| Scene Listing | || | Scene Schedule | || | Scene Schedule RSS |
| Owner | Pose |
|---|---|
| Operator | The ever-busy warpgate system of Afterus usually sees a lot of traffic. People coming and going, goods flowing from place to place. It's the ultimate travel hub, one that does not need to conform to linear space or the curve of a planet. With the right gate, anything is deliverable in 30 minutes or it's free. But right now, the arrivals area is like a ghost town. Small fires sputter in random areas, windows and glass has been smashed, klaxons wail in the distance. The cause is five robots who suddenly burst out of massive crate and tore through the facility, halting all shipping activities and securing the area against any attempts to rebuff them. Standing guard at the ARRIVAL POINT is a robot who looks cobbled together from a forklift and a cherry picker. Specifically, it's arms are made of the forks, and its tail is the cherry picker. Emblazoned on its chest is RAISE MAN. Past him, one would find their next foe in the FOOD COURT. Here, a robot built like a fridge, literally, is watching over affairs. The air is chilled by the mere presence of FREEZER MAN. Making it past him would land you in DEPARTURES. A thinner, sleeker robot rolls around on a pair of thick, ghetto-ass roller skates, brandishing a whip. It is here that CONVEYER WOMAN holds court. Once you're past them, you reach the higher security areas of Afterus. Within the OFFICES is the largest of all the robots. Built like a literal truck, holding a bazooka made of a carriage is ROUTE MAN. And past them, finally, is CUSTOMS. It is here that the mysterious master of these robots oversees the opening and subsequent theft of the contents of the many containers that flow through Afterus. Yeah I mentioned five robots and only listed four don't worry about it. Each one of these Mechanical Regents will observe and respect the 'leave this guy to me' trope, allowing those who arrive to engage with all of them at once, so despite the linear layout, treat it like a videogame and have fun okay? |
| Rita Ma | Rita the perfectly ordinary girl is here! Her outfits are- as always- purely products of her own imagination, and her inspiration today was probably her new roommate: she's got a vivid red cardigan with slightly too-long sleeves over a simple white shirt and dark knee-length skirt. For a second after arrival it looks like one of her eyes might be blue in place of its natural brown, but she catches sight of herself in a store window, startles, and does something to make it normal again. She stares up at RAISE MAN from a distance, anxiously fretting for a few moments before working up the courage to approach. Her hands are balled up in plucky bravery. He *looks* sort of like a monster... but Mr. I4 could be reasoned with, right? Maybe he's the same way. If I don't ask, I could be making a big mistake. "Excuse me, mister!" she says politely on approach, waving to get the big robot's attention. "I've got something important in the mail, and I'm really worried about it. Do you think you could let me through, just for that...?" Her eyes are hopeful and pleading. It'd take a heart of iron to say no. Unfortunately... |
| Hibiki Tachibana | SOME TIME AGO: HIBIKI TACHIBANA, in the interest of continuing the Multiversal shopping hobby she's picked up in order to a) have something to spend her government paycheck on and b) attempt to fill the gaps in her ever-turbulent life with exotic material goods she can either put up or surprise her friends with, put in an order. Multiples actually, all of them to do with idol-related goods and merch that you would never find in near-future Japan because most of those idols don't exist. It's not for her, it's for a new friend. You wouldn't understand and you probably don't want to. THEN: The app she was using to keep up with her '30 minutes or less' delivery looks like it's going to be free. Nice. Unfortunately, it looks like it's going to be infinitely delayed. Not nice. She already said she had something special coming and it'd get there in no time. NOW: After getting a quick run-down on what's actually happening in Afterus and that it's not nearly as innocuous as she thought it was, HIBIKI TACHIBANA (Forma Mahou Shoujo) makes an extremely unnecessary entrance into the FOOD COURT in the form of boost-kicking through the nearest wall and exploding a portion of it inwards in a dramatic but ultimately harmless explosion. It's difficult to tell if she got here from the Arrival Point or a weapon-locked shortcut, but the fact she's at the food court of all places is probably just a coincidence. She does not step but stomps rather angrily through the bits of rubble, stepping to the center of the space and turning to face down the bulk of FREEZER MAN. She does not look very pleased, and her voice is low. "What the heck is the big idea, takin' over the whole warpgate system like this? People have orders coming in, you know! Are you just trying to inconvenience everyone, or is whoever your boss is trying to get away with some big heist? Whatever's going on, you're not gonna get away with it!" |
| Candy | Amacuzac, 'Morelos Free Territories' People in Amacuzac get their packages delivered within thirty minutes--to Cuernavaca, the nearest warpgate. The rural town is too small to have its own. Today, there were a lot of glum faces on the way back from Cuernavaca--it's downright confusing for Candy to see so many at once. Naturally, he replaced whatever was missing where he could, but that's only half of the problem. What's the other half? ARRIVAL POINT, AFTERUS "Well, now I see," he says, scratching his head and glancing at the nearby RAISE MAN. There's a deck of cards suddenly in his hand, and the crisp flutter of a one-handed cut. His brow furrows slightly, and then he flicks a card to the ground with his thumb. It burns up on contact, smoke billowing dramatically outward until it blows away and reveals a sizeably crate of WEAPONS and AMMO--rifles, shotguns, man-portable machine guns, pistols, grenades, all following a decidedly early twentieth-century design. The exterior of the box reads what you Understand to be 'Help Yourselves' with a little cartoon Candy winking beneath it. He, in particular, sizes up their first opponent, and elects for a pump-action shotgun, one that appears to load via a tube along the bottom. Slugs are slid down this spring-loaded tube, one by one, nose to nose, until five are loaded. Candy turns and wrinkles his nose playfully, bending the brim of his newsie cap at Rita, encouraging her to give it a shot. You'd have to be a real asshole to say no to that, anyway. When Hibiki asks what the big idea is, he does cough--and then hurriedly work the pump over his 'cough.' |
| Staren | AU XX Staren was born to a a retired adventurer and a scientist,and the family were enjoying their peaceful days. Then one day,she learned that evil all over the world continued to rampage and the world was in total chaos. Staren,having a strong sense of justice, volunteered to become a fighting robot pilot. Thus the elite robot pilot Staren was born. Staren shattered evil's plans countless times but Multiversal peace is scarcely maintained... and history repeats itself. Dr.Rawbought,a mysterious scientist,has invented five powerful robots and sent them to Afterus. Staren starts for the battle again, this time equipped with a powerful new gender identity!! Some shipping company run by someone brave or foolish is still sending trains to Afterus. Staren rides atop one of the cars, her signature coat and scarf billowing behind her as the wind whips through her hair. Ack the hairs in front keep blowing in her face why did she think this was a good idea?! The train is already slowing down as it comes through one of the vehicle gates, but it's not enough to avoid crashing into another looted train that's already here; Staren leaps off with perfect timing, and as the train comes to a halt, shipping company security mooks open the doors and are no doubt pinned by mechaniloids, becoming so much background scenery. For her part, Staren summons her vambraces onto her arms, now apparently equipped with dual plasma ejectors firing little 'comets' of firey energy that tend to spread nasty, superhot flames across targets on contact! She's already opening fire on some of the enemy mooks that must be here before she lands in a roll before arresting her movement in the classic superhero pose, then holds her arms out and unleashes charged shots at the mooks on either side of her! Then she stands, and sees Candy's beaten her to the punch on doing her job. "Eh... well, I've got a myth to live up to, haven't I?" She mimes snapping her fingers and warps in a similar crate, loaded with more futuristic weapons, body armor, and some magic enhancement potions for completeness's sake. That said, it seems that as far as engaging the FIRST BOSS, people have opted for... PERSUASION? Well, Staren will give it a shot. "Alright. I dunno where you're from, so maybe you don't know who I am. But I played a small part in creating this world, and it's under my protection. If you let us through, then... I guess if we beat your boss you can escape, and if we don't, then you can just stay here without having to risk getting hurt. Deal?" ower to peer into his past and find out why he's here! |
