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Persephone Kore	You are in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, at the zenith of an ancient memetic containment pyramid.      The sun is setting over the hills in the distance. You can see that because an entire face of the pyramid has just been casually shredded away.      The culprit is the young woman floating in front of you, surrounded by a planetary disc of metallic dust and rubble like the rings of Saturn.      Her smile is warm, saintlike, and effortless despite the flatly horrifying feat. But also, just a tiny bit, eager. "You're really willing to fight for this? Haha, I almost want to just let you have it. That's so pure!"      "But... you know, I have something I'm willing to fight for too. So let's fight like humans do, okay? Not to kill, but to learn, to grow. Be persuasive! Show me the strength of your hearts."      (Her presence is suffocating already. Persephone feels like the most real thing in the world; next to her everything else is hollow, cheap, fake. It's unnatural to raise a hand against her, and natural to do what she wants; fighting her is like fighting gravity. That's really the unfairness of it- that this is so easy for me, and so hard for you!)      The air shimmers with a spatial distortion. The Queen in Veils materializes around her, floating exactly as she did. It's barely a mech at all- more like a thirty-foot-tall doll made in the image of a fanciful goddess. Its white plastic chassis resembles a dress; its limbs are ball-jointed, revealing no electronics; the halo-crown above its head casts down vertical slats that half-veil its body, and its eyes gleam out from a featureless face wreathed in smoke-like hair.      The light of the sunset behind bends and lenses around the Queen in Veils' body like a black hole. For all it is, it feels less scary than its pilot. It's a playground fight, a clash of action figures, plastic and earnest and childlike.      When it reaches out for the eater-thought's manifestation, its movements are organic, natural, exactly like Persephone's. She isn't piloting it- it's being moved like a second body through sheer telekinetic force, perfectly responsive to intent.      The eater-thought howls and thrashes and ties itself in knots, straining to get away, but it's impaled on the containment spike. The Queen in Veils- no, Persephone- bends the black metal of the pyramid around it; crushing it, containing it, pulling it out and holding it in the palm of her hand with easy grace.      "If you think you're real enough to defy my wishes, then prove it! I dare you, I challenge you, to prove it. I know you're special, so show me how!"
Ioanna Langstrom	'Let's fight like humans do. Not to kill, but to learn.'      It's almost laughable. If it wasn't mind-bendingly horrifying, it would be. She'd laugh about it. About how the more things change, the more the Multiverse shifts, the more things remain the same.      'Not to kill.'      How like them. How like the old gods. How like the ones who strode across the battlefield without even looking down. How like the ones who imagined there was nothing to the world but themselves.      Behind the mirrorshades, her eye contracts. She doesn't need to feel Persephone's realness. She doesn't need to feel her pressure. She's been here a thousand times before, and it's never gotten easier. It's so much easier for them than for her because they were special. Because they were...      Well, Elite.      By the time the goddess appears and just bends the eater-thought with a motion, Ioanna's already biting her lip.      She's so small, standing among giants.      She's always been small. She's never made the kind of decisions that Elites make, the kind that decide worlds. She's never made the sort of choices that the special people make. She's always been in this position.      She's always held the line against these things. Just like this.      Except, a little part of her reminds her, before, they didn't know you existed. They weren't looking at you.      Did that make it better, that the people around you died without them even knowing? Or did it make it worse, that now one of them sees you, the god-monsters of old?      She bites her lip. In the end it isn't any bravery, any courage, to stand and look this thing in the eye. It isn't anything so fanciful as that. It's not heart. It's not survival instinct. Survival instinct is telling her to run.      So when she raises up the gun, folds the hand holding the badge across her arm, and fires a single shot - just a single bullet, almost comedic in its pointlessness, a single bullet directed at Phony's head - it's because of one thing.      Because she's standing in front of Effigy of Cimilco.      'Mourn the unburnt dead instead. It seems their souls do linger.'      Her eyes stare directly into Phony's own, like staring at the sun. And then, her voice wavering, says,      "You put that down."      "Right now."      A swallow.      "It doesn't belong to you."
Redshift Operators	The determined gunman at the front of the four is the one second-best equipped to swim in a sea of self. A man who lives in defiance of a larger being at all times. "Told you. Don't gotta let me. I don't wanna have it." Sharply, "I just want it dead."     "FASTBALL RAZOR, GO!" He shouts to his three companions. In blindingly fast motion, grenades are in the air, spinning, twirling, arcing through the air. Their calculated trajectories twist through Persephone's distortions, orbiting like something entering a black hole at just the right angle. They cook each other off in a chaotic jumble that brings to mind a mobile game's cascading combos, meant to dazzle and ruthlessly blind and batter.     The giant calls out, "Okay!" And takes a pre-trained position, two hands cupped, low.     The woman with the sword bounces onto his palms, and then straight along the arm of the Queen in Veils. In Persephone's eyes, a dozen of her seem to arc straight for the mecha, a shotgun-blast of possibilities and self. It's only when one finds the closest thing they can to purchase that the truth is clear: Projections, predictions. She is no longer a shotgun-blast of possibility, she is a whirling razor-blade slicing at the arm that was manipulating the Eater-Thought in an elegant, violent spiral, trailing trailing crimson, green, and white in three equal measures.
Gawain	Gawain takes a step forward. A terrifying stunt. A person who doesn't want to kill them. A psychic, who is going to take a plague of great power. A goddamn mecha pilot. Gawain seems to be just watching, for a moment, tactically appraising it all. Those in his head know that actually, he's having trouble with Persephone's presence. It'd be so easy to walk away. She probably means well with the eater-thought, right? Otherwise she'd be killing them. But then a voice rings in his head. Cimilco's. How his entire society died to this hazard. The one being played with like a toy. He's all that's left. And to fail him... Well, Gawain told him he'd help. At the very beginning. So, Gawain has to help. He can't go back on his word, especially not to a good robot like Cimilco. The knight steps forward. His armor is on. Each footstep is slow and thunderous. They slowly pick up pace as Gawain starts counting to thirty. To distract himself from the presence - the mantra Lilian showed. Cimilco is the bond that he thinks about. He's glad to have met him. "It's nice to finally meet you, Persephone. Let me show you what I can do!" He draws his sword into his hand. The light shines on his body as it refracts around the massive Queen of Veils. The sun's kiss ripples on him, boosting his physical power. Taking the blade into a two-handed stance, he presses his feet against the pyramid, braces... Gawain is launched into the air, cracking the floor beneath his feet, and moves to strike overhead straight into the Queen, downward slice, trying to crash back down onto the floor! The holy blade cuts through steel like butter, but this is a powerful mecha. It won't be that easy. "Obviously, though, I can't use my finisher on the first attack! You understand."
Tina Natsumi	After nearly getting through that whole ordeal with their job here compled, seeing a new and unrecognized figure just obliterate most of the pyramid has Tina staring with her mouth agape. There's a familiar chest crushing sensation to all of this, too, as her mind goes right back to the last time she faced such an overwhelming power. There's two massive differences this time, however. The first is that Persephone hasn't already (to Tina's knowledge) slaughtered however many people like Evehime had. Already, the lack of a body count has her calming down somewhat even though that mental pressure is still very real and not likely to disperse anytime soon. The second is that Tina herself has changed since last time. The anxiety is still there, but she clutches her phone firmly in one hand as she starts approaching the Queen in Veils and the thrashing eater-thought. She's gotten stronger since then. She can handle this. She has a trustworthy group with her, and this person doesn't seem as bored as Evehime did. Was it boredom? Or indifference? Whatever the case is, this one seems almost... Pleasant. That just makes Persephone even more unnerving. As Tina steps by Ioanna, she plants one hand firmly on her shoulder in a vague gesture of reassurance, although the latter can probably see and feel the Persona user trembling somewhat even as she lets go to keep moving forward. "A fight, eh? Alright... We'll show you just how strong we are, and we're going to take that thing back! Persona!" She snaps a picture of herself, and out comes the giant bipedal lizard with the mechanical scales and the star-shaped spikes. It roars its distorted and legally distinct roar, and both it and Tina launch themselves forward as they go for the most dramatic of fight-starting maneuvers: A two-pronged punch to the face. Or the veil, considering they're going for the giant robot.
Candy	*Oh, my friend. Ms. Sunshine.* Candy sighs. *I need a minute.* Time stops. Again. For a moment, that mental pressure changes. It's frozen--no less intense, but manageable, in the way that a single, sustained tone is more manageable than a complex symphony. *How do I get outta this without feeling bad? I like her. I think she likes me. She gave us an out--not that I'm great at that kinda fighting.* It's simple. Try. It needn't be to the death, as she says. If she fails, her Carpathia still knows she tried. And if you fail, Cimilco will know the same.      Time resumes. All that has changed is the presence of a deck of cards in Candy's hand. And... the dynamite, fuse and plunger are gone--no point in keeping them when she's here and able to dispose of them doubtless without much effort. "Treat me like a toy, toss me across the room, crush me into the floor, and I will still be plenty real," says Candy, as grenades lift into the air. "As real as the bones down there." Cards fly through the air, towards the Queen's midsection. "--as real as my friend!" They detonate into violent torrents of water, striking with the blunt force of furious rapids and towering waves-- "...who waited thousands of years and gave up their eye to get us up here safely."      There are suddenly several Candies--but only one of them is real. Which, though? He's hiding his mind... "You're the strongest that's ever tried to get me, up here," says a Candy, tapping his index finger to a temple. The nose isn't quite right.      "It is like being in a whirlpool," admits another with a tired chuckle. The eyes aren't quite the right color... "Especially with that fucking thing here." Spits a third at the eater-thought. "But I will not forget which way 'up' is no matter how hard you toss me."
Lilian Rook	An entire wall of the pyramid they spent so much time working their way up has been broken in. Exploded. Obliterated. Ceased to exist. The Preservers, the Warden, the smoke, the drones, the furnaces, the Snarl, the shooting, the disembodied souls, the bones --endless bones. An hour surrounded by blood and sweat and the fearful, pounding hearts of the living, in amongst the sad and lethal remains of the dead. What they'd learned. What they'd seen. What they'd spoken of. That race against the clock. That bond with Cimilco. That mourning for his people. That hateful anticipation for the Eater-Thought, somewhere above them, ever climbing upwards.     And this girl just skipped it all like that. Like it didn't matter. Like they could have just waited outside.     It makes Lilian absolutely furious.     And yet, the sound of her thoughts is deafening silence. Not an opaque void nor an impenetrable wall blocking the outside from the in, but an eerie gap in the comforting mental audioscape of human company. A fracture, razor fine and infinitely thin, in the surrounding, perfectly contiguous glass. Something you could smoothly run your finger over and not feel why it comes away a little bloody. A singularity from which only one sound escapes. A soft, delicate, silver on glass ticking. Exactly one second per second, with atomic precision. Tick. Tick. Tick. A sound that has been counting forever.
Lilian Rook	Amidst the line of Elites, poised for the climax of their harrowing journey, the young lady in black first moves forward ahead of them. "Nobody here wants to *have* that thing. Nobody should have it. Nobody deserves that thing *inflicted* upon them." she says. "You have no idea what it is. What it does. What it's done. You haven't a clue why we're here. You don't know who's waiting for us to succeed."     She is left behind by the Elites she stood in front of, surging ahead, rushing in to join battle. "You don't belong here. Go home. Tell whoever set you up to this horrid thing that you were seconds too late and it was already done with." For all the intense venom held back behind a dangerously thin, sugar glass wall, she somehow sounds completely earned. "Take some pictures of us here. Turn around. Go back into town. Take the day off. I'll even scuff up that plastic toy if you want it to look good. You shouldn't be here. It's not fair that you're here. Take this opportunity while you have it. You can still take it back."                 -----[then]-----     A six year old girl with long, dark hair and bright green eyes. A pretty little dress and a heavy book. Crisp winter sun glowing through a window so high up, an ancient, well-loved hardwood floor so very close. A much taller girl, red-headed and with the same eyes, sat on a patterned red velvet sofa. A shelf full of old books with difficult titles. A grandfather clock at exactly the stroke of six. "That's amazing!" she says, beaming back to the little girl. The little girl bounces on her heels in excitement. "Don't worry! You should tell mum and dad as soon as you're ready! They'll love it, I promise!" The little girl nods emphatically, squeezing the book to her chest. "See? I told you~ We all knew you'd be special~!"                 -----[now]-----     "Because humans don't fight to learn and grow, and then don't learn and grow from fighting. People don't understand each other through wanting something really badly. Violence is violence because it's the one language everyone understands."                 -----[then]-----     An adult woman, who would look just like her elder daughter, plus some years, were it not for her outdated style. A tall, dark-haired man, unshaven in the past several days, with sleepless eyes. It's nine. It's snowing. Plush red carpet. A bright fireplace. Its light gleams from all the corners of glass cases and brass cogwork and polished sculptures against the walls. The little girl was still waist height with the table back then. Newspapers. The man liked to read those even though no one made them anymore.     "You must be the only one in the world."     "Of course, our daughter would."     "I'm so glad. And so early too. You have a bright future."     "We expect great things from you. Be proud."     "Don't worry, we'll help you every step of the way."     "We'll be there for you."     "Let us take care of it all."                 -----[now]-----     "And killing is the one argument that always works. Don't you get that?"
