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Persephone Kore	For a brief and terrifying instant the stars are parallel streaks around Flamel. He cannot see the Earth, because everything behind him is redshifted into colors the human eye sees as black. He cannot see the Moon, because everything ahead of him is blueshifted into hard radiation visible as a rain of actinic pinpricks.      He strikes at full velocity. Impossibly, this does not kill him. The Moon is no stranger to craters. What's a little more lava, a little more molten glass?      That concave hellscape has only just begun to cool when Persephone and Lilian arrive. The Queen in Veils decelerates rather than making a hard impact. Its feet touch down gently, not jarring Lilian from her perch in its palm. It has a bubble of air, and its terraforming aura creates a stormy rocky shore that seethes with knee-deep water around it. The combination of these two create fire and steam at the leading edge of its aura, drifting up to shroud its figure in wispy clouds of fog and smoke.      Its glowing eyes pierce through.      "YOU DID THIS ON PURPOSE," she says in a voice that's audible even in hard vacuum. It rattles in one's bones. It is difficult to ascribe an emotion to besides 'searing'. "SHE COULD HAVE DIED. EVERYONE COULD HAVE DIED."      "I TRY VERY HARD NOT TO HATE ANYONE." The logical conclusion to that is left unspoken. The Queen takes another step forward, and another, quenching the burning crater as its aura approaches. Its plastic legs melt, then heal, then melt again.      A little quieter, but not much: "I liked this ending. But now I realize we could've had something better. Something with more tears or makeup, and less blood or guilt. If not for you."
Flamel Parsons	Flamel moves at unbelievable speed. Skin pulls around his stone skull, cheeks tugged back by the force. He looks in wonder around at the raw FTL experience. His mind is filled with fear. But for a moment, the beautiful display almost provokes him to a state of curiosity. Almost.     He slams into the lunar surface with a sound like a rock dropped into a dust pile, multiplied by a million. When he surfaces in the lava, he puts his arms around a chunk of drifting rock, pulling himself out of the cooling surface. Somehow, he's not dead. Somehow, his sunglasses survived, cracked as they are. He adjusts them first, then climbs onto the stone, panting heavily. Atmosphere? He'll take it.     "I really," He says, in that nervous-cheerful way, kneeling and getting his bearings on the drifting rock. Convection be damned. "Really, feel like maybe you're spoiling the meal by looking in the kitchen. The making of the sausage is a pretty messy process! And-- well, I mean, be fair to me here!" That bit comes out much more fearful. "I thought this all had its roots in the Atriarch. And, that was more manageable! Didn't really think it would..." He winces. "Haha, you know, make all *that* happen! Not some parts of it. So, really, I think the data-search was warranted, in a way."     "Perfect is the enemy of good, you know. It's not good for mental health to focus on making these things get done *exactly* right." He tries to nervously ramble, as he gets to his feet.
Lilian Rook	This is Lilian's second trip to the moon at the behest of Persephone. Even though she knows this is another Luna, that came along with another Terra, she still can't help but feel as if she must have seen this exact spot before. She wants to look for the other crater, even though she knows she won't find it. That even if she did, it'd be subsumed completely into this one. That Persephone had felt completely different ways about that man and this one, just like she did in a different way.     'She could have died.'     §That's your first thought about all of this? Really? Phony . . . you really are just impossible.§     "Oh politely shut the fuck up, Persons" Lilian blips out of the Queen in Veils' hand. Flamel doesn't get to see how furious she is. Not like that. He has to imagine it; which is arguably worse. "To be fair to you? Why should I? When were you fair to me?" She's behind him now, directly across from Persephone at the edge of the slowly encroaching storm-water, looking in. She floats a few inches above the seething waves as the steam rolls past her.     "What was all that you told me when you were a severed head on the ground? Were you just having a laugh? Were you having fun, Parsons? Did you enjoy your little educational field trip? How's the paper coming? You must have gotten a lot of good data from-- Well I suppose it wasn't really trying to protect Phony at all, was it? So what should we call it? Perhaps an experiment."     "You know, Parsons, it's really, really not often that someone is able to lie to me like that. I fell for it completely too! I really thought you had this whole master plan worked out to get me. And I walked right into letting you turn me inside out for everyone else to gawk at --they still try to tell me about it like I was there, by the way! As far as spies and secret agencies go, you're definitely in the top class of manipulator!"
Flamel Parsons	Flamel turns to Lilian, still trying to get his bearings. Oh, cut off on every angle. He flickers slightly, a fear reaction accidentally activating second-nature invisibility. But he doesn't vanish, or at least not yet. It would be unbelievably rude. "Oh, I didn't lie. I do think you're a good person, and nothing I did was subsidized with the rationalization that I was doing it to evil people. You and Persephone both, I think, have a very significant innate goodness! One I *was* willing to die for, though, hah, uh. Wasn't. Aiming for that, I mean!"     His smile is unsteady. "I didn't do what I did as a moral judgment. I needed to know what was going on in your mind, and it needed to be addressed before... Well. Before things heated up too much. Before it put a lot more at risk! Even just the Atriarch was an unconscionable risk. It's nice to know what happens during an astral eversion, sure, but it's a lot better to know what happened in *your* astral eversion."     The smile gets all the more uneasy. "Though, you're in a much better mental place now, and, uh. I suppose it's only healthy to take it personally, haha..." His voice practically breaks as he tries to keep the upbeat, optimistic positivity. "It must seem kind of manipulative!"