| Staren | Words never work for Staren alone, though; It's a tactic to try and buy time as Staren focuses on RAISE MAN, using Phony's borrowed power to peer into his past and find out why he's here! |
| Lilian Rook | Lilian is here because she has many important packages currently on route from Afterus and frankly even if this were a workers strike somehow she'd definitely be here with about the same amount of equipment. Maybe minus the minor ablatives hardslotted to her combat skin, and without the folded handgun mounted to her hip, but she has twenty thousand dollars of Stuff:tm: in transit that she plans to use over the next month, and frankly she might have used the latter to threaten the metaphorical manager so that she gets it anyways. Robots at least makes this sort of easier to clean up. And yet, after briefly documenting the junker robot masters on display, it's Staren that becomes the first thing she gravitates to. Only a short distance away, she talks over her, breaking up and interjecting her thoughts with her dreadfully cool and heavily charged tones. Secretly, she is doing much the same to Staren; immediately reading every little thought and experience that comes to mind. "You. Perfect timing. You're test subject Kore's favourite, aren't you? What kind of relationship do you have? What does she think of you?" |
| Operator | RAISE MAN considers those who stand before him. A little girl, a slightly less little girl, and a not so little girl who immediately starts harassing the slightly less little girl. And also Candy who is a hunk of a man but he is being pointedly ignored for some reason. "Sorry girls, Afterus is closed! But you know, I'm a really nice guy. So once I'm done beating you up, lunch is on me!" And immediately, he just kinda slowly sweeps with that cherry picker tail. It's a gimmie, he probably feels some kind of bad. FREEZER MAN looks to Hibiki and lets out an obnoxious 'ooohohohoho~' that makes you want to beat him up. "Why yes, that is in fact the big idea~ Doctor Rawbought has some big plans, and to help him accomplish them, we need to take control here for a little while. But don't worry, I'll help you cool that temper of yours. Maybe whatever you ordered will be waiting for you once you dethaw." And with that, they open their chest to blast at Hibiki with a beam of cold! |
| Rita Ma | Rita holds the shotgun in her hands for a moment, examining it with obvious foreign curiosity. I've imitated real guns before, but I've never held one in my hands. It's easy, right? Especially up this close. Turning to the side, she finally gives Candy a brave little nod. "Okay, Mr. Man," she says with more bravery than she really feels. "I know you have a job to do. So no hard feelings, okay?" So they really are smart. But, if they're all robots, at least I don't have to worry about human blood... He swings the tail, slowly. Before it can connect, there's a sharp thump and a whickering sound, and Rita leaps up to hit the ceiling feet-first, thirty feet up in the air. A second identical sound follows as she kicks off the ceiling to land behind him, and then slams her tiny foot into the back of his knee with superhuman force to drive him off his balance. As he (hopefully) falls, what appear to be iron chains materialize out of thin air to bind his limbs- their true substance is durable, but still breakable with sufficient strength. Rita briefly tries to shoulder the shotgun, but her expression wavers, the line of her mouth wobbling. She can't just shoot someone in the leg after he offered her lunch! "Please stay down, okay? Just... take this as your excuse for a sick day, Mr. Man." Regardless of whether he really does stay down, she's headed deeper in- other people can wrap this one up. That'll take her through the FOOD COURT and eventually into DEPARTURES, if she's not stopped! |
| Staren | The labcoat is the longer one from the AU27 makeover, but Lilian's fashion sensibilities are no doubt abraded against like a wound rubbed by a salty lemon because THE SHORTS ARE BACK. With sneakers and white knee-highs. Will Afterus's people even recognize me? Eh, I guess since I'm one of the lesser mythological figures, anyone who actually knows me already knows I have multiple forms and probably has followed my appearance in recent Multiversal events. Or maybe they've played that gacha game. Oh, Rita's here? And Candy! He's always great to have around. Surprised he's not shooting yet, maybe we see where this goes? Uhhhh I'm bad at talking but I guess I can do the talky thing while trying to gather info. And then Lilian is here. Uggggh Lilian. At least she's probably an ally today. Staren gives her a wide-eyed, surprised look. Memories flicker through her mind; hugging (a weirdly big and tall; mental exaggeration?) Persephone on a beach allowing herself to be comforted, (Persephone is normal-size in the rest of the memories) Sitting in Persephone's lap at Kukuru's lunch at the Shrine and then at the war table in Kings as Persephone fixes her hair, sitting next to her on the train to the Queens' city; All accompanied by the soothing, no-worries sensation of Persephone's aura. It stands out to Staren, who's spent so much of her life stressed and worried. The suggestion she's Persephone's 'Favorite??' is accompanied by warm feelings. Persephone offering the choice of safety or understanding. For Staren it really was a lifelong wish, to fix what was broken about her. It seemed like everyone else must have psychic powers or something, to be able to communicate the way they do. A heart's desire, longed for since childhood then dismissed as impossible some years ago, suddenly made real. The alien thought was put in her head that allows her to envision that ocean of stars, each 'star' an intelligent being, surface thoughts and feelings revealed when 'looked' at, visions of pivotal moments in their past when focused on. Every time Persephone called her cute, giving her that flustering rush of gender euphoria before Staren even knew what it was. Persephone was trying to help her realize. Those thoughts rush through Staren's head in a second or two. Still staring at Lilian, Staren answers, "Why should I tell you anything? What are you hoping to get from me??" Staren's attention is divided -- Lilian is a threat?? and possibly more so than RAISE MAN. It's basically on autopilot that Staren steps in too close for the tail's reach, summons a vibro-sword into her hand, and chops it off, then summons a second one and begins guessing at the locations of vital components and stabbing, trying to sever the mechanical equivalent of nerves and muscles so that the bot is disabled. Staren's mouth can run on autopilot too. "You can't CLOSE Afterus! How do you expect this to work?! We're the first elites to respond, but more are on the way; They literally have an entire HIGH SCHOOL here training students to be protagonists, you think someone's not gonna see this as a great opportunity for a class project??" |
| Hibiki Tachibana | FREEZER MAN's laugh style evokes both smug rich girls and pompous older gentlemen, and honestly, Hibiki is not about it at all. You can practically see her square up her shoulders and do her very best to stop herself from grumbling under her breath in Angry Short Girl fashion. Picking up on the fact Lilian is here does absolutely nothing to help with this, but thankfully, she has the perfect outlet right in front of her. "How about I kick you over and go pick up my mail myself!?" Vehemently refusing to cool down, she dives for a table and kicks it up, grabbing hold of it to bring up like a makeshift shield. It's completely frozen over on the spot, and plenty of the cold makes it past to freeze at her limbs and parts of the armor on them - but she avoids the worst of it, and promptly tosses the icicle sculpture the piece of furniture has become right back at Freezer Man! This is just the lead-in to her lunging in right behind it to throw a punch right for his big blocky face however, with more than enough power to just bowl him right over if she gets a clean hit. She is followed up with even more punches, kicks, and honestly kind of vicious street brawl-y knee strikes to the rest of his towering frame while she's here. "So this Dr. Rawbought guy is the one responsible...! Alright! Then I'm gonna...shut him down!" She punctuates her attempted beatdown by attempting to grab onto Freezer Man and /chuck/ him in the direction of DEPARTURES. It'll either hurt a lot or leave a nice (and also very unnecessary) fridge-shaped hole to keep moving forward. |