Persephone Kore	Before the suit can materialize, Ioanna's bullet finds its mark, skimming Persephone's temple. Blood and hair and skin is carved away in its path, circling around her head like a pink halo, like just another planetary disc.      "Haha. You're so terrible to me," she says playfully, her eyes drifting shut for a moment. This injury isn't as real as I am. Persephone isn't someone who gets hurt. "But here, right now, bullets and swords aren't as real as plastic and pretend." There's just an instant before the mech materializes around her where Ioanna can see the wound close; even the snipped strands of hair regrow. "Don't fight me like that. Fight me like this instead!"      The elegant swordswoman's blade finds purchase in one future- wait, no, in all of them. There's no attempt to defend herself; Persephone meets the onslaught with warm expectation and innocent curiosity. Whichever future she chooses, the hardlight katana slices through the Queen in Veils' plastic exterior in vicious curves and spirals.      But there are no inner components to sever, and the wound starts to gravitationally heal even before it's finished being inflicted. The Queen in Veils naturally bends itself back to its ideal state, both hard to injure and hard to keep injured. It's neither as tough nor as brittle as conventional armor, designed to break but then rebuild itself in a slightly different shape. "The power to choose the future you want, isn't it? That's incredible. And the way you trust your friends... I love it a lot, actually! But are you really strong enough to make that future real?"      Gawain's plunging blade likewise finds purchase, dragging a long cut down the middle of the Queen's elegant torso- but not as deep as could be hoped. Edges are bent back, smoothed over, as I refuse to be hurt! I refuse to let you injure me! "You're amazing, Gawain! I'll treasure that action figure more than ever, after today. But it really won't be that easy."      Similarly, Tina's giant lizard throws a pair of powerful punches, both of which strike and crack one of the slats of the Queen's titular veil. Smaller combatants can get through them without issue, but someone her own size will have more trouble with it! The cracks are already mending when an immense telekinetic force gently pushes Tina and her lizard back, re-establishing space. "Awww! You're so scared, aren't you? But so brave! You can do it. I believe in you, Tina!"      Water can cut diamonds, and the Queen in Veils is no diamond. Struck head-on, its torso dents and existing cracks are peeled further open under the force of the torrent. But it doesn't stumble or waver, and the dents pop back out with a slight telekinetic push a moment later.      Conveying her gentle amazement, the Queen in Veils puts one hand on its cheek as it watches Candy clone himself. That amazement only intensifies when it tries, and fails, to sort out the real one via mind-feel. "And you're the slipperiest I've ever tried to grasp, Candy! But don't worry. I promise: no hard feelings, and no broken bones. Is that okay?"
Persephone Kore	That same expressivity means it's painfully obvious when Lilian makes her tense up. She looks... hurt? She looks defensive. The Queen in Veils' spine straightens up, and then slumps quietly. "No. What you're saying... it's true. But it shouldn't be. I don't want it to be. Even if you fight for real, even if you use bullets or swords, it's not as real as me playing pretend. I get to decide that! I do."      It takes a good long moment, during which everyone else can rest or ready up, but the Queen in Veils finally raises its head and sets its shoulders with determination again.      "The dream of Sapient Heuristics... is that everyone should get to be as real as I am. More real than violence, more real than a bullet. Everyone should have their heart heard, and force the world to listen. Are you really allowed to say I can't make that dream come true?"      "You were born special. Violence serves you. Why do you have a right to speak? I can't read you, so if there's something worthwhile in your heart, show me! Or else shut up about it."
Persephone Kore	A fact: it is impossible to be killed by the Queen in Veils. No matter how logically lethal its attacks might seem, they stop just short of critical harm; even terrifying blows become like a gentle caress inviting surrender.      Another fact: it really, really doesn't feel that way.      There's a moment of intense, horrifying peril. It isn't projected from Persephone; her aura stays constant, still radiating warmth. But the animal brain reads the subtle tension in the air, the way physics contorts itself to rationalize what Persephone is about to do the the world, and howls "danger".      Do you think the deer in the headlights knows something we don't? In that split second before the Toyota Corolla tears him in half, is he tuned in to something so divine that he has no choice but to stop and listen?      Don't just stand there. You're making me sad.      The entire top floor of the pyramid is shattered with a telekinetic hammerblow right to its center, and then instantaneously, gently, effortlessly ripped apart by Persephone's tidal forces, cored out and shredded into her orbit with an unholy shriek of tortured metal. Taking a direct hit from the telekinetic strike would require being extremely oblivious, extremely stupid, and extremely durable, but the shockwave and shrapnel are enough to wound.      It's a thirty-foot plunge down into the Rehabilitation Village, still strewn with horrifyingly psychohazardous art, and now with falling debris. Those without mental defenses are safe as long as they stay within Lilian's mind-ward, but its area of protection is relatively small; protecting oneself while preserving mobility requires closing one's eyes, an unappetizing prospect..      The Queen in Veils gently lowers itself down into the hole, standing on the edge of the floor.      "You're all really special," Persephone says, her voice still tinged with a bit of sadness from Lilian's rebuke. "You know, I think maybe you could beat me? You really could. But I don't think you're prepared for just how hard you'll have to try."
Ioanna Langstrom	She made God bleed.      This has never happened. Not once. Not ever. Ioanna's eye widens behind the mirrorshades as the bullet grazes the temple. Shock, at herself. Distracting. Stunning. She did that. She made God bleed. Ioanna Langstrom, Union Armed Forces - Ioanna Langstrom, Commonwealth Mechanized Mercenaries -      Ioanna Langstrom, Paladin Elites.      She made God bleed.      It's just for an instant that she's shocked. But the world changes in an instant. Hammers swing in an instant. Shockwaves erupt in an instant.      She's not so shocked that she's stupid enough to let that hit her dead-on. But she is stupid enough to do something much, much more important than get completely out of the way. There's something so much more important that she needs to do than protect herself.      She throws herself on top of Effigy of Cimilco and tucks him tight against her.      The shockwave rips over her. They start to fall. The MCM protects her from the worst of it - the suit takes the damage, and the fancy mirrorshades crack, and the earpiece buzzes and hisses, and the jacket is torn in a whole lot of places. It'll assuredly need to be repaired. That's as dead-on a hit as a human being *could* take - and this is a field test.      Some field test. A trial by fire.      As they start to fall she holds him, the robot, against her. She turns him upwards, so that it's her back to the ground. She can't trust that he'll live. She can trust that she will.      She hits and bounces once. The Effigy hits the top of her and she groans. No time, though. She just hoists him up, throws him over her shoulder, and starts running.      Running. Running. She's running through the Rehabilitation Village. She's-      -running through the village.      "Trust me, please," she murmurs to Cimilco, her voice quaking very slightly.      "I don't know what I'm doing."      Then she whips her foot around into one of the sculptures and sends it flying right for Persephone.      It's not meant to hit her. It's meant to show her The Idea. There's no way that something like that can't protect itself against a simple ideogram, a simple tainted idea - if she can just grab the thing with a thought, she's strong enough to do it.      But she doesn't *understand* it.      With her free hand, Ioanna wheels up the badge. She points it at Persephone. There's a flash of light - a burst of light pointed right at her eyes. It's bright as all hell, and it *might* hurt her, but that's not really the point. The point is to very briefly keep her from seeing The Idea. Just long enough.      Her voice is shaky.      "Why..."      The mirrorshades crack a little more. Through the cracks, her green eye. She won't break eye contact. Not while she's got Effigy on her shoulder. "...is your dream..."      "More important than anyone else's?"
Tina Natsumi	Some part of this feels insulting. Another part of it feels reassuring. There's even some confusion mixed in when Tina hears just how non-threatened Persephone seems to be by all of this. She should probably be angrier than she is, but when Persephone pushes Tina and Godzilla back instead of battering the shit out of them with that telekinetic force, she almost looks relieved. "I don't get you. But... You really believe in what you're saying, huh?" Tina inhales slowly as she steadies herself somewhat, that earlier anxiety still lingering even if it has subsided a little bit from that initial exchange. "But we do, too, you know. This... That thing you've got there? It's something that could do crazy damage if it goes free." Tina glances back at Cimilco briefly, recalling what had happened in the depths of this pyramid only minutes ago. "Hell, it already has. If you're some kind of psychic or mind reader or whatever, then you can look right in and see for yourself. That's why we need to take this from you, dream of Sapient Heuristics or not. Dreams that just end up in people getting lobotomized ain't dreams I can abide by!" Should Persephone dig, she'll also notice that Tina actually kind of likes that name for a company. A little ominous, but cool. Luckily for Tina, when she had gotten shoved back, she's just within range of Lilian's mind-ward. Between that and her Persona acting as a form of generalized defense for her, she doesn't suffer from the full effects of that perilous falling sensation. It's still enough to get her to waste some effort on trying to slow her apparent descent, though, with Godzilla breathing superheated air below itself to keep them both from splattering from the perceived fall. It doesn't protect them enough that Tina gets away unscathed, though, as the falling shrapnel tears through some of her jacket, gets embedded in the bipedal lizard's form, and batters her repeatedly from above. Once she recovers from that falling hazard and the rain of projectiles, Tina yanks the submachine gun off her belt. Jumping onto Godzilla's back, she starts firing wildly at the Queen of Veils, banking shots off the ground to strike at it from unexpected-ish angles, and even laying covering fire down for her allies. Godzilla, meanwhile, lets out another roar as its scales start to pulse with gathering energy, then stomps forward while firing a fierce beam of white plasma across those slats in the Queen of Veils'... Veil!
Gawain	"...no, it won't, will it?" Gawain is smiling brightly as the edges are smoothed over, even if he's internally frustrated that this will be a very difficult fight. But the smile is still genuine. And then there's the moment of peril. A howl of danger, Gawain braces, more suited to taking hits than dodging, but as he feels what's really coming, he fatrolls out of the way. Sadly, it's a fatroll, so he still gets hit by the shockwave and shrapnel head on. He's sent flying backwards, and downwards. His armor makes a sound as it impacts against the ground, and as the Queen in Veils lowers itself, Persephone can see Gawain rising. There's no blood on him, despite the impact, but he's feeling it anyways. "No...I'm not. But I've got to try anyways, right? If I just ran away and gave up, I wouldn't be a knight worthy of such an action figure. You're more 'real', you say? That may be true. But I'll fight in two ways, now. I want you to see how special I really can be! Please forgive me if I embarass myself, though!" Gawain spins his sword around the ground, creating runes. A miniature sun flies above him as magic leaves his body, causing the dark room to glow brightly and making it so he doesn't have to play with rays. He tries to stay in the area of the wards, only closing his eyes for hit and fade tactics. And then, leaping upwards again, he ignites his sword with holy flame, and moves to thrust it straight forward. He does this over and over again. He doesn't have the ramp up for Excalibur Galatine yet. He's charging power through the miniature sun. And a memory appears. It's for Persephone. A LIFETIME AGO "Your highness! Please, stop fooling around, sword training is very serious business. How are you ever going to be a knight, let alone King of Orkney?" A tutor says to the beautiful blonde prince, with a smile so bright it radiates like the sun. They're standing in a field, the bright light shining on them. They each have training swords. "Sir Yorrick, please! Serious business is for times of war. And war is something I want to avoid, as king. It's a sad business. Can't people just smile? Can't they just play and live in peace?" Yorrick rubs his brow. "Yes, yes, your highness, but that doesn't mean you won't get killed if you don't hit me straight on instead of trying flashy maneuvers the serving boys told you about. Honestly. Strike me again!" Young Gawain readies his training sword, and swings forward, as he speaks once more. "This is just a game to you, and even though there's lives at stake, Persephone, I understand the feeling! The battles of swords and bullets are ones that should someday be left in the past. So I'll try playing pretend." "Feel my heart!" Talking basically 'directly to the camera', the 'blow' is focused at Persephone as she reads the emotion. Gawain isn't sure if it'll do anything, but even so, he hopes Persephone will appreciate it.
