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Flamel Parsons     You're back here, Sector L-57, far away from Sector Zero. Fort Tormach was once the primary base of operations serving the entire East Elphyne front. When everywhere else fell, Fort Tormach stood against bombing campaigns, sabotage, siege, land-curses, and even a flood. The Winter Slayer operated out of here for years on behalf of the Winter-Summer Spirit's Union against an onslaught of angelic and divine forces from the Aesir-Host Treaty Organization, but she hasn't returned in quite some time. This fort lays at rest, still forged roughly from the bodies of trees lashed together tight in their camaraderie and infused with the immeasurable will of many of the good neighbors.

    Everything here is an amplified version of more historical sorts. The thatched roofs, the heavy beams, the smithing workshop's equipment, are all expanded in a way reminiscent of a kaleidoscope. The high ceiling and boarded walls probably don't make for very good acoustics. The vast, multifaceted forge was imbued with so many blessings they can't remove it, nor turn down its enchanted heat. But the windows are wide, and show the gentle blanket of snow beyond. The forge, hot though it may be, is warm at the limited seating. The men and women here, a mix of fae-blessed warriors, winter spirits, and a few foreigners (the Shade that the Winter Slayer married, a loa hanging from one of the rafters, and one of the approximately eighty thousand spirits claiming the name "Coyote").

    There is a piano here. An upright number, lugged through the door and left where a workshop table once was. A bench nearby was used mostly for high-stress craftsmanship, but now it is a seat for the Winter Slayer. She has gone without her armor this time, wearing instead a sort of fancy tunic in shining white, deep blacks, and vivid greens. The cloak stays on, even as she approaches the piano. The hood continues to hide that face that has stayed hidden this whole time, but it can't hide the white hair all the time, a braid of it draping at one point beyond the hood's shadows. The Shade she's married to joins her at a stool just beside her, carrying their own instrument, something two-pronged, stringed, Lyre-like but diverging just enough to give it a unique sound.

    Flamel Parsons is in an adjoining building with all who want to get insights into Lilian, and has filled it with all manner of Psychonauts equipment. Wide parabolic dishes and complex antennas are pointed straight at where the piano was left in the workshop. A Paladin sweep of the area could surely have found it at some point, but at no moment was it unmanned and thus at no point has it been an easy target. "Alright, everyone!" Flamel peeks up from behind a console where he's been adjusting variables. "When she gets really into playing, I'm going to fire up the Astral Injector and open a psychoportal! Once we're in, we'll get everything we need. Persephone, I know this is a weird ask, but can I hook this up to you? I need a *lot* of mental power to make sure we break the barrier, and you're the one I know can do this." He offers her a place to stand, where a large rotating device is meant to point directly at the skull.

    It would take a keen eye to notice the shinning white light that flickers in the adjoining building, fluttering over the Winter Slayer's head. But as they launch into their duet, the shadows over the Winter Slayer's face soften, the gleaming of her shining green eyes lightens. Her playing goes from stiff to moving. It becomes an expression of her love. You can almost see the smile on her lips as the shadow of her hood recedes.

    Flamel, too, is smiling.

    "Here we go." He says, throwing a switch. Machines start.

    Somewhere at the border of North Elphyne and the Underworld, there is a small apartment, high above, with a good look at both. Within, monitoring equipment activates, brought to life by a secret signal, and locks on to Fort Tormach at the edge of North Elphyne...
Persephone Kore      Persephone, by the look of her outfit, was definitely prepared to be somewhere more social than a high-tech secret Concord listening station. Glittery dangle earrings, warm resin hoop bracelets that threaten to fall off her hands replacing her typical arm-warmers, a beautiful red-orange sash draped around her shoulders, black high heels- about the only thing that hasn't gotten a 'classier' upgrade is her keyhole sweater. Improving on perfection is too impossible even for me, ahaha!

     (There is no physical way for the sash to stay on her body the way it does. Physics yield to aesthetics here.)

     But I'm not put out by not being in the audience at all. As much as I'd have liked to better hear the other-Lilian's song... if we can use this to fix our Lilian, there'll be plenty more chances to hear it.

     She slips into the secret listening post as subtly as she can, which is to say not very, and shuts the door behind her with a cheery wave to everyone already assembled. "Sorry for being a little late! I had to find out what the Winter Slayer would be wearing, at least. Isn't she cute?"

     "Persephone, I know this is a weird ask, but can I hook this up to you?" "Okay!" she answers Flamel sunnily, scooting over to stand in front of the Ominous Device. "If I can't do it, nobody can." She's wearing that dumb, warm, serene eyes-shut smile that could light up a room. "Haha, no tiara this time? Even if it wasn't my color, I kind of miss it." And it was a little bit satisfying to feel it break!
Featherman Neo Featherman Neo, who was Busy last time and is now here, waits with the others. He watches Flamel with ample curiosity, having prommised to help him, and if Flamel needed any help setting up, he gives it.

"So, in, out, don't dally. This Featherman is ready. How much time do we have, once the psychoportal is open?"
Kale Hearthward Kale's been keeping an eye on the Winter Slayer.

He's gotten changed into something more appropriate for the event (having your entire wardrobe on hand in miniature version helps) and is mingling with the other guests, and being appropriately social.

Presumably, there'd be some sort of kidnapping attempt, or interrogation attempt, or assassination attempt, or - really, just something along those lines.

In the meantime, he's just lightly mingling, learning what little bits of info he can - and keeping an eye out. If the Winter Slayer was known to be at this event in advance, it could be a chance for the Concord to make her move on her...
Candy Candy doesn't need his coat in this adjoining building. He has, however, dressed for a party, much like Persephone. Pressed grey slacks take the place of his usual work pants, and his shirt buttoned all the way up only for the presence of a cute little blue bow tie and a brown tweed vest. His hair is held back in a ponytail by a matching ribbon, though an errant lock does hang before his ear.

    He still feels a little overdressed, considering the actual plan, though the fact that Persephone has also planned for a social engagemnt means that he at least isn't alone in having made that guess.

You're worried.
*Fucking right I am. I've never done nothing like this before.*
Try not to be. You're among friends, in service of another.

     He's still pacing.
Hibiki Tachibana     Despite the absolute smattering of weird and interesting Psychonauts equipment here to be interested in, Hibiki has been pretty 'off and on' mentally with her attention frequently going somewhere else that's not really here.

    No doubt on Lilian, the Winter Slayer, and probably a dozen other things as she is wont to do, but she's not bothering to bring them up out loud. She is, at least, a bit down at the prospect of not getting to see the performance firsthand, and an up-close view of the Winter Slayer.

    Which is honestly a silly thing to worry about when they're going to be going into her /mind/, but teenagers feel the way they feel. When machines start booting up and Persephone enters, she shuffles up off the wall she was leaning against with a raise of her eyebrow.

    "And what exactly is it going to be, uh...like? I know that's a pretty open-ended question I should have asked before, but..." Pause. "Actually, I'll just see with my own eyes."
Ishirou I4 had been trying to get a beat on what the other party was going to do.  Right now he knew the point of the ambush of the Winter Slayer, which he thought was more than a little underhanded, given what he learned.  Though he ALSO learned that an alt version of Kore was involved, so he wondered if the attempt was as underhanded as it might have seen.  

The event was starting, and he couldn't get closer to the equipment he could see.  Instead, he would get close to the building, and attempt to peep in on the conversation and what was going on inside the building, trying to piece together what was going on, and how to better stop it.  

Thankfully, he didn't need to get UP next to the building, but he wasn't a master of disguise or stealth either.  Instead, he hung nearby and was trying to get a feel for what was going on, before deciding if he should try and rush in himself.  Kale could work with the Winter Slayer if they decided to rush her instead, but if it was technological, then he'd need to be here.
Staren     Cold. Formal. Staren shows up wearing her Assassin's cloak over a military-style black overcoat and matching boots with a bit of Concord orange sash visible. She, too, was expecting to be somewhere other than a secret Concord listening station. A dress was considered, but... no time to figure that out. Better to fall back on the old standby, well, with the slight variation of a skirt instead of pants under the coat.

    She gives Persephone a questioning look. "It's hard to imagine Lilian as 'cute', sorry." She looks between Persephone and Candy and smiles. "You both look nice, though!"

    Staren's ears turn to listen to the distant song. "...She and her husband play beautiful music, though." For a moment, she can imagine an alternate time where they're not enemies, where they might listen to their Lilian playing like this. Such an imagined gathering is... cozy.

    Staren's tail flicks uneasily under the cloak. She's done Mind Dives before, but... Lilian? Who knows what THAT mins will be like...
Cantio "She's... Cuter." Cantio admits as she puts a few light touches on her own machines within the outpost, making sure they're all ready to launch once things start moving for real. "Being married must've helped her a lot. Hmn..." She furrows her brow, rubbing the back of her head briefly before tweaking some more decimal-point exact settings to make sure the drone's sound-capture and projection settings are really tuned right.

Like the others, Cantio too is dressed in her Sunday best: A light pink ball gown dress with a whole lot of frills and yellow accents that's a bit flashier than what she's uesd to wearing. It's definitely going to get in the way if she needs to move at any pace faster than a brisk walk, but...

She'll figure it out later. "We should still be prepared for anything. Considering it's another universe entirely, I wouldn't be surprised if..." She purses her lips, then shrugs and resumes drone-tweaking. "... At all."
Flamel Parsons     "We probably won't have a lot of time. But it might feel like more than it is-- I wouldn't worry." Flamel explains to Featherman Neo as the large, rotating device begins to draw strange red energy away from Persephone. It rattles unnervingly as it does, as if even at baseline exertion her energies are a little too much. Flamel is tapping his feet oddly, he looks like he's *too energized*. He has the mood of someone about to go on stage for their first performance. He replies to Hibiki. "What it's like? Inside a mind is... well, the way you *feel* is what's *real*. Your doubts really drag you down, your regrets really weigh on you, your personal demons really sabotage you... But, more tangible. More real! Like it is in your brain. That means pain can really hurt you, but you can fix things, too -- you know, by punching someone's pain away."

    He turns back to the console, and flicks some switches. "Astral engines igniting." Flamel whispers. A shining light builds inside the rotating mechanism... The psionically sensitive might see a thin white beam shine through one of the nearby windows and onto the Winter Slayer's skull. "Assigning target. Activating injectors." One of the large emitters near the window forms a shimmery reflective orb, like a weird inversion of space, and that inversion spreads along the targeting line...
Lilian Rook     §Distance. Lidar, 482.3 meters. Wall thickness, 1.2. Intervening, 2.1. Travel time, 149 milliseconds. Drop, 11 centimeters. Windage, 5kph south-southwest, convection from forge. No coriolis. 42 centimeter gap between first and second grouping. Sound cover commencing. Entering optimal position in three. Two. One.§

    A cluster of three inch wide glowing hot tunnels silently open up through the psychometric machine. Red, shockingly vivid, opens in Persephone's back and bursts from her chest. The jerk of sudden impact three times in quick succession, pinpoint white hot flashes inside. The fourth snap-blooms out straight through the forehead.

    §Sound lag following in 1.41 seconds at 343m/s. Signal travel and arming time 12 milliseconds. Octanitrocubane expansion velocity at 10.1 km/s. Two stage spalling will take 1.2 seconds. Masking sound signature. Delivering payload.§

    The sparking crackle of shattered and melted machinery is just starting to follow, the shocking sight just sinking in, when the earth explodes out from under. The floor has burst through the ceiling under Persephone before the motion can be perceived. The roof is torn free and hurled miles into the air. The report of a firearm is lost completely in the simultaneous, shredding roar of the fireball that blossoms on the spot. A split second after, the pillars in the corners of the building explode in sequence, spraying thirty degree cones of lethal shrapnel converging on the same spot at hypervelocity. All of these things were checked over thoroughly, but that well over ten minutes ago, and nobody had entered or exited since.

    §Sacred geometric charge tension at 125%. Thirty four of thirty six damage-type rune air exposures primed at twelve times four multiplication prima materia substrate. Triplicate invocation of Kenaz.§

    Lethal chunks of spalling wood and stone have barely crossed the room before a tenth amongst them blaze gold-hot and ignite; a full third in psychokinetic barrier range. Carefully etched runes, patterned inside the removed and replaced fragments themselves, spray explosions of magical fire into the closed building, whirling and spinning and crashing against the walls like a tidal wave. Barely a fraction of a second has passed, and the colossal blaze is already smashing together and erupting through the blasted off roof, becoming a sky-scraping tower of hellish flame.

    §Three stage high-efficiency opening play alpha confirmed success. Beginning §-type approach. Select Cleassana Lilí Dubha. Finally. Finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally finally--§

    And within that horrible instant that seems to just go on forever and ever and ever, all compressed into the space of a heartbeat, Lilian appears out of thin air in the midst of the fiery hellstorm. At a glance, she's unusually clad in a heavy jacket and multiple layers, hair unbound, sword already in hand. Deep and recent slash marks cross the bridge of her nose, cheek, and jaw. Eleven pitch black shades close in from all other directions in three dimensions, forming a constellation of blades. There is death and fury in her eyes. She is screaming.

                         "PERSEPHONEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!"                          
Persephone Kore      Red-that-isn't-blood blossoms from Persephone's body. The bullet that strikes her head doesn't penetrate through just yet. She doesn't react in time- how could she? what is there to react to?- but it snags on something nonetheless.

I don't want-
But there is no "I" to want. The brain matter that could wish, that could overrule reality and make everything okay, is cavitated by a metal slug.

     She is frozen mid-kick by the contradiction in reality; crumpling backwards, hair fluttering in the wake of the bullet, expression still serene and unknowing. She remains frozen through the hideous explosions and sprays of shrapnel that fracture her body, sending stress-lines of more too-vivid red across her skin.

     Only when Lilian closes in and screams her name, not two heartbeats later, does Persephone 'unstick'. Her eyes drift to fix on the intruder. Her hair swims in slow motion. She is still smiling.

     "Oh," she says. "It's you."

     And then the bullet unsticks too, blowing out the back of her head. Red erupts from it and spirals out into the inverted space made by Flamel's device. It spreads like spilled oil paint. It blots out the whole world.
Persephone Kore           You are standing in a cosmos of soothing scarlets, gentle          
        magentas, and every hue in between. Red here is not the color        
         of violence but of tranquil sleep. Twinkling stars, spinning        
         planets, and behind them lush galaxies are carelessly strewn                  across the crimson sky, as dense as wildflowers in a meadow.        
        Its beauty could really consume you for hours. Maybe forever.        

        Space is really horrid. It's black and grey and sometimes, if        
         we're very lucky, brown. It is ugly and it hates us, hungry          
         to drown us just in how much it isn't. This isn't that. This        
         is a cosmos of human love. It could never choke you, no more        
         than your best friend could choke you. It was made as a home        
        for humans to live in, and it wants to be lived in, made real.        

        Behind you is the Sun. Not the Sun as it really is, a mediocre        
        yellow dwarf that just happens to shine on us, but the Sun as        
        we imagine her: life-giver, nurturer, center of the universe.        
         She looms larger than anything else. Her gravity holds you,          
         supports you, like she holds the earth. A Persephone-shaped          
        hole is at the center, frozen. This world is Phony inside-out.        
Persephone Kore      There is a path to follow. Pieces of pastel foam playmat wind forward in an intermittent trail, the floor of a child's playroom broken up into a tiny island chain. One can either walk or weightlessly float; even the 'empty' gaps between the fragments of playmat, with nothing but endless scarlet stars beneath, will somehow support one's weight.

     In the distance, a howling wall of dust and space-rocks curves to block all angles of progress. It's like Saturn's rings seen up close: millions of motes of star-stuff whirled in an endless gravitic dance at terrifying speeds. Is this one of Persephone's mental defenses? It seems meant more to keep things in than to keep them out.

     It's so tall that flying over it would be excessively slow, and so intense that forcing through it would be grueling. Ahead is a possible way through: the floating-island path forks into two.

     Down one fork is a foggy memory-scape where an adult stares at a child across a desk. Down the other is a memory-scape where two teenagers sit and talk.
Flamel Parsons     Somewhere far away, in that apartment high above the cities, monitoring equipment blips. A spool of paper begins to print, starting with a single stable line and moving quickly to a rapid shudder. A dozen, no, two dozen such machines pour waterfalls of readings desperately into bins in the empty apartment, as if trying to vomit up lethal poison. On one piece of equipment, an alarm goes off with nobody to hear it.

                     CLASS 10 ASTRAL DISTORTION DETECTED                      
                     SIGNAL TYPE "EV", CHECK INTERFERENCE                    
Ishirou I4 is about to jump through a window, not only because it was cool, but because it was faster.  He doesn't know that Lilian was here because he didn't get any response back that she had gotten the information in time. So when he goes crashing through the window, it is at the same time as the world goes /weird/.  His perception of what is up and down warps, and where he is at goes weird.

Facedown in Persephonality, he looks up, as the cosmology of love is both absolutely terrifying because reality is gone, but also very comfortable because he was in the embrace of the giant woman before.  He's only /slightly/ calmed down, but not entirely because in a lot of ways his trust had been shattered, and more than that he's taken the operation on other Lilian as a betrayal.  

Also, the sun was weird and NOT SCIENTIFICALLY ACCURATE.  That was disturbing, but it was also assuring.  Like, it's completely different from his knowledge, and everything he knows tells him he should be choking on not air, but...at the same time, it's that cartoony way that children might imagine the world around them.  Whatever has happened it's not good.  

Before them, there are two paths, but right now I4's less interested in that and more interested in both freaking out and yelling at people.  He's probably coping with what's happened and not completely losing it BY yelling at people.  

"What in the hell is wrong with all of you?!" he asks but gives a gaze towards Candy, who as far as he understood, wouldn't /do this/ because he promised he wouldn't.  Hibiki, who he assumed wouldn't do this kind of thing was here, doing this thing!  Persephone was now the entire world somehow, so he can't be mad at her, he guesses?  Flamel was, to him, gibbering mad.  Staren being her in an assassin's cloak was just all sorts of bad.  Featherman wasn't making things better.  Cantio being here made it more proof of his fears.  

Of course, after the initial raw emotion that he finally got to release, in a moment that felt REALLY GOOD, but also kinda bad...he looks at the situation more logically.  Kale makes a good point in that they might not know what's going on now, but before deserved an answer.
Kale Hearthward Kale's making light chatter in one ear and listening to I4 via the other. When stuff starts happening, he edges a bit closer through the crowd towards the Winter Slayer...

... picking up the pace when there's a visible beam, for all the good it ends up doing in the end. It'd be just as well - Kale hadn't formulated a plan yet. Try to intercept the beam? Move the Winter Slayer? Do... something?

And then he's here. In the middle of an inside-out Persephone shaped hole in the world.

"..."

Here, admidst assorted other Watch and Concord elites. On the back foot as far as information and outnumbered. The most immediate determination is made: throwing down here would probably not go well. Maybe throwing down later might be in their favor, sure, but throwing down right now feels like a losing play.

Yelling at the Concord and Watch on the radio, though, is *always* the right play. So he does that for a bit.

And when talking is exhausted (and presumably he gets read into the situation) - he goes to head down the path towards the adult and the child. Figuring that one of the two is probably Lilian. Or at least *a* Lilian.
Cantio The machine turns on. Psychic tech stuff happens that Cantio doesn't quite understand, and then the floor explodes. The ceiling explodes. Persephone's head... Explodes?

That can't be right. Cantio only sees it out of the corner of her eye for a moment, and then it's gone. Maybe she's just seeing things wrong. She reaches for her face to rub her eyes briefly, but that just makes things look even more wrong. Suddenly, everything looks like she's staring right into an ill-advised gaming headset, but it's somehow soothing rather than causing massive amounts of nausea and eye strain.

It feels safe, but there's something off about all this. She sees the path, and she touches down on it after a few moments of awkward floating. Cantio opts to walk along that path for now, although her steps get lighter until she just winds up starting to drift forward instead. She doesn't stop when she hears I4 yelling at her and her friends, but she does turn around to cross her arms over her chest.

"Lilian's a Paladin, isn't she? You should know what she's up to. Unless... Is she hiding things from you, too?" She slows to a stop, then sighs and rubs her forehead lightly. "Can't believe I'm saying this, but... Um. So she's in danger of going off the deep end... Er. More off the deep end, and we're trying to save her from herself."

Even Cantio doesn't sound like she's really into it. "So... Come on. We need to figure out what /this/ is now. And what we can do to..." She makes vague hand gestures before giving up on that, then just waves towards the forks in the path instead of finishing that sentence.

Cantio stays at the fork for a little while. Context clues tell her that this is more dives into Lilian's past! That means the place to go to get the most new information (probably) has to be the path towards the TWO TEENAGERS.
Candy      Boy is afraid! Should listen to vague and menacing agent.
*That's easy for you to say. You're not the one that fucked up.*
Boy is wrong. If Tzincatli had warned, boy wouldn't have felt hurt. Wouldn't have said what he did. Trust friends! Let go of anger, sadness, worry--will likely have plenty, in Slayer's mind.

    Candy steps forwards, and the earth explodes out from under the machine. Instinctively, he hits the deck, faster than fast--in one instant he's on the ground, curled up. Shrapnel, glowing hot, batters and burns his toughened body.