| Lilian Rook | Oh, Lilian sees it all, of course. Worse, she soaks up those hidden desires, those torrid emotions, the little secrets, deep regrets, and treasured moments, almost exactly like the kind of dream-eating terror that Staren had long spent so much time harbouring paranoia and dread towards. She experiences all of it secondhand. And Staren needs only say those handful of words anyways, because by then, Lilian's expression has hardened to pale, trembling, white-knuckled . . . disgust? Perhaps? It's so hard to read. "Ah. I see." she replies, her tone icily neutral. "She's your everything, isn't she? Like a messiah to your little charity case. And she loves fixing you. Petting you and pampering you; you're like her emotional support animal at this point, right? No, perhaps even like one of her fellow test subject children. She has all the answers you want, and she loves helping you find them. A lovely little relationship. Giving you everything she has, like she wants everyone else to have." Lilian uholsters the handgun and flicks the safety. "This is going to sting a little." She points it at Staren's knees. |
| Candy | Rita now holds the PF Model 19. Intended for use by the Policia Federal as a coach gun to stop armed entry of trains and armored cars, the gun has nevertheless clearly found its way into the hands of revolutionaries, perhaps thanks to Candy. A twelve gauge pump action with an impressive range--Rita could do worse for her first. Raise Man irks Candy--but not because he's being ignored. If ignoring him worked, someone would have figured that out a long time ago. "Closed?" Candy's face sours. "Go close a bank or a diamond mine, ah? Not shit people actually want around. Sweet of you to offer dinner, though," says Candy, well accustomed to being included in 'girls.' When the picker tail is swept, it crashes into his crate and sends munitions clattering across the floor. There's more than enough people here to handle him, if that's his opening swing--and so Candy is simply gone when it reaches him, reappearing balanced on the length of the arm with a bandolier of slugs. Candy runs down the length of it, shotgun bucking in his arms, cartridges discharging as fast as he can work the action, his trigger finger not even moving after the first. Four shots in total, each aimed in the general direction of the weld-spot where that picker is affixed, all made from the hip. Slamfiring on the run like that is bound to be inaccurate for pretty much every shot but the last, but it makes a lot of noise and, therefore, a good distraction. He leaps from the arm and when he lands, time stops. Candy stands back up, having bent slightly from landing. When he steps forward, another Candy, sans newsie cap, is frozen in place, shotgun in hand. The real Candy grins. *More than enough to clean Raise Man's clock. That icebox guy, too, at this rate...* Time resumes. -Fake!Candy arrives near CONVEYOR WOMAN to loudly announce his presence. -"EY! Why don't you make like a tree and fuck off?" -The real Candy, subtle and methodical as you like, attempts the STEALTH ROUTE past her; ducking behind vending machines, vaulting turnstiles to sit flat on the floor behind them, peeking over shoulder to move only when her vision isn't towards him. The destination, barring sudden blaring alarms, is ROUTE MAN, in the OFFICES. "Ey, Route Man," he says, shouldering a Galbadian wire-guided missile system, courtesy of Xion. "I showed you mine, ah? Show me yours.~" |
| Operator | Rita, with her tiny frame, easily topples the big, slightly sexist lug and ties him up in magic chains. Immediately, he's straining to try and break free, the tail thrashing. "Urgh, absolutely not! Heroism doesn't take sick days!" And then he sees Lilian stone-cold shoot someone who is ostensibly on her side and he adds, "Heroism doesn't USUALLY take sick days, but today is an exception!" In the food court, Hibiki blocks with a table and serves up Freezer Man. Fridges aren't really that durable, they're just hollow metal boxes, and so her rapid assault has them coming apart instantly. "Ghhkk... that does it! In five minutes, this facility will explo-" Exactly what they meant by this is not clear as they are yeeted through the wall into Departures. Conveyer Woman flinches as Candy just appears. "Ooohohoho-oh wait, Freezer Man gets that gimmick." At that moment is when Freezer Man's crumpled form slides to her feet, and immediately she says "Ooooooohohohohohoho~! Silly boy! I'm the one who decides what comes and goes!" The whip is turned on Candy, and also Hibiki once she shows up, a frenzy of lashes! Real Candy meanwhile meets Route Man, who as it turns out, is a robot of few words. The moment the himbo appears, they start blasting, their giant bazooka levelling the whole office and everything in it. Or it would if the missile it fires did not move infuriatingly slow. "Tremble before its speed and power," he remarks in a dull monotone. |
| Candy | Fake!Candy disintegrates upon contact with Conveyor Woman's whip--stopped dead in his tracks, distorting and rippling until there's nothing left. "Oh," says Real Candy, lowering his missile launcher as Route Man's projectile proves to be huge... ly disappointing. "Oh, my friend," he says, pacing a yard or two over to stay out of its flight path (and to see if it follows--not that it'd be difficult at all to avoid, even if it did). "My friend, I am so sorry." It's a cruel mad doctor indeed that denies their creations the joy of reasonably fast explosions. "No wonder you sound like you're not into it," he opines. "Listen, we gotta get this place running again, but this guy that build you, what does he know? Nothing, that's what. I got a friend that's real good--" BOOM "--with robots and egghead stuff like that," says Candy, having blinked to the far side of the OFFICES to avoid the explosion. "When this is through, we fix you up. Then maybe we show you some places you -really- wanna blow up, ah?" He winks, then shoulders the missile launcher again. An image of ROUTE MAN is displayed on the medium-rez viewfinder, scan lines slowly tracing down it. Candy utters a low whistle of appreciation--then thumbs the activation button. His fingers move then, to a control pad. The missile hisses as it takes off, wire spooling out dramatically as it races, much faster, towards the Mechanical Regent. Using the control pad on the weapon's side, Candy's fingers correct its course with minute adjustments, guiding it to strike at Route Man's torso. |
| Staren | 'Everything' feels like a bit of an exaggeration; as does 'messiah' and 'charity case'. A thought along the lines of I'm NOT a charity case! can barely even begin to form before it's run over by 'petting and pampering you', words that would make her think of memories and their attached warm fuzzy feelings except that they're coming out of the mouth of Lilian Rook and this whole interaction has an increasingly uncomfortable air. Brought up in this context those feelings feel tainted. It's so jarring she can barely process the rest of the words or realize what Lilian is doing next. A feeling of 'something is VERY WRONG here, escape' is just beginning to build before the gun fires. Armor of Ithan is up; of course it's up, Staren activated it before leaping off the train, she's not stupid! But Lilian is a match in magical threat preparation, and caught her off-guard, magical armor-spell and knee shot through. It HURTS, and it HURTS WORSE because Staren's trying to move away. This has, bizarrely, never happened before?! People don't *go for weak points* or *attempt to maim* Staren, for the most part; well, except the first time she died to a broken neck. Any other time she was facing an opponent that would do that, she was a robot, able to turn off pain with no concern of bleeding out. So Staren's just a *little bit slower* than she would be to come up with solutions. The catgirl goes down with a pained scream, weakness forced on her rather than willingly shown to seem human. The feelings that gave rise to Dark Staren haven't had time to engage yet but if she had time to consider it she would very much rather be operating in that mode right now. She's not, though. So 'call for help' actually manages to occur as a mental possibility before 'take tactical control of the situation', a call of 'CANDY! HELP ME!' going out on the radio in a synthesized tone of only moderate distress, because she's not mucking with the settings now and there's enough Dark Staren deeply ingrained in her to refuse to say it out loud in front of Lilian. NOW the tactician can start pushing back against the pain and fear. Leg down. Cat? Too vulnerable, haven't practiced walking on three. Flight. It won't stop her but it's a start. Staren doesn't actually have to touch her coat or *say* 'Fly as the Eagle', it's just a little magic push and Staren hovers off the ground and accelerates towards the warpgate. Teleporter. Avoids attacks as if she can see them coming. No clever counter on-tap, shoot anyway while you think, it can't hurt to make her dodge. If given another half-second or so to think and act, Staren starts firing the vambrace-mounted plasma ejectors at Lilian. |