Candy	"More than okay," says a Candy--a split second before the floor gives out beneath him. It doesn't matter which one is real--because whichever one it is will still have to deal with gravity. Still have to deal with rubble falling. All of them disappear, save one, who hits the ground on his back, hissing in pain and rolling over. No broken bones, but you can still hit pretty hard--and so can the falling rubble. One strikes him in the shoulder, and-- and that's enough of that. Now... what's going on? Rubble hangs suspended in the air. So, too, the Queen-in-Veils, and Persephone, with that almost saintly smile of hers. A statue, frozen in flight. A shining light from Ioanna's badge. Godzilla, breathing flames to keep itself aloft. Gawain, wreathing his sword in flames and winding up for a strike. *That's the ticket.* Candy smiles.      Time resumes. -The remainder of the collapsing rubble abruptly, jerkily changes position, two times. -It flies beneath Godzilla's flame breath. -Before Tina and Godzilla can smash into a superheated pile of rubble, it zips over to Gawain, so that his sword strike bats the flaming rubble towards the Queen in advance of his intended attack. -Footsteps can be heard retreating. Candy has hidden himself behind one of the houses... -Something clicks and unwinds.
Lilian Rook	"If the dream of Sapient Heuristics involves *that thing* you have in your big plastic pretend hands, then it shouldn't be realized." Lilian replies. "You really have no idea, do you? What did they tell you? What have those people made you believe? How can you hold that thing in your hands and really believe that everything will be fine?"                 -----[then]-----     A seven year old girl with long, dark hair and bright green eyes. A pretty little dress and a heavy book. A great big library with ladders to reach the top shelves, and an open floor above that. Warm indoor candles. It's seven o'clock. The creak of a rocking chair with no one in it. The scent of patchouli and sage. She stares with rapt attention at the man across the table. Complicated drawings have been rendered in chalk on a miniature slate, and drawn in ink on parchment. Astrological symbols. Alchemic units. He has a neatly pressed silk tie, a tweed jacket and vest, and his face isn't all quite there. Slightly bleary and impressionistic.     Two women in maid uniforms arrive. One is short and blonde and equally forgettable. The other is tall with black-violet hair and is carrying a tray of tea and sweets obviously meant to be a reprieve. The little girl looks happy to see her. She asks her a question. The tall maid's lips twitch upward, but her eyes go a little dull. "They'll be home late, darling. Come on now. It's been three hours, Sir ------ Save the rest for later."                 -----[now]-----     "What do you know about *anything*? Really? What do you know about anyone else? You read their minds and think you know what it's like to be them? Everyone's heart is right there already. It's not hard to find them. It's not hard to hear them. Psychic powers don't enter into the equation. Do you want to know why nobody else's hearts get to be heard?"                 -----[then]-----     An eight year old girl with long, dark hair and bright green eyes. A pretty little dress and a heavy book. The title is smeared and blurry, like it was painted on with oil. A great big piano, expensive as can be, yet somehow generic as can be. The maker's name is illegible. Music far more complicated than an eight year old should handle, and yet the girl stares past the sheet with mild disinterest, looking into a crowd. Everything past the velvety curtains, and the exactly sixteen stage lights is a dark, lumpy mass of human silhouettes. A single clock says it's ten in the evening. She searches around, face gradually falling as her fingers hit the keys with automatic precision. A weak smile jumps back to her childish face when she sees a familiar face, almost unrecognized with her black-violet hair let down from a work bun. The lady wiggles her fingers. Two seats next to her are empty. The little girl smiles anyways.                 -----[now]-----     The Queen in Veils heals from every attack. Harm --genuine harm-- slides right off of it. But Lilian isn't done talking. "It's because the world doesn't have time for them. How are so many hearts supposed to yell over one another and *all* be heard? The world isn't big enough for everyone's wishes to be real. Reality only listens to whoever can yell the loudest. The world only has space in its heart to care about a few people, and you're just as desperate to be one of them as everyone else."
Lilian Rook	This time, the world explodes *beneath* Lilian. The final floor. The place that was meant to be the stage for their showdown. Their climax. Their catharsis. Their resolution. Their promise fulfilled to a new friend. Gone. Like that. At this girl's whim. Trivial and childish.                 -----[then]-----     A nine year old girl with long, dark hair and bright green eyes. A pretty little dress and a book. A woman in a vaguely nice, feminine suit, snaps at her. The little girl's attention jerks back from the window. It's a bright summer day, and she can see a deer out on the edge of the woods from her seat on the third floor, but even though it's two o'clock, she's still indoors. The woman, vague and impressionist, reiterates some kind of question. Stacks of papers. There are pound signs on them, and some graphs, and there's a calculator somewhere at the girl's fingertips. She answers automatically, taking the suited woman aback, and then asks her own question. The suited woman adjusts her skirt uncomfortably and says "Never mind that." The girl fingers the edge of her book, and glances back out the window.                 -----[now]-----     Lilian drops to the floor below with the grace of a cat and the weight of a falling leaf. Even the shrapnel glides past her, like she's seen where it's going to be. Or like she stopped being in the place it was going to go just a moment ago. She sidesteps a falling chunk of ceiling, her lips twisting into a more visibly livid snarl. She picks up her gun, then tosses it aside like a torn shirt. "So are you going to try and tell me some bullshit about how, when I put in all this hard work, it doesn't count because I'm special, but when you show up at the last second to walk away with what we worked for, it's deserved because you weren't? Are you here to tell me about how everyone deserves to be heard, to get what they want, except me, because I happen to be in your way? What I want doesn't because I was born different from you? Or because you just don't want to hear it?"                 -----[then]-----     A ten year old girl with long, dark hair and bright green eyes. A pretty dress and a book. An old wall clock says it's two in the morning. She's awake anyways. Moonlight spills in through a series of wide patio doors, showing rolling gardens of roses glowing white. There are candles lit, but most of the hall is still in shadow. Humanoid shapes move about in the background, carrying candle pans and old-fashioned oil lamps. There are hints of maid uniforms, of too many different temporal styles to really fit. Thumping and bumping sounds around the house. The clap clap of footsteps with nobody to match them slowly goes by.     Two Victorian Gentlemen chat and laugh with each other across a table, in accents long gone. A faceless maid brings them another silver platter, which opens to a dish of nothing, which they tuck into with imaginary gusto anyways. They discuss politics from three hundred years ago. The little girl sits at the other end of the table, chin in her palms, listening with rapt attention, expression dreamy and absorbed, with an abandoned pile of scrolls near her elbow. She talks along to the conversation, but though it would be rude, it seems as if the two men don't recognize she's there. They're very dead, after all, but she doesn't seem to mind. It looks like she just enjoys pretending to be a part of the conversation.                 -----[now]-----
Lilian Rook	Lilian glides back to gain some distance from the queen. She draws her hand back, and motes of crimson light coalesce out of thin air, the leylines in her protective circle flickering faintly as the magic builds up to a white-- then black hot point between her curled fingers. "Am I not prepared? Really? I've been trying hard my entire life, you patronizing piece of shit. Don't tell me what I'm prepared for while you hide behind pretend and because-I-say-so."                 -----[then]-----     An eleven year old girl with long, dark hair and bright green eyes, a dress and a book. She stands at the center of a circle of stone, flat and level, stained deeply with centuries of use. Old megaliths thrice her size ring her all around, covered tip to bottom in endless, angular, geometric scrawl, lines of which she is copying down dutifully into a notebook under the watchful supervision of a person-shape in a classical dress of some nebulous renaissance fashion. The sun is setting, but she checks her pocketwatch anyways, all the numbers except nine blurred out. The supervisor says something, but it's a muffled kind of burble. The girl turns over her notes, scratched precisely in charcoal, watching blank and bored. Her stare drifts up to the sky, and the house on the hill. The landscape itself is faintly foggy, as if viewed through a dirty lens, though the house itself --no, obviously a very old mansion-- remains clear. The bored silence is interrupted by a woman's voice. A maid uniform. Black-violet hair. The words are clear, "Time to come back inside darling." but even her face has lost some definition. Just a bit. But enough.                 -----[now]-----     "Why do I have a right to decide? Why do *you*? Did you 'earn' it? I *know* you didn't. You're a special little child, taken in by someone who wanted you for what you could do. They raised you just so, taught you everything you knew, cultivated your powers, and now they want something from you. You're everything you are because someone *made* you. You have everything you need because someone *gave it*, no strings attached. How is that any different?" The magic reaches critical mass. Lilian thrusts out her hand, and it erupts as a short-lived beam of lashing fire, the flames themselves turned photo negative so that they are inky black at their core and rose red at their edges. The target is-- The Eater-Thought in the Queen In Veils' hand.
Lilian Rook	-----[then]-----     A twelve year old girl with long, dark hair and bright green eyes, wearing a dress. She's walking down a set of grand steps, from an even more grandiloquent double staircase, down into the heart of a brightly lit lobby with an ornate chandelier gleaming off marble floors. The place is packed, but respectfully parted to either side. Faceless shadows of men and women in suits and dresses. Faceless shadows of their own children, younger than her, between them.     Glinting glasses and soft, tasteful music, but even the pattern on the marble is indistinct. The table cards say nothing. It's impossible to even distinguish anyone's colour of hair, save for the red-headed older girl nearby, her smile only recalled like a dream, and the black-violet haired maid, wiping an imagined tear away from a half-defined eye. A tall man, and old-fashioned woman flank the girl on the steps, walking her down the stairs, for the crowd. Only their hands, immediately holding hers, really stand out. Otherwise, they might as well be like the crowd. The girl does her curtsy, in her little heels, and canned, dreamlike applause fills the somewhere-hall. She glances to the clock, because she seems to know exactly where it is. It's exactly three. "Three more hours." she whispers to herself. The room dissolves into start red and black crackling. A red just outside of red. A black just beyond violet.                 -----[now]-----     "None of that makes you real. none of that makes you matter. I don't care how special Sapient Heuristics is. I don't care how much they lavished you with. I don't care how much you adore your guardians. *They* want to be heard, and you're the loudest megaphone they can find."
Redshift Operators	The angry grenadier descends, scraping and crashing against chunks of the floor as they fall. The giant is the one who snatches him out of mid-air, surviving most of the blow by landing on his back. The woman with the ponytail falls and slams into the village dirt, splattering-- no, she crashes through a roof, impales on-- that's not right, she twists in mid-air, rolls off one of the roofs, and leaps elegantly to snatch onto the astronaut, whose jetpack has almost entirely blunted his fall.     "Fffffuck! Ghhh... *Every* Egregore there's ever been promises everyone that big dream! And every goddamn one'a them there's ever been lied, and *killed*, to grow fat on that fuckin' trust." The gunman scrambles to his feet, trying to find his shotgun again. THERE, just at the edge of the wards. Up, up, get that barrel focused on her. Pump her machine full of those special explosive slugs. "You any of 'em live even a *little* and you're givin' 'em the only thing they want, a *chance*."     "Unfortunately," Says the woman with the sword as she brandishes her blade. "It was never a matter of who is and is not strong enough to pick that future. When choosing the right outcome, you don't pick what you're worthy to take. You pick the one outcome that is not unconscionable. I cannot fail him and his world."     CRACK! CRACK! A heavy cross between a takedown sniper rifle and an anti-materiel rifle sounds its shots in rapid succession. "You have an objective." CRACK! "This is the wrong way." CRACK! "This won't make everyone as real as you are." CRACK! "You want everyone to get to be heard," CRACK! "But that thing will only tell you how to hear something like it." The astronaut just blazes away at the exact middle mass of the Queen in Veils, working overtime to lay bare a heart that's already fully vulnerable in other ways.
Persephone Kore	Cimilco has a sense of self-preservation; it was already booking it like hell. But it's not as fast as Ioanna, and without her help, it probably would have taken Persephone's attack hard. "Honored foreigner," it says quietly as she scoops it up, voice wavering. "Throw me over the side. I will survive. Do not burden yourself."      The flash of light is blinding, thanks to Persephone's perfect sensory integration with the Queen in Veils. It reaches up to cover its eyes from the attack- but the statue has a more demoralizing effect. Persephone briefly contemplates it: "Why are you the way that you are?" The answer makes her visibly recoil, not as if bitten, but in revulsion. The statue is telekinetically obliterated an instant later.      "It's not. It really, really isn't. That's exactly the point!! I don't want to be strong. I want everyone else to be as strong as I am! I want them to have this gift too, so they can make their wishes real." She's still warm, still earnest, but she sounds a little less certain now that she's seen the statue's origins.      That somberness carries into her tone towards Tina. "I really do believe it," she says sincerely. "I hope I can make you understand. Everything I have, you deserve it too!"      And the name *is* pretty cool, haha. Thank you! But it's more of a... non-profit initiative?      The bullets have at least a small effect on the Queen in Veils; the amazing superheated breath does more, scorching its body between the slats and melting two of the slats to burning, bubbling plastic on the floor. But already they're starting to regrow, albeit not as fast as they were damaged; the doll-mech is starting to show accumulated harm, but you get the sense that if you let up for just a few moments, I'd will it back into perfect health. It's really frustrating that you won't let me, you know!      The boulder that Candy lines up to strike her hits dead-on, passing through the gap in the veil left by Tina's legally-distinct Gojira to strike the Queen's shoulder with a crunch of plastic. Gawain's blow itself...      You really do understand me, don't you, Sir Gawain? Maybe better than anybody else here. You know, I think we could be friends? But if you understand me- She's in his head. She reads the attack perfectly. It's battered aside just before making contact, halted cold by a simple act of will: no. "You know why I can't just let you win!"