*Please not this. Not now.*

    He scarecely has time to think it, before he stands up, finding himself no longer in that side building, but in the inside-out universe of Persephone.

    "Me? Me?!" Candy marches across the playmat island chain to thrust a finger in I4's chest. "I4, I don't know if you've noticed but Lilian is hurting so bad she's starting to lash out at other people. What in the fuck am I supposed to do, when two people I care about are the unstoppable force and the immovable bullshit, ah?" His hand is then jutted squarely into his palm, both hands thrown up in exasperation, before the index of the right hand swings vehemently back around. "And -don't- say 'talk it out.' Trust me, I tried! And you know what happened? I got the shit beat out of me."

    Candy's voice had steadily been rising--but he remembers the words of his wahy, pauses, closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath. "We wasn't here to hurt Lilian. We was here to find how in the fuck we get her to stop being so goddamn suspicious. Guarded. Because she's not gonna listen to a fucking thing anybody says if she thinks we're all out to get her."

     His eyes soften as he looks at I4, an apologetic look in them. "Sorry. Can we please just... try and figure out... anything?" He points over towards the talking pair. "Maybe over there. C'mon." Candy walk-floats to the two teenagers sitting and talking.

     "Ey. How's it going, ah? You two mind if I hang around for a while? Not interrupting, am I?"
Flamel Parsons     "PERSEPHONE--!!" Flamel shouts, in urgency, as she apparently gets the contents of her skull blasted out. He understands that some things don't affect her, but surely that does, doesn't it?! Then shrapnel and death close in... And something strange happens. He loses track of everything. For a moment, he worries that he's dead as the world re-resolves around him, holding onto his head...
    No. Flamel is here. The foam mats squish under his soles. "Oh. Oh. We're still where we were before." He mutters, nervously, excitedly. He takes out a little cannister of smelling salts, popping it open, taking a whiff. "No ejection. This is happening." His laugh gets more nervous. "This is happening."

    He looks to the others. I4 gets a sheepish smile. Kale gets a helpless shrug. He adjusts his sunglasses and presses forward unless they intend to attack him. "Primary EV-event content looks to be Persephone... We need to see what the surface thoughts are. Need to get closer to the wellspring..." He keeps adjusting his sunglasses and doing little nervous laughs and weird grins as he moves ahead. These memories might give him some guidance about this space, and the path leads to them. He heads on to see what they have to offer. Teenage should have more developed memories and something that can give them more mental landmarks, even if he really wants to go see childhood insights into Persephone...
Hibiki Tachibana     Flamel's explanation of the inside of a mind gets Hibiki folding her arms with a thoughtful expression. "...I see. That's..." She takes a good amount of time with her focus clearly somewhere off in the distance, before finally nodding and unfurling her arms to clench a fist up to her chest. "...I kinda wish fixing someone's pain was that simple all the time. I still can't really believe it, but..."

    She's about to see it.

    At least, that's what she thinks until a far-too-fast series of hyperviolent actions happens in a span of time almost too quick for her to percieve - but there's no way she'd ever miss the appearance of Lilian herself. Her eyes widen in what might as well be slow motion between her and Persephone, caught halfway in raw confusion and her body trying to move without thinking about it. Then everything goes crimson.

    The mental cosmos that they all find themselves in next takes several seconds for her to wrap her mind around, and the beautiful and tranquil atmosphere doesn't stop her from spending those few moments breathing far heavier than she probably should be. "Was t-that...is it...no, it wasn't, it was..." A tiny, tiny modicum of understanding that that that wasn't the actual physical Lilian who shouldn't be anywhere here sets in, at least before her attention is taken up by everyone else here. Like I4 and Kale.

    "What the hell is wrong with /us/? We're here to figure out something to help her! Wait, what are you guys even doing here? We're not..."

    Most of that get sorted out on the radio, and as the situation becomes...about as normal as it's probably ever going to get and their objective is set, Hibiki has to pick a route.

    After a moment, she gravitates in the direction of the TWO TEENAGERS with a slight grimace, intending to listen in on them from a short distance away. Well, now that they're already here...
Featherman Neo Featherman gestures to Flamel during the yelling at Paladins and also the stress, after he's inside. This is bad. Really bad. Lilian is here. But he has to keep going. He has to help her, after what he saw in that cane.

Instead of sticking around to fight more, he heads down the path of the two teenagers with Candy and Cantio.

And dangerously, he opens his mind towards them, probing for thoughts. They're not actually people (presumably, this is a Persephonescape and that means anything could happen), but he might be able to learn, from any 'thoughts' they have, their significance towards Persephone. Especially if one of them IS her.

Besides, they're psychics, they'd probably expect this.
Ishirou I4 gets a finger pointed into his chest.  I4 not so very long ago might have crumpled from that.  More because of the confrontation and not the finger, he wasn't /THAT/ much of a twink.  "I expected you to not go around breaking into her house.  I expected that you'd trust me enough to let me help, instead of keeping me in the dark and trying to figure out what you were doing from piecing together security and the company you brought."

"I don't trust for a moment all of these people who specifically hate her are here for her benefit.." he says.  Though the apology gets a more moody shrug.  "I'm going the other way, the more we know about what's going on here the better."
Staren     Staren has about a second to realize what's happening after Persephone is assassinated. She's recovered before. Enemy, where? And Lilian appears and everything goes to hell

    ...Or perhaps, to heaven

    Staren's mental image of herself is wearing the calf-length battle labcoat with cosmetic belts on the upper arms (and one open at hip-level) and a Concord Orange stripe around the waist, and the sea-green hero scarf around her neck with two trailing waist-length tails. Under that is a fitted red pocket T-shirt and a long black A-line skirt with two thin silver-white horizontal lines near the bottom, brown hiking boots, and matching protective gloves. The coat is fitted with bulky metal-looking vambraces that must contain some kind of gizmos, although just what is unclear besides some Ominous Panels and holes that could be missile launch ports, or cooling vents, or just Looking Cool. Her blue messenger bag hangs at her side, and her double-barreled laser pistol is drawn.

    And standing protectively in front of her...

    The Ghost of Maslow Peak stands almost 10 inches taller than Staren. His skin is pale and ashen, his hair is darker and redder, chin-length and floating about his head in a manner reminiscent of tendrils or tentacles. He's wearing a black labcoat and cargo pants and sneakers and the bag, a red version of Staren's scarf, a baggy red T-shirt tucked into the pants, and a black fingerless glove on his right hand. On his left forearm is a segmented brass gauntlet with wires running along the back and each finger, and a gem set in the back of the wrist that flickers between black as the void and a deep red that is somehow more aggressive and less friendly than the red that now surrounds them. His sclera and irises are undifferentiated, glowing that same angry red as he glares at I4.

    The Ghost draws his own laser pistol and points it at I4. "Did you do this?! Were you plotting with Lilian to stop us?!"

    "Woah, woah, woah!" Staren reaches forward to pull the ghost's arm down. "Come on, we saw Lilian, right? They wouldn't have been close enough to have been caught in the blast if they'd been in on it..."

    The ghost looks between I4 and Kale and grunts, lowering the pistol.

    Staren turns to I4 first. "We were trying to help. We want to un-crazy Lilian, but we need to learn more about her to find out HOW. So we hoped we could learn from this alternate version of her..."

    "Wait, if our Lilian's here, where is she? Wasn't she caught in this too?" The ghost looks around warily.

    "But, now it's all gone... wherever we are." Staren waves an arm vaguely, then turns to Flamel. "'No Ejection.' What are you talking about? What's an EV-event? Wellspring?"

    Staren turns and looks down the two paths, while the Ghost glances around this way and that, looking for Lilian who might strike at any moment.

    She takes a deep breath. "The hopes and dreams and burdens placed on her as a child... or how she was as a teenager? Perhaps expressing concerns at same..." She tugs the ghost's arm. "Come on. We--" "Don't want to find out what happens if we get seperated in here, I know. Hey, turn on Armor of Ithan. Just in case." Staren sighs, holding a hand to her chest and focusing on something, and is surrounded by the image of blue-white translucent plate armor which fades from view.

    The pair walk down the path towards Carpathia(?) and Child-Phony(?), Staren looking tired and resigned while her mental defense mechanism continues looking out for attacks.
Persephone Kore      The path diverges. On approach, the foggy memories resolve. Both contain one person (a girl with dark hair, near-orange eyes, and brown skin) who is psychically 'real'- or at least, some fragment of a real person- and others who are mirages. The 'real' person seems capable of acknowledging visitors, but only after the memory has played out.
Persephone Kore      A small girl with messy straight hair, barely reaching below her chin, sits in an office that's trying very hard not to look like an office: small, cozy, with crayon drawings plastering the back wall. One of them, half-finished, is spread across her lap. She can't be more than ten.

     "Persephone," says a slight middle-aged woman in a heavy sweater, trying to catch the girl's attention. She hunches over the desk, either out of bad posture or an attempt to get closer to the girl's eye level.
"I'm here because of the Decompression Chamber test results, Dr. Carpathia," the girl says. She doesn't look up.
"Yes, that's right."
"Why are you scared?"
"Because you're very special, Persephone. And I do not wish to place more weight on you than you can bear."
"I don't want to be special. Why are you picking on me like this?"
"I'm not- ..."

     Carpathia takes off her glasses, folds them on her desk, and lets out a deep sigh. Before it would've seemed impossible for her to deflate further. Now she has the posture of a crumpled napkin.

"It's too late for that, Persephone."
"You feel guilty. If you're guilty, you're doing something bad. Just stop it."
"You aren't taking your work seriously enough. You know why our dream is important, don't you?"
"... Yes."
"Everyone else is in the thousandths range. You're in the tenths. What I'm afraid of is that our dream can't come true without you, Persephone. If you can't do it, no-one can."
"..."
"All our work, everyone here. All the faith we've placed in you. It'll all be for nothing unless-"

     The girl tenses up as if an electric shock has run through her. Her head hangs low, bangs obscuring her face. A high-pitched, fearful sound escapes her. Carpathia starts to say something soothing, but the girl gets up from her chair, turns, and runs out into the hallway, her drawing fluttering to the ground.

     "PERSEPHONE!" Carpathia shouts, alarmed. But her voice is muffled. As her expression sinks into a guilty grimace, she is already receding into the mists of memory.
Persephone Kore      A teenage Dylan Cruise- butch girl, flight jacket, short curly hair- sits on the floor of a hangar next to someone else, a mid-teenager vaguely recognizable as Persephone. She's too slender, too awkward to reconcile with the one you know; even the structure of her face seems different, a little sharper. They stare out into space together, through the atmospheric forcefield.

"I think they must live in castles, most of them. With how many stories about castles there are."
"But when there's pictures of cities, there aren't any castles in them!"
"Ughhhh. If you want to really know how normal people live so bad, just ask Carpathia!"
"You know why I can't. She'd get guilty and sad again."
"... Yeah. Yeah, I do know."
"And it's more fun to argue like this! ... I bet if I were normal, I'd live in a log cabin. That sounds cozy."

     Dylan grabs Persephone's (?) hand and looks her in the eyes, seized by a sudden energy.

"We could go! We could leave! It's not much longer 'til you're eighteen, right? And then I'm right behind you! They'd have to let us. We could find out..."
"Dylan."
"... how normal people live. We could... we'd..."
"You know why we can't. It'd tear her apart. The whole Project, it'd fall apart behind us. That better world-"
"It's NOT FAIR! They put EVERYTHING on you, just because-"
"I need you here too. Please. Stay with me."

     Phony kisses her on the temple. Dylan hangs her head. Her knuckles are blanched, but Persephone still holds her hand. They both look nauseated by what they've just said out loud; sometimes spilling your guts feels like shedding a weight, and other times it's just eviscerating.
Persephone Kore      The teenage Persephone looks up at Candy, confusion mixing with her existing guilty queasiness. Dylan continues staring off into space, shimmering slightly like a paused video on VCR.

     "Ah... do I know you? You seem familiar." She pats the hangar floor next to her, forcing a smile. She hasn't gotten good at making them look convincing yet. "You're not interrupting anything at all. Sorry, I'm just... I'm a little out of things. You know."
Flamel Parsons     "There's also people who live in domes, and vans, and weird little cabins." Flamel's voice is breathlessly excited. "Out of it... Out of things makes sense! I'd say a lot of things are out of place at the moment. Hey, Persephone, I don't suppose you've seen some, uh, rennovations around here?" There's something in his mind just *humming* behind those sunglasses. "I need to go take a look for myself, if you've seen any."
Kale Hearthward Kale watches things unfold.

He looks up at the ceiling, trying to work through his thoughts. He hasn't actually met Persephone. He might have heard her on the radio, once or twice, but...

... well, this is practically their first introduction, then, him being inside of her head(?).

"... Alright," he says to herself, and then heads out into the hallway after her. She seems to be the- for lack of a better word, the focus point, anyway, given that the rest is fading into ambiguity as she leaves. That should also make her easy to track - just go in the direction that seems the most real.

If he can catch up to her, he does so, and waves her to slow down - or otherwise does what he can to get her attention.

"Hey."

"It sucks when adults try to act like you don't understand, right?"
Candy      "Yeah," says Candy with a breathy laugh, sitting beside Phony on the hangar floor. "I understand."

     He lets his defenses down, and his mental presence burns brightly before her, twinkling as he ponders how glad he is that I seem familiar. "My name's Candelario," he says, as tears well up in his eyes. "...but you can shorten it to Cande, and then the yankees, they made it Candy. So that's what I go by," he says.

     "I'm out of it, too. See, two people I like a lot, they been headed straight for the other. One of 'em won't stop, and the other won't move. And the longer it goes on, the longer I worry that one of 'em is gonna do something she can't take back."

     "You know," he says, gesturing towards the frozen Dylan. That other person is someone who's had a lot put on her. It really ain't fair, the way we do people like that. Heaping all them expectations on somebody... hoping it all works out. But it -really- ain't fair when them expectations don't come from a place of love, like they did with your mom.

     "I, uh..." he swallows. "I'm not sure if you're okay, right now. And I know it's selfish, but I need you to be. Because if you're not... I'll be angry at that other person, even though she'd hurting too. And then I'll lose the both of you."

     "So... what do I gotta do, to help you be okay?"
Featherman Neo "Yeah, we're pretty familiar. Don't worry about it - we're friendly. Name's Featherman Neo." Featherman, behind the mask, laughs genuinely, if anxiously. His mind is more clouded than Persephone usually has to deal with, but his emotions are clear that he's unsure what to do.

"You've got the world on your shoulders, huh? You're Atlas, lifting it all up. I've felt that way before. Sometimes still do, but less so."

"What do you want, Persephone Kore? What would make *you* happy?" He knows Candy's doing the same thing, and is trying to use his own feelings to reflect that towards the psychic teen Persephone, to show that he's genuine.
Staren     As they approach the childhood memory, Staren stares at Persephone, thinking, while the Ghost looks between Persephone and Staren.

    It begins to play out. "She was *scared*?!" Staren sounds alarmed. How would... how would young Persephone take that? She tries to reach out and read child-Persephone's surface thoughts, although perhaps they're already what's being spoken aloud. "Are you sure that's a good idea?" The Ghost asks.

    "She wanted... to *not* be special?" Both of them wince visibly at the phrase 'why are you picking on me like this?' and look increasingly distressed at the accusation of guilt. Fists clench, and they shake a little as the girl runs. "It's a lot to put on a young child." "It's a lot to put on anyone." Staren turns to the ghost and they holster their pistols. "I wanted to be a hero and help people. I didn't want..." She just sort of gives him a look. "I was a child. Things seemed simpler then. Being a hero isn't just the fun and exciting times, it's doing it even when it's hard," the ghost looks stern, "and putting in all the effort and preparation and boring work to make sure I can do it... and it means helping the people who need it even when I'm tired."

    Staren glares a bit more angrily. "Are we really any good at that anyway?! Maybe it's better to just, to just accept the good I can do without trying to be you! If I strain myself so much that I break, I can't help anyone!"

    The ghost looks at where Carpathia was sadly. "If Persephone thinks that way, will Dr. Carpathia's dream ever come true?"

    Staren growls in frustration and annoyance, walking to where the drawing fell to look at it if it's still visible, then looking for... well, she *assumed* another memory will be forthcoming, but perhaps she's faced with a frustrated child instead. The ghost trails along behind her.

    Their eyes widen when/if they come upon child-Persephone. "Persephone?" Staren asks. Trying to tell if this is... Persephone-as-a-kid, Persephone-now-but-in-a-childlike-state, or some fragment of her mind, or *what*... oh wait, maybe she can tell with Persephone's power? She tries for surface thoughts again, unless that went horribly a moment ago.
Ishirou The scene before I4 was...something.  

The scene before him is...he can't really put it into words.  What is it..?  No, I4, calm down...you're mad and hurt at people, you're worried about Lilian...who didn't even bother to tell you...and it's possible your fault we're in this mind thing in the first place.  You can feel bad about yourself later, we can sulk and be mad at ourselves when the situation isn't literally 'the person who helped you realize yourself's brain isn't all over you'.  

Also, Flamel's words snap I4 to a sudden realization.  The POD immediately starts trying to record what it can, trying to identify what's happening, and take in anything it can from around itself.  Which means he's got to work through the obvious problems himself.  He hopes he didn't, in his anger, lose anything that couldn't be recovered...damn.

However, the scene plays out.  He realizes, that there might be a reason he's seeing that Persephone tells others not to worry for her, that it's illegal.  What he's seeing here might be the seeds of that.  He follows after Kale.  Others go for the smaller Phony...but I4 has another idea.  If this entire space is her mind...

She's probably resistant against this, but he can at least try and READ the room...by literally trying to read the room.  His hands shoot a beam out, trying to, less hack the space he is in, but try and read the construction of it.  Trying to understand what specifically constructed the thoughts and feelings in this room in a way he could better understand.  "I have a million questions, and a lot of conflicted emotions right now, but...it ain't going to get better if I just mope, right?  So... let's try and figure this out.." he says, maybe to himself?  Maybe to Persephone, maybe to both?  
Cantio It's a younger-ish Persephone and someone else! It takes a bit for Cantio to recognize the unfamiliar face as one of the Sapient Heuristics people mentioned in a report. It's a personal moment, and part of Cantio wants to look away, as though she shouldn't be watching what would otherwise be a private personal moment.

And yet, she still watches. She listens. She sees the difference in reactions between their reactions to Candy's presence. Cantio listens to Candy and Featherman Neo speaking to the teenage Persephone, and she pops a squat besides them while raising a hand in a light wave. "Hey there! I'm Cantio. I'm a..."

Wait. She's still wearing that floofy ball gown, isn't she? She can work with this. "... Princess! We're here because... Yeah, we've got some friends that needs help, and for us to save them, we came here." She tucks some hair behind her ear, then holds out a gloved hand to Persephone. Why?

She actually has no idea. It just felt right at the moment. "Do you want to see my castle sometime? It's a nice place, but it'd be nicer with friends there more often." She offers with a genuine warmth in her tone, even perking up a little at recalling that exact thing happening just one night ago. It's still a fond memory in her mind, even if it took a lot of pain to finally get to that point. "Does that sound like something you'd enjoy?"
Hibiki Tachibana     The scene between the teenaged girls plays out ahead. One of them, Hibiki doesn't recognize. But the other...is more than close enough. She watches from a respectful distance away, as if afraid of disturbing the memory.

    Until the emotionally charged second half of it happens, and her face falls into a wince. "Persephone..." Giving up on being normal...for the sake of someone else. And the world. Even if she had to bear all of that weight herself. She recalls that exchange from before, way back when they 'fought' one another...

'Are you really okay having that much kindness for everybody else all the time, Persephone?'
    'I want to be able to hold the whole world in my hands, and not dislike anybody. My heart and soul are in it. To make Sapient Heuristics' dream come true, I need to be.'

    But that still wasn't a yes.

    With both Persephone and Dylan's torn-up expressions in front of her, Hibiki slowly steps forward to join in on talking directly. "...Yeah. I think a lot of us know. It's not easy at all...but it's still something you have to do, huh?"

    She sighs, heavily. Sympathy. Empathy. Hurt...and relief, an overflowing amount of it, that she's still 'here' after what had just happened. "...I'm sorry. That things are...like this. But even if they can't do the same things as you...I'm really glad you have people you can lean on. Who are there for you."

    She looks at the shade of Dylan and then back, lowering herself down some on a knee. "...Can we help you?"
Persephone Kore      Earlier, in the Decompression Chamber fight, Persephone was resistant to I4's control. But surprisingly, she- or at least her mindscape- isn't resistant to his reading.

     He finds that these are wishes she's not allowed to have, things that have to be walled off from her ability to warp reality. These memories are sealed behind this barrier because she refuses to allow herself to make these desires real: to be normal, to be carefree, to shed the responsibilities of being Sapient Heuristics' perfect scion.

     If they can make her cave and really want those things, even for a minute, they must be able to slip through.
Persephone Kore      The child-Phony is, to Staren's assessment, a window into part of Persephone's psyche: glimmers of her real self, but lensed through how she would've thought and what she would've known at that age. She resents her responsibilities, but could never free herself from them: the project has given her everything, so shouldn't she give everything back?

     It's only fair, but it's so unfair at the same time, and she can't reconcile those feelings.