| Hibiki Tachibana | Right on the trail of Freezer Man's dramatic skid to CONVEYER WOMAN'S feet sprints Hibiki, who is reasonably sure they'll have a lot more than five minutes for whatever that just was. And there's Candy and Rita...! Scratch that, that's just one of his fakes. She needs to learn how he does that sometime. Technically, Rita could be one of her fakes too, but she really hopes not. Otherwise she'd be like the one person here who can't do anything like that. She'd wonder where Staren and Lilian are during all of this, but the combination of ghetto-ass rollerblading and whip-slinging blocking her path is taking up all her attention. "If you are, then you shouldn't have held up my mail! Or Rita's mail! Or /anyone's/ mail! I'm gonna give your boss a piece of my mind, and you're in the way!" She charges right through the incoming lashes, with her gauntlets braced up in front of her like a makeshift shield. They take the worst of it, aside from some bits of the metal being dented in or shorn open, and she can live with the parts of her body where clean cuts actually do make it through. She's clearly okay with taking some pain in order to get to Conveyer Woman herself. She doesn't have sick ass skates herself, unfortunately. But she can jump good, which she does to fling herself at the Mechanical Regent boots-first. A heavy metal dropkick to send her spinning out of control, and also possibly continuing her theme of battering herself or other individuals into the next place they need to go. |
| Rita Ma | Even before Raise Man has hit the floor, Rita's absolutely booking it further in, shotgun somehow 'magnetically' stuck to her back. Her pace is only minimally plausible for a baseline human, and becomes decidedly implausible when she drops to all fours once she thinks nobody's watching. There is a puff of dust in the FOOD COURT where she passes through the Freezer Man-shaped hole. In DEPARTURES, there's a brief blur. A breeze in its wake stirs Hibiki's hair. Finally she arrives in the OFFICES with Candy and Route Man, giving the former a friendly wave from behind the latter. She fires into Route Man's unsuspecting back- IT'S SO LOUD WHY DID IT JERK SO MUCH DID SOMETHING EXPLODE And immediately fumbles and drops the shotgun, staggering backwards and looking down at it on the floor as if it bit her. Her ears are ringing, her fingers numb. Her expression as she glances back up at Candy is betrayed and reproachful. |
| Candy | "Hah!" Candy ruffles Rita's hair. The imouto betrayed and reproachful look... counter to that is headpats, right? He's pretty sure. "Maybe a pistol next time Coach gun kicks like a mule, don't it, cowgirl?" She seems more used to pistols anyway! His favorite not-actually-a-sharpshooter will have to wait-- Staren is raising hell on the radio. At first, he'd thought it was one of the Mechanical Regents, but... <J-IC-Scene> Candy says, "Limey, what're you doing?" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook transmits over the sound of a click, metal rasping slide, heavy tap, a smooth metallic slap, and a matching 'clack'. <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Communicating." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Like humans do." One snide rebuttal later, he nods towards Rita. "Go on without me," he says. He doesn't sound jovial, or flirty, or happy in the slightest. He sounds driven. "I gotta go 'communicate.' Fucking kidding me..." Time stops. *This I gotta see. I knew they didn't like each other. I didn't think it was 'shoot each other' bad. What the fuck, Limey? I thought going bonkers was our thing. You trying to join up?* When he returns to Arrivals, Staren is frozen mid-flight and Lilian is racking the slide on her pistol. *Talking about keeping things under control while you're trying to put a bullet in my fucking friend. The fuck's the matter with you, ah?* Time resumes. -Midflight, Staren bursts into illusory multitudes. -There are easily over a dozen Starens, each with minor imperfections--some aren't wearing the right clothes, some the wrong length of scarf, some with minor facial differences. -Candy appears opposite Lilian, shouldered. "Lilian, I'm serious. Who're you trying to get to by shooting Staren? Just tell me, and we can take 'em down together." She can see that this is clearly upsetting for him--though his aim is steady, his eyes are tearing up. Hurt. Why is she acting this way? |
| Operator | Conveyor Woman scores a hit! And the fake Candy dissolves into nothing. "Oh what?! Clones don't count, how am I gonna rack up the highest kill now?!" The answer is that she won't, as Hibiki rider kickers her through a wall into the offices, proving once against the superiority of STR over DEX builds. Rita rushes through, dashing as fast as she can. She find the Officers smouldering and charred, Route Man comedically charred by the force of his own explosion. But just like real trucks, the weakness is the back. The strong kick of the shotgun peppers his rear and shorts something out, leaving the route to the good Doctor clear. Back in Arrivals, if robots could sweat, Raise Man would be sweating right now as all this ugliness happens above him. |
| Lilian Rook | Lilian watches Staren fall to the ground with a completely deadened lack of expression. Or, no, more like she's seen this exact thing a hundred times before. The rolling around, the blood, the screaming. Something is completely turned off behind her eyes. Maybe that's not quite true either. When Staren drops, now consumed with panic instead of cozy thoughts of Persephone, Lilian breathes a sigh of relief, like throwing off a hot, stuffy blanket and taking in fresh, cool air outside. Several more shots punctuate the brief calm. Finishing off the leftover magazine, Lilian calmly and smoothly engages the release, flicks it out of the well, slams a heavy, full helical home, and latches the priming bolt forward. <J-IC-Scene> Candy says, "Limey, what're you doing?" <J-IC-Scene> Staren says, "Don't listen! She'll lie!" <J-IC-Scene> Hibiki Tachibana says, "Wh--?" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook transmits over the sound of a click, metal rasping slide, heavy tap, a smooth metallic slap, and a matching 'clack'. <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Communicating." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Like humans do." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Rita. This is very important. Please, keep things under control while I finish up. I'm counting on you." Staren turns and shoots at Lilian to try and force her to dodge. Lilian-- -----[stop]----- Holsters the handgun again instead. She squints at the glaring little stars in her vision, the bright points of blue-hot plasma displeasing her eyes, hanging in the air in that loose scatter she is consciously aware is aimed at her, but instinctively only recognizes as clutter whilst they aren't in motion. She taps her feet toe-heel to the ground, as if preparing to sprint, and then lifts off on a short plume of black static. Climbing. Swerving wide around the plasma scatter. Gliding sideways like a phantom to 'right where Staren is going'. -----[start]----- --'teleports' right behind Staren, in the direction of her flight, but opposite where she's looking and aiming. At that moment, Staren is split into a huge chaff cloud of individual illusions. Something Lilian was pretty sure-- no, she knows Staren can't do this herself, and didn't; the catgirl's panicked mind is an open book right now. She only has to-- |