Persephone Kore	After all of Lilian's venom, Persephone is braced for some breathtakingly awful attack to be directed at her. She isn't ready for the Eater-Thought to be attacked instead. Lilian's wave of fire splits the blackmetal containment open, singes the Queen's hand, and wounds the Eater-Thought's manifestation awfully- it shrieks and keens at the edge of human hearing as a third of its smoke-stringy mass dissolves, immediately thrashes and lunges to be free, and is then just as quickly crunched back down and contained by Persephone's tidal forces, re-assembling the metal containment.      "Why are you so awful to me," she says in a quiet, sincere voice. She really means it. "I don't understand you at all. Why does it scare you so much that you might not be stronger than me? Why does it scare you so much that you might not be stronger than other people, if we get our way? Why does not being more 'real' scare you that bad."      "The piano recitals. Learning magic so young. You really have worked so hard, haven't you? But it can't just be that. ... You're right. What I have isn't fair at all. But that's exactly why I have to share it."      The squad of mercenaries opening fire on her promptly distracts her from that. The explosive slugs pockmark her veil and hull; the heavy anti-materiel bullets drive in gouges, deeper than anything else so far.      "You think it's too dangerous for us to handle," she says softly, weathering the assault with more graceful equanimity than she can really afford. "But the Eater-Thought isn't the scariest thing here. I am! Won't you be scared of me for just a moment? Won't you play with me, instead of just trying to make me feel bad?"      One of the anti-materiel bullets hammers a point already weakened by the explosives, punching through into the cockpit. Direct hit. For a brief moment, through the hole, there's a glimpse of red; of Persephone's face grimacing, but not in pain. Then the hole seals over. I'm not hurt. You can't make me hurt. Stop it!!
Persephone Kore	The ring of dust that surrounds the Queen in Veils is drawn inwards, compressing down into a sphere until it ignites from the friction. A tiny star is born in her hands, growing brighter and brighter as it's crunched down, expanded with more material, and compressed again, growing unbearably bright and setting the grass on fire with its radiant heat alone.      "If you won't let me feel like a hero, at least let me feel like a villain, won't you? At least be scared. You're hurting my heart. I don't like this at all."      Its flames ought to sear flesh, too, but somehow it doesn't. Somehow its warmth becomes gentle and subduing; an exhausting midsummer day, a cozy fireplace, the kind of heat that makes you not want to get out from under the covers in the morning. It still weakens the ability to fight, but it isn't real, lethal fire; it's pretend.      But it isn't so kind to the pyramid. Again, as the star erupts in a supernova conflagration, the pyramid's structure is utterly devastated. The Rehabilitation Village is absolutely destroyed, and you fall into the Crematorium.      The dragonfly-drones here recognize the Queen in Veils as something to be repaired; they flit down and rest on its chassis, trying to puzzle out its mechanisms to patch them over. Worse, this is a section you haven't visited; the conveyor belts are still running, the furnaces still belch flame.
Ioanna Langstrom	Fire.      It's the warmth that's so awful. The kindness. The childishness of it. That's what the worst part of it is. It's like it encapsulates all the worst of the old world, all the awful, self-centered attempts to sound...better...than the others. To pat themselves on the shoulder and feel like they're doing the right thing.      And again, she's holding Effigy of Cimilco tightly, and as the fire washes over them, she says, quietly, "My name is Ioanna. And I'm sorry, sir, but I can't obey that order."      The warmth grabs her, and she curls up again, as the MCM overcompensates. The fancy black suit starts to burn away. The ground burns with it. They fall, fall, fall, and hit the Crematorium.      This time, though, Ioanna lands on her feet. She wobbles, holding the Effigy by the hand.      "Because we've both heard 'I'll be alright' enough times to know better."      The last of the suit burns away, leaving her in a button-down white suit. The mirrorshades have shattered, though there's no debris - there's no *glass*, after all. Not that she knows how it works, exactly. She's not sure the people making it do. Something about hexagons and fundamental structures. There's a little ripple of hexagon along her ear as the earpiece breaks down and disappears, even.      She wavers.      "You..."      "Want to be feared...?"      Her voice is quiet.      It's pain, mingled with relief.      If Persephone could see her, was paying even the slightest bit of attention to her, she'd know that Ioanna was scared out of her mind. But that also meant that Persephone wasn't paying attention to her.      So Ioanna can pay attention when the statue gives her pause, when Lilian's attack on the Eater-Thought forces her to act. So Ioanna can put things together as she stands on the conveyor belt, carefully keeping her balance with Effigy of Cimilco's hand tight in hers.      And she can put together something Lilian said yesterday.      She starts running. She runs, knowing that if Persephone is paying even the slightest bit of attention to her, this might not work at all - this might mean nothing. Persephone could tear her apart. She's tiny. But maybe being tiny will pay off.      She dives through the Crematorium with Effigy. She dodges left of a furnace. She tosses him over another and rolls under, the blazing fire inches from her face, thankful that the MCM is environmentally-sealed. She catches Effigy and kicks her way into the next room. Then, still crouched down, Lilian pats the top of the metallic urn like the head of a faintly annoying child, and says, "Don't worry. I'll figure out a way to kill you later. You piece of shit." To the seething malevolence within.      "I need you to keep trusting me," Ioanna says to Cimilco as she scoops up the urn, tossing him onto her back like a backpack, "Because right now I don't trust myself and if you stop trusting me I'll probably collapse. I don't belong here. I need you to believe that I do, so that I can, too."      She runs. She runs back into the furnace, back under the dripping, melted ceiling, urn tucked under her arm.      Careful. Have to time it right. Have to time it in between the shots. While she's not paying full attention. While she's looking away, while someone else has her awareness. It has to be last moment. She can't see it as an attack.      With all her strength, Ioanna hurls the urn at Persephone.      She swings up the gun.      "Why is your dream more important than the billions of dreams this thing cut short?!"      Bang.      A blast of cutting wind.      Cleaving the urn in half to release the malevolence directly in front of Persephone.      Solving at least one bird by hurling it at a bigger, meaner, scarier bird.      "Why are your promises so much more important than his?!"
Tina Natsumi	"Wanting other people to have what you got isn't a bad thing. Wanting good stuff for anyone generally isn't. But that's not the problem we have here." Tina inhales sharply as she reloads her submachine gun, recalling Godzilla to bring it back into a defensive stance as she tries to get a better read on Persephone. No... On everything. There's some parts of this that aren't adding up for Tina. She's pretty sure she hasn't heard anything about piano recitals, but it had to come from somewhere. Or is Persephone just trying to confuse them? No... That wouldn't be it.  It'd have to come from somewhere for someone as open as her to actually talk about it. But who? Wait. Shit. That's the distraction, isn't it? It's not enough of a distraction to get Tina to take her eyes off the Queen in Veils, but it is enough to have her reacting to the creation of the star rather than trying to actively stop it. Even though she knows that this isn't completely real, the sight of the giant machine creating and destroying a star still creates a viscerally unpleasant fear reaction in Tina's gut that only amplifies the exhausting feeling behind it. Getting thrown further down into the depths of the pyramid certainly doesn't help, either. Tina lands with a painful bone-cracking thud complete with a pained scream, and she only gets back up after struggling for the first few attempts. Hissing at the pain, she feels around her legs before noticing something odd: Nothing feels broken. Bruised, certainly, micro fractures, probably, but nothing outright broken. "... Huh. That's new." Apparently, she's not aware of her Persona's regenerative capabilities, but it's a pleasant surprise nonetheless. "Anyway... Geh. Where were we... Oh, right. The problem is this." She gets up, and she gestures at all the furnaces, the conveyor belts, the skeletal piles if they're still around. "These machines were made to eradicate the existence of the people that used to live here. The ones that found what you're trying to take back for your company's experiments. They were the ones that had to go through so much shit just to keep people they'd never meet safe from that thing." "They did all this knowin' nobody would even know they existed. I get you want to make things better for people. I really do. But ignoring their sacrifice by bringing it back to your home... Are you ready to bear that kind of guilt if something goes wrong and your powers can't do a thing to fix it no matter how hard you try?" And with that, Godzilla launches itself forward with Tina on its shoulder once again, star-spikes crackling with energy as it goes for a more direct approach. It tries to grapple with the Queen in Veils directly, screaming at it while unloading white-hot fire breath onto the slats, onto its body, into anything it can point its face at and blast even at point blank.
Gawain	The blow is battered aside. Despite that...Gawain's heart reached Persephone. That's what counts, for him. And when she shouts out, his smile's brighter. "Right! Don't hold back, and neither will I! Our ideals and dreams are on the line! We're enemies right now..." "But I've made some of my greatest friends from battles like this!" The star is born. It's bright, like Gawain's sun, and it explodes, sending Gawain hurtling to a conveyer belt. He slams hard, but not as hard as before, prepared more for it, and rips off a piece of metal from the conveyor belt as a makeshift shield against flames, blackening and burning. He spares a look towards Lilian, briefly. She got read? How? And why can't she understand Persephone is special, even if she's their enemy? It doesn't make sense to him. Instead, his sun comes back down, giving him more light, as he suddenly runs up a wall. He kicks off it, moving the flaming sword to pierce into Persephone again. Last time she read him, so... This time he throws the shield up at her head first. Just as a fun surprise! Also one that hurts because he's throwing it with all his strength, so the shield is gonna shatter and explode.
Redshift Operators	Four trails of green light fall into the skeletal abyss. Burning, seared by the intense, gentle heat of that supernova. There is no future without the flame, and nowhere to run from the warmth. A shotgun and rifle clatter to the ground, crossed in a pit of bones. The horrid soul-tethers undoubtedly wreak all sorts of havoc on their bodies in strains to avoid connections with the Eater-Thought.     "Scared." The titanic meat-wall of a man speaks the word as if it's foreign when he crawls his way out of a bone pile. "'Scared' sounds about right. You're 'scary' because you can wrestle everyone in the world, aren't you?" After all, this sure is awfully scary! The giant of the Redshift Operators is pretty nervous. "Play-fight any man or any army. Maybe pin down the whole multiverse. But you're not gonna be the scary villain."     He reaches down, crushing bones beneath his palm, and hoists the woman with the ponytail out by her organic arm. She speaks up: "Indeed. Few here would question the goal of elevating people above the world. We dispute no ideal, but instead facts. The egregore... Our leader can't allow its existence. His truth is that the egregores and humankind cannot coexist."     "Not in a lab, not in a market, not in a tomb, *nowhere*."     Covered in cinders and bone fragments, the duo move along belts. The tall man's armor is screaming an unholy wail of metal and straining motors as he leaps with tremendous force up a series of the belts, still holding onto the woman's arm, and lands heavily near one of the upper furnaces. The massive, structurally-embedded equipment begins to wail like his armor when, with his gauntlet-clad hands, he starts to twist it free. The woman rides atop the lip of the tipping thing, and the duo aim it precisely through prediction and strength to pour hundreds, maybe thousands of pounds of cursed ash directly onto the Queen in Veils while Tina Natsumi-zilla holds it in place with a grapple.     Hopefully significant damage, certainly, but not the most damaging part. Through the ash, a ninja-like strike: Moonjutsu maneuvers of tremendous skill attempt to hide the cyborg ninja's soul in the storm of ash, ideally allowing her to plant a blade deep in the body of the Queen in Veils, somewhere critical, somewhere important. She tests, in her mind, almost every square inch of potential striking space, before she picks the one that provokes the greatest wince of play-fight pain after the strike.