     Her reckless energy runs out, and she comes to a stop leaning against the wall in a hallway. Kale calls to her, and she looks up; that anxiety and stress is still there, but undercut with curiosity and bafflement.

     "I understand everything," she says in reply, and it's not a boast but matter-of-fact. "Everyone knows it." Her vivid almost-orange eyes fix on him. "I understand it's your job to hurt people, Mr. Hearthward. I understand there's some people you're really careful not to hurt. But are you good to him because you care about him? Or are you scared that if you don't remind yourself to be good to him, you'll lose the habit of caring?"

     It's eerie to hear that come out of the mouth of a child. She pauses and looks off to the side with a vague hint of guilt, crossing her arms over her chest. "The doctor says it's rude to do that. But she's the one who made me this way. It's her fault."

     Staren calling her name makes her look up and smile, if a little shakily. "You got it right," she says. "I wouldn't have picked it if I knew how many kids would say it wrong. ... Do I know you?"

     The drawing, Staren finds, is of two crude figures staring at the stars together. It's impossible to tell if they're the real stars outside the windows, or the psychic sea of stars Persephone calls the underworld.
Persephone Kore      Teen Persephone draws in her knees, folding her arms over them. She stares at Candy, marveling with wide-open slightly-teary eyes for a moment- what does she see, beneath his surface?- and then turns to look back, guiltily, at her knees.

     (Everything about her is a little off, even the color of those eyes. She looks like a close relative, not like someone who could grow up into the real Phony.)

     "It's nice to meet you, Candy," she says softly, then shakes her head to clear it like she's experiencing some kind of deja vu. "I don't even know if it's unfair. It's a decision I could make myself, isn't it? I could leave. I just... won't. And I don't even think the doctor understands. It's not like *she* can read my mind."

     She puts her hands on the floor and pushes herself up to standing to acknowledge Hibiki, rubbing her arm uncomfortably. That confident body language is something else she hasn't learned yet. "What does it mean to 'lean on' somebody if I can't ask them to shoulder the weight? I can't even tell them how I really feel. Then it'd make them sad, and their sadness would be my responsibility, and that'd be one more thing to carry. What's the point of sharing misery if I feel their pain too?"

     Featherman gets a wan smile from her; she stares at him, too, like she's seeing more than what's on the surface. "Not the world, really. Just a few hundred people. It's pathetic, isn't it? You've carried more. ... But I guess the project really is the world to me."

    "A castle," she laughs, looking over at Cantio for a moment. She takes the princess's hand- for once, she isn't wearing arm-warmers- and shakes it gingerly. "Just like the storybooks, huh? I guess I'm right and Dylan's wrong."

     "It'd make me really happy to visit. But that isn't the freedom I want. It's just for a little while, and then I have to come back, or Carpathia starts worrying and the whole thing falls apart. They need me. And I wish they didn't need me. I'd never give up being this strong, but being the strongest is the worst."

     Candy, Featherman, and Hibiki all ask a similar question. She turns back to space, fingers tapping where an earring would be if her ears weren't still unpierced. Her frown doesn't suit her. Her voice quivers a little.

     "You're from the future, aren't you? That's why I almost know you. Tell me it'll be okay. Tell me someday the work will be done. Tell me that one day I'll get to be normal, and care about normal things without feeling guilty. That's what I need."
Featherman Neo "A world can be as big or as small as matters to you. You don't need seven billion on your shoulders." Featherman smiles inside his mask, allowing that emotion to ride forward.

"But I'm not going to lie to you. Not just because you can read it, but because it's not fair. Your mission is still ongoing in our time. But at the same time..."

"You never have to feel guilty for caring about things. That's how you deaden your soul. And while I don't think you could, I still think you can hurt like anyone else. Let others shoulder some of your burdens. Let us. Even if we're not as strong as you. The world can't be changed with one person's hands."

"I should know."
Ishirou That was unexpected, at best he was assuming what he'd get was information about what was, not...an actual honest idea into what was constructed here.  It makes him quiet and reflective for a moment because there was a real reason why she came to help him...why she was sad when he recoiled on himself in the chamber.  Their meeting wasn't just because she felt sorry for him like he thought.

Heh, he thinks to himself, people of similar issues are attracted.  She was just a more mature slash moved on to fix her issues?  Well, no, fix is the wrong word.  Maybe she had come to live in others' dreams, to have what she couldn't through making others happy?  This might be a conversation for later, but right now...

Should he reveal it to everyone?  Part of him, a very small angry part right now says no.  However, I4 knows better than that.  It's not just because it's about getting out of here, but burying this knowledge would likely hurt Persephone.  Also, he hates to hide knowledge, he hates hates hates it.  So he reveals what he knows on the radio.  

I4 walks towards the little Phony, and tries to consider what to say...if he can say the right thing because children are little monsters who either know nothing or know everything.  There is no in-between.  "Yeah, knowing stuff you're not supposed to can be hard sometimes, you know?  On the other hand, knowing stuff means you're able to do things right, yeah?"

"Like right now, with Kale and Staren...oh I'm I4 by the way.  I guess you can say we're from the 'fuuuuture'.  Future you is a strange lady who helped me out when I wasn't sure who I was, ya know?  It's funny that...she helped me out, yeah?  I was trying to, in my less nice side, put together why."

"I think I get it, that you...want to give others what you think you can't have yourself, right?  Right now though, you should have what you want too.  You can be yourself, you can help others...and you can be what you want.  I don't suggest trying to be buff though, I tried that and it made me look weird.  Small and comfy was the shape I ended up liking..." he says, and to show he's not just a big fibber, he tries to shape himself into the...

Giant man I4 for a minute, then lets his borrowed regen return him to the form he prefers.  "Weird, right?"
Kale Hearthward Kale looks child-Phony in the eyes.

He radiates sincerity, in a way that she shouldn't need to look into his mind to confirm - but if she does, his mind does indeed confirm it.

"You may understand a lot of things, but you still understand less than you think," he says. "I'd hurt everyone in this place if it meant I could go on caring about him."

And then he blinks, and remembers that he's not alone here. "Not that there would be, you know. Any sort of need to choose between my allies and friends and him. I care about all three."

He clears his throat. "Right. So."

"Persephone. You're getting told a lot of platitudes. People sorry about this, people feeling guilty about that, people not wanting to pressure you... whatever."

"None of that really matters. It's about what you can do... and what you want."

"You are - in the tens of whatever that was. That means you're powerful, and that means you have the ability to choose. If you want to stay and help, you should. If you want to... go?"

He glances over at Staren's drawing.

"... Then you should go."

"But if you burden yourself with a duty you're not willing to see through to the end... then that's doing you no favors, and *them* no favors. You need to pick a path, and follow it through, and if you really understand everything then you'll understand that."
Candy      "That doctor don't have to read your mind," says Candy. "She raised you since you was a little Phony," he adds with a wan smile. "With love, and understanding. Even if she don't know, I bet you she worries. That's how it is when you love somebody."

    "You don't love somebody 'cause you expect 'em to be happy, or perfect, all the time. You do it because you like when they're happy, and 'cause they're worth sticking by even when it takes some work to keep 'em happy. Even when it takes a lotta work."

    "You gotta lotta weight to carry. And you're real, real strong. But you know, you gotta have some faith in the rest of us, ah? Even if we're like little ants to you, ants are clever. They hold shit way heavier than they are. And you know what else... there's more than one of 'em. If something's too big for one, they spread the weight out, even if it takes one, two, ten, a hundred..."

    He takes her hand and squeezes it lightly. "You know, I bet I can guess what you're gonna think even though I can't read minds." Lifting the opposite hand up, index finger raised, "'But I couldn't ask so many people do do that just for me.'"

    "Why not? That's what *I* wanna know. You'd do it for them. Maybe sometimes they get hurt trying, but..." He lifts her hand up and gingerly guides her touch to the scar on his arm. Memories of anger, indignance, at first--but they've healed, become something constructive. Newer memories. Sharing, providing, care, protecting. "Most people would rather get hurt cause they opened up and carried that weight, than just be shut up like little birdies in cages, always getting handled and sheltered."

    "You wanna know if it'll be okay, I got no fucking clue. I don't even know if it's okay now!" He admits this with a weary laugh, pointing at Featherman in agreement. "Your work, that's still going on, too. But listen here. Every day, we're all out there, rolling up our sleeves, getting dirt under the nails, 'cause we -want- shit to be okay, and you ain't no different, and I'm proud of you for wanting that. So how about 'normal,' ah?"

    He releases her hand, and folds both of his in his lap. "Think about the questions you're asking. 'If I do this, does it let down the people I care about? How can I lean on people without hurting them? How am I gonna deal with all this shit on my plate?'"

    "Normal people ask them questions all the time. I've seen the way you smile at everyday people--how you take an interest in what they do. I never seen a shred of guilt from you, doing them things. I can't read minds. Maybe it is there. But I tell you this--I know the Phony you're gonna be, and I'm real, real proud to know her. I love that person. And I love you, too."
Flamel Parsons     Flamel bounces on the soles of his feet, his heels going up with excitement multiple times. Teen Phony has so much that's interesting to say! "We're working on it." He explains. His grin widens, nervously. "Things are really chaotic. What's happening is pretty complex in how real it is! And you're pretty good at spreading that strength around these days. But trust me, I'm working on making sure you're not the *only* person like that, and today was *huge* progress! Don't worry, you'll have more backup soon." He adjusts his sunglasses with manic energy.

    "Must be tough! Nobody's *forcing* you to do this, because you can just leave. But you can't just leave without making disappointments that are unacceptable! And *they* can't just give up on you, because the goal's noble, and because you'd just keep going anyway, but they want you to be happy too, hah... So the only option is to find more routes through, to learn more!" He sounds like he's halfway talking to himself. "I think I've figured something out, though. This is all part of something a lot bigger, and you should, *should* be able to get what you want, if I'm right. The Type Black... Hey, you can sense things, right? Can you sense any Black jungian-newtonian energies? Maybe point the way to them?"

    The point of contact should be the root. The place where the fountain is blasting from. The fracture point. "I need to find where this phenomenon is coming from. Can you help me?" He smiles wide... then shakes his head. "But. You know, maybe I don't *need* the help, it'd just be nice to have. If you want to give it!" Another fast, frightened laugh as he plants his fingers on his temples, pulsing clairvoyance and psychic senses into the world they've found themselves in. Maybe he can find the fracture point on his own? But he'll welcome any help Persephone can give him in finding the path forward.
Cantio What happened between then and now to change Persephone so much to what Cantio recognizes today? Was it a single instance, or was it years and years of feeling like this? Of shouldering these crushing responsibilities, of taking on so many expectations without a real choice in the matter?

"That's a lot of pressure to put on someone your age. It's not fair, no, but.. It gets better than it does now, even if the work's not done yet. At least, it feels that way. A lot of us know what it's like to try and bear all of that weight alone, and there's even more that really are powerful enough to actually help instead of feeling bad about not. Er. Doing that. And by the we're all helping each other, nobody's going it alone. Anyone has everyone to rely on."

Clutching Persephone's hand, Cantio half-tugs half-leans forward, but she's a bit too far away for one of those meeting-halfway hugs, so she instead just falls forward and has to shuffle-squat over before she's close enough to do that properly.

"Even if the work's not DONE done, you still have plenty of time to do things you want to do. You'll have time to come to my place, to chat with all of us about days being boring instead of busy and exciting, and to try all sorts of weird new food that you end up hating. Some of it might even taste really bad." She speaks with an encouraging tone despite her words, reaching over to ruffle Persephone's hair lightly. "Of course we want you to be okay. That's what families do, right?"
Hibiki Tachibana     Hibiki glances down briefly, faced with a hard to answer question by a Persephone distinctly more...down to earth than the one she's used to. "...I don't think you need to tell them how you really feel. When someone cares about you a lot, a whole lot, I think they just...know, beyond words. But that's not another responsibility you need to put on yourself."

    "...Maybe they can't shoulder the same things you can. I hate that. Nobody should have to...try to take that much on themselves. They shouldn't. But those people will at least do their best to make that weight a little less heavy to bear. I want to believe that's at least a little bit of leaning on someone else."

    She rubs the back of her neck, pretty awkwardly. "...I'm probably not the person who should be saying any of this. I'm pretty bad with it myself. But..."

    She pauses, considering the final thing they're being asked. And then when she makes eye contact with teenage Persephone again, its with a small, tired grin. "It'll be fine. Just fine. 'Cause the Persephone I know is one of the strongest people I know, and not just because she thinks she needs to be. And she has all sorts of people who are helping her finish her work, and all sorts of people who want exactly that."

    "Me, too. I'm gonna make sure it happens. I know how bad you want it. And you deserve it."
Staren     There is a conflict of thoughts brewing in Staren. That last exchange was it beginning to surface, perhaps. Was it due on its own, or is it due to the aspect of this mind-space? Either way, seeing this Persephone is casting a question into relief that needs to be answered.

    Staren chuckles. "People say 'Staren' wrong half the time too, but I guess that one's on Mommy, not me."

    The Starens look thoughtful a moment. Both open their mouths, but Staren ends up speaking: "It's rude, but lying is ruder, isn't it? I hate lies. But I guess I could never know for sure... do I hate lies because I'm bad at them, or because they're really bad? They hurt me so much, though."

    Staren tilts her head thoughtfully. "But no one can lie to you, can they, Persephone? Because you can see people's hearts." She gives a sad, knowing look. "But it still hurts, doesn't it? Knowing they would *choose* to lie to you. It feels bad. Lies only hurt people when they're found out in the end, and that means, if someone wants to lie to you, they want to hurt you. And it hurts so badly, to know someone wants to hurt you. To know someone hates you."

    Staren takes a slow, deep breath, and lets it out.

    "...I could never see people's hearts. Not even as much as others could. So I couldn't see what other reason they'd have for lying. Sometimes it's because they don't care and are willing to hurt you... Other times, they're afraid. Or they really believe it won't be found out, and that they can protect you. I think... that's wrong, but, it doesn't mean they want to hurt you, huh?"

    Dark Staren looks at his better half. "Is this *her* trauma we're working through, or is this for us?"

    Staren gives an annoyed grunt, glancing at her other self and then back at Persephone. After a moment, she steps forward, and kneels to bring her head closer to level with the child.

    "Whatever happens now... Know that you deserve this." She's referring specifically to these comforting words and gestures, not any more general 'this'. The catgirl tries to embrace her in a hug, her eyes watering a little. "Future you told me, after I struggled with being him for ten years, that I was enough. But has there been anyone to say it to you?"

    Dark Staren looks away awkwardly in the manner of manly men everywhere when the womenfolk are talking about /feelings/, and it's clearly important but they aren't sure how to contribute.

    Staren hugs tighter. "There is such a thing as Good Enough. And you've always been Good Enough. You were when you were small like this, and you still are in the present. Whether or not it's ever felt like Enough to you, whether or not anyone else would ever judge so or tell you so."

    Staren lifts one hand to caress the back of Little Persephone's head. "You would never hurt other people in the ways you hurt yourself."

    Staren takes another slow breath, then releases the hug (standing up and stepping back unless the child is clinging to her or something) and wipes the nascent tears from her eyes.

    The Starens turn to look at Kale after he speaks. This time, the other one responds, sternly: "But what about Dr. Carpathia's dream? What about everyone out there who will be helped... not just those suffering now, but those yet to be born into terrible lives, lives that will be filled with pain and suffering without her help? Persephone's not selfish, she always says 'I want everyone to have what I have.'"

    Staren turns towards her double. "That may be, but... we can't just ignore her suffering. There must be a way to help her..."
Staren     Dark Staren crosses his arms and looks away. "Suffering doesn't define goodness, but putting others first means being willing to suffer a *little*. You can't have a perfect world where no one suffers... well, maybe you can, if Carpathia's dream comes true. All the more reason. She's choosing to bear this because she can and others can't. She's saving so many others from so much more..."

    "And just how far can it go?! Do a trillion or a quadrillion or a googol people saved from a tiny cut each justify one person hurting all the time?!"

    Dark Staren looks away awkwardly, then back at Staren. "They've got to, at some point. A trillion? A googol? We can't really *imagine* what suffering it adds up to on that scale. How many ways is the world broken because someone is sadder about their pet cat dying, than thousands of deaths elsewhere in the Multiverse?"

    Dark Staren crosses his arms, and speaks firmly, "Of course it's better if no one gets hurt... but fear of hurting someone can't mean never doing *anything*! No one ever got hit by a car before they were invented, but how many lives were improved by interconnectedness? And you keep trying to do better, but if you never start at all you won't get there!"

    Staren points at Persephone. "She's not *maybe* going to be hurt, she *IS* being hurt! Remember how it FEELS, trying to be you! And remember how I felt when I could stop for awhile... could I really wish that suffering on anyone else, or deny them that relief?"

    "But... this isn't about you! Or her! This is about *everyone* who will be saved by Carpathia's dream!"

    Staren clenches her fists. "If... if... if a great future for *everyone else* is all going to be placed upon *her* back, how is this *any* different from Omelas?!"

    Dark Staren looks shocked, then thoughtful.

    "I promised I'd never build Omelas, no matter what! No matter how good it was for everyone else!" Staren points at the Archetype. "That's how I knew I was Dark, and not Evil, because I wouldn't hurt a friend because 'I knew better.' And Persephone is MORE than a friend!"

    Dark Staren looks back and forth between his other self and Persephone, anxious. "...But... she's doing it to herself... just like I was... and SHE could actually save the Multiverse, where I couldn't..."

    Staren is shouting. "If it's somehow right and good for someone like Persephone to hurt so much to save the Multiverse... than I REJECT that world!" For a brief moment, as she emphasizes that word, it's as if one can see through a transparent Staren to a field of iridescent pastel colors behind. Then it passes. "I REJECT that definition of goodness and rightness! It can't be right for someone to suffer for everyone else! It CAN'T be!"
Persephone Kore      "I can't 'have my cake and eat it too'," child-Phony says to I4, obviously trying out a new phrase she just picked up. She still looks guilty and anxious, but her crossed arms have relaxed a little, and she laughs at his 'magic trick'. "... Or if I can, I'm not strong enough to believe in it. It's a scary thing to hope for. What if I reach for both and get neither?"

     Kale further wears her down. Her face tenses up with guilt and worry; her eyes glance up at him briefly, then drop down to study the floor. Even if she doesn't talk like a child, she is one, and this is all too much for a child to process. "What I want..."

     "I *want* to want this. I want to be the person who makes the doctor's dream come true! ... But that's not good enough. My heart isn't in it, even if everyone thinks it is. I can't be that perfect person forever! I want to be selfish too!"

     Staren's hug attempt is neatly ducked. It's as if she sees it coming- oh, right, she does. "I don't know you," she says firmly. At least they've taught her a healthy sense of boundaries already, even if it's sad the deja-vu familiarity only goes so far.

     Most of the dialogue goes over her head- they are, after all, talking to a child, or at least a simulacrum of one. She responds to the moral criticisms with a simple, scolding "Don't talk about the doctor like that. She's a good person." But if only one line lands solidly, it's the right one.

     "You would never hurt other people in the ways you hurt yourself," Staren said. Her hands ball up into little fists. Her guilt intensifies rather than alleviating, but that sends her over a boiling point.
Persephone Kore      Teen-Phony exhales in soft exasperation. "Of course she worries," she tells Candy. "She worries about everything. And then I have to reassure her all over again, and it's my fault, and I can't even be mad. That's how it is with everybody! Just let me suffer for everyone else in peace. It'd be easier that way!"

     Her head tilts back and her eyes shut. A practiced breath: in, hold for five seconds, out. "No. I'm sorry. I'm being unfair. If you're willing to carry it- no, if you already are carrying it, in the future..." Those warm memories of Candy's seem to be soothing her too. She squeezes his hand back and shakes her head.

     "I can't imagine ever being that strong," she says to Cantio wanly. "I can't imagine this ever getting easier to bear. It feels like I don't have a future at all. No, like my normal life won't even start until all this is done; and then 'normal life' won't even exist, so what's the point? But..."

     They trade a warm embrace. Persephone holds Cantio maybe just a little too tight before finally pulling away again. "That could be nice. Every once in a while, if I can learn to stop feeling guilty."

     Even as a teenager, she's a lot taller than Hibiki. She has to lean down, just a little, to put her hand on the magical girl's cheek. It was hard to see the resemblance before, but there's just a glimmer of that serene warmth in her eyes that will one day fill her heart up utterly. "If what you say is really true... if I really do, someday, become the person who can carry this weight..."

     "I'm sure it'll have been because I've had friends like you. Thank you." She glances up at Featherman and gives him a little wink- that serves as a reply to him, too. "You put a lot of value on friends, don't you? Haha, probably more than even me."
Persephone Kore      Child-Phony stamps her foot petulantly and turns to the swirling ring-barrier. Teen-Phony heaves a deep sigh, purging the last of the morose anxiety from her body, and turns primly towards it too. They trade a single glance across the gap between their memory-spaces, acknowledging each other for a moment. Then both of them raise a hand.

"Because I trust you that, one day, I won't feel guilty."
"Because I deserve to want selfish things too!"
"We don't need this wall anymore. Not for now."