Persephone Kore	Lilian, for just a moment, injects a bit of wry levity. They made me to be impossible, she thinks back, and it was a terrible success.      The Queen in Veils walks forward, its seething water turning the lava into obsidian inch by inch before it's overwritten by more rocky shoreline. Its steps pause, for just a moment, as Flamel's words sink in. Even now, she can't be quite unreasonable enough to shut herself off to conversation.      Uncertainty. Doubt. Guilt. Uncertainty again. But he can see the moment when she clicks back to determination, and it's followed by another rattling footstep forward. He is now inside the aura, standing on jagged rocks, knee-deep in cold water and surrounded by thin fog.      "You're still smiling. That means you don't get it. I don't want you to smile." Her morality is simple, clean, and almost childlike. That makes it easy for her to see the best in complicated people with complicated circumstances. But it makes it easy for her to judge them lacking, sometimes, too. "Your 'eversion' didn't help her at all. Lilian got better despite the mess you made, not because of it. Don't paint it like you made things better! That was the *reason* everything went so wrong, and we almost didn't make it right again!!"      The Queen in Veils' hands curl into fists. They clench hard enough for the plastic to crack. It sounds like a glacier breaking in half. "YOU KNEW YOU WERE DOING SOMETHING WRONG! That's why you kept it a secret! But you still won't say sorry. You're smiling and rationalizing, like we're on the same side. Like there's not even anything to forgive."
Flamel Parsons	Parsons' smile does falter a little. Persephone gets what she wants, in the end, but usually there needs to be a path solved to it. And for once, the universe isn't the one to do it. It'll take a little while. "Maybe. Maybe it could have gone better. It could have gone worse, too! In the end, it's a lot healthier to accept the good things, however they get to you." The bared fists get a flinch from Parsons. He plants two fingers on his temples, a fearful, defensive gesture. He gets the impression this is going to go to violence before it's done.     "I think if I'd told you the plan when I came up with it, you'd have pushed yourself to be the one to perfect it. I think you would have forced yourself to go through a lot of pain to make sure it didn't take any risks you were uncomfortable with. This wasn't a time you could sit back and watch the little people show off their methods, you know? It was messy and personal, and you would have bled yourself pretty dry to fix it. Strained to fuel some astral engine to inject us straight into Rook, maybe, or suffered through your past to learn how to refine your influence aura. But you wouldn't have just let me solve it!"     "You can't have it both ways, you know? Haha..." His laugh is nervous, again. "It's perfect solutions, all paid by you, or it's imperfect solutions, our treat. But until Sapient Heuristics figures out how to bottle the lightning again, it's gotta be one or the other."
Lilian Rook	Lilian twitches just faintly when Flamel's level of visibility flickers. Like she'd almost pounced. There's no doubt about the fact that she already knows what he can do now, after it gave her such much trouble before, and so it seems probable she is ready and waiting to do that the very instant he tries to make a getaway. She won't take her eyes off of him. It doesn't matter if he hides if she won't let him move; the area of uncertainty that way is very small.     "So you really believed I was 'a good person', and you went and did that anyways? What exactly does heating up mean to you? You got to find out the answers to your nasty little questions --and then ten times that much by the sounds of it-- and then what? What did you expect to happen?" Flamel raises his fingers. Lilian begins floating forward, closing in from behind in slightly faster measure than the Queen in Veils from the front. The fact that it doesn't make any noise to do so has an intimidation factor of its own.     "Because it seemed to me that it was already far too late to do anything about it by that point, and everything only worked out the way it did because nearly ten people chose to react in a way they shouldn't have. So what was your plan? Hmm? After you gathered up all those people, after you'd lied to me so that I'd put them all in danger, after you got Persephone hurt on purpose, how were you going to deal with it?"     "What the fuck were you going to do if that first shot ended it?!"     'It's perfect solutions, all paid by you, or it's imperfect solutions, our treat.'     Lilian reaches Flamel first. She has the loosely formed threat of a sleeper hold on him faster than thought, barely held back far enough to let him still look and talk. "Don't say that again. Don't make it about her having to be perfect. Don't blame it on her for wanting to be something. The only thing worse than having to be perfect is someone deciding that you're not allowed to be anymore."
Flamel Parsons	Flamel regards the arms near his neck like knives. With Lilian's abilities, they might as well be. "Alright. Alright. No lies, no omissions. I'll tell you what I wanted to happen."     "The Winter Slayer's mind probably wouldn't tell us everything we needed to know about how to help you. But she could force the issue. She was a vulnerability you couldn't extract when you broke off. You had to come to this with all your force and vulnerability, and you had to stay and endure that. Like sterilizing a wound, you have to make sure there's no flinching, even when the collateral damage starts, if you want to have health."     "Persephone is an immovable object. A single point where I knew for... well, for *sure*, that your unstoppable force wouldn't power through. You'd have to stop, at least for a moment, and she'd have to move. And, you know, I'll be honest, I didn't actually expect a full Eversion! I mean, it was a theory, something that could happen in the most amazing circumstances... but what I figured would happen was you and Phony would do what you did."     A small psychic hand reaches up to carefully push his sunglasses up his nose. "I figured you'd lock blades, so to speak. And then, I could find some way to go after the high-class IG psychohazard. The biggest and most dangerous I'd ever seen, inside of someone who is, really, fundamentally good. And you did lock blades -- just, I never expected an even larger psychohazard to be there, ready to spill the astral plane out of a hole in Phony's head."     "It needed dealing with. I fight psychohazards that put the world in danger, and try to cure people of their effects. I won't not do my job. I know you weren't about to just let me in, you know! Not after how much you rejected Phony." He dry-swallows. "And I can't blame you! I suppose there were a lot of risks there. And you wouldn't have been unjustified if you rejected it! I mean, I might be... haha, deceptive or manipulative. Right?"