Lilian Rook	"Why are you the way that you are?" is a question that was maybe never meant to be asked of Lilian. The psychic impressions of all those events, all those brushes with other people, all those times that were just a little bit real, like dirt on shoes, are never ending. There's no sequence of dramatic, comprehensible moments. No pleasing answers. No tender moments and sympathetic fears. No pacing, structure, beginning, middle, or end. It just keeps flowing. Tumbling. Bleeding out. An outpouring of so many little fragments of time, confused and jumbled and frequently plagued with incomprehensible static and 'glitches'. Maybe it has to do with the fact that Persephone can't read her? Yeah, that has to be it.                 -----[then]-----     A thirteen year old girl with long, dark hair and bright green eyes. She's at school. Of a sort. It looks more like a state building. A parliamentary capital. Her eight classmates don't even come close to filling the adult-sized hall, though they each need their space for the immense amount of alchemical equipment and arcane textbooks by them. The other students are like extras in a dream. Blonde. Brunette. Short. Tall. Boy. Girl. The uniforms stand out, black and red and white and gold, but only because the girl is wearing one too now. They each overturn a stack of papers they've been instructed to keep down. They appear to be tests. The girl's is marked 71 of 100. She swallows hard. The girl glances right, then left, shielding it with her hand. Curious fellow students look her way. She begins breathing too hard. Tiny tween hyperventilating. Panic--     The girl's is marked 100 of 100. She leans back in her chair in casual indifference. The other students, as children do, run around checking each others' papers. They form a crowd around her in short order, and begin gasping and cooing and chattering over her perfect grade. This is the first scene where she smiles since she was six.                 -----[now]-----     "Why do I have to be scared of you to think you're wrong? Are you that conceited? Or are you just that spoiled?" Lilian shoots back. Her fingers smoke. "How ever did you get the idea that people aren't your friends just because they don't know you? That people don't like you because they don't understand? Who taught you that people only resist them out of naive fear? Rhetorical question."                 -----[then]-----     A fourteen year old girl with long, dark hair and bright green eyes. A sporty summer uniform. Crisp air that tingles like licking a battery. A sun that shines with a weird, layered corona of geometric halos. The green of grass and the blue of sky and the white of floating stands, all running together like an unfinished watercolour. People shapes run around on the pitch. A ball is somewhere. It could be soccer, maybe. It could be anything.     The girl looks like she doesn't want to be there. Bored. Stressed. Tired. She stops frequently to lean on her knees, constitution not ready for mandatory sports. A quietly desperately look keeps going to the crowd, to check if the maid-lady is still there. She has trouble finding her without her uniform on, visibly having to try several times. Every time she sees that she's still there. The girl gets back up and keeps going, dragging her feet in tense dejection. The other team scores, in some vague way. Canned cheering sounds from the other side, though it seems like someone forgot to fill in the people. The student-shapes wearing the same colours as her storm her way. Angry shouting. She looks terrified. She--     The girl scores. The goalie, of some kind, looks baffled and confused. The girl's team runs up to her and lifts her up. The maid-lady in the audience is standing up and applauding. The girl's smile is weak and half-hearted. A girl in a ponytail on the other side of the field strops off in a huff.                 -----[now]-----
Lilian Rook	"Of course I'm not going to play with you! You're the only one here who thinks this is a *game!* Are you blind, or stupid on purpose?! Look at this place! It's a crematorium! Look at these bones! Look at these ashes! Imagine who they belonged to! It's life and death, and you're holding death in your hands, and telling us how we shouldn't be so serious!" Lilian meets Persephone's sincerity, somehow, with her own. However, all she can sincerely convey is her vexation. Her frustration. Her indignance that this is even happening.     "If you wanted to fight, you should have expected blades and bullets. Those are real things. Real like the people that thing you have ate from the inside out. The consequences aren't pretend just because you want the fight to be. *Real* people are depending on us, for *real* things! They're depending on us to *deal* with this, not humour your egotistical little pageant play! You're a child! Go home! Adults have things we have to do; even if we don't like it, even if they're difficult, we came here and did all of this prepared to risk our lives, and you're not even prepared to take this seriously!"                 -----[then]-----     A fifteen year old girl with long, dark hair and bright green eyes. She is flanked by two other girls of equal heights, slightly shorter than she. They stand out just a little, one blonde and slightly bubbling and the other brunette and exuding a vaguely elegant step, but that's only because the other students in the image, and even the pair of faculty talking in the ridiculously huge hall, might as well be cutouts. Flesh-toned placeholders in clothes. The paintings on the walls are colourful, blurry smears. A cabinet is filled with golden and silver somethings with photos of blank faces next to them. The girl gets distracted and glances at them, and a girl with a ponytail slips right by and subtly sticks out her leg. She trips and falls on her face. The students in the hall begin laughing. The laughter is clear. Clear as that ponytail, if nothing else about the bitch. She--     The girl stops to look down at a fellow student with a ponytail, who has fallen and bloodied her nose. The blood stands out bright red against her degraded blur of a face. There is loud laughter in the background, some of it coming from Blonde A and Brunette B. The faculty rushes over. The ponytail girl is yelling and complaining and pointing her finger at the dark-haired fifteen year-old. The faculty make confused, burbling adult noises, and stand her up to walk her away. The dark-haired fifteen year old girl with bright green eyes sighs in relief, for seemingly no particular reason.                 -----[now]-----     Lilian is evidently beginning to take it seriously though. Whatever she is thinking tactically is a no-go for Persephone, but what she can most certainly read is the aura that emanates from the sword that she draws from nowhere. It feels as if it has a personality of its own. A limited, yet distinct range of 'realness' all its own. Words flash into her head. "--And death upon those who have wronged my people"
Lilian Rook	There's nowhere to run from an entire *star*. Even small and fake as it is, there's no such thing as a clever dodge, a skillful maneuver, or a brilliant trick, when it comes to that. Though Lilian takes cover in the shadow of the buildings, the play heat blasts her much the same. It's exhausting. Mentally as well as physically. Well beyond her tolerances. Finally, her grogginess becomes apparent. Her movements have slowed down. Her--     Lilian takes a deep breath and gets back up again. She looks fully recovered. Like that heat was a suggestion, and she turned it down. That doesn't make any sense. She finally closes in with the mecha, dashing in through a brief gap in those slats caused by her team's attacks, and once again, aims to attack the Eater-Thought itself, denying Persephone her play fight to skewer even the black containment metal with her sword, piercing the enemy within.     The answers to that question are worse up close.                 -----[then]-----     A sixteen year old girl with long, dark hair and bright green eyes. A girl her age, memorable only for a ponytail, like the only way one can tell apart a bunch of identical, off-brand barbie dolls, walks past her on the corner of a grand staircase, milling about with other students. Everything is fuzzy. Blanched. Faded and unreal. There are stairs. There are things on the walls. There are decorative objects. There is an adult. There are children of various ages. The ponytail girl does nothing in particular. The girl shoves her. The ponytail girl tumbles violently down the stairs. She hits the bottom, and makes the only identifiable sound in the whole scene; a gross, shiver-inducing crack. Red blood pools out from her head. A distant, underwater-sounding scream. People rush past her, oblivious. Her smile is wide and--     A ?????????? year old girl with long, dark hair and bright red eyes, plastered in blood from the neck down, stands knee deep in the dead. The air tastes like iron. The sun bleeds crimson through the clouds. The girl puts down a blade and stares at her hands, drenched up to the wrists in gore. She looks into the field of tangled bodies, sees something, and begins screaming.     The ponytail girl walks down the stairs. Nothing exciting happens. Blonde A asks why the girl is staring at her. She replies that it's nothing. Brunette B asks if she's alright. She says she's fine, and tells them to go on without her. When the stairwell empties, the girl curls up in the corner, curls her fingers into her dark hair, and begins sobbing into her lap, rocking back and forth with each shuddering exhalation.                 -----[now]-----     Lilian flits out of range once again before the retaliation can come, dancing between flames and flying bones on memory. It must be memory. Circling and waiting for another opportunity. And yet, she gasps in explosive exasperation.     "I don't *want* to fight you." It sounds like she really means it. It sounds genuine. "I don't want to hurt you in the way you're trying to force me to. So please don't make me. You keep talking about being too real for it, but all you're doing is being too fake to avoid it. If you're real, show me that you can care about the *reality* of what's *happening* here."     "Don't make me prove you aren't real. Please."
Candy	Hidden behind one of the houses, Candy waits--waits for the chance to press down that plunger. He's still foolishly anticipating that Persephone will come to him. Still treating her like another person, and not the force of nature she is.      So, instead of catching her in a trap, he's forced to push that plunger in a vain effort to break up the rubble. The plunger clicks as it's depressed. Sparks generated by copper teeth on wire travel down and into several strategically placed bundles. What was meant to be a range of offensive options becomes a desperate defense.      All around, dynamite explodes. Rubble is broken into smaller pieces. Candy hits one of the conveyor belts with a gasp, as jagged rubble pelts him in multitudes. It's better than being crushed by a giant piece--better than the fear of such a piece, even if the Queen is protecting everyone.      The conveyor is going. The one he landed on. Fuck. Get off it. <J-IC-Scene> Red Giant says, "'Scared' sounds about right. You're 'scary' because you can wrestle everyone in the world, aren't you? Play-fight any man or any army. Maybe pin down the whole multiverse. But you're not gonna be the scary villain."      When he rolls off, he's bleeding. Again. He grunts, and wheezes. The fall knocked the wind from him. That wound on his shoulder has opened back up. -- Time stops. *I got an idea, fellas. C'mon, let's play a hand.* Snake, bat, and coyote. The snake and the coyote are good at bluffing, the bat overeager to call every bluff of Candy's. As predicted, it uses the Widow--much to the annoyance of coyote and snake. Bat is first out. Then snake. Then coyote. You win again. What'll it be this time? *That robot... lot of those lately, ah? I need to fix myself the way it does.* It should be doable, with your skills. Listen carefully...      Time resumes, just moments after Red Giant's rebuttal. -Candy has a flask in his hand. A dark brown bottle of liquid medicine, with a printed label that reads 'REGENERAL' in a font that looks as though it was sourced from a Great War infirmary. He unscrews it and downs the whole thing, wiping his mouth as the wound begins to seal itself. Regaining his footing, Candy shakes his head.      "But this thing... it is scarier. It's not as strong as you. But it's a thousand times meaner. It won't promise no broken bones, and it damn sure won't promise no hard feelings. Ms. Sunshine, it's nothing *but* hard feelings. I'm not trying to hurt your heart, but that thing, it will. Any way it can get. That thing is against everything you want."      "Your heart will hurt, and your doctor's, and our friend's. And ours. And then we will be like these poor sons of bitches," he says, as a bolt-action rifle with a teak frame, archaic scope and unusual gas-operated loading mechanism appears, piece by piece, in his hand. "Closing up the well after someone has drowned. That's how come we're fighting you so hard. Because if there's an -opposite- of what your eggheads want, that fucking thing is it. That fucking thing is the devil, Ms. Sunshine."      Candy shoulders the rifle, aims down the scope, and fires, aiming for the Queen-in-Veils--specifically, he's trying to lay down suppressive fire so that Lilian can get at the Eater-Thought more easily.
Persephone Kore	Preserver Cimilco leans heavily on Ioanna's shoulder; it has no way to contribute offensively, but it does ease her movement through the Crematorium somewhat: its heavy metallic shield is perfect for blocking the jets of flame, letting her ignore them as long as she keeps it close. "It's not any safer in here," it says, the quavering of its voice giving the impression of gritted teeth.      "No," Persephone answers, and it's earnest; almost pained at the misunderstanding. "No, I don't want to be feared. That's so different! Nobody should ever feel fear about me. I don't want to be a danger. I don't want to be threat. That isn't my heart."      The urn trick catches her completely by surprise. The snarl roars out of the urn, immediately carving into the Queen in Veils with its smoke-string tendrils- it targets her preferentially, with all its strength, animated by the hatred of the greater whole. Even in just a split second, the wounds are awful.      That split second is all it gets. Persephone crunches it with such unreserved power that it's instantly annihilated as soon as she registers it as a threat. Where the snarl once was is now a psionic black hole, and then the black hole evaporates, leaving nothing at all behind. None of the mercy she affords humans is given to the Eater-Thought.      More gently, even after that display: "But I hate this. I hate it so much. You being so weak. And me being so strong. You hate it too, don't you? I don't want it to be this way anymore. I want everyone to have what I have. Please." Persephone isn't lying- she can't lie, not like this. Her heart is bared. It's real, and earnest, and at least trying to be benevolent, even if she is a bit of a child-god.      For a good few moments, Persephone allows herself to bathe in Tina's nuclear fire. Even underneath the sadness, there's that innocent curiosity- I told you to show me how you're special, didn't I? But eventually she's seen enough- impossible telekinetic forces clamp around the lizard's jaws, forcing them shut, and then gently shove it away again.      "I didn't know," she admits softly, obviously shaken by the bones. "But even so... do you really want their deaths to have come to nothing? Don't you want to see if any good can come from it instead? Wouldn't that be a better memorial?"      "And I'm ready to bear it. I've always been ready. I could hold the world if I had to. I'm sorry."
Persephone Kore	That kind of talking leaves her open for the Redshift Operators' gamble. She can track them by the feel of their minds, even blinded by ash, but White Dwarf's singleminded focus manages to avoid Persephone's notice in at least a few timelines- or perhaps she still just wants to see what happens? Either way, it strikes true- downwards through the hip joint, which drives the Queen in Veils to one knee until it heals.      "Okay," she says softly, allowing real doubt to creep into her voice in response to the mercenaries' collective intent. "Maybe it's too dangerous. Maybe this isn't the way to make our dreams come true. But if you really want me to believe that, you'll have to prove it. I can't just... let go of Sapient Heuristics' dream like that. Not without a fight."      Gawain's shield slams into her and breaks like a rock against a wave. His sword follows a moment later, piercing the Queen's side just above the cockpit- but it doesn't get to penetrate all the way through. Telekinetic force arrests the blade before it can gouge into Persephone herself, then gently pushes him back to a comfortable distance.      "Haha. That's the kind of fight I love, Gawain. I knew you understood my heart. Even if I lose somehow, I won't hate you. That's all I ever wanted." She sounds a little less dispirited now, but still gradually cooling off; his words still work to put her more at ease.      The notion of suppressive fire against the Queen in Veils is nebulously-applicable at best; Persephone barely responds to most of the attacks that strike her, except to undo the wounds by overpowering "I shoot you so you get hurt" with sheer contrary "no I don't". But with so many injuries to recuperate from at once, Candy's bullets still leave a mark, and his chatter draws her attention.      "You really are worried for me, aren't you? You're not just saying that to make me stop. Haha, you know, I believe you. I believe you mean it. I believe you're looking out for me. And I believe you're my friend."      "... But even if I think it's a bad idea. I have an obligation. I have to try my best, for all the people who put their hopes in me. Will you let me do that?"