     One stops the dust and space rocks flowing counterclockwise. The other arrests the ones flowing clockwise. Between their two telekinetic barriers is an open, cleared path, like parting the Red Sea. Far beyond it, you can now see, is a swirling dark nebula that crackles from within with ominous energies. But Phony's mindscape is vast; there are still countless miles of space left to traverse before reaching it.

"Let's go together!" "I think we're needed."

     The two Persephones telekinetically fling the party forwards at relativistic speeds. Every atom of your body is acted on simultaneously; there is no acceleration-shock, no G-forces. There are only stars blurring into streaking lines as you shriek past. Vignettes of other memories can only be glimpsed for milliseconds before they're gone.

-a Decompression Chamber ruptured, thick smoke spewing out-
-wishes made real, becoming more perfectly herself-
-staying up late, laughing and playing games, building up that warm heart-

     And then you're at the nebula, a wall of ominous star-fog separating you from whatever lies on the other side. Two small, floating lights have followed you, catching up a moment later; the twin fragments, having now shed their bodies, tired and nonverbal but intent on helping.

     There is nothing to do but cross over.
Lilian Rook     Beyond the barrier ends one girl's heart and begins another.

    Playmat foam, soft and safe, laid to cherish children, gives way to the stark black and white gleam of marble checkerboard, hard and unforgiving, laid to venerate old halls. The sparkle of an endlessly beautiful, endlessly loving, endlessly accepting cosmos is blocked out completely behind paneled walls of dark varnished oak. The floor stretches on far too wide, and walls soar away into vaulted blackness. What must be miles of an impossibly gigantic corridor curves away in the distance, gradually bending upwards before it vanishes behind the cold and unlit chandelier pieces that hang from the ceiling. Every so often, a perpendicular corridor slashes across the way, forming an endless sequence of eerily identical intersections. All at once, the exaggerated scale of the surroundings feels overwhelming in its preposterous size, and impossibly vulnerable in its sheer emptiness. Just being here is like being a mouse in an open field, imagining the shadow of the hawk on one's back.

    But the hawk would never cast a shadow either way. The entire impossible corridor, every intersection, the air from floor to ceiling, is shrouded in a deep black haze of something like fine soot, gradually disappearing everything in front and behind, but starting to blur out details as close as arm's reach. Though every hard surface gleams with immaculate, unmarked polish, under some dim, cold, directionless light, the hazy black air feels sweltering. Choking. Drowning. It's like being trapped inside an airtight box as all the oxygen is slowly used up, sweating from the heat of one's own body going nowhere, sucking in air and yet feeling a little more asphyxiated with each breath.

    And the noise. The noise is worse. For such a cavernously empty space, one would expect deafening silence befitting a gallery, but instead the ears, the skull, are assaulted with a frothing, churning tide of voices, all babbling over each other like the shouting of several hundred bored students trying to get out all of their chatter before break period ends. A tide of so much verbal chaos, occasionally bubbling up jetsam and flotsam of broken sentences that submerge just as quickly as they rise.

    One can barely see. Barely hear. Barely breathe. Barely think. There's nothing to navigate by, and no sign of anywhere to go. No rest, no destination, and no way back. Everything practically seethes with the frigid panic of realizing one is well and truly stuck in a narrow tunnel, and no one knows where they are. One could die here. Quickly. There's nowhere to go but forward, putting one foot in front of the other, endlessly. Trudging on past each intersection, huge, closed, locked and heavy doors to either side, off-limits and unwelcoming. And yet, one could become lost within moments. Suffocate within the hour. They might still go mad before then.

    And so seeing a light in that suffocating blackness is like a godsent sign. Just a flicker in the haze is enough to elicit the surge of hopeful adrenaline, belonging to a drowning man seeing a boat coming for him. It flickers out almost as soon as it sparks, but it's something to lurch towards, clumsily, blindly, but with purpose. Sparks in the distance, little flames igniting and failing to catch, yet trying over and over and over again, lead the way, down endless samey turns, through identical doors left suddenly unlatched, each burning up a little haze and leaving a brief pocket of warmth and fresh air in their wake, offering but a moment's respite. It's next to nothing. But what else is there to do but clutch at them and hope?
Lilian Rook     Yet just that is enough. Enough to stumble into one final intersection, its corridors hitting dead end walls, but each quadrant containing its own doors, gilded handles on dark cherry, each left unlocked, matching one single double set at the very end. The errant light burns brightly at its center, creating a desperately welcome oasis of light and fresh air, even muffling the brain-blending ocean of competing voices to a tolerable level, like the background of a noisy party. It's difficult to force oneself to leave after touching it.

    It's forced by something else.

    A pair of hands, large enough to pick up an entire person between them, seemingly made of articulate black metal with bronze-gold joints, swoops out of the darkness, smashing together around the flame in a vain attempt to capture it, a second pair following, clapping down on top of the first. The precious light shatters on impact, splitting into four humanoid flashes that spiral away into each of the four rooms, slamming the doors behind them. The hands chase after them, one each, no longer paired up. At the same time, several unbroken phrases, whispered softly into the ear like a terrible secret, appear from the audial chaos, and disappear again into the mists.

    See now her many hands. See not her many eyes. Eyes to see without being seen. Hands to touch without being touched. See, this hand for grasping. See, this hand for holding. See, this hand for hitting. See, this hand for petting.

    To one corner, a hand simply twists open the knob, silently enters, and shuts the door behind it. Yet in another, a hand throws open the door, which freezes midway, forcing it to scrape and crawl through the partial gap. In another, a hand pounds against the closed door with loud, resonant bangs, the sound bone-rattling, yet not so much as causing the wood to vibrate. In the last, the hand taps a single fingertip on the door's center, as if impatiently fidgeting, light little clacking touches building up in one spot, and then suddenly the door cracks in half and explodes inwards. Given the logistics of corners, there is a second way into each room, but the sight itself feels important somehow.

    In the bright and precious flame's place, only a faint, soft, night-light glow remains; a deep and soothing purple in the shape of a person, fuzzy and half-see-through like a bad hologram, but clearly evincing the shape of a woman in a long dress and apron, her hair tied up closely. Her voice fades in and out, as if something is strugglingly to produce it, but is clear enough to be comprehensible-- and familiar.

    "There you are. You really shouldn't be here. This is about the worst place you could possibly be at this time. There's really no time after all; while we are dawdling here, I'm afraid things are getting worse and worse."

    "That girl, the one outside, the one keeping this place safely cut off, is in very serious danger. I'm afraid that, this time, the earnest wish to protect you all simply isn't enough. Out of all the many wishes she has, the one she needs is simply not amongst them. Not when the Young Mistress is like this. Not when her wish is so simple and clear and terrible, like it's never been in a long time. If you wait too long, you'll never go home again."
Kale Hearthward Sheer size. Sheer emptiness. Kale - having been in the sky and on the sea often - might fare better than others, but perhaps not by enough.

Fortunately, landmarks. And... a person to talk to. Someone who's not quite there.

"I don't think leaving is an option, at this point..."

He glances over at Flamel, before redirecting his attention back to the woman (or the idea of a woman?). "But not dawdling sounds like a good idea. Which way do we need to go."
Flamel Parsons     Flamel is flung. A psychonaut is often trained in matters of being flung to places, partially because of telekinesis-based travel, and partially because one of the traditional ways of moving around a mind is inciting something to throw you somewhere. Lightspeed is different, but they're beyond the barrier now. It's past. They're into Type Black, soon, one hopes, but the black is a little suffocating. A lot suffocating. When light pulls him out of it, or rather when he pulls himself out because of light's motivation. And just as soon, it's gone.

    Here she is. The woman who kept the psychohazard at bay. He scrambles to his feet, and speaks to Kale. "Haha, where would we go? This isn't a mind's interior anymore. This is real life!" He looks to the maid and nods several times. "Guessing we better grab those lights?" he adjusts his sunglasses. "Or do you got a better idea? I mean, you're the root of mental health down here." If he's approved, he'd better head to the door of the silent entry. He gets the feeling that's a stealthier challenge, and with invisibility, he's the one to take it.
Featherman Neo Featherman nods as the teenage Persephone speaks, and then watches her go off with the child. When he's pushed forward, he's smiling inside that helmet of his.

And then they end up somewhere quite different. Quite worse. He's gasping, choking, but his will lets him carry on, hope to continue, and push into the final corridor.

He watches the hands, as he proceeds forward, and stops to watch what happens to the door. He can't quite piece it together himself, but perhaps...

Once they reach the deep and soothing purple, he nods. Something is rocking in his head, but he has no context. But if they're going to save both Lilian and Persephone, they need to figure it out. Who here could figure it out...Flamel?

But that's not the one he had a talk with. That he forged a bond with. They said they'd work together in the future. He wouldn't worry about Candy staining his soul, as much as he could.

"Candy, the door. What do you think? Can you gleam anything from that? Anything we can use to help her?"
Cantio "I can't blame you. Believe me, though. You're not the only that's going to be really different in a couple of years." Cantio holds that embrace as long as Persephone needs it, even holding her breath to not let out a peep from how strong she already is. "And a normal life... Maybe not all the time, but we'll find some time for it. And if we can't find it, then we'll just make it anyway." She stumbles briefly on being released, then gets up slowly to give Teen-Phony a pat on the shoulder.

The wall of stone stops, and the way is opened. Cantio starts to walk, and then she squeaks as things start blasting right by her at speeds she's not prepared for. Although she can't physically feel it, she can see all those memories speeding by, and then...

A new wall. From Persephone's comforting red, now to an overwhelming blackness. The sights, the sounds, everything is too claustrophobic to comprehend properly, and CAntio finds herself starting to freak out. It's not until that light appears that she even has a direction to start moving in, only managing to pull herself together enough to smash something in her pocket and bring it out to provide just a little bit more light.

She's holding a glowstick. It's another little spark in that darkness, but it's just what she needs to keep pushing through while trying to keep the path visible to her friends and others she can't really even see right now.

Eventually, the brighter light is right there, and she nearly collapses onto it once it's finally within reach. That respite doesn't last particularly long, however, as the sudden hands smashes them apart, scattering them in four more directions behind closed doors.

"All of them." Cantio replies to Kale despite his addressing Flamel, already starting to walk towards the door that was STRUCK MULTIPLE TIMES. She pauses only to address the purple person-shape. "That's just more reason for us to hurry then, right? If we don't resolve this, we're stuck anyway."

Indeed, Cantio doesn't dawdle, and she reaches that banged-on door. Instead of mimicking that method of entry, however, she knocks on the door with a far lighter touch, just enough to be audible without being so limp as to be mistaken for an animal pawing at the door. "It's me. I'm..." She speaks in a calm tone that's even gentle, although she still can't believe she's saying any of this. "... I'm here to help. I'm coming in now."
Hibiki Tachibana     Hibiki blinks when her cheek is cupped, leading into her eyes widening just a bit - that's Persephone alright. Even back then...of course, she doesn't get to bask in the similarities for long. The path ahead is opened, towards that swirling, menacing darkness. The earlier question of if they were solely in Persephone's mind is easily answered at that point, for her. She knows what it has to be.

    "...Lilian...alright." She steels herself up as they're propelled off towards it, and cross past the barrier.

    Into probably the most oppressive yet entirely empty, and lonely space she thinks she's ever been in. With a singular light ahead that ends up leading them towards...

    "You're..." Hibiki trails off, pursing her lips. "If time is short, then we just need to do things as quickly as we can. If things are that bad..."

    She sees Cantio going for one door, and after a moment, Hibiki gravitates in the direction of the first of the doors, the one that was entered incredibly simply. She stops in ront of it, pauses briefly, only to let out a small breath and try to mimic the exact same.

    If that's the right call, as opposed to taking another route, she's not sure - but there's nevertheless a silent turning and opening, and cracking the door equally quietly if she can to peer in before actually proceeding into following through.
Candy *I remember that day. The Eater-Thought.*

    Memories rush by at relativistic speeds, blips of light in the great, red expanse.

*None of this woulda happened if I hadn't been such a coward.*

    Something about smoke in the decompression chamber.

*It's not like I could hurt Phony even if I tried. The best I can do is hide. If I had let her in on the plan, and then stood by Lilian... maybe she woulda listened to me. Maybe I could have--*

    The barrier is there. One small step, and he's crossed into Lilian's heart. But his own mind must be clear, this line of thought must be put to bed. Maybe...

*No. Fuck that. Maybe if a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his ass every time he jumped. I'm here now. We all are. And I'm gonna act now, and if I fuck up, I fuck up.*

    "I4. I'm sorry I didn't trust you," says Candy, now that there's no longer a gulf between them. His eyes are firm, despite the watery gleam, his voice as steady as it can be as the two of them stand before that precipice.

    "I told Phony it's okay to let other people help... but I can't take my own goddamn advice sometimes. Now she mighta been hurt because I couldn't, and that really, really hurts. I don't wanna argue with you no more. I don't wanna blame you for nothing or tell you you're unfair. I just wanna fix this and save our friends. With you. Not in spite of you." He extends his hand for a handshake--but it's a trick. If I4 accepts, he's pulled into an embrace. It lasts, if permitted, for a weighty, silent moment, punctuated only by a sniffle before Candy withdraws.

    "Sorry if I cried on you a little."

    His eyes water, shortly thereafter, for an entirely different reason, a psychosomatic response to the intrusive feeling that he is somehow being smothered by that black haze. As he marches forward, the journey takes its toll. Sweat stains his collar, forming in beads upon his brow. His hand rests upon a wall that he might have both guide and support, but the cold wood is little comfort. It's grueling.

    Until it isn't.

    Pocket to pocket. Little spark to little spark. All the way until he ends up peering at that one, final intersection. He basks in the light, grateful in that same way that one is for water at the end of a harrowing desert journey.

    Cecilia.

    "First," Candy says to Featherman, "We gotta make sure she remembers Cecilia. More than she does right now. We gotta make sure she knows there's at least one person who loves her no matter what, and don't expect nothing in return for it."

     "She listens to you," says Candy to Cecilia. "Because you loved her and cared about her even when those two sorry excuses held it against you. The whole time, you was in her corner. Even when nobody else was. So here."

    Cecilia struggles to be seen clearly, and for this she is given a large magnifying lens. Her words struggle to come through clearly at first, and for this she is given a horn from which her voice might be amplified.

    "You tell her what she needs right now, be here for her. And you let me worry about getting out of here safe."

     With that done, he heads for the door menaced by the hand that strikes. He is well familiar with that hand, and motions for Featherman to come along with him. Just because he's come prepared for being hit doesn't mean that he wants to be the one taking all the punches this time. "She's used this one a lot, because she's always felt like she's had to. So... let's try this."

     "EY! You don't have to bang on it so hard, ah? You want to bang on something, bang on me, not you. I can take it. And then... and then maybe once you got that out of your system, then the three of us, we open that door and we go in together, ah?"
Ishirou I4 is barely used to breathing, so being in a place that is so overwhelmingly choking was a new experience and one that is so vast and large, so dark and alone. Well, those are not so unfamiliar, but in this place, it might as well have been forever.  

The darkness doesn't bother him, honestly.  He can see in the darkness, or use other senses to overcome that.  It's just the entire feeling of this place.  The voices are overwhelming, however.  Everywhere, forever, unable to make out clear voices.  He's barely able to parse things, he's disoriented by the sheer volume of information.  For a moment it looks like he's about to collapse.  

'You just said you refused to be a bystander and you're already trying to close everything out,' I4 thinks at himself.  Come on, he pushes himself more.  If you can't do this, then how are you going to convince her to stop taking on everything herself.  To stop torturing herself, to prove to her that she could rely on him.

Candy snaps him out of this internal hell.  It's, honestly, the same way he feels.  He's tired of arguing, and wanting to save his friends with his friends, and not in spite of them.  He takes the hand but is RUSED.  Instead, he's given a hug, but...right now it's something he needs to push through this awful place.  

"It's fine, my eyes are a bit wet too, so you're just as wet as I am..." a pause, "Oh no," he says, realizing he might have just made a mistake in his choice of words.  He's a bit exhausted, but internally things are a bit mentally together now.  This is good because Persephone would always go easy on them, even in the worst of her places.  Lilian, and that psychohazard, is not.  

Thankfully, the light was there to guide them to where they needed to go, but where this is..?  The lights are gone, the words of the hands are read.  I4 reaches for one of the doors, aiming for the door that the hand tapped in the center.  If he can't open it, then he'll try and hack?  No that's stupid.  He notices Cantio knock.  Oh right.  If he can't open it, he'll knock on it. I4 is worried and distressed, but for once more focused and determined.  He guesses this hand is the hand that pets?  
Featherman Neo Featherman nods to Candy as he answers, and follows along with him. "Violence is something I...know well. I know using it because you feel like you have to. So, perhaps we can get through to her if we take this one."

"We need to come in, hand. Please. You can open doors peacefully, not just violently."

And if that doesn't work, and it still keeps banging on the door, Featherman just drags Candy into the next entrance past that door they can find.
Lilian Rook     The purple figure unclasps her hand to point towards the massive double doors behind her. On second glance, they have four handles, set lower and higher alternatingly. "I'm afraid you've been walking away from your best hope this entire time. This may very well be the only way out that will be there in time. Sadly, I don't have nearly the power to open it. I'm . . ." The shade flickers. "Not what I once was, unfortunately."

    The silhouette nods to Flamel and Hibiki in a way that looks suspiciously like a graceful bow. "If you would kindly. I'm afraid that door simply won't open without them. And indeed, as this is the place you were before, time is ticking at the very same rate." An unpleasant pause. "I'm no root of anything; merely the custodian. But I did keep this place clean, once upon a time. It once glowed like that all the time, you know. But all I can do now is make a little space here and there for more. I'm sure one day . . ."

    "Well, even if it doesn't make sense, what else is there to do? Between resigning to choking and wasting away, or spending all your time chasing after silly little glow-lights on a vague promise it'll work out, which would you rather pick? Haha . . ."

    Under Candy's lens, the soothing night-light gains the edges and contours of hands and fingers, ruffles and frills, lips and eyes with which to worry and smile and fret. The voice is the one he knows, and yet somehow 'bigger', as if his memory had failed to recall quite how wonderful it was. "Even if things have gotten terribly difficult to keep clean, I'll be here always. I don't think I have it in me to fizzle away into nothing without seeing sparkling halls one last time." An uncomfortable silence elapses. "They weren't always that way. But that was long, long before her time. Ahh . . . There's so many people I wish she could have met. It's not fair. It really isn't. So I was so very happy when she had the opportunity to meet people like you to fill that gap."

Glancing back to the door, the spectre addresses him very seriously. "But I still must warn you. The one that you're after; it got behind those doors before you, and locked itself in tight. It shouldn't be there. That's not the proper place for it. Those doors are special. That room . . . That room is for something else. Something much older. Much, much stronger. Something you mustn't involve yourselves in if you hope to help that girl. Or, indeed, leave at all. Make certain that you keep in mind what you came for, and waste no time on trying to fight the impossible."

    "That old thing . . . is a job only I can handle. Please understand."
Lilian Rook The Half-Open Door:
    A classroom. It has to be. The baroque furniture and gilded lights, marble floors and soaring tiers of seats, are more like a palatial court in miniature, but the air is that of quiet, frantic, academic anxiety. The hazy air is thinner, the visual density of the room replaced with a crowd of people. Young men and women hunched over curved benches like joined desks, meandering up and down stairs between them with papers in hand, circulating to and from the podium and the board, bags and books by their feet or dangling from their hands. A suit-clad figure waits at the head of the room, watching a grandiloquent water-fed clock, collecting the thick sheafs of paper his students scribble on.

    All of them are faceless, their features blurred into dreamlike unrecognizability, pictures as only barely-human smears.

    All of them are completely motionless. Not a tick of the clock sounds in the deathly silent room. A stack of papers hovers in mid-air between a student's hands and the professor's desk. The second hand is stuck between ticks.

    However, there is sound and motion itself in the room. A swarm of dark shadows, visually indistinct, but recognizable by shape as Lilian, flit around the room by the dozens. Looking at them too closely risks contact with their searing bright eyes, hellish pinpricks in the dark, and temporary blindness as a result.

    Each one has her own test. Each one wanders freely from any desk. One hovers over a faceless student's shoulder, leaned jauntily on his chair, blatantly copying from his page. One reaches into a bag and simply flips open the textbook, putting her feet up on a desk and referencing answers from the back. One rummages through the teacher's desk and picks up the master copy. One appears to be reading off a tablet. Surreally, their surroundings only seem to stir in fits and starts. Pens scribble out lines, then freeze on unbalanced point when a shadow lets go. Books flip to their designated page, and remain unfalling at a peripheral angle.

    One brighter shape stands out from the rest, in that she is actually occupying a desk space of her own. A Lilian in inverse shades, glowing firelight forced into her silhouette, with harmless black dots for eyes. Her swarming sisters steadily pile sheets onto the oblivious professor's desk. They say 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, over and over, whilst the bright Lilian has her head down, pen to page, slogging through one line at a time.
Lilian Rook The Open Door:
    A busy hall, nebulously between that could be prefixed with 'reception', 'dance', 'meeting', 'grand', 'waiting', 'mess', and 'lounge', mishmashed up of a dozen different places and concepts that blend holistically into something mildly absurd and yet strangely believable. Plush velvet couches against plastered walls under station windows and expensive paintings. Warm electric lights over mahogany counters upon which crappy fast food burgers mix with top shelf drinks and a bar television plays karaoke lyrics instead, a menu from Aegis Astray across from it. High stakes poker at a table where one member is playing with a Gamebrick. Dinner at another across from a strategy meeting.