Persephone Kore	Lilian's words strike Persephone, perhaps, harder than they struck Flamel. Being 'seen' so succinctly, so sharply, takes all of her momentum away. You understand. I really shouldn't be surprised. ... But it's so strange, to hear that from someone else. Anyone else at all.      The Queen in Veils slackens, just a little. The next words from Persephone lose that 'big' quality that the Queen imparts to them entirely. They are cold instead of scorching.      "I couldn't have it both ways. But you never even asked me which way I wanted it."      It holds out its cracked hand to the side. Regolith and smoke accrete into the shape of a mecha-sized blade, are crushed and ignited, and become glittering diamond. In the unmediated starlight that bathes the moon, the crystal glints with colder colors than it would in atmosphere.      "Having it 'on you', as if fighting her like that didn't gut me completely. As if it were easy and free. As if being hurt by, and hurting, someone I love were the *easy* way. Not everyone can have a heart made of stone."      The blade is raised, as if to fence. She does not make an immediately aggressive move, but seems to be waiting for him to strike first.      "I've carried everything, for everyone, forever. But now's the time I had to be spared, right? This moment, this once, you had to take 'being perfect' away from me, right?! You've never lifted a hand to lighten my burden before, but as soon as soon as you could get some data with some exciting zeroes at the end, it had to be taken over my head??"      "Don't squirm and justify. It's so gross. I want you to say you're sorry, and mean it. But you'd better not actually be sorry, because if you did something that awful and didn't really believe it was good, I'd never forgive you either!! Fight me about it! Believe in it, be my enemy, and let me beat it out of you until I can stand you again!!"      "Because if you want to take the world from my shoulders, I'll crush you with the weight."
Lilian Rook	"'Lock blades'?" hisses Lilian by Flamel's ear. "That's how it seemed to you? Like a cat fight? A breakup? You decided that she would be fine, and that I would 'vulnerable', and so the risk was acceptable for the both of us?" Her voice takes on a weird tone of rising, subtle offense. "You thought you knew better that me. That whatever I did, you could outdo it. That it couldn't ever get 'that bad'. And you panicked. And eight people covered your ass. And a miracle happened. And that's the means justified, right?"     Lilian sighs deeply. Both warmth and venom leave her voice almost entirely. "You're so stupid it beggars the imagination. Thank god. And here I thought you knew what would happen and still felt good about gambling with those stakes." A pause.     "I'm not going to pretend that everything that happened was your fault. I'm not going to say that you 'made me' do it all. I was awful. And I was prepared to do worse. But I really can't stand being underestimated like that. I can't stand it when people think they can outsmart me. I can't deal with being used by adults who say they care but then turn around and say they're doing their jobs. And I really can't deal with the fact that you'd feed Phony into that fire either. I'm so very, very, very tired of having choices made for me about who and what I am Parsons."     Lilian's arms suddenly tighten, but they shift at the same time, grasping Flamel around the waist and throwing him over her shoulder into the Queen in Veils. "If you get to take my choices away, then I'll start taking yours until we're even!"
Flamel Parsons	Persephone's challenge, of both his combat and his rationale, adds a look of exhaustion to the smile. "Phony, I fight psychohazards and gather data. Yes, this one time when I could fight psychohazards and gather data was the time I chose to act, and not the other times, times when it was things I don't do. And it was the best plan that came to mind."     "You're asking a tall order there. If I'm going to apologize for what I believed it, I guess that means you're going to make me regret it... haha, ahh, that's going to be painful, isn't it? Mmm."     Parsons grunts slightly, jostling in Lilian's arms, but resumes that constantly-positive tone. "Oh, no, this wasn't below me in any way. This was a global crisis waiting to happen. Someone like you, powers like that, and a psychohazard like that, constrained by almost nothing but codes? If it didn't get addressed, well... it had a risk of ending the world. When the codes started breaking down, important people started dying. That wasn't something you missed out on, that was something you saw, right?"     He heaves a bit of a sigh, as much room as he's given. "Whether I was smart or not isn't something to feel good about. The only thing to feel good about is how it turned out. And I think we can agree it turned out in a way that ended with a lot of mental health. Just, haha, maybe too much for my humble blood right now! There's nothing more powerful than vulnerability, I guess you really get that now too. Now that there's nothing more to hide..."     "I guess you're wanting me to regret it too, huh?" He sighs. "I really wish you two would bite the bullet and solve this the way us psychics are supposed to."     She throws him. Hands rush out to snatch the blade, translucent and telekinetic. Already a barrier is forming on the opposite side, bristling with openings for psi-blasts. One palm, open to Persephone. The other, Lilian. He hopes it's enough to distract the two from his real strategy.     CRACK!     The sound of something breaking. What does a spy do when he's in the most dire danger? What does he do when he has no other options? When overwhelming force has him closed in? He bites down on the fake tooth. A tooth that doesn't hide a cyanide capsule, but a very, very tiny hand-crafted electronic window. Persephone feels a familiar force, like she felt in their first meeting. And Lilian feels an unfamiliar one, though it's similar to the Eversion event. Astral intake. He's going to try to yank their minds deep into his own, to bury them in some incredibly dangerous segment of his mind and barrage them from there. This is stronger than what Persephone felt before, a dozen, a hundred, maybe a thousand times more intense because of the physical equipment being used.     If it comes to it, they'll both find themselves drawn astrally into his mind, and entering it by slamming their way out of next-door heavy containment cells, scattering foot-thick steel blast doors. He's trying to bury them in the PARSONS ANOMALOUS CONTAINMENT INSTITUTE, around the sector labeled "HEAVY CONTAINMENT - ACTIVE SUPPRESSION". And should this be successful...     The area is all made up in thick, brushed steel, and the hallways already visibly twist in mind-bending ways. Some are irrationally tall, while others are weirdly squat. Weird sciency-looking instruments protrude from walls and ceilings at strange angles. Strange emergency equipment is available every few dozen steps -- "BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF ALIEN MIND CONTROL", for example, or "PULL LEVER IN EVENT OF HOLLOW EARTH UPRISING" -- and none of it is ever the same no matter how far one walks.     Heavy interior gun turrets are instantly opening fire. Rows of identical men in heavy tactical armor are lining up with M4 rifles and blasting wildly, and grenade launchers at the back trying to clean the area with incendiary payloads.