Persephone Kore	Once again, Lilian tries to attack the Eater-Thought. Once again, it reacts to her sword with horror and revulsion and pain. Even muffled inside the blackmetal jail, it howls and shrieks, noises of pure spite and fear that no human throat could ever produce; the light of its core dims as its vitality is attacked, briefly visible through the hole in its blackmetal containment. Persephone knows it's coming, after last time. But she still doesn't try to defend the Eater-Thought from her assault.      It's obvious that she's hesitant to try to preserve it, now.      "Why don't you want to hurt me? I believe you, but why not? That girl with the ponytail. You broke her nose in school," Persephone says, even though she's still awash in the memories- still passively sifting through Lilian's psycho-narrative residue, trying to make the pieces fit.      "You can cheat somehow, little star. And you've always used it to win or to hurt people, just because it felt good. Why not to hurt me? What changed?"
Persephone Kore	Persephone is under visible, transparent stress. She's admitted that what she's doing is probably a bad idea, but I have to try anyway. Sapient Heuristics' hopes and dreams... Marc, and Dylan, and Dr. Carpathia. I can't just make the decision to let them down. I'm not the one who gets to choose that.      So please win, okay? And please forgive me. I don't want to do this anymore. My heart and soul aren't in it. But I still need to. Do you understand?      Everyone she can locate, by eyesight or by mind-sight, becomes the target of a crushing telekinetic force. Like a hand pressing down from above, it's unbearable; it could pin you to the ground, and then dent the metal beneath you But where it ought to rupture blood vessels and crush bones, it instead gently subdues; it robs the strength from limbs, somehow quietly invites surrender with all the force of a hammerblow.      The pyramid groans under that force. And then it shatters one more time, spilling everyone into the catacomb-like lowest floors, finally giving a release from that intolerable pin.      There are bones, here, and still-active but feral Preservers with their scorching energy beams, and heavy machinery beneath the glass floors. And the smoke-strings from the souls that once pointed straight up now point sideways, at the blackmetal containment for the Eater-Thought in Persephone's possession, making them all the more hazardous to navigate.
Ioanna Langstrom	Cimilco gets a quiet smile she doesn't really feel as she runs. "Yes it is, sir. I'm with you."      "I won't let you down." That's the one thing she says with confidence. She won't.      She's running, because even though the urn-thing is dead, she knows that Persephone can see her, now, that she's *aware*. The honesty doesn't make it better. The honesty makes it worse.      Everybody always believes they're doing the right thing.     But I hate this. I hate it so much. You being so weak. And me being so strong. You hate it too, don't you?      Of course Ioanna hated it. What kind of question was that? Of course she hated being weak. Of course she hated feeling like she didn't belong here, because she *didn't* belong here. She wasn't someone who belonged here. Of course she hated this.      Hadn't she jumped for the chance to test the Alter Gear in the field? Hadn't she worked her ass off to get here? Hadn't she struggled, with every step, to stop being a little fish in a big pond?      And hadn't she barely even accomplished that?      The force is horrid. It's that *passivity*, that *gentility*, that imagination that this thing - no, this girl, this girl - is playing with them. That this child being wielded as a weapon doesn't even believe this is real. Doesn't believe any of them are real.      She's nothing but a doll in someone else's hands.      It's awful. It hurts in ways that Persephone can't perceive. Persephone *can't* read her thoughts, can't even get glimpses of jumble - not even emotion, outside what Ioanna is showing. There's none of the self-loathing for her to read. None of the self-hatred for her to taste. The fear and desperation is on her face alongside determination to survive and the will bolstered having Cimilco at her back. As she's shoved through the floor, that one thing consoles her.      She might be a doll in a monstrous god-child's hands, but her mind is her own, and nothing can take that from her.      It's the only strength she can present as she falls, falls, falls, again cushioning the blow for Cimilco. The suit's already gone, now. The shoes crack and shatter. She's left standing there in her pencil skirt, her white top (itself also starting to tear at the bottom), her stockings, all of them fake but all of them damaged, surrounded by the sideways strings on all sides.      She can't move. She can't even raise her arm. The instant she does, she, or Cimilco, will be shredded. She's utterly defenseless. All she can do is look up at the god-child coming down towards her, at the certainty that she won't survive, and ask, in a quiet voice, a voice she *knows* that Persephone will hear, and asks,      "What about me? Does my hard work not count because I'm smaller than you?"      "What about him?" She tilts her head back. "Do his thousands of years not count because he's smaller than you?"      "Why is it that your family's hard work counts - that their dreams count - but not mine?"      "I don't...want to be given anything like that by someone else. I worked hard to get where I am."      She would gesture, but she can't. So she just looks around, so Persephone can follow her gaze at all the corpses, at all the shadows, at all the dead, and then meets the girl's eyes again through missing mirrorshades. The eyepatch seems almost as oppressive as the dark threads all around it, the green eye bright and soft.      "...would their hard work not count if they dreamed something your family didn't like, either?"      Then, she bites her lip.      "Why are you being so mean to everyone around you? Saying we aren't real..."      "It's really hurtful, you know."
Gawain	Persephone gets hit this time. But she crushes them directly, subduing limbs and trying to force surrender. Gawain has trouble struggling. And then- They reach the bottom floor. Gawain crashes against the ground. He stands up straight, his armor bent and his face finally bloodied, as his sun comes down ONCE MORE, keeping following him. The light is keeping him safe. But there's all those smoke string skeletons pointing at them. Gawain tilts out of the way, takes his sword, and- This is probably something Persephone's seen on TV... -slides it around the ground under him, creating those runes again. "Time to show you my strongest attack! Excalibur..." The sword is thrown up into the sun, creating a ray of sunlight that shines straight down into his hands. "GALATINE!" And then Gawain takes that sunlight sword, and swings. It extends extraordinarily far. It's extremely hot. It burns the skeletons pointed vertically at them, hopefully allowing those souls release. It burns into the Queen of Veils. Hopefully... It can carve straight through it, without killing Persephone!
Tina Natsumi	"I want their deaths to have meant that other generations wouldn't have to deal with what they stopped. If I do my job right here, then nobody'll know anything happened at all. But if I screw up here..." Unlike before, there's no telepathic mind-screwery to deal with. Instead, it's a contest of strength against strength! It's one that Tina's confident she can even handle, too, up until the pyramid collapses right underneath her. Without any solid footing, she hits the ground with another painful thud that's exacerbated by the continued forced trying to smother her. The only relief is that it does have to stop eventually, although she lands right in a pack of those Preservers, taking several of the blasts head on. The Persona lands shortly after her, shielding Tina from harm long enough to restore feeling to her limbs before starting to toss herself around and punching the crap out of them with enhanced Godzilla-strength and also a Godzilla. Eventually, she just resorts to grabbing her Persona by the tail and swinging it around like a flail at the Preservers. "But if I screw up here, then I don't know what'll happen next. Maybe you'll be right about your family being able to pull it off, and I sincerely hope you are. But if you're wrong, then everyone that's not you or me has to deal with the shit that got so many people killed here in the first place." When there's a potential opening, Tina releases the Persona at just the right moment, flinging it at the Queen in Veils so it can unload yet more of that stupidly hot atomic breath into its everything. "If it was just me or you, I'd say go for it. But with this... I'm not willing to take that risk with other people's lives!"
Redshift Operators	All four of the Operators are pinned to the ground. But where the gravity robs strength, just one of the mercenaries has more than can be robbed. Persephone's individual one-to-one strength is greater, but spread out among so many? He can rise. He can stand, and stride, while the others suffer and drain, pinned the way that kids amidst horseplay slowly sap the strength from their companions. The titan stands. He even hoists his friends under his arms, the gruff one under one and the woman and astronaut under the other.     When they land, drained though they may be, it's at least ready to go. Now the rifle and shotgun are in hand, and now they can move and act near-instantly. "Give us cover! Cut 'em down!" Shouts a gruff voice on a rhythm with heavy breathing. Here in this constrained space, it's surprisingly easier to fight that mecha. The belt gets lighter and lighter as the grenadier gunman unloads it in Persephone's direction. Nearly impossible to comprehend the many directions they move in, the fastballs, curveballs, knuckleballs, and screwballs, all threaten to explode, dumping EMP, fire, even radiation, a dozen corrosive effects.     Several airburst unexpectedly. Some bounce strangely. Because that astronaut's heavy rifle manipulates them with well-placed shots, striking them in mid-air in exactly the right ways, and then trying to pound the Queen. They're so exclusively focused on these blasts that they just can't be damned to think about the incoming shots -- it's the giant and the woman with the katana that manage that, acting as a human shield at times, or deflecting blasts away actively.     "So what, just following orders? Just need a little more proof to do it? Fight us because you want to, don't fight us because someone told you. Never fight someone because sociology, or organizations with misunderstandings, or fuckin' *math* say to. Fight because you wanna. Because otherwise that's how that shit gets you. The blood and bones, the default-child-settings, they know the truth. It's the fucked up adults and egregores that beat it out of you, tryin' to tell you you gotta hurt people you don't wanna hurt or do things you don't wanna do."
Candy	*This thing might as well be a fucking pea shooter. If I can't get through to her...*      "Ms. Sunshine, something good -did- come from this place. It's them," he says, angling his head towards Cimilco. And then he's running. "Of course I'm worried for you! I know you're not full of shit. If you weren't already trying your best, you sure coulda fooled me!" He blinks forward in rapid, jittery motions, attempting to stay ahead of that next anticipated shockwave. "Of course I can let you do right by your family! But Persephone, this isn't that." He leaps over the smashed remains of the fan he'd built earlier. *Gotta be ready for another wave like the last one. I gotta. Even with this new shit, I can't keep getting slammed around like that.*      "This is the -opposite of that.- They might not know it, but that thing is against everything they're dreaming of." He presses his back against a wall--habit. It won't help against someone who can obliterate them with a thought. She isn't some shit-kicking Federal Army lieutenant, or a scared richie throwing well-armed goons his way. This girl is pure force.      Candy slings the rifle over his shoulder, looking around the corner and wiping his brow. The furnaces' sweltering heat doesn't make the fight any easier. "You want to give people something they don't have. That fucking thing, it wants to tell them they're missing something, but it never tells them what--and it drives them fucking crazy. You want something the eggheads can study, get 'em down here, and get that one to tell 'em anything -else- they'd wanna know. Fuck it, take me, and I'll make 'em damn near anything they want! But this thing--" His words catch in his throat as she pins him straight to the ground. His arms struggle to lift him up--and the ground shatters-- Now. All around him, people are in various states of falling. The ground has just begun to give way. But that's good. Because it means he can get to the ground on his own terms. He blinks down--only to find that the feral Preservers have already begun opening fire. An ugly burn winds across his abdomen, as if he'd just leaned against a red-hot knife. Always, he has to resist the urge to scream. To cry out, in this state--it would give away the ace up his sleeve. He pauses. Waits for his newly-minted regeneration to kick in. It's slower than he'd like--but he's got time. He's always got time. *The guns, I could try and overwhelm her with them. But that feels wrong. After everything we've said to each other. I don't wanna use those rules. The ones she doesn't like. So... let's do this.*     In the darkness, something hums to life. It sounds like... a vacuum? The motor is as loud as it is primitive. But the bag, it isn't a bag. It's a chamber, metal, and heavy, and black. The same stuff the containment urns were made from. The air is completely, wholly undisturbed by this thing. But the souls feel its pull as if they were so much dust. He's scooping them up. Snatching them from the Eater-Thought's grasp. Making a clear line of attack for Lilian.      "Now, Limey!"