    The hall is crowded with people. Again, none of them are quite people. What they wear, what they hold, how they carry themselves, the microscopic details of their body language, are rendered in sharper-than-reality three dimensional detail, but their faces are interchangeable whorls of barely human-registering hues and shades. The eerie stillness of the room transcends that of a museum. That of a tomb. Amidst all these people, all these pastimes, in this bustling and social atmosphere, between drinks and games and friends and tender moments, the atmosphere is that of crushing, asphyxiating isolation.

    Lilian-shadows swarm this place too. Unlike the other room, the physics of this place are all theirs. One sat at a poker table freely swaps cards in her hand with those from the deck, tapping them out with a garbled sound of satisfaction. One swipes a drink right from behind the counter and tips it back, animatedly talking to a sister in distorted chatter noises while the liquid inside disappears. Another pair is simply busy fussing over random people, moving and posing them like dolls, seemingly for no other reason than amusement. Removing and swapping clothes with others, drawing on their faces, dragging them around to construct some kind of elaborate set while a third is setting up a camera, the tenor of their chittering deeply, scornfully amused.

    And again, there is one flame-bright Lilian shade. This one is stood near a private corner booth, where reconstructions of three women of differing sizes, hair pink, dark brown, and black, faces blurred only to the degree of a moderate radial aberration, are frozen in a conversation that never happened. The bright Lilian stands blocking it off, the silhouette of a sword in hand, and before her lays a smoking heap of shadow-black corpses, ostensibly slain in the process of trying to get in. The bright Lilian turns around and adjusts a hairpin askew in one woman's hair.
Lilian Rook The Closed Door:
    The pattern is well-established by now. A busy street, mixed up of a hundred different visited places. A moment frozen completely in time. No, frozen in a different way. Faceless people by the score. Possibly by the hundreds. Some are more vaguely recognizable than others; an incrementally sharper visage is placed here and there, without rhyme or reason.

    The shadows here are oh so careful not to touch anything. Or at least, to never leave a hair out of place. A wallet casually taken without even the slightest dent or ruffle in a pocket, cards slipped free and the rest returned as if by magnetism, snapped into its proper place. A cinderblock pushed in front of a bike, most likely moving at top speed. A shadow swings a fist and strikes a shorter figure straight in the stomach, not budging at all, but tagged with something covered in calligraphy.

    Shitty and spiteful escapades, left and right, center and afield. The shadows aren't having fun. They're out to get people. The fact that a bright Lilian exists here at all is astounding. She stands in front of a slightly less vague red-headed man, fists balled, yelling and screaming, words obliviously unheard, cursing and stomping until her silhouette visually suggests exhausting itself.
Lilian Rook The Broken Door:
    Another frozen moment. Another hundred faceless, nameless, unpersoned figures. Another unnerving, walk-around diorama of what should be a moment filled with intensity, only turned cold and numbing by the lack of even the slightest sound, or the faintest restlessness of living flesh.

    That pervasive sense of isolation, stagnancy, of being stranded, alone, is the most intense in this room, in no part helped by the fact that it is the scene of a battlefield. The unending, infinite, interminable moment of never-to-be action is specially strange. The explosions and flames, the streaks of gunfire and flares of magic, encompassing faceless and genericized blends of a hundred different Multiversal foes, aren't rendered as the human eye sees, but rendered with strict physical realism-- the inherently fake feeling of taking a photograph of a candle flame, technically accurate to the light source, but not conveying what the brain actually conceives. Human beings don't see like this.

    The shadow Lilians here are the worst of all. A dozen of them skip about the flaming battlefield like a florid meadow. Here, one casually taps the edge of a two-dimensional blade to the neck of someone with just the right build to be Staren, two, three times, like politely knocking at a door, and a moment later, it flies free in a fountain of too-real gore. Another strolls up to a solid ringer for Candy, machine gun in hand, throws a few jabs into his ribs, and walks away, the sound of cumulative crunching following all at once. One more finds a recognizably blurry facsimile of Hibiki mid-strike, and hops up onto her outstretched arm like a rail fence, childishly balance-walking across it, and when she steps free, the compounded weight bloodily crushes her hand as if it fell under a truck.

    The only bright Lilian to be found is engaged in a surreal-looking dance of stop-start pantomime combat with the only figure in any of the rooms that seems to have some fractional semblance of life. By the height, it's probably Rita. But it also isn't much of a fight. She suddenly starts to life when Lilian closes in and attacks, then freezes up again the second she backs off, the frenetic motion of half a dozen fast and lethal tentacles playing out as if someone were reviewing and editing the choreography in a 3d program, the bright Lilian holding backwards, circling, and watching reluctantly. Reluctant to be close. Reluctant to let it continue. Reluctant to even hit back.
Staren     I *want* to want this." The Starens hang their heads at that.

    Staren's surprised at the hugdodge, but nods, saying her piece anyway.

    Well, something got across. The Starens look at the way opening, then at eachother. They look... guilty. Like someone who knows something is right but have been conditioned to see it as wrong, and can't completely shake it.

    And then they look appropriately shocked at being forcelessly moved across the distance between the stars. Up ahead, is...

    "We're doing the right thing, right? We have to be." "We may have just doomed Dr. Carpathia's dream. ...To be fair, it may have been doomed by whatever Lilian just did. Or when Persephone first met Lilian. Or maybe even if Lilian never met her, someone else similar would have."

    Staren frowns. "It's too good of a dream to be wrong, though..." Staren shakes her head. "The dream's not bad. It's counting on Persephone alone to fulfill it that was bad." She looks her other self in the eyes. "Thinking that a single powerful enough and righteous enough person can fix everything..." "We've learned it doesn't work. I guess trying to become that person yourself..." He looks at the fragments following them, "...is one possible failure mode."

    He looks back at Staren. "I don't know what else to do, though." "Neither do I. We'll figure it out!" Staren forces a smile and points to the sky.

    As they set out, she comments to Kale, "Funny how you already had the answer the whole time..." "Despite wanting to kill me." "It gives me hope that somewhere out there, someone may already have the answer to our next problems!"

    "But right now, we need to help Lilian..." And onward they go. Breakthrough made, Dark Staren starts to fade and get closer to Staren...

    It's... a corridor of awfulness! Dark Staren is looking around in worry again. Staren hunches slightly and crosses her arms as if cold. "Great. Her *mind* is haunted just like her house."

    Staren coughs as they get in far enough for the air to finish transitioning to the choking black. "No, no, no! This is almost as bad as the torture she put me through! It's like that in her mind ALL THE TIME?!" "What would that do to a person?"

    As usual, Lilian's presence brings Dark Staren to the fore. As Staren starts freaking out and curling into a ball wishing this would go away, Dark Staren picks her up and pushes on. She switches to cat form for easier carrying. "Dumbass. Are you too weak to get by without me, now?

    Not that he has it much better, but he's more stubborn, trying technological solutions to the atmosphere and pressing on whether they work or not. He can't give up; if they die on his watch, Staren will never get another chance to be herself.

    Of course, he's all too aware that reality, ultimately, can't bend before he does... So the sparks of Light and Hope provide that much needed boost to sustain pressing on just a little longer. Just enough...

    ...To reach an oasis. Dark Staren stumbles to a stop, gasping for breath. But before he can rest for even a moment, something tries to snuff out that light. "No!" Things move fast, and he's left with Cecilia. Loathe to leave the oasis, but... her words provide the impetus. He nods. At Cantio, too; he follows her.

    At Cecilia's words, Dark Staren looks down at the cat in his arms, then at Cecilia. "...We're not leaving here without her. It's not worth it. And depending on one person to do everything... It won't work. We just learned that lesson! It was a whole thing!" He smirks awkwardly. "We're leaving here with Persephone. And Lilian, if she hasn't completely destroyed herself already."
Staren     Staren starts to recover once the opressive atmosphere has receded, but events happen too fast. She doesn't need to be filled in, though, they *are* kinda the same person, after all. She nods at Dark Staren's assertion that they're not leaving, then glares at him when he mentions the idea of Lilian destroying herself.

    Staren leaps out of his arms and slips through the half-open door, because cats fit through small gaps with ease. "Hey, wait!" Dark Staren struggles to squeeze through the gap, before having an 'oh, right' moment and also turning into a cat to slip through.
Ishirou The Broken door is...

Gruesome.  Worse than that, alien?  People don't see like Lilian is here, the way perception works here is...bizarre.  I4's mind can process this, thankfully, due to his ability to render data into easier-to-understand bits and reformat for his mind when things are really too off the rails.  

Of course, it makes things MUCH worse when it comes to the absolute brutality that happens to Staren, to Hibiki, to...Candy.  Holy shit, he just looks shocked by how brutal this was, Hibiki's probably especially so.  However, he knows that it's not about judgment.  Lilian, was pushed to this, and right now it's being there for her, and not be horrified.  

He can't imagine what ugliness is inside him when he thinks about it.  The bright Lilian seems to be in a fight she doesn't want to be in though.  He's sure that's Rita based on what he knows about her...and how fast this is happening.  Lilian is holding back, he thinks...not wanting to dive back into the brutality.  

"Lilian?" he asks the bright one.  "Do you need help..?"
Kale Hearthward The group needs to go every way, all at once. And quickly. Okay.

Kale ends up going through the broken door first. The sense of being alone washes over him. The sense of stagnacy, the smells and the sensations - he has to waste a few moments re-orienting himself before he can do anything useful besides taking it all in.

And all of this...

... Well, it all looks wrong, for one thing. In a literal sense. Too realistic, and the way the Shadow Lilians are acting isn't appropriate at all...

... For a long moment, Kale is tempted.

<J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "Remember the core of psychonautry. You're not here to fix someone and change them them to your liking, you're here to support them through their problems. Be at their side while fighting their demons!"

For a long moment, Kale is *very* tempted, by just that. He does not know why so many in the other factions are so keen to help Lilian, who should be their enemy. If she's spiraling into self destruction, that should be a win for them. Not a clean win, but a win none the less, and not a win to be passed up. There is being polite to your enemies, and then there is... going to elaborate lengths to help someone. Supposedly.

It'd be easy to reinforce some of the things here. Make sure there's at least one person in the three-faction bloc that sees things the same way he does. That enemies are enemies, and all of this feel-good power-of-hearts stuff is only going to get you or the people you're responsible for killed.

It'd be really nice. All he'd have to do is, he figures, step up to Rita... and take her out. Cleanly. Professionally. Show her there's really only one way to deal with monsters and foes. And he could probably bluff I4 into claiming that that's the best way to fixing her.

<J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "Remember the core of psychonautry. You're not here to fix someone and change them them to your liking, you're here to support them through their problems. Be at their side while fighting their demons!"

"... Stale winds..." Kale curses under his breath, and moves across the battlefield, closing in on the Bright Lilian.

"Look."

He claps a hand on her shoulder.

"However you want to deal with her, however you think is best, I'll be there to help. If we need to end her, I'll do it cleanly. If we can deter her some other way, help her, I'll be there for that too."

"And - if you don't know, whether in strategy or morality... remember that you have allies who can help you there too. We can figure it out. You aren't alone, and I'll be there to back you up, through calm winds and through storms."
Cantio "Popular door." Cantio comments as she looks over at Candy and Featherman coming for the same door as well. She laughs briefly, although it's less of a funny haha laugh and more of a 'what am I getting myself into' laugh.

"I wonder if we're really just asking for it this time... Oh well. It's too late to back down now." She takes a deep breath, then heads on in to see a frozen street. The shadows moving around have her questioning their role in all of this compared to the nonmoving figures, and the the implications of what's happening aren't lost on her. Confusing, but she's starting to get a better picture of what's going on.

"... She really had it rough." Cantio admits with a light grunt of mixed frustration and sudden understanding, walking by the shadows on the way towards that red-headed man and the brightest Lilian. She pauses momentarily to take a look at the thing covered in calligraphy first, though, to see if she there's any potentially useful information on it, before continuing her approach.

It'd be easy to lash out now, but it's not the time. This isn't the place. She's committed herself to this course of action, and she has to take a deep breath to steady herself again before stepping besides the bright Lilian to address her. Cantio stops short of actually touching her.

"People like that will never be satisfied with what you do, so don't waste your time on them. You're..." She's struggling a bit here. "... You're successful without needing the approval of someone like that. There's people that already recognize what you're capable of and what you've accomplished, and even they've achieved more than-"

Cantio can guess who the red-haired man is, but she can't put a name to the hair. She just gestures at him instead. "-people like him. Heck, some of those people might not even like you, and there's... An objectively beneficial use to what you do." She's REALLY struggling for that part. "If you can even get your enemies the acknowledge you and come out like this, then... Who cares what one jerk thinks?"
Flamel Parsons     At the Open Door...

    Flamel assesses the chamber. Okay, he thinks he has a good idea of this. Lilian's compulsions of manipulation, control, and undifferentiated depersonalization. But there are some who are meant to never be treated that way. The urges of manipulation should never reach them.

    Flamel has few options here. "Hey," He calls over to the Bright Lilian. "You'll stab me if I come over there, right? I'm not telling you not to, I just want to know where we stand." He strokes his chin, trying to solve this. "Uhhh... I know!" He heads for the not-quite-people, the interchangeable isolation-things, the not-quite-people who are not quite worthy of the proper treatment. He looks for a waitstaff, someone who's supposed to be supplying the tables...

    A quick pulse of clairvoyance. He needs to see the most common drinks at that private booth. A quick burst of pseudo-astral-projection, to take control of a mind. He needs to manipulate one of the faceless waitstaff here, with an essential command: "Hey, go get drinks for the private booth, please! Their favorites. On me!" Flamel is trying to set someone in motion to assist through telekinetic manipulation, literally psychically picking them up and moving them the way you'd move a little plastic figure with your hands. Except Flamel's are big, translucent PK-hands. "Hibiki!" He calls out to the other one who joined him! "C'mere. Can you punch out any shadows that try to mess with this one? But *not* the bright one. And protect any of the others I can set up."

    He poofs into invisibility. The shadows can't be allowed to see him. "This one!" He calls out to Hibiki, commanding another faceless not-being to go offer food to the booth. "This one too!" Another one, he implores to go simply strike up a conversation. "Don't attack her, but try to make sure she can't stop them! And now... this one!" He tries to send another faceless unperson over with the simple need to compliment. He just keeps trying to find reasons for the unpeople, not the shadow-Lilians, to get involved.

    "I really appreciate what you're doing! Holding back the tide, and all." He says, chattering to the Bright Lilian. "I'm wondering if you're okay with other people helping out with that! You're sort of needed back in the main hall, but I don't want to ask you to leave your important post without some substitutes to help. Do you think I could get these frozen weirdos in motion enough to cover you enough to handle the important business out there?" He laughs nervously. "We're sort of lacking on the light angle, here."
Staren     School.

    "She was cheating?" "Figures. Little miss perfect isn't so perfect after all." She glares at him. "Okay, okay! Sorry, veins filled with edge, remember?" Staren rolls her eyes.

    She walks closer to the bright Lilian, looking over her shoulder. "Okay, while I can't exactly praise the efficacy of this learning method, it *is* patently obvious that actually working through these questions instead of copying answers from other students or the book, is more likely to lead to you retaining the information. Is, uh, that what you need to hear? Some validation in choosing to do things the hard way?" She looks over at Dark Staren who's looking over bright Lilian's other shoulder; he simultaneously looks back at her and just shrugs helplessly.

    Staren looks back to Lilian. "The school, the grades aren't important, the learning is. You want to be an Immune, right? To protect people." "You'll always have this power... but sometimes, when you're saving the world, no one else has the right answer to copy." "Sometimes there is no right answer." Together, they conclude:

    "You need to become someone who can do her best to find the right answer..."
    "You need to become someone who can do her best to find the right answer..."

    "...and to live with however it works out and move on." "...because if you can't, then who will be there to try and find the right answer next time?"
Featherman Neo As they enter the CLOSED DOOR, Featherman's brain starts clicking context together, but he doesn't say anything. Instead, as Candy and Cantio move to peptalk...

Featherman is moving to test something. As the cinderblock is put down, he picks it up and moves it aside. He checks to see if the shadows interact with HIM, or with the cinderblock. Can he distract them? And can he do it while talking?

"You can't let your pain move you to hate and spite. You can't let the darkness into your heart, to the point that you remove others from the picture, cheat, and lie. It's not good for the soul. But I'm not here to scold you."

"Please, listen to them. Let them help you."
Candy      "I understand. I'm not gonna involve myself in that thing," says Candy, looking over his shoulder at the custodian in Cecilia's image. "But you said yourself that thing ain't in its proper place."

     He laughs, in spite of himself. Of the gravity of the situation. "'Don't try to fight the impossible.' You make a habit of reading strangers like maps? C'mon, Featherman--I just realized something."

     "We gotta help them hands. That's her way of holding onto what's good. It's the little sparks we want."

     So--this Lilian, the bright part of her, looks to be wearing herself out shouting at this redheaded figure. And while she does, the shadows are committing a litany of petty acts. Perhaps it'd be possible to go after every single one--but why?

     "Hey, Lilian," says Candy to the bright Lilian, blinking through the crowds in an instant. "You know, you're not the only person that does that," he says.

     "I have to think it," continues Candy. "Or else go somewhere they won't hear me. But... everybody feels that way, sometimes. Like just screaming at somebody who's pissing you off. Who just doesn't get it."

     "I'm uh... I really don't like the way we left things. I really don't like what I said to you. Maybe... would it be okay, the next time you felt that way, if we just talked about it? Or maybe if you talked about it to Xion, or Tamamo..."

     "What I'm trying to say is... you don't gotta do it this way. There's people in your life that care about you. We'll listen. And, I dunno... maybe you'll feel better, doing it that way."
Hibiki Tachibana     "...A vague promise it'd all work out..." Repeating that silently, Hibiki pushes on. Through the easily opened barrier, and into the expansive hall filled with people, and yet not people. It's /wrong/ in a way that fills the chest with a cold knot, the disparity of hyperdetail and lack of human recognition - and it makes her wonder if this is how Lilian really does see people. That look in her eyes, on their last encounter, is still fresh in her mind.

    Just as fresh as the immense loneliness is here, despite the fact it should be a combination of so many places that should be the opposite. The Lilian-shaped shadows running roughshod over the place eat up all her attention at first, following every action that's done seemingly for their own pleasure and amusement. Without any regard to anyone else, in this frozen time...

    ...And the singular shining one, the fragment of light, dutifully guarding the trio more real and human than the rest from all the others trying to interfere. Protecting them, caring for them...she reaches an understanding of the situation in a somewhat more roundabout way than Flamel, but understanding nonetheless.

<J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "I'm gonna set up a certain mobile defense target. Can you punch out anyone that tries to mess with it?"
"That's the one thing I know I can do. Don't worry, I think I get how this works!"

    After one brief burst of transforming light, she moves forward - that waiter is going to be escorted the whole way there, if she has anything to say about it. Not just him, but each and every one that Flamel sends over. She trusts in his plan and his expertise. No matter how many of the Lilian-shades do or don't take interest, she'll send them flying all the way across the hall if not outright punching or kicking them in half.

    "And you don't have to do it all by yourself!" She adds on, calling towards the Bright Lilian herself. If it comes down to it, she'll stop her from trying to strike them as well by physically defending against it, but never even looking like she's going to strike her. Flamel doesn't even have to tell her not to, she'd never.

    "You're trying so, so hard...and other people might not be as strong as you, but that doesn't mean they can't make it easier on you! Or at the very least...we can work towards the same goal! It shouldn't have to be just one tiny light in the dark...!" That last bit is more to herself than anything else.
Lilian Rook     The Broken Door:
    Shockingly, for all this surreal and horrendous metaphor, the bright Lilian not only turns around to see I4 and Kale, with her harmless black button eyes rather than searing stars, but even verbally responds, with 'Rita' left paused in the background like a game of chess set aside. Though it is unmistakably her voice, the meek, tremulous softness to it is utterly impossible to imagine Lilian speaking with. The brain rebels.

    "You can't help." her voice quavers. "The heroes never help. They're so much weaker than the bad guys. So weak that if I'd known, maybe I would never have tried to help. It's always just me. Me all by myself and everyone else going down or running away. Just me and more and more and more bad guys to worry about. Because nobody else can help. Does a real hero enjoy losing? I don't get it at all. The bad guys don't go away if you don't win. Why is it just me and them? . . . Am I bad too?"

    She looks back at 'Rita'. "I don't want to kill anyone. No . . . That's not true. Sometimes, but not as much as I don't want to. I'm afraid. I'm afraid of trying it. Because I think it'd be too easy. And if it's easy then . . . I'm afraid it'd be . . . cathartic. Because that'd finally prove that your lives aren't real after all. Then I'm sure . . . I'm sure that once I start, I won't be able to stop."

    "How am I supposed to hold back like that when everyone else is out to kill me back? If I don't show my full strength, they'll just keep coming, but if I show my full strength, I might kill them. There's only one way. And you can't help."

    "I have to be strong, and heroes are too weak. Just butt out and let me protect you. It'd be so much easier that way."