Persephone Kore	Persephone, improbably, remains anchored in realspace for just a moment longer. The Queen's massive diamond blade is angled to strike Flamel like she's a kid playing teeball. Physics shimmer with uncertain intent, a gut-dropping instability; it feels like she really might be about to swing and put him clean through the Sun.      "Ghhhh. This is really the only way you're going to let me fight you? You really are awful. I can't crush you in a way you're not putting up any resistance, you know. Then it's just bullying and not a fight."      A soft exhalation. "Fine. Let's go."
Persephone Kore	Her door explodes outwards in the same heartbeat that she enters. Fragments of metal, none larger than a finger, embed and sizzle in the opposite wall. She steps out of the cell with uncharacteristically harsh footsteps, the sharp clack of heels on cold concrete.      The psychic constructs light her up. The first handful of bullets catch her by surprise, passing clean through her body and spilling red that is not blood. The ensuing rain halts an inch above her skin as she decides I'm not in the mood for this, each bullet counter-struck with exactly the force needed to stop it dead.      "Are you okay, Lilian? You're here too, aren't you?"      She takes a moment to feel out the soldiers' tidal impressions. They're more like cells than individuals, aren't they? They're projections, with no real identity or substance or story. Softly, more to herself than them: "Oh. You really aren't people at all. Good."      Instantly each one she can perceive, with her eyes or with the sight of her heart, is individually sledgehammered from the left and right by twin unstoppable forces: the telekinetic equivalent of two tectonic plates serving as hammer and anvil. The end result is where each soldier used to stand, a nearly infinitely-thin crimson line that stretches from floor to ceiling.      If one steps to the side to view them from an angle, one can see that each crimson line is actually a two-dimensional, vertical splatter that was formerly being viewed on its edge. Every one of them has been crushed down to a micron thick.      Persephone turns to look back over her shoulder, looking distinctly put-off. The turrets still fire at her ineffectually. "I can't say I'm happy to find out what that looks like. The last time I was in here, I just tore it apart, but that didn't do much to make him regret it. What do you think we should do?"
Lilian Rook	"Maybe I'd believe you if you had any contingencies in place. If there were a private army and psychic doomsday containment device, not 'whoever was curious' and a recording setup." Lilian snaps back to Flamel.     "You keep telling me that you had a real plan, that you're a professional, that you approached it with all due respect, but what I keep hearing is that you thought you could do something that was completely absurd and impossibly dangerous, not tell anyone, and walk away from it."     The little thoughtful pause is almost as bad as the talking. "Well, whether you thought it wasn't as big of a deal as it was, or whether you had far too high an opinion of yourself, thinking you could get away with it, I suppose it doesn't really matter. You were in way over your head from the start. The only thing you were right about is that I really had thought about how I'd end the world back then."     "But yes, I'm feeling a little manipulated. And I feel like some terrible things happened because you decided you got to make that call for everyone else. And it would go a long ways if you could even regret it a little bit. Not for the outcome, not for the ideals, but because it was a shitty thing to do and Phony got hurt. Shouldn't that be enough of a reason for regret?"     Flamel gets the yeet. Lilian didn't even show up to the mission meaningfully armed, so it's just the wand that's flicked out like a butterfly knife, aimed at him in the air. A flywheel whine builds up behind the glow gathering at the point. "What fucking psychohazard are you babbling about? I've heard your theory about my family now, but you're talking about it separately. What could--"     Lilian thinks back to London. That moment where the colour drains from her face, and leaves her metaphorical finger slack on the trigger, is where Flamel's last ditch gambit gets her.     -------------     The held wand charge is abruptly used to slice the doors free of her cell a few moments later. Black-gold ink-slash beams intersect multiple layers of blast metal and bifurcate into shearing opposite planes, leaving behind melted surfaces with the texture of visual static. Lilian holsters it again at her thigh as she boots the last stubborn chunk out of its frame, looking around until she fixes the direction of Persephone's voice.     "Yeah. I'm here too. Otherwise you wouldn't be, I think." Lilian jogs a little bit to catch up, no longer floating, and then stops abruptly to shield herself from the sudden spray of bullets, producing Night Mist (crackling as it does in these sorts of spaces) from its place at her throat, and slicing a couple of rifle grenades out of the air, angling past their impact reactive fuzes to avoid setting them off. "He planned for this better than he planned for anything back then. God I'm pissed off." Lilian picks the sidearm up off of her opposite thigh, thumbing the charge release. "Stay close to me so . . ."     Lilian chooses not to finish of her own volition. Instead, she's just left staring with a mildly queasy and dumbstruck look on her face when Persephone smashes the 'guards' into an infinitesimally thin pulp. "That's . . . That's all it takes? I mean-- I know they're not human too. The Censors weren't either. But I don't think I could have . . ."     "Wait, he's done this to you before?"