Lilian Rook	'You broke her nose in school'.     "Cute." replies Lilian. "Everyone knows you can read minds, so they'll take your word, right? Is that the idea?" She sounds sternly disappointed. Like a pissed off girlfriend trying to pretend she isn't mad, at some really just genuinely shitty behaviour from someone who should know better.     But, invisibly, it gets so, so much worse.                 -----[then]-----     A seventeen year old girl with long, dark hair and bright green eyes. A bland and dreamy haze surrounds her on all sides.     She is taking a test. Her grade is 100 of 100 --Her grade is 100 of 100-- but the subject isn't clear; the only readable thing on the page is her name. Nobody looks. She doesn't smile.     She is talking to some younger girl. The younger girl is being loud. She slaps the little bitch across the --She says something deeply humiliating to the younger girl, who breaks into tears. She asks how she found out.-- The younger girl clears out her locker.     She is at home. Ambulatory maid uniforms shuffle around in a dim pastiche of rooms and stairs. A maid uniform with half-rendered black-violet hair asks her something half-intelligible. "I think something's wrong." the girl replies. "Is any of this--? --"No, go ahead. I'll be back by seven." She answers, mundanely.-- The bleary impression of the maid uniform's face gives off the vague sense of being concerned, but bows and sees herself out.     She is in her room, with a boy. She shoves him down on the bed. Her fingers tear at his shirt. She --She shoves him down on the bed. Her fingers tear at his shirt-- He isn't even well-rendered enough to bother to show what he looked like, despite her falling upon him. Her eyes lack any kind of excitement for the moment. If anything, there's only quiet desperation. Who could feel passionate about such a fake, figmentary person?     She is in a dining hall. Three children, the age she was when she began, are sat at a table. She tells them to move. They look hesitant. One of them voices something muffled and objectionable. Fake and irrelevant. Like it doesn't matter. Little muppet boys making little muppet sounds. Annoying. She punches the little shit in the stomach. He --The boy suddenly keels over on the floor and throws up.-- The others rush to his side, making more muppet noises about him being sick. She takes her opened seat as if she'd just brushed off some dust, and motions Blonde A and Brunette B over.     She is out on the town. What town is impossible to say. It's a town. It's town-like. She passes a window. There's one particular piece of jewelry that stands out; a single clear item like in a dream, compelling the dreamer to interact with it. She --Is wearing it. It might be later. It's hard to tell. There's no clock to check-- Blonde A asks where she got it. She says someone gave it to her. She sounds as if she really believes that.     She is at home. She is staring at a maid uniform with blackish-violetish hair colour. She is yelling. "Hellooo?!" For some reason, the maid uniform doesn't respond. The maid uniform doesn't even move. "Can you hear me?! Are you listening?!" No response. No movement. She's right up in where a face should be. "Are you even real?! Say something! Is it really just me?! Come on! You were always there right?! Say! Something!" No response. No movement. The girl sits down in a sofa-ish blur and clutches her face, breathing heavily, fingernails digging into her skin.     She is staring at herself in the mirror. She is the only thing in the mirror. The background is a colourless blur.                 -----[now]-----     Lilian takes a deep, deep breath. She mutters a passage from earlier. Something about air and birds, sea and fish.
Lilian Rook	"Fuck you." she says. It is . . . unusually blunt. Exhausted. It is also, for some baffling reason, a close approximation from some very old form of Gaelic. Slipped into it somehow. Like an old accent. "You have no idea what we went through, how hard we worked, what we felt, to get up here, and then you ripped off the wall and stole it from us with that patronizing, condescending smirk. Don't talk to me about cheating. You don't deserve to talk to me about it. You haven't earned the fucking right to try an analyze me, you spoiled, naive, pampered, privileged, ignorant, lazy, and arrogant lab baby."                 -----[then]-----     A ????????? year old girl with long, dark hair and bright green eyes. She stands in an office of some kind, insubstantial as a mirage, with bits and pieces only coming into focus when stared at, the rest all simulated and abstracted. There is a female adult in a chair. More in focus than her surroundings. She has some kind of slightly too-big turtleneck. She painted her fingernails. Black hair. Greyish-blueish-smudgy eyes. A smudgy mouth shape. Words come out, though they warble and glitch badly. She twirls a fountain pen of some kind nervously.     "I'm not looking to tell anyone. It's not about that. It's fine if it's just between you and me. But--"     "It's clear enough already that you can be anything you want. I mean that. I'm sure everyone tells you that, but they don't know ------ like I do. But you should think about--"     "What I'm saying is . . . There are already enough people like that. Too many, in our world. If you could be anything, then why be like them? There are things that only you can do. Only you can -------- Don't you think that's important?"     "I can put you in touch. He's a wonderful man. And he can keep a secret. I guarantee you he'll know what to do. About ------- meaning.                 -----[now]-----     That amount of shittalk is probably deserving of the crushing telekinetic palm strike from above. Once again, there's nowhere to go, but then Lilian hasn't really been making a lot of use of mobility so far anyways. Some of the Concord had talked about her teleporting, but she hasn't really used it. Not more than a few feet, once or twice. It's like she's reluctant to do it. Not that it matters either way when she's smashed through the floor. She lands in the rubble with an angry grunt and a dull thud, rolling over and out of the debris. "I've had . . ." She has to pause to dive out from under the rapidly rearranged tethers of malevolence. "Enough of you . . ." Lilian manages to skate back to the entrance. "Pretending you know anything!"                 -----[then]-----     An eighteen year old girl with long, dark hair and bright green eyes. She is wearing a similar-looking battlesuit to the one in the present. A stripped down version. Training, maybe. There are plenty of others dressed identically, in the strange, black and white field, with the shattered glass sky. It's dreamy and weird, but sharp enough that it might be *supposed* to be. A huge man, possibly exaggerated in size, with a huge mane and beard of bright red hair, dominates not only center frame, but seems to suck the light, the reality, into himself, achieving mere unclarity rather than total unpersonhood. The girl is sweating. Panting. Leaning on her knees. So are many others. The man bellows something, followed by the words "WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD!"     The girl is sweating. Panting. Leaning on her knees. So are many others. She swallows hard. She stands up. "Sir yes sir." she croaks with a dry throat. It manages to sound just a little lively. There's a little spark in there, somewhere. A blurry, toothy grin appears on the giant man's face.     She is in a classroom. It's different. More crowded. Grey and white and glass. Her tablet shows a score. 98 of 100.     She is on the field. She--                 -----[now]-----
Lilian Rook	"You'd never understand even if I explained it. You least of all in the entire Multiverse. With your fucked up obsession with what's real and what isn't. Your fucked up idea that you can decide which is and which isn't, and how it'll make you ever so happy." Lilian picks up her sword, but she doesn't move from the entrance. She's stanced forward, like for a lunging thrust, but is much too far away. She looks frustrated. Tired. Kind of . . . sad?                 -----[then]-----     A nineteen year old girl with long, dark hair and bright green eyes. She is outdoors somewhere. The grass is black and the clouds are crimson. A scarlet light pierces the sky far away, ringed by concentric halos of eerie light. She is behind a rusted metal hulk of something, entangled by unrecognizable, even alien plants. She is clutching the suggestion of a rifle to her chest.     There are two dead people, a boy and a girl, a stone's throw away from her. Still bland and faceless, thankfully, for the fact that they've been torn in half, gore pooling on the unthirsty earth. Nothing else about the scene is blurry. Nothing is unreal. The girl holds her breath in a feat of sheer survival instinct outweighing traumatic terror. Eyes wide, sweat dripping from her chin. As quiet as she can be. As still as she can be. No time to scream.     Something is moving around on the other side of the cover. Soft, cooing, rapid clicks rise and fall in volume, condensing and elongating in frequency. Weird, stilted footfalls in the grass. An enormous, quadrupedal shadow-thing, like a sleep paralysis demon, festooned in lurid lights and alien appendages, stalking the grounds with the menacing reality of a waking nightmare. Checking behind the hulks --cars?-- one by one. The girl--The girl is standing on top of some big, slumped over, monstrous corpse. Grey and unremarkable. Sketchy filler, like something an artist couldn't be bothered to render. Blue gore drips from an identical sword to the one she's holding now. A boy and a girl, dressed identically, about her age, form up on her from behind, saying something muffled about it being time to report in. She is busy staring at the scarlet wound in the sky. Her face only registers a vague kind of hope. As if maybe over there, at least, there'd be something she's looking for.                 -----[now]-----     Lilian hears Candy calling. Every muscle in her body tenses. As if in fear? Can't be. "I wanted to believe that you were real too. Couldn't you have let me play pretend for a little while longer?"     It's impossible to adequately describe, or adequately encompass, the experience of being cut open before you're cut open. Knowing that you have been --that it has been decided-- and you're living in the slice of time riding towards it. The Queen in Veils splits open. Sunset streams through, along with dusty air and the stench of metal and dusty bones. Sharp, bleeding pain across the torso. Intense enough that the body just recognizes it as diffuse heat.     She can see, has seen, will see, the Queen's hand as the real target, falling to pieces as if someone willed it, but in a very different fashion than how she does. Surgical and efficient, rather than revoking its right to be there. The metal too. The Eater-Thought inside must be worse off than she is. It's all so incredibly real. It can't be a mental intrusion though; Persephone is far too strong for that. It's happening right now, but it isn't happening yet. The seam between one camera cut and the next, where nothing is happening, but the film is still rolling. Even if it doesn't, it already happened. Isn't it real to her, if she has to see this? Feel this?     Even if she might protect herself, that means she had to admit it was real, just for a moment, right? What about the Eater-Thought? Can she protect it too? Does she want to, in that negative-time there isn't to defend it?
Persephone Kore	"You're misunderstanding me on purpose," Persephone says to Ioanna as her pressure falters, then relents. It's not an indignant tone; just a sad one. She distorts the blackmetal prison the Eater-Thought is trapped in, carefully severing the strings surrounding Ioanna by blocking its connection to the souls one by one. "Careful, foreigner," Cimilco says in a hushed tone. "Careful..."      As she works: "That's the opposite of everything I've said! I hate that things are this way. I hate it so, so much, even if I'm selfish enough not to feel guilty. Don't make it sound like I like it. Don't make it sound like I don't care about you. The things I want, they're because I'm trying so hard to care about everybody."      And then Ioanna's free. But even if it's a misunderstanding, the psychological damage is obvious. Persephone sounds like she might almost cry.      That's the state Tina's Persona finds her in. It slams into her side. For once, the Queen in Veils lurches; previously it'd been held invariably steady by Persephone's telekinesis, but this catches her off-guard.      Plastic drips and runs like wax from a burning candle. The pseudo-smoke of the Queen in Veils' hair mingles with the real, actual smoke from that hideous atomic breath. But she weathers it. And she wrenches its head aside to avert the flames, for once not gently, but with impatient force.      "Thank you," she says to Tina. "For caring so much about people. You're really good at heart, aren't you? I can tell."      Galatine strikes her when her chassis is still softened from the heat. The sunlight washes over her. She lets it. I don't want to win anymore. Please give me that excuse. Please just let me lose. But it doesn't defeat her. It leaves a vertical mark- a real, genuine mark, from its head all the way down its torso- but the Queen in Veils holds together, plastic withstanding impossible temperatures through sheer force of identity.      "I'm sorry," she says to Gawain, and it sounds like she means it, but it's hard to tell for what. Her voice is still, just a little bit, cracking.      The rain of grenades wash over her, too, cracking and corroding and burning and electrifying the Queen in Veils' armor. I accept it. All of this, I accept it. What else can I do? "Ahaha. You all... you remind me of a some really old friends. I can't argue against that. It's really unfair of you, actually, to be so right."      "You know why I can't, though, don't you? You know why I have to be this way. I can't let them down like that. I've never been strong enough to say 'no'."
Persephone Kore	""I wanted to believe that you were real too. Couldn't you have let me play pretend for a little while longer?"      Persephone's breath hitches. The common thread in the psychic residue. The negative-time between simultaneous effect and cause. I'm so sorry. You've felt this way too, haven't you? Sometimes it makes me happy. And sometimes it's a burden. But for you, it's been eating you from the inside since you were a chid. Knowing that nobody else has that solidity. Nobody else gets that authority from the world.      It's easy for me, to see everyone as more than just hollow plastic. It comes naturally. For you it's been harder, but you've learned anyway. You've tried so much harder to be good than I ever needed to.      But it's okay, little star. You really aren't alone.      Persephone does not defend. Lilian's blow carves through the Queen's hand, severing its fingers and gouging through the Eater-Thought in the prison. It howls more vividly and yet more feebly than before- maybe in its death throes, maybe just hanging on with a sliver of life.      It doesn't matter whether or not it could have survived. Persephone crushes it into oblivion a moment later, making it the heart of a new star. The smoke-threads all throughout the pyramid are instantly severed. The soul-orbs diffuse.      "Okay," she says softly. Her voice is still a little hoarse with choked-back tears, but it's noble now too; a little bit braver. "It's over. Anybody who wants to can leave. But, Gawain... and you, little star, at least. I have to show you that I have something to fight for, now. Something better than that awful parasite."      I want to show you that I'm real enough. I want to lift your loneliness, even if just a little bit. I want to help you keep pretending.