| Lilian Rook | -----[stop]----- Look closely with her superhuman vision, and feel out where Staren's natural magic is versus the different level of Candy's with her magical senses, and locate the real Staren by reading her thoughts, making the shell game fairly trivial. -----[start]----- --glance at the flock of Starens to somehow just *know*. Then, in the air, she can pull a full double rotation of her entire body to gain exponentially more momentum than on the ground, and get a vicious spinning bar kick into Staren, aiming to catch her neck against her shin and throw her back down to the ground. Then, without actually chasing her through the air, teleport to her landing point, engage a mount and pin, and exploit the fact she knows Staren has no idea how to put a guard up to simply thrash her around the head with both fists, the closest thing to an 'expression' being 'sitting down after a long day'. It's a pattern that gives up multiple shots at simply knocking someone out cold, only accomplish being extremely painful and traumatizing. "You don't pay attention to anything anyone tells you, do you? Not what your friends say about me. And not what I say about you. It's nothing personal this time. Don't think too hard about it." She clearly knows that Candy is there, aiming a weapon at her, but not even looking up at him. Just like that one time before, under the intense distress of the Eater Thought battle, she habitually, even maybe unconsciously, swaps tongues. "I wasn't asking Rita for help. I was asking her to keep you safe from making any stupid decisions. Do it again Candelario. I dare you." |
| Rita Ma | The headpats are appreciated- Rita makes an unbearably sunny smile and leans into them, even!- but as soon as Candy's gone, her expression falls to one of obvious distress. I smell blood back there. Lilian... is this really what your rules look like? Or are you slipping up again? Rita tentatively picks the shotgun back up as if it might lash out at her again, and once she's assured that it won't, pumps it to ready the next shot. She probably won't use it, but it's good for intimidation, anyway! She waits long enough for Hibiki to catch up- or to get impatient, if Hibiki's straying from the plan- to head into the final area beyond and confront Dr. Rawbought. I know how to deal with monsters. I know how to deal with bad people. But what do you do when people you like can't get along? ... I want to be liked by everybody. But if I do anything, someone will end up hating me... and if I do nothing, maybe they'll hate me anyway. This is awful. |
| Hibiki Tachibana | "You won't!" Hibiki adds on very extraneously mid-kick, before moving ahead to dash through the Conveyor Woman-shaped hole (which is sadly not as large as the Freezer Man one but it'll do). That'll teach her to rollerskate in these halls. With Route Man taken care of, it's a clear shot ahead...! She stops in her tracks. The situation going on way back in Arrivals hits her ear, and she's faced with a decision. Candy is already going back. Staren is in trouble. This must be what Lilian was talking to Rita about, who's now convincing her to keep going. Does she trust Candy? ...Of course she does. Honestly, he can handle her far better than she could ever hope to. But if either he or Staren get hurt and she could've been back there to stop it... If she could've been back there to sock her fist into Lilian's jaw and do something about her--get back at her for everything she's done to her and the others but also her--take any excuse to lay into her and get actual answers for all the stupid crap she keeps--! Rita. Her face scrunches up, her hands tighten into fists, and she keeps sprinting forward. Dr. Rawbought is still waiting ahead, and still needs to be stopped from getting whatever they held up Afterus to get. There's no telling what might happen if they get away with it scot-free after coming this far. That's what she tells herself to keep her focused, anyway. She links up with Rita to dash into CUSTOMS without a word to the other girl, only speaking up once they're actually inside the FINAL AREA itself. At which point she calls out to the entire space in an angry tone that's like 50% personal problems and 50% directed at the good doctor responsible for holding up their mail. "Rawbought...! Whatever you're trying to do here, it's over! We've taken down all your goons, so it's just you now!" It's almost definitely not, but she thinks it is. |
| Operator | Finally, within Customs, Rita and Hibiki come face to face with the Big Bad. Doctor Rawbought. He's... kind of a schlubby old guy wearing a short that doesn't properly cover his potbelly, tattered sweatpants, and an old labcoat. But his eyes gleam with a fierce malice as he looks up from a security console at the two. "Ah, finally! I hope you enjoyed my MECHANICAL REGENTS! But now, you face my latest AND greatest!" From a pile of shipping boxes in the corner, something leaps and attempts to slide boxcutter blades in between the shoulders of both girls. "Like a delivery that arrives before the scheduled time, I strike. I am... BOX MAN!" It sure is a robot made from styrofoam and plastic. He vanishes again into the box pile, moving between and among them all throughout the room. Meanwhile, Raise Man awkwardly mumbles, "Um, if you're going to have a domestic dispute, could you at least let me go? This is really awkward to just be chained up around." |
| Staren | It's a calculation as available resources are assessed. Hibiki is an ally that hopefully views Staren favorably; Staren's helped out on her world before, and when The Ghost Of Maslow Peak was independent he may have fought Noise as 'a problem that can be shot without pissing people off'. Lilian turned actively hostile is a 'yes' level threat and there is no reason to not go all-out. At times like this the Dark part of Staren really wishes she had some kind of big power-up to use; going super-Saiyan, slotting boost cartridges into Eureka and performing some absurd Rotation, opening chakras, *something*. She doesn't wish even for an instant that she'd answered Persephone differently, Understanding is more important, but she can't help but wonder what kind of Safety Persephone would have provided. Fly as the Eagle is combat flight magic -- ease of control first, maneuverability second, speed third. Staren twists and jukes in the air, making Lilian's followup shots more difficult. Most still hit, but they're not the perfectly-aimed right-through-the-armor critical strikes the kneecapping was. There is barely time to register the illusory help before she's getting kicked to the floor. Magic prevents it from being potentially neck-breaking, though. Ironically, Lilian talking about not paying attention is not paid attention to -- Nor her dispassionate expression, as evaluation of others' mental states is difficult at the best of times and Staren's not wasting any thought on it now -- Lilian's words are not as critical to consider as her actions. Which is an attempt to beat Staren senseless; Lilian's fists feel like they're hitting magically-tough steel as if Staren's wearing an invisible helmet, but it's nothing she can't damage and eventually break through by adjusting her attacks appropriately. Still, it gives Staren time to fight back, readying to shoot Lilian with the vambraces. Even if they're pinned, she can activate a shock function or warp in a different weapon system. But as she's about to activate it, she gets an idea that is going to go very, very badly. Staren aborts the attack to go cat-form. A split second of being small and out of her assailant's grip would be enough to break free and resume escaping if Lilian weren't reading her mind. While this is going on, there's an exchange between Rook and Candy. Staren concludes that Candy knows how to fight Lilian on her level and leaves him to it. Also, Lilian can read PHONE: Candy says, "Get the fuck out. She's lost it." Somewhere in all this, part of Staren's brain *does* get around to processing 'what your friends say about me.' Persephone said 'Lilian is 'good for almost no reason'.' She's trying very hard to 'be good', even if she doesn't always get it right.' The accompanying feelings indicate that at the time Staren trusted these words, believed even Lilian deserved a chance to be a good person. No, not 'even'... just like everyone else. It's a thought that isn't high-enough priority to figure into fighting for survival against a Lilian-class threat, though. |