Flamel Parsons	The guards are smushed. Crunched into a monomolecular set of card, or at least the mental equivalent. All of them at once. Over the PA system of the facility, Parsons grunts with some pain. "Ghhh-- that hurts!" Taking a deep breath to steady himself. "Yeah. The psychohazard. Not the Atriarch..." A door near the two blares red, and the hallway goes dark. The door is between them and the exit for this area of HEAVY CONTAINMENT, Parsons is still trying to cut them off with their leisurely pace.     "The Atriarch *was* a global risk, though." Several alarms sound as the door labeled "ACI-794" releases its safeties... and then is wrenched open. Parsons' memories of the Atriarch form a twisted, distorted view of her. The black cocktail dress is a little ripped, the heels look razor sharp, and her hair's a little more messy. She wrenches herself free of several of the chains that attached her to her cell, and tears her way towards Persephone.     Her wordless "words" are speech without meaning. She brandishes her cane and leaps -- not for Lilian, but for Persephone, swinging it with enough striking force that it could send the plastic toymech back towards its cell -- assuming Persephone and Lilian don't intervene. She's got rushing, violent, imperious movements, and rants in incomprehensible unlanguage as she leaps and swings that cane, focused almost entirely on Persephone and willing to exploit her own light resemblance to Lilian to throw off her own potential pulping, and letting the turrets focus on Lilian to distract her from helping Phony.     "When we got there, it was willing to try to work with a foreign mental influence that was... I can't describe it. The Atriarch had a capacity we only write about in theory. All the deaths of your family members had been so refined and perfected, it almost had enough mental capacity for an entire independent mindset. And even *her* capacity got overloaded by *that thing*..."
Persephone Kore	"That's all it takes?" Persephone grimaces a little and turns her face away, queasiness bubbling up to the surface from the pit of her stomach. "The Censors back then had a story," she mumbles. "I couldn't hurt them for the same reason I couldn't break Night Mist, you know? If something's important, if it has a story that might matter to someone, of course I can't wish it was gone. These are... like cells. Flamel doesn't even think about them."      A second passes as she looks back at the forest of crimson lines. Her eyes flick away. I wish I didn't have to look at that, and it disappears into fine ash. "Ugh. I feel gross about it already, though. Even though I shouldn't. If they just looked like robots or blobs it wouldn't feel this way."      The change of topic perks her up a little more. "Yeah! Back in the Shrine, actually. My very first time getting in a fight," she says brightly. She starts walking down the hallway in no particular direction, expecting Lilian to follow. "I really didn't know anything back then! Haha, and I kind of still don't. I wanted him to teach me about it, but I've never been a good student."      She's interrupted by the Atriarch, of course. Phony isn't in her mech at the moment- does that mean she's taking this more seriously, or less?- so Lilian gets to see the surprise and incomprehension on her face as the psychic construct lunges for her. "Lili-?!"      The blow from its cane knocks her back into the wall. Spiderwebbing cracks spread out from her body, but they're on her body too; her childish reimagined anatomy fractures under pressure instead of bruising. I want- but her wish falters. She's never seen the Atriarch before; unprepared for the resemblance, she can't bring herself to hurt something that looks like Lilian. Instead, a gentler force pushes the Atriarch back to prevent a follow-up blow, and the turrets are telekinetically crushed after their first salvo.
Lilian Rook	"I . . . know that consciously." Lilian replies to Persephone. Then she suddenly hugs her sword against her body a little at the comment. The tension passes, and a short, bitter, awkward laugh follows. "No, that was a stupid question. I don't really feel that way about stories, so I don't mind breaking things at all. Actually, I really love it when a bad story ends well, or when a happy story has a sad chapter. But even knowing what these are, I don't think I could 'kill' them. They still . . . How do I put this?"     "It feels like . . . working up courage. Like training for the real thing. And I want to stay as far away as that as possible. It's not too hard to not kill someone, even if they're really terrible, even if they deserve it, if you've never done it before. But once you can think 'it'll be fine', 'it's just like that time I killed something that wasn't quite human', it's . . . probably not so easy. I think."     "That isn't your problem at all. I'm sorry for bringing it up out of turn like that. It was just a tiny bit shocking to see someone else's line for myself."     Lilian rolls her eyes in disgust at the intercom. "Of course he can hear us. And still talk, too. Why did I assume it'd be any different." She holds her hand up to her mouth and raises her voice. "Oh it hurts does it?! Good! Then I'll have to get in on it too! If you can't be sorry because you did something shitty, I'll make you sorry for getting caught!"     Lilian's reaction to 'ACI-794' is, compared to Persephone, bizarrely underestated. Actually, even not compared to her. Lilian recoils less than even a very ordinary person should, only hardening up her expression and her stance with unease at the furious gibberish and visible aggression. "What the hell is this thing supposed to be? Are you taking the piss? It's creepy. Put it back." She glances sideways to Persephone. She hears the first half of her own name, and her eyes widen in something like betrayed, mortified revulsion.     She hadn't automatically recognized her own likeness until Persephone called attention to it.     The turrets explode, but Lilian probably would have charged in regardless of whether they were still shooting at this point. Night Mist flashes red and all but arcs itself through the cane, targeted acquired and destroyed with extreme prejudice when thirteen other ghostly shadows of the same slash hit the rest of it. She tackles the Atriarch sample (copy? impression?) in the same motion, slams the sword through one of its arms to pin it, raises a shaking fist, and then begins striking it over and over and over again.     Lilian raises her voice a little higher each time she swings, exhaling harder, louder, with each blow, not stopping until Persephone herself pries her off, and even then hysterically struggling to get in a few more hits, as if every little bit of damage would ease an unbearable burden. "Stop talking about that thing like a person! It's not! I was never going to be like that! I was never what they thought I was! Stop talking about my family like it's all past tense! It'll get better! There's still time! I still have time! I have all the time in the world, Parsons!"