Persephone Kore	The Queen in Veils projects Persephone's mindscape outwards, overwriting the dismal bone-filled halls of the pyramid's lowest floor. The nonsapient Preservers are instantly destroyed, shredded to dust. The sky overhead changes from the black ceiling to the star-studded void of space, though still with enough sunlight filtering through to power Gawain.      The ground underfoot turns to gray lunar dust and rocks, a perfect, literal moonscape. Loneliness. Solitude. (Mercifully, there's still air.)      And once those who want to leave have left, Persephone spins her newborn star, the star that burned the Eater-Thought, into a spiral galaxy in her hands. Threads of nebulae and diminutive, unreal stars spin outwards in strobing patterns, lashing at the surroundings with their twisting arms. There's too many to avoid. Even if you could, that subduing, gentle, cozy heat is unbearable.      The cockpit pops open. Persephone steps out onto its rim; her eyes are teary, but her face still wears that natural, easy smile.      "I'm still so tired, you know? But I want to give you this, at least. I promised Gawain: no holding back."
Ioanna Langstrom	When Persephone frees her, Ioanna just sort of...sinks to the floor and exhales, hand over her chest, breathing heavily. At least, at this point, it's not because she's afraid she'll die - Persephone has more or less disabused her of that notion. It's...relief.      Because that's not what the old Elites would do. The old Elites would never do that for someone like her. They'd never look at her. They'd never free her. They'd never save her like that.      So as she sits there, her hand on her chest, breathing slowly, she says, "Thank you."      She smiles. "I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to misunderstand you."      "But I can't understand you without being wrong first."      She stands, and takes Cimilco's hand. She doesn't want to leave. She wants to stay, to prove that she belongs, to prove that she can stand here in the force of this fire and wrath.      But...      There's more important things she has to do.      She doesn't have to belong here. She has a job to do.      So she holds Cimilco's hand as she walks him out of the pyramid, away from the destruction and the chaos and the madness that's about to unfold.
Gawain	Gawain waits, as Persephone destroys the Eater-Thought after apologizizng to him, after she creates a space environment, with the sunlight still protecting him. A moonscape with air. As she creates her star into a spiral galaxy, threads lashing at Gawain, he... Doesn't block. He takes it face-first, depending on his armor to protect him. It's both a show of his confidence in himself, and his confidence in Persephone. His armor is shredded at the top, revealing his skin. He's bleeding from the lashes. He dearmors, back to his suit, which is still partially burnt from the earlier fire. He's still holding his sword. He's injured and exhausted. Even so... He charges. As he does, he's smiling, Gawain saying one last thing. "Right. Let this be our parting blow for now, and next time, we speak as new friends!" The sword is not on fire. Even so, the holy power is sharp in the sunlight, and it moves to slice into Persephone. She can read on his mind - he doesn't care if she deflects it, or eats it, or whatever. He doesn't think he can hurt her, nor does he want to. He just likes this play-fight enough that he wants the last say. A little selfish treat, just for him.
Candy	Candy feels a weight gone from his chest, with that awful thing breathing its last. He takes a deep breath, smiling at Persephone. His rifle--that complex, yet primitive self-loader--it's on the ground nearby. He doesn't need it, which is a really good thing, because it really wouldn't do much to the Queen but slow it down.      No holding back. She was, this whole time, wasn't she? But him, he had to try so hard just to keep up with her, even then. Now that she isn't holding back... he wants to know if he can still keep up with her. His smile widens,      There is, at last, another presence here. Warm, happy, like a kid with his share of scraped knees who keeps getting back on the bike. ~Hey, Ms. Sunshine. It's me. I don't wanna go. Can I stay a little longer? I don't wanna hit your doll no more. But if I could just be here a little longer...~      It's gone, as soon as it appeared, Candy's grin affecting a shade of teasing smugness, as-- He vanishes. It's the only way he knows to avoid such an all-out, all-consuming inferno like that. He quite literally just stops time, brushes past Gawain's charging advance, blinks behind Persephone and upwards, alighting on the highest portion of the pyramid he can safely rest upon without fear of collapse.     Time resumes. -Candy is perched precariously on a lip of intact upper level, kicking his legs idly back and forth, twirling a lock of his hair around a finger as he watches down below. ~Thanks for understanding.~
Redshift Operators	"Find it. It's gotta be--" "Well, it has to have fallen *down*, right?" "The objective is in our limited area." "I'll find it. It calls to me."     As things wind down, the Operators keep their defensive posture. Fundamentally, there are some similarities with Persephone. Where she acts alone, they are more like the children on a playground, who band together and refuse to separate. But they don't need to. The woman with the robotic arm shuts down her goggles for a moment and focuses. She branches out to a hundred different places, looking around, trying to find it, digging under rubble, examining piles of bones... "Ten meters, ten-o'-clock. Its energies incite my cursed arm."     "No they don't."     But they keep in tight formation as they retrieve it. The shiny briefcase, now no longer clean and spotless. More on that later, friends. For now, the Redshifts refuse to leave. "Not goin' anywhere while most of this pyramid's upright." Says the gruff man, through clenched teeth. He doesn't have a choice, though.     The whole world spills out of Persephone's soul and into the space around them. The galaxy itself lashes out. The astronaut fundamentally lacks any of the reflexes necessary for evading that, so it's the giant's duty to take the stellar fire straight to the back, hugging the astronaut tightly to keep them safe, and being driven to one knee by it. The gunman suffers strike after strike, but winds up simply stumbling on his approach. Only one of the four has a notable compatibility with this.     The woman with the katana is instantly struck down straight in the chest with one of those. No, she wasn't, of course, she managed to swerve her stumbling walk to one side, only to get lanced by two more. That didn't happen, of course, even though eight of the possible paths she could have taken ended with her flat on her back, she took the ninth instead, and strode forward further, and no, she was not slammed down by that strike from above, and no, that sweep to one side could have taken down a dozen other possibilities, but she approaches further. Dragged in one free hand is the gruff man, lanced badly by several of the galactic arms but still standing.     The two operatives take their ready stances. "Still plenty left to scrap over. Gotta be the last one standing if I'm gonna bring this pyramid down. Can't afford to let *one shred* of that thing get away. The egregore may be dead, but those damn things love bouncing back." He says, getting a low, battle-ready posture. His shotgun racks again.     "If you are truly capable of holding your own just as much without your mecha, then I will see it." And the root in her sprouts a dozen, two dozen, maybe even a hundred rushing phantasmal plans, predicted strikes probing for the solution to slash Persephone.     Many test with the flat of the blade. Well, perhaps she has been a bit convinced about that fighting-for-ideal. But the gruff man only has his shotgun, and his shotgun only has its shells, and its shells only have their military-style buckshot to try to rapid-blast Persephone with.
Persephone Kore	Preserver Cimilco limps away with Ioanna, maybe in better shape than she is- though not by much. "It is finished," the robot says, shaking its head in obvious disbelief. "After all these years. Thank you, honored foreigner. The water of my well is yours."      "I still have no plans for the remainder of my life," it adds after a few moments of quiet, thoughtful trudging through the sand. "But I do owe you a debt of stories, do I not? I promised that."      "Now, it is finally safe to remember."
Persephone Kore	Persephone doesn't flinch as the blade comes straight at her. She can read its arc off the surface of Gawain's mind, as bright and unguarded as the sun itself. It ought to cut her in half. If she were an ordinary human, it ought to kill her- but they both know better than that.      The blade is arrested, stopped cold without even the dignity of a sound. You know, I never learned to be on my guard? There's just no need to, when I can tell what everyone's thinking and nobody can touch me. But you almost make me regret not learning how. And then it's hurled aside with a force that is impossible to resist, likely to send Gawain staggering backwards.      "You're really amazing," she says, and it's utterly, exactly sincere. "Maybe we'll fight some other time, and it won't be so bitter. Fight like friends do, and not like this. I'd like that a lot."      She smiles down at him with the smile that her face was built for, and maybe it's just her mind-bending aura, but it really does seem sincere. She hops out of her mecha and drifts down slowly, gently, heels touching down on the moon-dust as the damaged Queen in Veils shimmers out of existence. "Thank you, Sir Gawain."
Ioanna Langstrom	As they leave, Ioanna's hand tightens around his. "You do. But I think you could tell it to a lot more than just me. I have some friends..."      "Well..."      She purses her lips, and grins. It's a very pretty grin. She's a very pretty woman.      "Have you ever thought about a career in academia?"
Lilian Rook	§You should have killed her. You had the chance. You could even have made it look like the Watch did it. You gave too much away. Not about That, but everything else. This was the time you should have, wasn't it? You're going to regret it. But you didn't. You couldn't. Could you even? Could you have done it if you tried?§     §It's fine. It'll be fine. It's over. You succeeded. You win again. You didn't even break the rules. You could have, but you din't. You'd have regretted it more than you did. There were two choices and you picked the right one. You'll see.§     It's not entirely clear how Lilian ends up where she does. One could probably blame the utterly insane cosmic light show. But it looks as if she's had enough. Physically tired. Emotionally tired. Lacking the requisite bloodlust to continue. The Eater-Thought is gone, and that's what she'd been obsessed with. She'd been furious over every single thing about Persephone; incensed by her very existence, only increasing with every hopeless word out of her mouth, but it seems even she now lacks the drive to try cutting her again.     "Don't you dare try to talk to me that way." Lilian sighs, then hoarsely hiccups. She passes it off as a cough, unconvincingly, and swallows. "I told you. You shouldn't have been here. You should have listened to me. You should have let it be. You could have gone out to town and done what kids do, instead of all of this." She coughs again, holding her breath for several seconds, then releasing it more calmly. "Whatever Sapient Heuristics wants--"     "If you're perfect all the time, Persephone, one day people stop noticing."     Bip.
Persephone Kore	The Redshift Operators open fire on the de-meched Persephone mercilessly. But I made a promise, didn't I? Nobody dies! Not even me. The shotgun shells curve around her as if distorted by an enormous gravitational field, literally warping from her psychic tidal forces.      The ninja swordswoman sees dozens of futures. But in every single one of them, I refuse to be hurt! I won't let you, White Dwarf. Because you don't really want to hurt me, do you? I think you understand the idea of fighting like friends do; the idea of fighting to learn and grow. The blade is arrested just short of hitting her, or blown away with unimaginable force, or just bent along an invisible ripple in space to curve around her body- one way or another, passively bending to Persephone's will.      "Okay, okay," she finally says, laughing and holding up both hands. "I'll leave. I can feel it, how much you mean that. How much that world you're trying to bring about means to you. I'd feel awful if I got in the way of that."      "Just give me a minute, will you?"
Persephone Kore	Lilian only gives Persephone a moment to respond before she disappears. "Haha, it's true. You were absolutely, definitely right all along. I really should've listened." And she sincerely means it; things that would sound sarcastic or condescending from other people just don't in Persephone's earnest voice.      "But you understand, don't you, little star? Why I couldn't just give up. And why, even so, I'm grateful you convinced me to lose."      I still can't read your heart, little star, even if I can read your past. Are you hoarse because you're happy? Because you're sad? Probably a knot of complicated things I'll never understand. I'm so bad at talking to people if they won't let me feel them!      "But I loved hearing you play piano," she says, as sincere as it is casual. "Could you do that for me some other time?"
Persephone Kore	Finally, she floats up to Candy, levitating with an utterly easy grace, and perches next to him on that high-up piece of debris. Her legs are crossed; she's leaning back onto her hands, smiling easily with her eyes shut.      "Yeah," she says softly. "Let's stay here 'til they set that bomb off. You were really enjoying yourself, weren't you? Almost as much as Gawain, ahaha."      She's emotionally drained, even if physically fine. Her body takes deep breaths anyway, not quite knowing the difference.      "You're all wonderful people, you know. Even if you try so hard to hide your heart from me! I can still see it in the way you act, the way you talk. And I know you must be okay."      And there she'll stay, basking in the sunset, until the Redshifts shoo her away.
Redshift Operators	"A minute." The man with the shotgun racks it again, before pulling it back, over one shoulder, narrowing those shining green optics. "Alright. Newt, put an extra minute on it."     The shiny briefcase is unfolded by the astronaut into the briefcase bomb. This exotic-material explosive promises the complete obliteration of any very, very large structure or your money back, regardless of the brain spilling out into the world. "Get distance or get dead, though. I don't know what your brain can do, but you don't wanna test it."     "...You've got one thing right. About doing things the way kids do 'em. That's your methods, but it's not how you're making decisions. You should. The default settings on kids are right. Anyone saying otherwise, they just got the real truths beat out of 'em. You tell me you *can't*, but I don't think that's right. Not like how you think it is."     "Red Dwarf, I've set it. Eight minutes." The astronaut rises from their kneeling position, and gathers up their rifle. "We need to get back to the Viper."     A nod from the gruff man. "Move out." The pyramid will be slag and ash once the suits get here. But Red Dwarf isn't a psycho: he at least broadcasts a warning.