| Candy | Raise Man gets a rather brash response. "SHUT THE FUCK UP, RAISE MAN! Nobody's asking you a goddamn thing, ah?!" *Listen to you. Caught up in who's better than who, like that fucking matters. Like it ever did. You're talking about shooting my friend like people talk about putting down lame animals. You think I give a shit how much stronger you are, when you talk like that? If it -costs- me an eye, that shit gets you a shiner. That's just how it works, motherfucker.* "I don't cheat," Candy repeats. "And you don't do shit to her. Sounds like a good deal to me." In real-time, Candy lowers the shotgun, holding it one handed to cut that deck with the other. He makes a break, and less than a half second into his running start, blinks away. He reappears, prone, sliding between rows of what chairs haven't been knocked astray by the battle. A spread of three playing cards is flung--the Ace of Spades, the Jack of Hearts, the Queen of Diamonds--towards Staren. They all disintegrate at the same time. Suddenly, there are many cats, the real one somewhere mingled in with them. And... most frustratingly... Staren's mental presence is gone from them. "RUN!" |
| Rita Ma | <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, pained: "Lilian..." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook repeats, firmly, "I trust you Rita." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "... I don't trust me." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Then trust me trusting in you." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma takes a deep breath. <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "What you did to Hibiki. Was that inside your rules? Or was it a mistake?" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, ". . . I don't think it's as simple as one or the other." <J-IC-Scene> Hibiki Tachibana makes an almost startled sound, but otherwise says absolutely nothing. <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "Is *this* inside your rules? Or is it making a mistake, too?" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook leaves a long pause in reply, then her voice drops to a smoky rumble, "Stay not thy hand for unnecessary persons." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "I know what I'm doing." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma transmits dead air for a few seconds. There's the sound of her mouth opening, then another little pause. <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma turns off her headset with a little 'snap' of static. Rita enters Doctor Rawbought's room. She doesn't superficially look like she's crying- her disguise-wrappings can imitate the eyes beneath perfectly, but not secrete tears- but along the wrappings' invisible seams, little lines of glittering wetness form. She tries to keep her face averted from Hibiki, head hanging limply. Lilian... I thought I understood her. I thought we understood *each other*. But hurting Hibiki was something I could never square with that. And now this... even if she's in the same situation as I am, even if she's struggling to 'be good despite a bad heart', I don't think I can trust her. Not until she's got ahold of herself again. She's seemingly distracted. BOX MAN drives the blade right into her back and out through her chest. The fake Rita unravels before she hits the floor. The real Rita is next to Rawbought, holding the shotgun to his head. "Stop fighting. Explain yourself. I'll shoot." |
| Lilian Rook | When Staren turns into a cat, slips out from the pin, and bolts, Lilian doesn't appear to follow with any sense of urgency. She stands up, even dusting off her knees as if she'd just gotten dirt on the hem of a skirt, and cracks her slightly battered knuckles. A second later, she grips the plaster on the side of her face, peels it off of the faded purple mark below, and throws it away. The way she looks at Candy . . . Even he can tell there is something deeply, darkly, incomprehensibly fucked going on. The way she looks at him isn't normal. It isn't angry, or contemptuous, or even disinterested. People don't look at people that way. Their eyes aren't supposed to slide right off of people's faces as if they're a leaf on a tree. There's mean, or dismissive, or exasperated, like she sometimes is with him, and then there's . . . this. "I'm so tired, Candelario." says Lilian. And then she is gone. The natural thing to do would be to check on Staren. To see where she's jumped into the herd and interrupt. To play inteference on whatever attack she launches that way. Saturation fire, especially from magic, would still put Staren in danger. Being unable to simply sense her puts a battle-critical delay on it. She's nowhere to be seen towards the Warpgate --Lilian has gone all the way back to where she started. Standing exactly in the same footsteps she had when she'd shot Staren's legs out. Night Mist is in her hand, its blade vibrating in anticipation, roiling black ink-in-water smoke from its luminously scarlet edges. "Cleasa Iontach ~ Slais Gearradh Fola" The point is stabbed precisely into the bloodstains left by the gunshot exit wounds. Crimson aberration static-flickers down the length of the sword and causes the fresh blood to spatter and vapourize. The sympathetic link is well-established. The causal mirror of 'sword damage' is transposed directly onto the wound the blood had originally been shed from; kind of stabbing wound split between both legs, accounting and mirroring the difference in body geometry to render an agonizing injury in a conceptually appropriate and equal sense. It carries with it an excruciating blast of pain as the superpositioned connection sends through a pulse of occult power that turns liquid blood into solid, fractal thorns around the wound. And more than that, it carries something like her feelings with it, in the form of the Unseelie way. A psychologically tangible sensation like being blinded by smoke, slowly asphyxiating for lack of air, lost in a haze of deep, chilling malice, the warmth slowly leeching from her bones. This is how humans fight, isn't it Kore? To communicate. To grow. Don't bother with the others; I know how you bent their minds and poisoned them against me. I'm done with all of them. It's just us. And I'm not scared of you. So how's this for 'punishment'? |
| Hibiki Tachibana | Somewhere, deep in her gut, Hibiki feels sick. 'Hibiki, you too. I helped you, others will deal with robots soon. Careful, Lilian may have swayed Rita.' 'Hibiki, you too. I helped you. Lilian may have swayed Rita.' No, she's actually going to hurl. She made the wrong call. Staren is going to hate her. She should've gone back and-- After a brief moment of being extremely openly zoned out, the sheer juxtaposition of Doctor Rawbought's put-together outfit and the raw menace in his eyes helps bring her back into focus. Right. She's already here. With Rita, even if they're not able to look at each other. Which means it's too late to turn back now; they have to put an end to this. She stuffs the feeling back into her gut - for now - and clenches her fists to square up against their foe almost automatically. "I didn't! At all! It was just a crappier version of when I went to that Wendy's that was--" The story of Wendy's Woman is for another day, as BOX MAN suddenly attacks, and the hangups of Emotional Turmoil(TM) make her reactions slow down and her guard to be lowered enough for him to get a decent cut on her arm on the passby. "Ngh...! Oh no you don't--!!" Rita has Rawbought probably handled, but it's debatable on if Hibiki even realizes that. She spins around and dives right after the Mechanical(??) Regent into the mess of boxes. It looks completely ridiculous, and also she's fighting him in his element. People's mail. She promptly proves to not care as she chases Box Man through them like some kind of terrible box-shark determinator, hounding after him relentlessly until she can get close enough to try and grab onto one of his legs hard enough to crush in the styrofoam and /drag/ him out by force. "If ANYTHING happened to my mail or Rita's mail after all this crap, Rawbought is going to be renaming you Ash Man!" She's not even going to try to actually hit him or anything. She's just going to yell at him and toss him as hard as she can towards the wall at the other side of Customs. |
| Operator | "Hah! That's one on the board!" Box Man declares as Rita... dissolved into nothing. "What is with the clones tod-MASTER!" His evasive patterns fall apart the moment he sees the small girl with a shotgun to Rawbought's head. He lunges, aiming to skewer her again, making him easy prey for Hibiki to catch and smash. "Whoa, easy there little girl!" Rawbought says, raising his hands. "It's quite simple! You all focussed on my crummy robots! Not noticing the smaller ones I put in the cameras! Right now, they're broadcasting all your battle data back to my lab! And there! My machines! WILL PUMP OUT ROBOTIC DUPLICATES OF YOU ALL! HAHAHAHAHA! Really though, I wasn't expecting a show like this!" On the screens are the 'battle' between Candy, Lilian, and Staren. They sure are showing off a lot of techniques... Meanwhile, Raise Man does as he's told and shuts up. |