Persephone Kore	A MOMENT EARLIER: "A line," Phony repeats absentmindedly, as if the concept were novel to her. "A standard you set for yourself when you're calm, and promise not to cross when you're angry or in a bad situation. Right? It's a good idea. But I don't think I could use something like that. If I want something, it happens. If something should never happen, I have to teach myself not to want it."      Smiling: "Haha, don't be sorry for bringing it up, though. It's really interesting!! I think it might also matter that seeing hearts and feeling stories came to me so early, maybe? Every human has that. So seeing someone without it is like..." She pauses, glancing back at Lilian's face with a thoughtful little frown. "Either uncanny and incomplete, or scary-beautiful. Depending."      NOW: Even Persephone needs just a moment to breathe and collect herself after being rushed down like that, but Lilian's hysterical raving and savage beatdown of the Atriarch makes it hard not to hold her breath even so. Only a good few seconds after it stops moving does Persephone pull herself free of the wall, choose not to be hurt, and hurriedly walk over to put her arms around Lilian's waist.      She pulls her friend away gently, but with Phony, "gently" is always enough.      "It's nothing," she says softly. Lilian can't see it, but her face is scrunched slightly like she might be about to cry. "It's gone. Please. The idea of an idea. It isn't real. It was never real. He's just trying to hurt you." Her face rests on Lilian's shoulder. Her arms punctuate the moment with a little hug. Phony breathes in again, holds it for exactly five seconds, and lets it out as her arms loosen.      "You were never that person. And you never will be. You get to choose who you are now. Like me, right? And you've chosen something braver, and happier, than that. Thank you, Lilian."      She reaches down to squeeze Lilian's hand, locks eyes, and smiles: the smile is strained, the warmth is not. "But we're still going to beat him extra hard for pulling something that awful when all this is over, right?"      It'll probably take her a while to get moving again, but eventually, get moving she does.
Flamel Parsons	Slam, slam, slam, slam. The head of ACI-794 is pulped about as brutally as the guards before, but with much more effort, and perhaps more meaning. "It's my job to be empathetic to your pain. To have your back while you fight that. It's also my job to make sure you *do* fight that. Persephone doesn't like that I lied. You have all the time in the world, but we don't. You needed to face it down before it was too late, not for *you*, but for *everyone else.*" 794 is grabbing at Lilian's face, trying to stab her with the shattered chunk of cane, trying to get her hands around her neck, but soon, the head's a mash where psychic coherence used to be. Cyan synaptic patterns lay splattered along Rook's fists and the floor beneath her.     Parsons' voice sputters as the PA distorts with his pain. He sounds like he's still mustering a bit of coherent chatter, but it's growing more intense. "There's always something wrong with what forces you to confront these things. It's never anything good, because if something *good* forced you to confront something like this, a psychohazard would never let you touch it. That's why I had to do what I did. If I came to you, out of the blue, telling you about how you could feel after you confronted this, you wouldn't care, you wouldn't engage. There *has* to be a rock bottom before you can *stop falling*."     "This thing was lethal enough I had to make sure it happened a whole sector away when it did, and make sure it happened under controlled circumstances. Maybe I was biased because I wanted data! Maybe I wanted to see what the inside of a mind looks like for the most human humans. I'm a rock that got tricked into thinking! We do our best with what we have. I tried my best to give you something you can do your best with. Was it too much to ask, to point a psychometer when it happened?"     Persephone's path has taken them much of the way out of Heavy Containment, but near the central elevator that'll get them out lies one more massive blast door. As it pops open, the red lighting in the darkness displays its name: "ACI-004". Two massive floating hands wrench the door open nearly instantly. The other two lash out for Persephone. The titanic body of All The Time In The World -- or a twisted facsimile of it, far more jagged, far more rusty, far more hunched -- begins to wrench its way through the too-small door. It's trying to grab Persephone and pull her apart. No. Open?     "You turned out to be host to something even bigger. Even worse. Somehow, you've got something in your mind so dangerous, I'm not even sure the laws of cognition apply. The biggest psychohazard I've ever heard of couldn't get ahold of it, it was so much worse. Your... do you understand? It was *this* thing that almost got set off by Kore!" Kore? "This violation of your wish that she was representing! And it's *still* in there! So big and so energized I don't even know how to *touch* it. The thing I'm built to solve, a mystery and a psychohazard, too mysterious and too hazardous for me to touch! Hell--"     All-Time's blade comes crashing out, a jagged and horrid thing that rushes to almost fill the hallway with a terrifying slice of a caricatured Night Mist, aimed to crush and slash Lilian. "Can you blame me? Can you two *really* blame me?"