    The Half-Open Door:
    The bright Lilian doesn't look up at Staren here, but speaks all the same. Her voice is, again, obviously Lilian's, pitch and tenor perfect, but the deeply emotional, teeth-gritting frustration choking up in the back of her throat is unlike anything she's ever heard from her.

    "Of course the marks matter. The marks are the only thing that matter. Nobody will believe you if you don't have proof. You can't just say things about yourself and expect people to take it seriously. You need proof. Marks are proof, like licenses and money and alibis. If you're smart and don't have marks, they'll call you a liar and hit you. If you're innocent and don't have an alibi, it's the same thing."

    "So . . . what's so great about doing it this way? All the other girls get perfect marks and go right home. They have it easy, and their proof is the same as mine. What's so good about doing it 'legitimately'? If all I need to do is prove it, to make people believe what I already know, then any method is fine, right?"

    "Nobody really cares about the right answer. They care about the answer they want to see. Even books and tests are like that."
Lilian Rook     The Closed Door:
    Cantio is next to experience the sound of Lilian's voice in a way she's never once heard. The anger she's used to ranges from sarcastic, to facetious, to ice cold, to outright inhuman, but never like this. Not hoarse and sniffling and tearfully furious. Not like a normal person. It's too much to take.

    "You don't have to pretend to be nice. I know who you are. I hate you too. But I don't even hate you for a good reason. You did something awful to me. But you didn't even have a way of knowing you were doing it. And I couldn't tell you. And couldn't explain why. Because I can't talk about it. I'm not allowed to. So I just got . . . I got so mad, and I panicked, and I just had to make you stop. You didn't really deserve it."

    "But then that never stopped anyone from hitting me."

    Candy is next. Weirdly, even after saying all of that to Cantio, compared to the two other rooms, this one sounds progressively more stable. However, he also recognizes, up close, the man she's been screaming at, where he can't hear it, must be Muramasa. He has to be.

    "Yeah. I know. I know everyone feels . . . people feel. But I'm not supposed to. Because I have the choice not to, and it's obviously better not to show it. Showing them how you feel is just giving them ammunition. If they won't love you, then you have to scare them. If they ignore you, turn their back on you, run off with someone else, decide they don't need you, then you can't let them see anything but how badly you can hurt them. Otherwise, they think they have power over you. And once they pity you, you'll never get control back again."

    "But I don't blame you for not getting it. There's no way I could explain it. Not then. I hurt you too much just for that. But I really can't stand it when you do . . . 'That'." Her silhouette wavers when he mentions those two names, but in the way of a little flame being fed a breath of air. "Yeah. While I was with Scáthach . . . They came for me. All the way out there. And they . . . Well, I can't talk about it. But, thank you anyways. It'd be nice if it was possible to talk about it one day."

    With that, the bright Lilian turns back into an ember of light, and races back out into the hall. The shadows burst in her wake, and chasing them, the black-gold hand flies in hot pursuit. Out in the lobby, the light flits through the main doors, and the hand crashes into one of the four handles, yanking and pulling to try and get it open.
Ishirou I4 sinks a little from where he was, he remembers her saying this exact thing before.  However, more...more was added to it.  Questioning herself, thinking that maybe she was bad, that she had to do it herself and it would be easier if she had to.  He sighs, he...realizes that his choice was selfish, sure.  Well, no, he knew that.  The choice was inherently a selfish one, but one he perhaps should have waited on.  

Then again, maybe it would have ended worse, that he'd be stuck in that body?  He doesn't know, but he does see the consequence of doing it then and there.  It isolated her, she turned her back on him, because she thought he did it first.  That she was seemingly trying to take on everything...that maybe she failed him?  

"No," I4 says, and instead of shrinking back takes a step forward.  "You're not bad.  You can't be bad, because if you were you wouldn't have done all you've done for me.  Remember when I was hating on myself for being too weak?  Instead of yelling at me about it, you instead helped me realize that I was trying to do things like others, instead of my own way."

"Or when you helped with finding out the truth about what the Androids are...or against the giant monster that attacked!  Or...keeping me safe from Indus after that?"

"I've been trying to figure out myself, and...maybe that's what lead me to that choice I made.  It wasn't because I stopped trusting you.  Just the opposite, I wanted to be better, because you helped me realize /I could be better/."

"I just waited too long to let you know and didn't do more to show you I was trying more.  You...put everything on your shoulders, right?" he says, looking at the shade of Rita.  "It caused...problems, and now you're facing down what resulted, right?" He sighs, and stands next to her, or tries to.  "There is a way, I think...we just stop fighting.  And if they stab at you, I'll help protect you."

"I promise I'll stand with you more, even if we disagree.  That way you can know when you can let your guard down...because I'll be there to support you," he says, with a firm tone.
Kale Hearthward Did... Lilian really just say that?

Kale's mind indeed rebels a bit. He tries to focus on the here and now.

"... That's... not how it works."

"There aren't good guys and bad guys. That's just a myth, propaganda, something that the bad guys perpetuate to the good guys in order to disguise themselves as fellow good guys. There's just people, and you're part of the people."

"And if you keep thinking in those terms, that's how they're going to get to you. By making you think you're one of the bad guys."

"And - there's no answer to that question. You fight. If you're truly strong enough, you'll shine, whether you're fighting with your full strength, or only giving it your half against their full might - and that's just how it is. If you're holding back and that causes them to keep coming, you just grin and bear it, because you're going to shine regardless."

"And... Rook."

He steps away from her side - and up towards Rita.

"If absolutely nothing else I've said has gotten through to you, if nothing else has sunk in..."

"... If you think heroes are weak and need to be protected..."

He pulls his sword - and goes to attempt to slice straight through the Rita simulacrum.

"Remember that I'm not a god-damned hero!"
Staren     The Half-Open Door:
    "Well, people will take *you* seriously without proof. It's called Charisma." Staren quips dryly. Dark Staren stands up straight and scratches his head. "Jeezus, she sounds like Momma talking about how Grandfather talked. Licenses this, degrees that. Who hurt you?" "We know who hurt her." Right, right." "Wait, did she say *money* is proof?"

    Staren sighs, and pats bright Lilian on the back. "I mean, it's proof in the sense it'll make people belive you most of the time. I gotta be honest with you: If all you ever want to do is persuade people, you're entirely right. No one cares about legitimacy. They care about *feeling* right. I wouldn't have extended that metaphor to tests, but you found a way..." Staren frowns and holds a finger to her chin, train of thought going a bit off-track.

    "*People* are that way." Dark Staren speaks up, looking at Lilian now. "But you want to be an Immune, right? Antegents won't listen to honeyed words, or money, or a license or degree that says you were taught how to fight them so they'd better roll over. You have to *actually* come up with a way to defeat them. Physics, magic, their powers are so weird who knows what disciplines might help you understand how their powers work and counter them? You have a lot to learn. But that's what it'll take to save people."

    Dark Staren sweeps an arm to indicate the room. "And that's where they will fail."

    "...Also if you want to go into engineering or the like, you'd need it there too. You can't sweet-talk or bribe a plane to stay in the air, and it won't listen to a certificate saying it's *supposed* to fly."

    Staren adds, "Even if you want to do a job mostly about influencing people, how do you know what to influence them *towards*? What system might actually achieve your goals? What goals are worth having? You have to actually learn. Maybe not from tests and books and schools, but from *somewhere*."

    Staren frowns. "It's not fair that an awful person has told you those things are all that matters. When you're a grown-up..." She looks Lilian in those dark eyes. "Well, when *you're* a grown-up, no one will be able to call you a liar and hit you. So this shit won't matter anymore. Actually knowing stuff will."
Lilian Rook     The Open Door:
    Four for four, this time Flamel is treated to Lilian's exact voice replying to him in a way he'll likely never hear again. Heaving. Breathless. Terrified. Overwhelmed. Exhausted and wired at the same time. Hyperventilating on fear and adrenaline, culminating into an initially unhinged scream of "Don't come any closer!!!" and the imaginary sword being brandished in his direction. It doesn't take much effort to recognize Tamamo, Xion, and Strawberry Princess, in the booth behind. It seems she won't step away.

    The entire stage play from then on gets a series of noises from her that oscillate between 'preposterous bafflement' and 'bated breath anxiety'. As he expects, the moment he starts, half the shadow Lilians in the room turn towards him, and their incomprehensible word-chitter becomes a wave of childish, sadistic laughter. However, all of them lack swords of any kind, and Hibiki is able to make quick work of them. The bright Lilian emits an entire kaleidoscope of uncertain and worried sounds when the two are bringing them drinks, but by the fourth telekinetic action figure, wearily laughs out loud.

    "That's the first time anyone from outside has ever said that. That they . . . that they appreciate how hard this is. Nobody else gets it like that. When they want something, they just make a choice in an instant. But whenever I want anything . . . every moment of every day, there's ten thousand things I could do instead. Things that nobody else could do. That nobody else thinks about. And I have to flip past them, pages and pages and pages, to get to the one I think I'm supposed to. Every single time, every single hour of every single day. And if I mess up once, then . . . People already got hurt."

    "I'm so tired. I'm so so so tired and scared and I can barely hold the people I have. I just want it to be easier. Even just . . . I remember, it used to be that she would say 'thank you for trying, it's not the end of the world, and I know you'll do better next time'."

    "I'm always going to be doing it all by myself. Until the day I die. But, it'd be nice if more people were like this. Making it easy and not hard. I don't want to hurt people. I want to be able to hold more of them."

    The second bright Lilian turns back into light, and is chased back to the doorway by a black-gold hand, causing the doors to groan under two cooperating grips. Thankfully, the shadows are annihilated in its wake, not requiring Flamel and Hibiki to stay back forever.
Lilian Rook     Having gotten the bright Lilian to listen to Candy and Cantio as he'd asked, Featherman's simple experiment meets the opposite result of every other room: the cinderblock is completely and totally immovable to him. Likewise, not one shadow actually contacts him.
Cantio The very first thing Lilian says to Cantio puts the purple-haired woman at ease. "Oh, good. I really didn't know how long I could..."

The rest does not. That's not what Lilian is supposed to sound like. Lilian's supposed to be a spiteful, terrible person that's easy for Cantio to hate, and for good reason. She's not supposed to sound human. She's not supposed to sound vulnerable. She's not supposed to be making it easy for Cantio to feel bad for /her/ of all people.

"You... Tha... That's not fair. You're supposed to be the... Why now?"

She doesn't know how to deal with this sudden swell of emotions in her chest, coming up her throat. She steps away from Lilian while she's speaking to Candy, pacing around slowly to try and get that feeling out through rapid walking. It's not enough, and what Lilian says eventually gets to be too much for Cantio.

She finds the nearest background object of no real importance, and she lets out a frustrated scream while punching it as hard as she can. Cantio regrets that immediately at the numbness hitting her hand all at once, but it does get her mind off that boiling frustration long enough to finally turns back to Lilian and Candy as the former changes into that light and ejects herself from the area.

"... That idiot. That stupid, goddamn idiot." Cantio spits out with an uncharacteristically pained noise as she hunches over, nursing her hand and clutching it tightly as she works her healing magic on it to try and undo some of that self-inflicted damage. "Isn't she supposed to be smarter than that? How could she have been this... DENSE?!"

Cantio lets out another shout that's far quieter and less hand-injuring this time, and then she turns to Candy and Featherman. "Is this what you saw in her? This kind of..."

Again, she can't bring herself to finish that sentence. Instead, she just starts walking away, towards the doorway once more. "C-come on. The faster we find her, the faster we get this... Her sorted out."
Candy      "Yeah," says Candy, as the bright Lilian races back, dissipating all her shadow-selves in her path.

    "Someday." It's more breathless. More tired.

*I hope you mean that, Lilian. I hope you know you can. That people will listen.*

    "I see a lotta things in her, Cantio," he responds sadly. "I just wish I understood her back then the way I do now. She said she couldn't have explained it, but I know why she did it now. Maybe we can talk more about it later. Let's get after that hand, right now."

    Pursuing the hand reveals that it's trying to open the main doors. Four handles, one for each hand.

    "Cecilia," he says. "Any minute now the rest of them hands is gonna come out here and open that thing. I'll keep what you said in mind... but if there's anything -else- I can do to help you keep this place clean, now's the time to ask."
Featherman Neo Featherman frowns at the cinderblock, but there's no use worrying about it. It's a mental construct, not a real threat. So he follows Candy, eying the Broken Door, hoping everything escapes it soon.
Lilian Rook     The Broken Door:
    Another first time of things, bright Lilian shuts up and listens to I4. It's hard to judge her reaction without a readable facial expression, but he gets the warm sense of his words being absorbed. Incremental bits and pieces of kindling on smouldering coals, still red, but only just now burning. "I remember. I remember everyone in the Paladins used to like me. They thought I was reliable, and listened to me. And then some people outside. People in the Watch too, who really cared about being the good guys. Not long ago, when people said bad things about me, other people would jump up and tell them all the good things. And I never . . . I never needed that, but . . . I appreciated it anyways. It made me feel good. That people just wanted to defend me, even if they didn't need to."

    "I liked it more when I got to call you Foureyes. I liked you a lot, because of that attitude. The way you finally stopped charging at the problem and falling over. How you were dedicated to supporting me back then; it was nice, and it worked. And . . . I also wanted to know. And I wanted to change things. About Indus. About how unfair it was, what they did to you. And I wish it had been sooner. Before she ruined everything. Because then maybe I could have said congratulations, on being human, instead of what really happened."

    Ostensibly, the rest concerns Kale.

    "No, that's right. There's not really . . . heroes and villains is how you decide who you want to hurt or not. How you get crazy and . . . classify who's supposed to win and who's supposed to die. I used to say that a lot. It's just . . . Everyone strong does terrible things. I have to be stronger than I am now, if I can keep being gentle, even to my enemies. But I can't become strong like her. It has to be my own way."

    That appears to be the determination she needs for the moment Kale swings his sword. "You can't! Not her!" His sword clashes against the fictitious image of one, and the resounding wave of impact disperses the shadows and their gleeful butchery. "She's fighting inside every day too! Just like me! If I can't believe in her, how am I supposed to believe in myself?! If you're going to do something terrible, I'll beat the shit out of you myself!"

    The explosion of rekindled warmth drives away the choking haze, and a third bright light slips beyond the great double doors, a third black-gold hand following it. The wood begins to grind across the floor, inch by inch.
Lilian Rook     The Half-Open Door:
    "Even fighting Antegent, I go back to people at the end of the day. Even after all of this is over, I still have to go back home. I have my weekly report due on Sunday."

    Most of what Staren has to say about education and reality bounces right off of even bright Lilian, but she can see the spirit burst with a breath of surprise air and warmth at a few magic words.

    "Oh. Right. I'm an adult. They can't . . . do that . . . can they?"

    The questioning gaze will have to go unanswered, because that alone was enough wide-eyed engagement to send the fourth light to the door, disperse the tittering shades and their perfect grades, and clap the last black-gold hand to the final handle. The doors swing slowly open in earnest now. There's but a few moments to gather together and get ready.
Kale Hearthward "There we go! Can't beat the shit out of me till after you get out of this, happy and healthy!" Kale calls after her as she exits the broken-door room.

"... You'll come visit me in the medbay, right?" he asks I4, once she's gone.
Ishirou I4 listens to Lilian, looking at her as she remembers.  The times where people stood up for her, reminding her that she was a better person than she thought.  How she appreciated it.  Then his own growth, with when she helped him stop beating his head on everything like a moron.  

"I liked it too, actually.  The...nickname wasn't even true, I just said it because I thought that's how humans made friends better, with nick names...I'm just glad it caught on, and people like you became friends with me..." he says, admitting THE BIGGEST SHOCK OF 2021!  

"...I appreciate you, I really do..." he says, even when she admits it, but those words, the congratulations on being human.  Eyes watering, he looked up at her.  "T...when your back to yourself, I know you will.." he says, wiping them away.

This is before Kale grabs her attention.  He was too busy dying his eyes to see what he was planning.  However, this Lilian had it, like she always did, and his hand went up, ready to support her.  It just so happened that it was what was needed.  They could leave, and on the way out he looked at Kale as he asked him.  

"Oh sure, I guess.  I'll be helping her put you there, after all," he says, with a look.  
Flamel Parsons     At the Open Door...

    Flamel beams! "Well, you earned the compliments for it! Seeing it like this, I mean, I could hardly fault it. Get on out there, we'll cover for you!" And now, things are clear. He wipes his brow. "Phew. I did *not* want to fight all those shadows, swords or not. Good work, Hibiki." He scratches his cheek and adjusts his sunglasses. He regards that hand... "I'm not so sure about that hand. Those hands..." He glances around. "We didn't see the eyes, though. Wonder what that was about. I guess it said 'see not' though. But... I'm curious!"

    He heads back to where Cecilia was, rushing into the relief of the light. "Is it okay if I look for those eyes I heard about? I'm worried about those hands, you know. There's an awfully big psychohazard around here, I'm sure of it." He plants two fingers on his temple, and pulses his senses out, trying to look for the mental fingerprint of eyes and observartion. There's more occasional nervous laughs as he does.
Featherman Neo Featherman starts moving towards the door, but stops with Candy. "Hey, let's go together." And a look back, and a thumbs up at Cecilia. "Thank you for caring for her."

And as he's beginning to move, his belt whirrs. He looks down at it. It dings weirdly. A new bond is being forged. Normally it's instantaneous. Did he just link with Lilian's mindscape?

Those are questions for another day. The world moves on, and so does he.
Cantio "She has some... Objectively useful qualities. And..." Cantio's calmer than before as she heads on back with Candy, but she's still visibly struggling with sorting out all the fluctuating thoughts in her mind. "... Some of her behavior is... Makes more sense now, I GUESS. We can figure out if it really was justified after we save her from all this stuff."

That's about as good as Cantio can manage right about now, and she's on somewhat better behavior upon reaching the spectre and the rest of the group as people start regrouping. "We're in too deep now to just leave, in case you're thinking of telling us to do that again. Instead, please... If you have any other information you have that can help us to help her, we're ready for it."

Just in case, she brings out her drone finally in case there's anything worth recording. Assuming it works, anyway, since she's never tried recording the inside of someone's mind before.
Kale Hearthward Kale sheathes his sword, and manages a smile behind I4's back as they leave. He's definitely earned everything that's coming to him, but - well, it worked. Totally worth it.

"... So behind the big door..." he says, to himself, watching it open.

"... Whatever off-the-charts intergenerational psychic trauma, presumably..."

"... Brought into the real world. Right."

He goes ahead and draws one of his swords again.
Staren     Near the end, the Starens look at eachother. That was kind of a you answer to the problem, saying she has to worry about these things to be the one to solve problems. Maybe it was the wrong call? Well, what else can we say? Do you have some sort of emotional insight to share? Uhhh, I dunno! I'm still figuring that shit out!

    They both blink, a bit stunned. "THAT was what did it??" Dark Staren crosses his arms. "Scars from the past can last pretty long, or you wouldn't be talking to yourself here." "But you carried me through the dark a few minutes ago." "Uhhhh..." Dark Staren scratches his nose awkwardly. "I feel like this is where someone wiser would say not to think about this too hard. Flamel's probably got some words like" (he imitates Flamel's cheery tone, "'Oh, don't worry about that! Interno-psychic survival mechanisms manifest in different ways! If you didn't have Dark Staren, you would've done something else! The determination to survive was inside you *somewhere*, all along!'"

    Staren smiles. "That does sound like him." "Of course it does, I'm you, that's what you think he sounds like. C'mon, wasn't there a time limit?"

    They're both smiling as the stride back out the door and reunite with the others. "Apparently we just needed to remind Lilian that she's an adult now, and that the people who hurt her in childhood can't anymore. How'd the other doors go?"
Hibiki Tachibana     "Lilian...you..." She just wants it to be easier. It's such a simple, simple, simple want. One any normal person would have, but she really deserves it. It's so strange hearing Lilian speak like this, so bluntly and so completely and utterly genuinely, talking about her fears and...

    The light heads off. "...I know how hard that is. I'm sorry things ended up the way they did. Not just you and me...but all of it. I'm gonna do my best to make it easier." By the time she's done a once-over of her face with her arm and is able to face Flamel, she's smiling back at him.

    "Nothing to it. You're amazing, Flamel. Let's go meet up with the rest." The subject of the hand gets a curious rub of her finger against her cheek, and an accompanying glance around, but it remains as a curiosity she keeps to herself as they hurry back.

    She's not rushing back into the warmth of the light, but to say she's not happy to be back would be a lie. There's a quick sigh, and a brief look of concern towards Flamel before she looks up at the doors, and then at Kale.

    "...Well, they did say we can punch people's fears here." She holds up a clenched fist for emphasis. It's extremely difficult to tell if this is her idea of a tension-lowering joke or not.
Lilian Rook     The purple shade shakes her head emphatically at Flamel. "I wouldn't, if I were you. The Young Mistress hates being Touched, but more than even that, she hates being Seen.The eyes that see you will blind you." To Candy, she says "Don't take on more than you can handle. Please. And be careful where you aim. Careless destruction could make this mess bigger than any of us could possibly dream of. It'd be just like she feared. Do what you must, and hurry home. I'm trusting you."