| Rita Ma | BOX MAN lunges for Rita. Her eyes flick to Hibiki, who's moving to intercept. For a tiny fraction of a second, their eyes lock. Trust. Rita's eyes turn back to Dr. Rawbought. When the blade comes within feet of her before Hibiki violently hurls the robot aside, she doesn't flinch. He's a maniac, just like Dr. Foid. Creating awful things just to see if he can. He must know he's in danger here. Does he not care? I can't threaten him with violence. "Okay," Rita says tonelessly, and drops the gun. Her disguise-wrappings drop the pretense of being human. The whole surface of her body changes color, becoming a human-shaped display screen. It begins to strobe an awful sequence of organic colors, dozens per second, pulsing and swirling over her body like rorshach inkblots in frantic spiraling motion. As she grabs his head to force him to look at her, something awful begins to happen inside Dr. Rawbought's brain. Cuttlefish flash specific patterns to stun crabs long enough to be eaten. Not long ago Rita consumed the Defender of the Three, a cultist champion beholden to dread forces, and learned along which fracture points the human mind breaks too. Today that knowledge gets its first use. (It is like being psychically ground to dust under a millstone that weighs as much as the moon. It is a horrifying perspective of meaninglessness and insignificance, in which the ego dissolves like salt in water. Everything motive, everything 'id', is extinguished- at least temporarily- under the smothering chill of the neural hijack.) Rita's next words, clear and neutral, hit an empty and receptive mind. "Shut it off." |
| Staren | The real Staren-cat immediately yowls in pain from trying to use a hurt leg, then limps towards the warpgate. It is a tense, agonizingly slow escape; If she reverts form, Lilian will teleport to her, but how long will this illusion distract for? Lilian reacting to Candy gives a moment of time in which Staren can think, at least. Emergency distress signals are sent; if she dies, she'll be recovered eventually. It hasn't dawned on her that killing her isn't the goal. It's getting hard not to go in mental circles, though. Lilian is scary *because* she's so competent; She teleports, she goes through walls, and who knows what else she's kept secret, how do you counter all of that? Come to think of it, Staren's not sure why Lilian hasn't killed her already. Not, like, *today*, but in general. Oh right. Probably because she's not sure how to make it stick, everyone knowing you can cheat death is a mixed blessing. Wait, so what's different this time? Has she figured something out? No, if the goal were to kill her, Lilian would have gone for a head shot instead of the knee shot. So what could it be? That train of thought is interrupted by being put through hell. Staren is dimly aware that there's a physical component and compensates by increasing body mass, returning to catgirl and then catboy form, a yowl turning into one screaming voice and then another before old habits demand he quiet down and soldier through, although soon he can't really think about that... This is bad... How can I escape?! This is horrible... I don't know how... I can't think... It hurts... Is this how other people feel when they die? Did she figure out how to kill me for real? I want it to stop... why won't it stop...? Survive! I have to hold on... Don't give up... I want it to stop...! As long as I live there's a chance... I won't give up, but it hurts so much... Can't breathe... can't see... I'm lost, it's cold... I can fix one of these things! Parts are warped into one of the vambraces, injecting pre-oxygenated hemoglobin-mimicing molecules into Staren's bloodstream. It doesn't help. Externally, Staren's twitching and flailing a bit. aimlessly trying to drag himself forward with his arms as he reacts to the psychic assault. |
| Candy | <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook laughs weakly, without humour, as if embarrassed with herself. "It really is that easy. He was right." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "I can't believe I spent so much time slowing down for you people." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "I feel so stupid." <J-IC-Scene> Candy says, "Well, even a broken clock is right twice a day, you know?" <J-IC-Scene> Candy says, "You should feel that way. But not because of whatever the fuck you're talking about." <J-IC-Scene> Candy says, "You didn't pull the trigger. But you did something. You wouldn't be talking all that shit, if you didn't." *Yeah. You ought to feel stupid, on account of you pissed me off.* "You want to talk about being patient? After everything I just tried to get you to stop? To get you to TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK WAS GOING ON?" There's a sigh, shaky, halting, from his cover. "Fuck you, Lilian." The Mendoza Armory RM20--also known as 'Mendoza's record player' for its iconic pan magazine--was the workhorse of the revolution on Candy's world, the product of a gunsmith who lost her sister to the the brutality of president-for-life Ibanez. It's equipped with a bipod. Candy doesn't use it. When he rises from the rows of chairs with tears in his eyes, he's got the weapon slung 'round his shoulder by the carrying strap, one hand on the barrel jacket, in a hip-fire grip. He knows from experience that despite the bipod, the weapon is still quite effective at area denial. His scream is drowed out by five hundred and fifty rounds per minute of 7.62x52mmR. He sweeps it across the arrivals lounge, bullets tear ancient magazines to shreds and send cracks spiderwebbing from points of impacts with walls. They strike and overturn small objects, shatter abandoned coffee mugs, ruin employee of the month plaques, punch deadly holes in the backs of chairs. "I told you to fucking stop." New mag. Click. Tears splash upon the spent pan as it rattles to the ground, and the trigger is held down again. There is not an inch of this lobby that he'll leave unshot, as he sweeps the MG back and forth, strafing back to Staren to scoop the cat up with one arm and escape through the gate. "YOU'RE GONNA WISH YOU FUCKING HAD, NO MATTER IF YOU'RE FUCKING GOD ALMIGHTY COMPARED TO ME!" |
| Hibiki Tachibana | For the first moment since they reached Customs, Hibiki makes eye contact with Rita. Ever so briefly. Even without the words... Then Box Man is hopefully down for the count, and Hibiki is left looking downright exhausted after she's sure he won't be getting back up. She can finally turn her attention back to Rita and Rawbought fully. She's tense, for a million and one reasons...though some of it can't help but give way to surprise when the full plan comes out. "Wh--this was all to /make copies of us!?/" The plan is so stereotypically evil genius (and actually genius) after all that ridiculous crap that she's left entirely flatfooted for a moment. But then her attention goes over to the screens themselves, and at what's happening between the trio there. A little bit of the color leaves her face. Wait, what's...? She looks back at Rita--and then immediately has to stop doing that, with what she's doing. After doing so, her eyes close momentarily. 'Shut it off.' Okay. That's her plan. Good. If they can make that happen, then everything is fine. Totally fine. And if they can't, she'll just deal with the robots when they're an issue. But there's no talking down that Hibiki can do here at this point, and nothing she can smash to make anything better. The other girl has everything handled. "...Rita," she says quietly, and so evenly it has to be forced. "He's done. Let me know if it works, okay? I'll be right back to help take him in as soon as I can. I gotta get back there." She says that, but she doesn't actually move until (or if) Rita acknowledges that it's okay. At which point, she'll take off at full desperate sprint back towards Arrivals. But that'll time. Too much. Especially when she'll end up having to stop halfway to /actually/ heave up some. It won't be anywhere near the Mechanical Regents, at least. They are spared where Raise Man isn't. |
| Rita Ma | Rita startles, just a little- though Hibiki wouldn't see it- at the reminder. "Yeah," she says urgently, her voice a little muffled by her own wrappings. "Go." And then, as Hibiki leaves: "I'm rooting for you." |