Flamel Parsons	The voice turns bitter, and shakes the hall a little. "The two most human humans, with the two strongest and most interesting psychic aspects, and the most hazardous hazards, showing off in front of the ~funny robot rock man~ and having fun with all your *fucking humanity,* and I shouldn't *look*? It's indecent to just *glance*? And now the girl who got a wish to manipulate everyone indefinitely, and the girl who has a twenty-four seven telepathic influence aura, want to break my nose because I had to do *some* kind of manipulation to even compete?! I can't stop time! I can't project these auras! I'm a smoothie of spy brains made for analyzing data! I think I deserve the right to lie a little, and at least a damn *glimpse* of what any of this means!"     "You weren't going to fix this! It wasn't going to be perfect! Kore wouldn't have the guts to force a moment of vulnerability! You wouldn't have faced yourself without rock bottom to climb from! And if it wasn't me in Sector L-57, it would have been you two in *Sector Zero!* I did my best, with my biases, to do my *job*, so you two can *feel better*!"     The breathing is getting a little ragged. He sounds kind of wounded by the impacts to 794 earlier. "You wanted contingencies? I can't make a contingency for the apocalypse! The best I could do was set it somewhere where everyone is already dead! You wanted a better process? How is a fireman supposed to account for getting to the scene of the smoke and finding *two suns?!* The only other person doing anything was *sending letters!* I did the best with the tools I have, which means astral psionics, data analysis, and not compromising opsec! This is all I have!"
Lilian Rook	EARLIER: "Teach yourself not to want it." Lilian repeats Persephone dully. "I guess that'd work. But I can't imagine how you'd do that. I know what it's like to try. But nobody was very successful in teaching me not to want things, least of all me. I'm still not the best at holding back when there's a very good reason."     A few moments later, an off-put stare, and then a little huff, back at Persephone. "You read way too much story off of me anyways, though. You weren't supposed to be able to do that." And then an awkward pause. ". . . I wasn't that gross back then, was I? You didn't ever say anything, so . . ."     THEN: Lilian, gradually giving up on getting her last swings in, knuckles covered in fake blood, finally starts gasping air back in rather than using it all to yell, shivering a little in Persephone's arms. "I--! Ghhh--! I don't . . ." It takes her a second to become articulate again. "Phony I don't think he was. I don't think he would . . . he could . . . he had to have gotten the idea from somewhere Phony. Which means it exists. Can you really make something up to hurt someone when they're inside your mind? When they can see your thoughts?"     Lilian begins walking again. She glowers at the speakers along the way. "The most human humans? Where do you even get this rubbish? What about me is human? Never mind 'the most', I feel like I barely reach the starting line each day. And then, eventually, someone figures it out, and then every time --every single time-- they can't wait to remind me. To tell everyone I don't count."     "What the fuck is your complex? You literally didn't even know you weren't! You couldn't tell the difference and neither could anyone else! And then when it came out anyways, they were all so eager to let you choose! You don't get to be jealous of something I don't even have! You don't get to peek and pry and try to dissect the replacement I built with my own hands because nobody would let me have the real thing! You have to at least let me pretend, Parsons, or I won't ever be able to forgive you!"
Lilian Rook	NOW: "So I'm very sorry, but I worked too fucking hard to be what I am now for someone to decide what's mine is theirs to handle because it's their job! It's not your toy to play with! It's not your sample to study! You don't get automatic ownership ownership over a part of me because you're 'qualified'! I need it to exist!"     The ACI-004 contaiment door is destroyed. So quickly, so easily, that even Lilian realizes it was never being contained in the first place. Not really. It was waiting for something to react to. She's never seen it before. She has no concept of what this mockery is even based on. It's just a horrible giant creature with a big sword in Flamel's mind. But--     §----------------------------------------------------------------§     Lilian is staring at her bathroom mirror over the sink. She doesn't remember her own face from back then. The shape in the glass is bleary and vague, but in just the right way to know that it's wrong. Like a filter. A censorship over something obscene.     It's fine. It's okay. I have lots of time still.     I have all the time in the world.     Lilian is staring at old photographs. People she never met, immortalized in old frames, and left on the cherished shrine of the mantlepiece. She isn't allowed to touch them. She isn't allowed to ask about them. But she hears about them often. She wants so much to know more about them. Why everyone loves them so much and not her. She wonder if she'll ever find out.     It's okay. There'll be family again.     I have all the time in the world.     Lilian is at her recital. There were a hundred more like it, but she remembers this one as the last she ever cared to look into the audience. She lied to herself back then. About whether the people who pushed her into it would ever even care to look.     One day. Eventually. Just keep it up until then.     I have all the time in the world.     Lilian is in the back of the car, being driven home. She'd made a big mistake. Even the chauffer radiates guilt into the cabin, like sickly cigarette smoke, knowing full well what he's bringing her back home to. Where she'd tried to go. What she'd tried to do. But it had been expressly forbidden. Her parents aren't ready to let anyone know she exists, but aren't ready to accept her either, and her brother and sister aren't ready to care that deeply again.     There will be other chances. One day I'll get there.     I have all the time in the world.     Lilian is sitting alone in her room, awake at midnight, roused by another nightmare. She is scribbling furiously at a sheet of paper with the stubs of all the pencil crayons near red. She can't get any new ones for a while; it upsets them that she just uses all the red ones and leaves the rest of the set. It frustrates her badly enough that none of the reds are quite right either. She feels like if she can't draw it, it'll never get out of her head. Even Cecilia doesn't know what it is. The psychologist doesn't help. Neither do the pills; the only pills they'll give her anyways.     One day, I'm sure I'll get to know what this means, and it'll go away.     I have all the time in the world.