    That's it. The doors swing open, and the hands disappear into the darkness beyond. Moments later, vantablack-infragold flames light along the circular walls of the gigantic room inside, each one flickering and bubbling as if being drawn a hundred times a second by an artist's inkbrush. Up high and far away, the inverse silhouette of Lilian gouges a hole in space-- the exit to the entrance and vice versa. And at the center of the vast, chessboard floor . . .

                           PYSCHOHAZARD: THE ATRIARCH                          
                         TYPE: INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA                        
                           [||||||||||||||||||||||||]                          

    This Lilian is definitely not a silhouette. And she is definitely not a bright spirit. Flesh and blood, black cocktail dress and heels, at least three inches taller, hair decoratively and impractically down to her hips, no longer held in any way by the white-gold lily hairpin she's always supposed to have. Not just that, but the black solar cross is nowhere to be seen hanging around her neck; not even its chain can be seen. There is no sword anywhere on her person, which is just as well; her body is that of a model, not a swordfighter, and in her hand is instead a cane made of glittering stars and space, all the hues of warm scarlet and ruby.

    The older, taller, very different Lilian turns to the group the moment upon entry. Despite every other difference, her eyes have the same way of sliding right past people's features, staring through them rather than at them, and absorbing nothing of the person, that Lilian's most unhinged moods have featured lately; but this is her default. She is a master of it. The platonic model.

    Far beyond her, at the back of the room, a considerable portion of the rear wall is taken up with the tremendous black hulk easily five times taller than her, a giant even on its knees. Its strangely pseudo-metallic exterior certainly matches the hands seen earlier, though it's difficult to say whether it's truly 'clad in armour'; for all its armoured shape, not everything about it actually attaches, showing glimmers of gold between the plates.

    The four hands released into this room hover around it equidistantly, while an additional free pair closely adhere to the ends of its actual arms, slumped in its 'lap'. One more pair is fully arrested, chained and bound to the wall, the long links of which trail through space to wind a hundred times around the crossed hilts of twelve gigantic copies of Night Mist, each embedded feet deep into the ground. The web of chains that connect the giant swords to the armoured figure is largely a waste, having been meticulously hacked apart by a malicious actor. The haze around the giant figure is pitch black, shrouding all other detail, and marking it as the apex point of the corrosive effect on reality here, if not possibly even ground zero.
Lilian Rook     The relation between the two is clear. The Atriarch is clearly to blame, hard at work unwinding the last quarter of the armoured behemoth's chains, unraveling the medieval metal and turning it into soothing scarlet threads, bundled up like a leash. The sword most recently divested of its seals bears the glowing embers of familiar names. The three remaining go without saying. With Flamel's specific expertise, the danger couldn't be more obvious, or any greater.

    However, the psychohazard itself makes no attempt to attack the group as they enter. It only redoubles its work, dissolving bindings one at a time with its cane. "Don't come anywhere near me!" The older Lilian snaps, with a higher pitch and slight smoky fry like the real Lilian, but with Alison Rook's flat inflections and modulations and cold enunciations. "It was that maid wasn't it?! That servant creature! You can't be here! I forbid it! It's not ready yet! This is for her own good! Just a little while longer, and I'll have finally fixed her! Everything will be as it always should have been!" Her tone is shockingly frantic. Panicked. This is not an entity smugly in control of everything. This is an entity operating on a deeply held, emotional wish. "All of those past mistakes won't mean anything! All of this ridiculous fantasy, all of it! She doesn't need you, she needs this!"

    "I wish Lilian would finally just get rid of you!"

    Terrible searing light that is not light, a colour which haunts Lilian's nightmares and exists nowhere else, flares into a blinding stripe from the giant figure's faceless head, drawing the shape of a 'knightly visor', and temporarily robbing everyone of vision. The room shakes as it begins wrenching itself upright. A wave of black fog so intense that it physically starts eroding flesh into black charcoal blasts off from it in all directions, as if shaken loose like thick layers of dust.
Featherman Neo As they pass through, they reach the psychohazard. The Atriarch, releasing the darkness that will stain Lilian's soul black. Most people would use words, try and talk her down.

But Featherman Neo can't do the impossible. He learned that a long time ago, as the black fog begins melting into his armor, revealing bits of the caucasian human underneath, and then begins burning his flesh.

Instead, as the mindscape locket continues to cook, he grabs another one blindly, opening it up, revealing the bag-headed Roidmude Hachi. "I'll sing you a song of hope and triumph! For Lilian Rook!"

The locket is slotted in as his vision returns, allowing him to roll out of the way of more fog.

SNAPSHOT

The locket whirls into place, locking, as Featherman's helmet begins to change.

HACHI - FACE OPEN

The mask opens up, revealing a built-in microphone. Suddenly, Featherman begins singing, releasing multi-colored waves of EM light-air gusts. They're targeted straight for the Atriarch, and they don't actually do much damage should they hit.

Instead, they dilate her sense of time as long as he sings, so that the others can hopefully find a solution. Featherman is aware this makes him the Prime Target. He's hoping for it.
Cantio The horrendous sight of an older, yet less composed and significantly less human Lilian throws Cantio for a loop. There's a lot to take in here, but the Atriarch's shouts snap her back to reality or whatever equivalent there is in this mindscape space.

"But we are here. Your obsession with controlling things isn't going to work any more. Nothing's been 'fixed' at all, and doing this isn't going to help Lilian or anybody." She shouts back, although there's a strange sense of calm in Cantio's tone as she draws her sword handle, the rest of the blade flaring into existence a moment later as a series of metallic purple bits layering on top of each other.

"Whatever it should have been clearly isn't working, either. Trying to micromanage everything is how this all started going wrong in the first place!" Cantio raises her weapon and points it at the cane, wincing slightly as the faceless head blinds her and, presumably, everyone else in the group. Instead of taking potshots blindly or trying to fly in without a sense of where anything is, Cantio instead raises her weapon as she focuses her efforts on casting magic.

More specifically, curative magic. She's not sure if it'll work on blinding psychic effects, but it's worth a shot."I've got this!" She shouts out as that curative magic spreads, not to heal the group of any injuries (at least not right away), but to restore their vision shortly after it's been taken. When she feels (and possibly sees) that wave of black fog eating into her flesh, meanwhile, she redoubles her efforts to focus entirely on that curative and healing magic.

"I hope it can't keep this up long, but... Hit it hard! I'll keep you fixed up as long as I can!"
Candy      Don't bite off more than he can chew? "Okay," says Candy, with just enough energy to playfully, if tiredly, affect being put-upon, "But only 'cause you ask so nice."

    He's got no idea what shape this thing will take. What abilities it might bring forth. He's never done anything like this, but if there's one strength he has, it's the breadth of his options in any given fight. He'll have *something.* Even if it only saves him by the skin of his teeth.

    The image of those swords, bound in chains newly shattered, and the behemoth nearby--it's easy to see what's being done. It's easy to see what he needs to do, as well.

    "Oh, yeah?"

*The color from the drawings. I remember--*

    He can't see. Not in time to get away from.

*That fog. My arm. Something's wrong--*

    His vision returns. An instant passes and he is gone from that spot, shearing a chunk of charcoal from his arm with a razor-sharp playing card.

*Lilian said she didn't like it when I used That. But you're not her. Don't beat me up this time, ah? I promise I'm not pointing it at you.*

Candy blinks over to her in an instant. There's no telling how long he's got before she catches on. He hasn't forgotten whose mind he's in. A simple playing card is slipped into the Atriarch's free hand.

     Time resumes.
-"Wish in one hand. Shit in the other. See which one fills up faster."
-A card appears in the Atriarch's hand. It feels cold. Very unlike paper. Surface is too glossy to be paper. "
-It's all the warning the intergenerational hazard has before the card explodes with the force of a hand grenade, superheated air and razor-sharp fragments of wafer-thin steel expanding rapidly out.
Ishirou The blinding light causes I4 to close his eyes out of that blinding faceless light.  Worse, it makes getting out of the way of that flesh-burning smoke.  He goes to the ground, burning from that powerful combination of abilities.  It /hurts/ but even as he screams he knows there has to be a solution.  Flamel provides some hints...

I4 forces himself to his feet, this isn't any different than before.  Support Lilian, right?  "POD, scan!" he says, even though he can't see, his POD can connect his senses it's, so he can see in ways that don't require sight.  In this, however, he attempts to do more than just see.  He uses his abilities to find out two things.  The first, how to stop the giant from escaping, and trying to undo the chains.  The second, how to keep the Atriarch from getting turned from their connections.  

Others can beat their heads against things, they are better for it, but I4 needs to know the lay of the battlefield, needs to find the path to victory.  He has to do this the way Lilian's encouraged him to do in the past, using his tools and his strengths.  

He can help guide others, but first...what is the path?
Staren     The Starens turn towards the door. Dark Staren puts his hand on the laser pistol's grip, clenching and unclenching the gauntletted hand. The door opens...

    That, uh... that sure is something. They take in the details and

                                    *flinch*                                    

    at the sight of that cane. They both look younger for a split second. Dark Staren looks between Lilian and his other half, hesitating fearfully and uncertainly for a second before stepping in front of her protectively. It's his duty, why he exists, to protect her, right?

    The Atriarch speaks and... it is deeply disturbing to *know* Lilian's voice could be more deeply disturbing to Staren.

    She clenches a fist. "No. A world with no people in it, with only extras..." Staren crosses her arm across her chest then sweeps it out to her side. "That's no way to live! That's not a happy future!"

    And then she's struck blind. "I can't see! Can anyone else see?!" Her groping hands find Dark Staren's coat. He's wiping his eyes uselessly, grunting in... *mild* annoyance as he tries to sound tough.

    The fog hits the barrier of a suddenly-visible translucent amber sphere around Dark Staren, with Staren close enough to be inside too. It rapidly erodes away. The Ghost gasps. Then hisses: "Armor, now!" There's a sense of lack of sound where sound SHOULD be, tinny and echoey, as the gem on his gauntlet flashes a flickering blue instead of red; The old Triax BLUE armor extrudes from him like a 4D object unfolding, colored red and black, with the faceplate reminiscent of a skull. Red sweeps across the gem until it replaces the blue again and the armor is in place.

    Staren, for her part, just 'warps' on the bubble-head white coat-accessorized armor with the Concord orange holo-scarf.

    The forcefield ceases to exist for a second or so before a more powerful one goes up, allowing the fog to begin eating away at the surface of their armor. "You heard Flamel. Use Persephone's power."

    Staren... readily latches onto the 'solution' her dark side suggests without thinking further, and goes for it, trying to bring the Underworld up here.

    "Is that really what you need? For Lilian to be alone?"
    "Is that really what you need? For Lilian to be ALONE?"

    The last word echoes, cold and metallic, from behind the skull mask. Staren tries to look at the Atriarch's psychic presense to see what passes for thoughts of what it needs -- or, for that matter, anything else that might be tactically useful!
Flamel Parsons     Flamel Parsons is nearly breathless. "I. Uh. I was wrong. There wasn't a giant, unimaginably dangerous psychohazard in Lilian's brain." He swallows. "I think that's. Two." He goes pale. Adjusting his sunglasses, he takes a few steps back. Calling out, in a panic, he tries to dump the info to his allies. "Psychohazards, 101! The only thing that can live in a brain is something that's trying to keep the brain alive! Even a virus wants its host to live! Everything you're seeing is a defense mechanism gone bad and out-of-balance! Cecilia said not to carelessly destroy... we have to be surgical and make sure the bigger one doesn't get loose from overshooting. And we have to make sure the Atriarch doesn't get turned against all connections!"

    He takes his psychic pstance, readying for the danger. "Find out what the Atriarch *needs* and hit it with it! Find out what *subdues* the big one and add it to the situation! And, uh, if we don't get this right, I don't know what'll happen if this goes bad in the middle of an astral eversion." His breath catches short. Could this thing make it out of Lilian's mind? No, focus.

    The blindness has hit him hard. His clairvoyance can only get so much through this, carving too-bright lights in too-dark spaces. There's too much competing psychic energy! Cantio's curative magics clear it up a lot, but Flamel's burning away now. Flesh sears, burns. Robotics beneath spark, and shimmering orange psychic pain manifests on his body.

    Power through it. Focus. This is a gigantic, apocalyptic psychohazard, forged in the furnace of violence, war, and power disparity. This is what you were built for -- just, entirely a different class-type which Flamel isn't specialized for, and at a scale he's unable to deal with.

    Fear surges through his body. Adrenaline-like psychic energy is bursting at the cracks along his body. I4 will be scanning, but Parsons can apply his Psychometry here. Together, hopefully, they can get the data they need. "Cecilia sent us to help! You *deserve competent assistance*!" He shouts, leaping for her. "Give *me* your wish, I'll make sure it's granted!" A gigantic telekinetic hand lashes out to grab the cane, and he tries to plunge a huge amount of clairvoyance energy into it. He needs to find out what the Atriarch's wishes are, and where he can hit her with them. Trying to immobilize it so she can't cast quite so easily, Flamel lashes another out to grab a hilt of one of those Night Mists in the ground, and do a second burst of clairvoyance on them as well. Psychometrically, what created these bindings? Can Flamel recreate and reinforce them in a healthy way?
Hibiki Tachibana     The doors are let open, and breath is stopped short in Hibiki's throat as they're placed face to face with the epicenter of all of this--no, not just the one expected psychohazard, but two things recessed here deep in Lilian's mindscape. The Atriarch, and...the black giant, emanating that heart-blackening darkness, at one point having certainly been far more chained down than it currently is.

    But it's not that long before her hands are clenching at her sides, one of them coming up to her chest as she steps forward with her expression tensing up. "That's not going to fix anything! It's going to be the opposite! Crossing past a point of no return that's only going to end in pain and heartache for everyone! You can't just ignore what's happened in the past, and what she really wants!"

    "We're not going anywhere! And I won't let Lilian keep suffering any more than she has! That means...!" The blinding shine illuminates the room, and Hibiki winces with eyes forced shut. That doesn't stop her from taking another step forward, and then another, pushing forward into a run. Her knuckles go white with how hard they're clenched, picking up speed. She's going to--

    --listen to Flamel's advice and do what she thinks is right, adding onto Flamel's telekinetic hold on the cane by physically lunging forward to grab onto the Atriarch's cane-bearing arm and stop any more strikes from being delivered. It's not a painful grip, but it is a uncompromisingly firm one, and one that'll be maintained even if slash when Candy's explosion goes off.

    "If you really want her fixed, if you really want what's for her own good...stop this, please!" By the time her eyes are clearing up, she'll be able to lock one of them up on the Psychohazard's face. "Is doing /this/ really what you want!?" At this moment, Hibiki wants more than anything to find that path, that wish, that want.

    To get even the tiniest bit of that connection she needs to understand, so they can finally fix this.
Lilian Rook     I4's scan turns up something unbelievably bad. One is that those chains are squarely Lilian's own handiwork; carefully crafted and embodied pieces of her dream anchored to people she cares about, most of whom she now believes have turned on her. He can see his own name amongst the many on the burnt out swords. As long as The Atriarch is able to undo the last few chains, there will be no stopping its eversion into the real world. Worse, it seems that the Atriarch is parasitically attached. The psychohazardous trauma itself is severe, but it still pales in comparison to the force with which Lilian has locked down the giant with one plus twelve swords.

    The cane, meanwhile, strongly registers Persephone's own psychological signature, and has made The Atriarch tremendously more powerful. Enough to start subverting the thirteen binds on this thing, and exponentially intensify its destabilizing, reality-eroding toxicity. If Lilian sealed it once, she probably can again . . . if the Elites can fix this.

    What Staren finds of The Atriarch's psyche is everything she would anticipate from investigating the Rook estate. This isn't Lilian's idea of herself, but a perfected and idealized conception of her that was hammered into her mind from outside, almost before she was old enough to read. It's an amalgamation of parental expectations and ambitions toxically mixed with neurotic anxieties and deeply traumatized fears.

    This is a Perfect Lilian. The sophisticated and controlling adult socialite with powerful magic who will put the family back together. The Lilian that knows all this silly stuff about knights and codes and a Multiverse is grievously in error, doomed to lead to more grief and failure. The Lilian that will ruthlessly abuse her power in every way possible to make up for the staggering loss caused by the Onslaught. To get back on top. Something that the real Lilian had managed somehow, up until the Decompression Chamber had given it the fuel it needed to thrive.

    Flamel's reading of The Atriarch's wishes is simple: It exists to push Lilian to fulfill those expectations, even where they compete with other desires, desperately attempting to protect the psyche from perceived, potential harm, from family members and society at large, for failing to meet them. The Night Mists are simple: One lies ready for the giant to actually use with its unbound and attached hands, the other twelve are strictures of maxims and axioms that Lilian had forged into solid shape in her mind as absolute truths. Each one represents why a single part of the Code Of Thirteen matters, and is engraven with names like reinforcing seals, embodying the people she felt most important to keep to those rules for. Only the last three are fully intact; a dangerous combination.

    And yet this Atriarch definitely isn't in control like it's supposed to be. Nothing about it but its appearance is sophisticated and put together. The raw power of the greater entity it's tapping into is too much even for it. A psychohazard is driving another psychohazard insane.
Lilian Rook     "Don't try to tell me about being alone! You can't go to where she is, and every day she spends a little longer there!" The Atriarch howls

    "What do any of you know?! You think you know more than me?! You've been doing this for two minutes! I've been doing this for thirty years!

    Hibiki tackles the cane the moment it's raised for a spell, and the Atriarch doesn't dodge. In fact, it seems it lacks Lilian's power completely. Though crackling with arcane power straight from a psychometric vision, even then lashing out with bolts of raw traumatic pain at those gathered at random, its unable to weave proper magic while interrupted, just barely. The Atriarch wrestles to at least go for Flamel, but the time-slowing song lowers her traverse below the rate she can keep up with him, especially with Hibiki on her arm. Cantio's cure cast on everyone's vision and healing on their bodies is giving them a fighting chance for now. All the way up until Candy stops time.

    No! NO!! screams the Atriarch, between the timestop used to escape and recover, and the timestop used to plant the grenade on her, before it even blows. "YOU FOOL! YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'VE DONE!"

    During his second timestop, Candy's vision is filled completely with a titanic wall of sensory static. The behemoth blinds him. A tremendous, glassy crash fills his ears. The next instant, it's just like Lilian beating him all over again, but just one, tremendous, bone-shattering blow. The giant doesn't move, because time is stopped. But it happens anyways.

    Mere moments after, the grenade explodes and hurls the Atriarch to the ground, still clutching the cane in a death grip. Chains snap with the sound of the fiery boom. The armoured giant lurches to one knee. Reality-corroding black fog explodes from its form. Harsh, red-beyond-red radiance casts it into sharp, terrifying relief.

    It's easily fifteen meters tall. A titan of built into interlocking knightly armoured plate with sharp angles, a roughly hourglass figure, inhuman, triple-reverse jointed legs that support it on mere points for feet, an angular horned 'helmet-like' head, and articulated hands that don't attach to its arms, each pair slightly different, now forming a circular mandala behind it, ready to be switched in and out. Etchings like Night Mist's warm up to bright gold across its breast. Its shoulder and hip guards unfold in layers, and emit a torrential outpouring of black fog, falling and shifting like a heavy veil, creating a mantle with the silhouette of shadowy crow feathers. At its back, oriented behind its head, a great and terrible halo blinds all who look upon it, incomprehensible designs, tightly interwoven and interlocked, rotating against each other like so many metaphysical gears, bright red lines tracing its surface like the forked shadow of a sundial.

                PYSCHOHAZARD: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD IS MINE                
                                  TYPE: BLACK                                  
                 FRAMEWORK: I wish it was my turn to be happy.                  
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Lilian Rook     The Atriarch rises in an explosion of power. The awakening of All The Time In The World has defibrillated it with parasitized power. However, when the entity opens its mouth again, it is, for the first time, the voice of Lilian just as she is right now. Unavoidable destiny foretold of this moment years ago. The Atriarch screams:

    "Why don't you understand?! You aren't real! None of you are! I've tried and tried and tried to believe it! I have! I want to believe it more than anything else in the world! But it just doesn't matter! You speak when I let you and stop when I don't; you go away when I'm tired of you and come back I feel like it! Every second you feel like you're in control is because I permit it! I could push and pose you, kiss you or kill you, make you mine or make you disappear, at any time! Don't you have any idea what it's like?! It's like I'm talking to dolls! I'm sorry! I really tried! But no matter how I think of it, no matter how hard I pretend, I can't escape it! Prove to me that you exist, I'm begging you!"

    The reason that the Atriarch doesn't have Lilian's power seems simple now. It's because All Time Is Mine does. Even partially bound up in chains, it still reaches out and grasps the thirteenth, unbound Night Mist, wrenches itself standing, and then, shrouded in its blinding glare and concealing shadow, blinks out of existence for less than a split second.

    The entire room is nearly demolished instantaneously. Scores of titan-sized sword wounds are carved ten feet deep and hundreds of feet across, criss-crossing the room from wall to floor to ceiling, glowing molten hot from sheer force. A blast of corrosive black fog drowns out air and light and life. That infra-vanta fire shrieks outwards in a dazzling starstorm of piercing and exploding rays, vectoring sharply around the room to strike again and again and again. And a crushing blast of overwhelming mind-cracking 'dominance' hits the brain at the same time.