| Lilian Rook | Staren stumbles, detransforms, crawls, hands and knees, towards the Warpgate. It's unclear whether Lilian is done with her. For a moment, she looks lost in some kind of . . . moment. Her head slowly tilts back, hair sliding over her shoulders and bangs obscuring her eyes. Staring somewhere up in the sky, she opens her mouth, and laughs a weak, helpless, humourless laugh. Her shoulders jerk up and down with the limp motions of someone who can't believe that they're even laughing. She sways backwards on her feet, bit by bit, and then finally slumps forward again. Night Mist is plucked from the ground with two fingers, launched a foot up with a flourishing spin and gripped again with a casual snatch. "I'm tired, Candelario." she repeats, but this time, her voice has taken on a skin-crawling cadence of hollow relief. The blade flicks up right as Candy levels the machine gun. At that distance, she doesn't even think about it. Neither is Candy. White and red sparks explode from the air all around her, glassy shrieks replying to every other gunshot. The area all around her is littered with holes. The magazine drops. "I'm so much more than you, and I'm tired of pretending I'm not." The bolt is still being pulled. It doesn't get to the end of the chamber. I said no~ For an infinitesimal fraction of a second, space flashes with a pulse like a beating heart. Lilian doesn't move from the spot. It's Candy who is subject to-- Perhaps you'd like to compare it to Kore? Touch without care. Force without mercy. Contact without compassion. Cause without effect, right? The human brain isn't designed to process the unique chaos of recursive input, but fast nerve clusters perform their primal purpose and warn Candy, too late, of the terrible, injurious pain exploding all over his body. Torque, impact, abrasion; split skin, snapped ligament, fractured bone; a carpet of cruel and horrendous bruises, like an hour in an unfurnished torture chamber for a revolutionary, simply appear all over him. Lilian didn't even blink out of his sight. He can hear a faint, incendiary hiss coming from her, and catch a glimpse of wrong-hued infra-coloured vapour roiling from her hands, briefly tinting the air like cherenkov radiation. At the same time, away from him, Staren is subjected to horrendous, brain-scrambling vertigo, and somehow finds herself hitting the floor on the other side of the Warpgate, deposited at a random location. But in front of Candy, Lilian just laughs one more hollow, chagrinned, lightly despairing laugh. "This really is so much easier. This is how I should have treated you people from the start." A contemptuous glance is directed down past her chin. "Know your place." Lilian warps out. |
| Operator | Doctor Rawbought is a keen mind, but not a strong one. Years of being passed up for grants and making rent on his mountain fortress by the skin of his teeth has him on a precipice, and now Rita has toppled him over. He produces a device from his pocket and taps away at it. "There... stopped..." The readout shows how many different Elites he had recorded, and how many robots based on each had been made. One of each finished production before he stopped them. |
| Staren | It's over. It's over? Staren collapses and just breathes for a bit. Some amount of time later, he lifts himself up on his arms and looks around. A dirt path leads away from the warpgate; there's a higher ridge to one side which the path curves around and up, and on the other side there's a bit of grassy field and then just sky, because this is a floating island. Staren feels kind of nauseous staring at the endless blue right now, so he stops, tries to stand, shivers at the weird feeling of a numbed knee not responding properly, and rolls over to sit, looking around a couple more times, taking a deep breath, and returning to her proper form. She hugs herself as thoughts start to flood back in. What the hell WAS that? Will Afterus be okay? Will they lose faith in her? She doesn't want to be alone right now... where is Persephone's soothing presence... but, Staren's used to being alone, she can tough it out. Wait, what happened to Candy? She warps in a couple of knee braces to avoid making anything *worse*. There are more extreme options but only if an emergency calls for it before other bodies are available. In the meantime, she calls for pickup, and reaches out on the radio. |
| Candy | 'Know your place.' The RM20 is out of his reach, in pieces. He's on his hands and knees, blood dripping from his mouth, welts, bruises, broken bones forcing him to curl up on his side. *This isn't my place. You think it is, but that's why you're fucking stupid.* He isn't here. He is in Tlahuica lands--New Cuauhnahuac, hidden from sight of pillaging hands by powerful magic. It is another time, when there was still a Mexico that stretched from the southern border of native holdings and the Thirteen, all the way to the sea. When there was no Regalo de la Tierra, no Morelos Free Territories, when the 'great generals' of the North and South were a miner and a farmer. When Candelario Maria Estevez de la Fuente was an angry young man with an aunt doing her best to raise him. ------*Your place is above me, ah? That's good.* "Candelario," his aunt had said, chopping vegetables as he stirred a sauce on her wood-burning stove. It never seemed to have any wood. She cooked with it just fine. "You will sooner meet the Old Old Coyote face to face than you will pry the hands of those men from this land. You are a farmer, not a fighter. Be happy that lord Cuauhtototzin allows you to stay here, and know your place--" ----you don't know a goddamned thing-- Power exploded outwards. The electric lightbulb flickered, buzzing louder, louder, louder, shattered. The flames in the stove burned blue. "--ABOUT MY PLACE! People take from you, and take, and take and take--and you're supposed to just bear it?! We're supposed to get shit on, forever and ever?!" "Candelario." "MY place is with the Zamoristas! MY place is breaking those greedy fucks' fingers. MY place is going to THEIR houses, burning THEIR land! THAT's where my place is! If they're so high up, then MY place is right at the bottom, knocking them down and watching them BREAK!" ------The ground breaks people like you. It always does. "CANDE!" The flames of the oven roar, shattering the pan with their heat. Candy's nascent magical will sends fragments flying everywhere. His aunt's will hits him like a ton of bricks, flinging him clear--but not before one of the burning-hot shards travels up his arm. "Cande? CANDE! " <J-IC-Scene> Staren says, "Candy?" <J-IC-Scene> Staren says, "Are you okay?" Candy's radio crackles. He is Here now, not There. "...I'm just glad you are." |
| Hibiki Tachibana | Rita is rooting for her. But... What is she supposed to do now? Lilian is gone by the time she gets to where she needs to get. Staren is, too. There's just the awful, terrible laugh that's picked up on her radio, and her own desperate running forward coming to a skidding stop once she realizes. She didn't know exactly what to expect, only going off Candy's tone over the radio. She didn't see it on camera. It wouldn't hold a candle to seeing his state in person, anyway. "Candy--!" Heaving and panting, she rushes over to his side, dropping down to her knees at his side. She reaches out to him with both hands without thinking--and then stops short, wincing hard and clenching her hands into tight fists in the air. Both limbs shake briefly. Before she half-turns and beats one of them down into the floor hard enough to leave a dent, spending several more seconds just breathing before sucking in air. "...Sorry. I'm sorry. I can't...Rita's gonna be right behind me. With the...the first aid. I can't do..." She swallows. "...I'm sorry, Candy. Damnit, what did she...!?" Hibiki looks like she might blow. For a second. But she stops herself, with Candy in such awful condition right there. But he'll...make it. And Staren sounds like she's okay too. Whatever happened, it's over. Only for now. "...Lilian...you..." |
| Staren | Eventually, simple humanoid robots in EMT jackets and caps come through the gate, riding a 10-ish-foot-tall wooden construct that's a bit like an open-topped car with legs, and disembark to stand wordlessly around Candy while Staren converses with him on the radio. Once he FINALLY agrees to go to a hospital, the EMT-bots stretcher him into the back of the construct's cab and set off to Healplz. Some minutes later, Staren speeds out of the warpgate on a hovercycle to meet up with Candy while he's being processed. She's in a fresh body and clean clothes, but the mental and emotional toll remains. She stays with him as long as he's conscious; procedures be damned, are they going to refuse a request like this from an honest-to-goodness mythological figure? She also makes sure to be there the first time he wakes up in recovery. |