    The halo advances forward slightly, like a timer, but if that means anything, it's not enough. This is what only Cecilia could ever handle. There is very little time left to make one last play.
Ishirou I4's trying to run the data as best as he can, getting what he can.  Ok, what can he see, what and how do these connect...in fact he sees one of the seals with his name, and he feels it in the pit of his stomach.  Steadying himself, he focuses.  He can't stop now, maybe later...maybe when he's waking up in a hospital room.  Right now, he's gotta go as far as he can.  

The room is destroyed, in an instant that he can't follow.  He couldn't even begin to dodge it, he goes flying and then crashed into the ground.  He can feel the warmth from fresh cuts that somehow he managed to avoid taking the brunt of.  The overwhelming dominance threatened to take over everything.

Facedown, he doesn't move for a moment.  In fact, he might be bleeding out...

Until a FAMILIAR power starts to fix it.  Much like the rod in the Atriarch's hand.  He's hurt, he's battered, his psyche is being pushed to the limit, and if it wasn't for the power he had borrowed from Persephone he'd be dead right now.  He walks slowly, towards the broken chain.  He knows what he has to do.

He steps, step by step, even if the monster should bear down on him again and again.  I4 wasn't going to stop...he tries to press his hand against the broken seal, though he might be more leaning against it as his borrowed power tries to keep him alive.  He attempts to hack it...but the goal is a sympathetic connection with the creature trashing him.  

"I didn't leave.." he says weakly, not because he's afraid, but because he's thrashed to hell.  "I should have been clearer with my thoughts, or my desires...or just in general." he says, "But I won't run from the consequences either..." he says, attempting to use the broken chain to restore it.  

"I said I'd be there for you, even when you told me to not bother, even when you warned me away saying I'd hurt myself...so I am," he says, "Keeping that promise," he says, firmly.  "Just like you taught me...just like the person you encouraged me to be now.  If that's not real enough for you, then lady...I just don't get what real means in your eyes!"

He presses every bit of power he can into that connection, trying everything to help the seal try and restrain the power of the giant, trying everything to buy everyone else a chance to seize victory.  He leans against it as he continues, bleeding.  Between the mist hurting him, his borrowed regeneration won't last forever, and he's feeling things now.  He can only stand up so many more times.
Featherman Neo Everything that can goes wrong does go wrong. The titan is releashed, All Time Is Mine revealed. It demands them to prove they exist.

Flamel tells Featherman to nuke it. Show everything that proves he exists. Lilian doesn't have a reason to believe he exists besides perhaps his words. So as lockets summon to hand, he's shouting.

"I'm real, alright! I exist! Regardless of you, because I take responsibility for what I'll do next! For everything I'll ever do! And if this breaks you a little, I'm sorry, but I need to snap you out of this!"

"I see myself in you, and I can't let you go any further!"

Medals start getting slot in. Suddenly, the belt chimes out.

SNAPSHOT - ENGARDE - LIMITERS RELEASED

Featherman's medals begin to activate. His armor grows bulkier, like a knight's, as the secondary knight-like Featherman with the lance appears in front of him, Featherman Engarde.

Two piston rocket fists appear for each hand. Each one has dynamite strapped to it, tonfas attached to the wrists. Byakou and Kanshou start floating around Featherman Neo, as the power of Hachi's song channels into the tonfas, allowing Featherman to close his mask.

"This is the power of the Featherman who never gives up on someone in need! The former Dark Featherman, redeeming himself and everyone else he can!"

"Let me show you my bonds."

Every attack readies to go off.

FEATHER
BREAK!
Featherman Neo The explosive area-wide attack does his Featherman, fraying his armor and sending sparks flying everywhere. Gareth's armor saves his life, just barely. And it doesn't stop him from attacking back. He swoops forward in tandem with Featherman Engarde, Hibiki's piston fists driving in with the explosive power of Candy's dynamite, as Lloyd Banning's tonfas blast Hachi's song, trying to slow All Time Is Mine like it did the previous psychohazard. Smashing into the titan, over and over, as suddenly, he lifts a hand.

Muramasa's thousand blades.

They fly straight into the titan, moving to carve it up in conjunction with every other ranged attack there is.

This is followed up by Engarde's lance glowing with holy light, which moves to pierce with full power straight into the massive dark titan's chest, trying to blow a wave motion beam straight through it.

"Featherman Neo! The vermillion hero who'll be your friend!"
Candy *You big motherfucker, you.*

    The force crashes into him. With no ability to see it coming--with even his sense of sight gone, to say nothing for Type Black's--

*It makes sense.*

    Candy drops to one knee shortly after the card grenade goes off, making a sick, heaving noise as something dark and scarlet escapes his mouth. One hand clutches his stomach, desperately grasping at it as if that would make the pain stop.

    "Ghhh..."

    He stands back up, and spits contemptuously. "..." The remark he'd had ready dies, when he hears Lilian's voice.

*I thought it might be something like that. That hurts, Lilian.*

    The room is demolished. Bisected, countless times. Even with the alteration he's made to his body, getting struck with a sword of that size, with so little time to react, even once, is easily enough to lift him off his feet. That split second is a harrowing gauntlet of rapid teleportation, but it can't save him. The best he can do is avoid the mist.

    When he hits the ground, his dress shirt and vest are concerningly darkened. But the one thing that doesn't touch him--that slides right off of him like trying to hold water in the hands--is the feeling of dominance.

*Prove it?! You irritating, high-and-mighty, Irish piece of... I went through all of this to help you! Even when I wanted to scream at you! Even when I knew what you'd do if you found out! If the Paladins found out!*

    Again, Candy stands up, fist clenched.

"I'm here even though you didn't want me to be. Does that sound like a doll? I'm a bad penny, motherfucker!"

<J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "I need all the data you have, and-- Nuke it. Everything and anything you had that ever made you look real in Lilian's eyes. Anything she thinks is real. Empty all your silos or, hah, uh, this thing might be big enough to kill the sector."

    There's a dangerous, mischievous gleam in his eye, even as blood from a gash in his forehead drips over it. "EY! How's this for real? Just 'cause yours is bigger don't mean I can't use mine, too."

    Time stops.

    Candy hurls a spread of five cards. And another. And another. And another. All from different angles, blinked rapidly around All the Time in the World is Mine, all freezing inches from the point at which they're thrown. He does this, no matter the beating he receives. Even if it means he's black and blue, on the ground, by the time--

    Time resumes.
-Cecilia had told him to be careful with his aim.
-He hadn't been. But that's okay.
-Every single card is just that. A card. No spell. No explosives. The deception is that there was no deception.

     The point wasn't to destroy. It was to prove, by virtue of infuriating Lilian, that Candy is real. Fake things can be thrown away, but what is real is sometimes also that which irritates.

     "You had enough?" Asks Candy, breath ragged, sweat matting his clothes to his body, hair coming loose from his tie. "I came... ready for a pounding this time, ah?" He coughs, sputters, takes a gulping breath. "You want a knockout, you better pack a lunch."
Flamel Parsons     "AAAARGH!" Flamel screams in pain as raw trauma slams into him, blasting him away from both the cane and the sword. The Queen of Wands and the King of Swords have infused his mind with most of what he needs to know, and I4 with the rest. It's too late.

    The chamber is obliterated. The fog is thick. The mind is choked by the mental effect. He sparks and strains. Pushing himself onto one knee, he struggles just to rise. "This is bad. This is bad. The intergenerational psychohazard is-- it can't handle all the psychic energy coming from that bigger one. What on earth could max the capacity on an IG-type psychohazard double-refined out of so many deaths?" His voice wavers unsteadily. "What the fuck is that thing?!" As he reviews all the data he has, dire knowledge comes to the forefront.

    "Nuke it. Everything and anything you had that ever made you look real in Lilian's eyes. Anything she thinks is real. Empty all your silos or, hah, uh, this thing might be big enough to kill the sector."

    Flamel pushes himself onto his feet, laughing unsteadily. This is completely out of control. "Come on. Come *on*. You're so close to understanding Phony. Not yet, come on!!" He rants to his own body. And then he turns to the Atriarch. "Phony..." He swallows. His face firms up, despite the cracks showing from his body shattering. He doesn't go to the TYPE BLACK. He goes to the Atriarch. Rushing to slam one hand onto that cane. "FINE!!" He shouts, trying to slam one hand around the cane -- and then one around her hand, where it clasps the cane. "There's one person! One person who you can't goddamn deny is real, because you're using her power! But she isn't here, and she *doesn't need to be!*" He yells, to the Atriarch, to the cane, to everything in the world. "I wish she'd see that it doesn't all depend on her!! I DID WHAT I DID BECAUSE SHE NEEDS TO KNOW SHE'S NOT THE ONLY ONE THAT CAN DO THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS!!"

    It's not even the cane that does what happens next. Chunks of his head spark and detonate. The raw minerals that make up his artificial brain are gushing energy. Most of the back of his head blasts off, turning to a burning stream of shining white light. Some of his jaw comes apart, leaving only mineral, skeletal substrate. He tries to wrench the cane hard, to point at the massive knight. "PROTECT THE WORLD!" He howls. His sunglasses crack, and one lens shatters, gushing white psionic energies. In translucent psionic constructs, the launch mechanisms of silos form and begin to unlatch around the cane. And he blasts, with unimaginable force.

    It is a mental intrusion, a bunker-busting mental nuke launched straight for the Type Black. Inscribed within is a warhead of an idea, stated in spite of all the misunderstandings, all the stress, and all the inconveniences, pain, and power disparity. The thought that the warhead ignites into is this:

    "Persephone wants you to be happy."

    It's all he can do. Every ounce of his psychic power, overloading dozens of capacitors and turning his head into a swirling mass of fire, a tattered skull in sunglasses. This thing wants its chance to be happy. It's vulnerable to connections with real people. And all of this was incited by one connection. Parsons is going to make goddamn sure that it's her connection that finishes it.
Staren     As Staren gives her speech, Dark Staren continues to fray and glitch into static more and more. She can't hold onto that fear and doubt, she can't strain to be that, while trying to hope and believe and have faith at the same time...

    Staren levels her wand at All The Time In The World Is Mine, averting her eyes.

    BELIEVE BELIEVE BELIEVE I BELIEVE IN MY FRIENDS WE CAN DO THIS PLEASE PLEASE IT'LL WORK PLEASE IT'S THE ONLY WORLD WORTH LIVING IN IT HAS TO WORK

    Some kind of devastating evil-destroying beam may or may not fire, she doesn't know how this works. Part of her knows this is completely insane, but if she tries really hard to ignore it... maybe there's a path besides death and fear and Doing What Has To Be Done? Maybe? Just maybe?
Staren     Staren slumps, and exposits sadly, "She's you, but worse. She can actually do it." Dark Staren's face is hidden behind the skullplate. "Seven A M. Saturday morning. Expiration. ...She's got to be stopped." Staren takes a breath and straightens up. "We have to save her!"

    And then THINGS GET WORSE. The Starens shield their eyes with their arms from the halo's blinding brightness, and Lilian speaks. They shiver at the implications.

    And then THINGS GET WORSER. The forcefield shatters. Rents and tears in armor expose Dark Staren's now-robotic innards and Staren's bleeding, wounded flesh.

    "What if she's right?"
    "What we always feared. Something that much more powerful than us. Something no heroes can stop...

    Even Flamel says don't bother with any tricky bullshit. JUST SHOOT IT.

    That, Dark Staren can do. He stands, and missile racks pop up and fire. His magitech staff reconfigures into one shape after another, alternating between magic blasts and calling forth strength/toughness/speed-boosting fields around allies. Panels open and far more many guns than could *possibly* fit inside that body emerge on armatures, tossing a hail of metal and exotic particles Lilian's way. Just for good measure, he redlines his reactor, arms glowing and discharging lightning bolts!

    As he pours out more and more power, Dark Staren's hair under the helmet grows longer and more tentacle-y and he and the area around him starts to get more and more static-y. Staren's psyche is extremely strained...

    Staren lies on the floor bleeding. She mutters, "If she's the only real one, why can't she make our story a nice one?" She breathes, and winces in pain, pushing herself to a sitting position. "This isn't hopeless. No matter how strong it is..." she breathes, and winces again. "I believe in my friends! The reality where any of them has to be sacrificed for anyone else... I WON'T ACCEPT IT!"

    That field of lights fades in through her body as she stands up, and when it fades out she's healed, at least superficially, and her armor has been replaced by... a magical girl dress. Her coat is a poofy-shouldered crop jacket and the sea green scarf is lighter and poofier and continuously billowing. The sleeveless pink dress underneath flares out nigh-horizontally just above the knees and is extremely pleated like a tutu or something for volume. Matching pink boots have heels short enough to run in.

    Staren clutches her wand to her chest (it's a stereotypical long pink stick with a yellow star at the end and looks like a toy). "No matter how strong you are... I believe in my friends! Candy! Hibiki! Cantio! Flamel! They'll find a way!"

    She looks up. "Persephone, wherever you are... I believe in you too! I know you'll fight to save her with all of your heart! Together, we'll find a way!"

    "And Lilian..." Staren points her wand at the Atriarch, facing her. "You're a good person, not someone who needs to be destroyed! You can still do the right thing! Listen to me, and listen to yourself:"

    "If we're not real, why do you care about us so much? Why did you fight for so long, against all of this, to help us? Whatever reality you have, we must be a part of it! Your actions and thoughts up until now show that! So please, fight alongside us just a little longer... Help us help you, and when you're free of these psychohazards it will be so much easier! You can do it!"
Hibiki Tachibana     With the heavy detonation, Hibiki is thrown along with the Atriarch briefly before hitting the ground hard and rolling a meter away. The few burns that get added on to the fog-induced flesh erosion that's already hit parts of her body. Her heaving and groaning attempt to start pushing herself back up ends with her looking back up at--

    The black giant unleashed. Towering far too high overhead even on a knee, forming its mantle of shadow, casting down the awful illumination from its halo. She's still wordless and in shock at it, brain trying to catch up, when the Atriarch rises. And the voice she's so overwhelmingly familiar with blares right into her ears. Screaming and shouting and begging and pleading with them. Hearing that, there's a deep knot in her chest that gets jarred a little looser, her eyes widening the instant before the room is rent apart in the span of an instant.

    Hibiki momentarily disappears amid fog, flame, and searing gashes torn through the environment--and then she's bursting out of it at full blast with wild eyes, bloodied and scorched and worn away at with her gift of regeneration doing everything it can to push back against it. But even if it wasn't, she'd still be launching herself straight towards the Type Black's head.

Where her fist is thrown forward to crash full force into it. "I'm /never/ going to let you do anything but think I'm real! The hate that you and me felt back then was real, wasn't it!?"
She punches again. "Whatever you thought of me before then, that was real too, WASN'T IT!?"
Punch. "Everything with Shirou--if I wasn't real, do you think I'd still be here right now!?"
Punch. "What about Xion!? Strawberry!? Tamamo!? PERSEPHONE!?"

    She doesn't care if she's beating right into corrosive fog. Her hands are the thing that let her reach out and connect with other people, and each blow is almost more emotional weight than physical.

    "I'm not going to let you think my feelings or anybody else's feelings aren't real! Who the hell says I can't go where you are!? I'm RIGHT HERE, with everyone else, and I'm not going to let you tell me OTHERWISE!"

    Machinery shifts and enlarges, turbines whirl, and Hibiki throws both hands forward to pummel into its visor. Thrusters and boosters all ignite at once at maximum burn to force her forward, all for the purpose of making the giant give up even the tiniest bit of ground and acknowledge it--

    Before both gauntlets pound inwards to release every last bit of strength and emotion she can dredge up to resonate through its entire body, a storm of force, heat, warmth, and every last punch she was saving for Lilian's own face.
Persephone Kore      The twin sparks from earlier, having lain dormant and silent for so long, flit back to life in response to Flamel's plea. They swoosh downwards and swirl themselves into almost-human form, flitting rapidly enough that their luminescent trails trace a human body in cursive. Even if it's featureless, the shape and body language make its identity unmistakeable.

     It speaks in a stellar hum, the music of the spheres, words-that-aren't-quite-words; the singing of a wineglass, the crackle of a radio, a voice like smoke and honey.

     I'm sorry, Lilian. You opened your heart to me, and I put you in this bind.

     You're trying to kill me because you think I'm real enough to hurt you, like he hurt you before. You're losing control of yourself because you think nobody else is real at all. I want *neither* of those things to be true. I want to be real enough to keep you company, and kind enough that I could never hurt anybody.

     But they can't *both* be. Please, Lilian. You have to let go of one. Selfishly, I want to go back to being seen as a harmless doll; at least that way we could be friends, even if this black mist still eats you up. Selflessly, I want to be seen as real; even if you have to hate me for it, I could be your lodestar, and you could stop living in a world made only of paper and dolls.

     The Atriarch, or Time is Mine. You have to choose. Please choose the one that lets you be happy.

     You said you cared about me once, when we sat on that bench together and looked out at the stars. Was it really only two months ago? I could never know for sure, but I think you meant it. Ahaha, I really meant it too.

     And I still do mean it. Even after all this, I really do want to see you happy. He's right. I made it hard for you to be good by mistake; I want to make it easy again. I want to make up again, and make out again, and talk about feelings and fight with silly plastic toys instead of trying to kill each other. I can't, really, hold anything else in my heart. I can't wish anything else with enough sincerity to make it real.

     You want 'Lilian Rook' to be happy, too, don't you? We both want the same thing. And we get whatever we want. As long as that's true- as long as you reach out for what make you happy- I know it'll all be okay.
Flamel Parsons     That exposed skull...

    Is Flamel Parsons grinning? Or is it just the jaw on his endoskeleton, clenched in place? Would he grin with hope, or something else? All that one can know is, Persephone's manifestation here is something he wanted. Something to let her see what comes next. She doesn't need to boost his psionics, or attack, or anything like that.

    All he needs is for her to see. No, that definitely is a grin.
Lilian Rook     Featherman, Staren, Hibiki, all smashing into the giant with all the force they can muster, and then force even further beyond, stop the titan psychohazard in its tracks. The complete outpouring of energy palpably feels as if it's steadily grinding through a health bar. Maybe it's just one of several, and that in of itself is terrifying, but that's what has to happen. Candy inflaming its aggression draws down hell upon himself instead of the others, but I4 throws himself on one of the sealing swords, and revives the chains with at least enough energy to run on fumes for a little while longer, lashing out and catching the giant's limbs, reeling it back and reducing its freedom of movement by a few more degrees and a few more meters short.

    The Atriarch itself is far more fragile. It is the weak link. The attacks aimed its way, and even the collateral damage, blow it down and back, fracture its form and break away tiny chunks with the same effect as Persephone, radiating outwards from the horrible psychological symbol it refuses to let go of. While its form cracks and breaks down, bit by bit, a hundred other permutations of Lilian's voice leak out like high-pressure steam. The horrible, horrible words that Lilian has never once actually said, but always had the potential to, are drowned out by a cacophony of too many others to make out.

    Flamel hurls himself on it like a live grenade, and invokes that gentle presence himself. The invocation of names around him causes the fully sealed swords to flare brighter, pulling the two Pyschohazards apart, leaving the Atriarch more vulnerable and All The Time Is Mine less able to reach out and harm him, pushed back by the combined onslaught aimed at its center. There's one terrible, frightening moment where nothing at all happens, and then, the weaker of the two links gives. The cane explodes into a thousand little splintering fragments, exactly as it had on the day that Lilian herself destroyed it, and with it, the unthinkable future where those words come true is narrowly averted.

    The detonation of the cane under the combined psychic pressure is enough to destabilize everything around it. The Lilian-shaped hole in the universe grows unbalanced, breaks, and implodes, turning into the mirror and counterpart of the Persephone-shape at the start; one that pulls people in, and one that tears people out. And in the ensuing chaos--

    A gentle shade of deep purple light, twinkling like the night sky in her maid's dress, moves between Elites. Skirts in her hands, she hurries across the floor towards the Prime Psychohazard, but just the feeling of her hand, a touch, a whisper, a reassuring look, here and there as she goes, rebuffs so much of its harm, as if by saying 'it's not all that bad', it would be retrocausally true. Black fog turns to lavender mist where she passes, soothing pain and exhaustion, and stabilizing reserves of mental energy.
Lilian Rook     All The Time In The World Is Mine ceases attacking. It makes perfect sense now. Unlike the trauma-based Atriarch, the entity is so perfectly and completely unique that it cannot propagate. Its mere presence is passively erosive and de-realizing, but its very nature precludes responding to psychic intruders as threats without the Atriarch's directions and without direct attack. Where Cecilia hurries over, as if rushing to pick up a broken plate before a small child panics and cries and attempts to do it herself, the giant visibly begins to power down, at least for now, at her touch.

    The last words before everyine is pulled out through the breach and back into reality are, of all people, seemingly directly at Persephone's own phantom.

    "A lot of things went wrong. And a lot of hurt happened. But you were trying your best. So don't stop reaching just because it wasn't perfect this time. Don't ever stop because of one mistake. Especially not with that girl, who is always backing herself into corners rather than admit she wanted something different. But all secrets that you tell even one other person come out eventually. Please, get the rest through to Lilian herself. I know she wants to believe it. And don't please don't die. I have things under control here. I always did before."
"Fight bravely, everyone. And think about what it means to fight with someone's heart in mind."