Lilian Rook	Lilian is looking in the mirror again. The only thing she can remember is that her hair was longer. She'd fought for that one for two years. But everything else is worse. She doesn't know if she can ever make it better.     I have all the time in the world.     I have all the time in the world.     Lilian is washing a blood-soaked towel on her own so that Cecilia won't see it. She doesn't know how to get it all out; it's so much harder than she thought. And she spent an hour on her makeup, too, so Cecilia wouldn't see what happened. She'll notice it missing tonight if it's not in place. And her weekly report is already due tomorrow as well, which she has to completely redo now. She feels like crying in frustration at the stains.     I have all the time in the world.     I have all the time in the world.     I have all the time in the world.     Lilian is coming home from the end of her first semester of year one. She got in another fight. A huge argument with a professor, again, over the same thing, but also one that scraped her up, and she wasn't allowed to bring makeup this time. The papers in her hand are nothing but mediocre grades they'll hate. Her uniform is hot and stifling and makes her want to vomit. She wants to cry in Cecilia's arms, but she's supposed to be too old for that now.     I have all the time in the world.     I have all the time in the world.     I have all the time in the world.     I have all the time in the world.     There's only so long her family name will keep her there, and she's not sure she can even stay. Even if she does her best to behave, she isnt sure she could live like that. If she doesn't, what is she going to do? She can't get out of the house. She won't ever get 'there'. She has to grow up, as soon as possible. But the thought of growing up by itself is sickening. If this is supposed to prepare her for the rest of her life, how bad will it keep getting?     I have all the time in the world.     I have all the time in the world.     I have all the time in the world.     I have all the time in the world.     I have all the time in the world.
Lilian Rook	Lilian is staring at the brass end of a familiar cane, moving through the air in slow motion. It isn't really slow, it's just that she's been here so many times before that her brain checks out. She can't even pretend to feel bad because it wasn't her fault. She can't feel stupid because there was nothing she could do about it. Her brain is occupied with thoughts of 'how long'.     I have all the time in the world.     How long she'll be out. How long it'll hurt after. How long she'll have to stay inside and stay away. How long she'll have to cover it up. How long until he calms down. How long until it'll be safe to speak again. How long this one will last. How long this situation will keep repeating. How long until this happens for the last time. How long she can bear it until then. How long until they can all just pretend it didn't happen and uneasily go back to normal like always. How long until she gets it right and finally gets to have what they promised.     I have all the time in the world.     It occurs to her that linearity is unfair like that. It insists that she sit still and suffer what will come with no surprises, but also dangles all the things she wants in front of her and snatches them right back while she waits. Good things vanish in an instant, while bad things stay just as bad indefinitely. If she stops moving for a moment, it'll overtake her, but she's not allowed to get ahead of it either.     I have all the time in the world.     How come she can be too slow? How come it can be too late? How come she's not allowed to go back for it? How come her excuses don't count? How come she gets less than everyone else? How come all the things she's missed forever keep growing while the number of things she has keep shrinking? How come everything has to happen at the same rate, one thing at a time, in sequence, for everyone, forever and ever until the end of time? Who said it has to be this way? Who set the rule? Doesn't that rule only help the people who had everything set up right from the start? What is she supposed to do about any of it? How is she supposed to live with that?     Oh wait. I get it now. I had it wrong before.     All the time in the world is mine.     §----------------------------------------------------------------§     "That's not what it looks like." Lilian blurts out. Expressionless. Automatic. Like in a dream. She corrects herself without a coherently formed thought. "That's not what I look like. I'm supposed to look different. Not all rusted. Not afraid to stand up straight. Not with all those hands. It's supposed to be beautiful. I remember what it's supposed to be, and that isn't it."     Her nonsense is interrupted immediately and savagely by Flamel's memory not having any particular care for it. It takes a swing at her just like any intruder. It's incredibly ill-advised for her to block something of that size and strength, but taking it blade on blade, edge on edge, feels important somehow. Because mine is stronger. I'm not made of stone. I'm metal. And I'm sharp.     Lilian slams her lead foot all the way through the floor plates, and then the other behind it. Night Mist burns fully bright along every etched design, gushing its namesake black fog. Little patterns of light run up Lilian's neck and down both arms as she throws herself into the counter, launching an anchored Cleasa straight into the rusted hulk of a weapon, and all the way through, splitting and collapsing a deep and thin pane of psychospace with an almighty yell and a freshly glowing burns on her hands.     " I don't want you to tell me that you were wrong! I don't want you to tell me that you shouldn't have! If it was really necessary, then all the more reason! I just want you to be sorry for what you put me through!"
Persephone Kore	"Don't worry," Phony reassures her with a little laugh. "You were always beautiful. Even if, at the start, it was a weird kind of pretty. Fae, maybe?"      Of the two girls walking through those concrete halls, Persephone is the less angry. I have less of a right to be angry. Is that really true? It feels like it is. But something about Flamel's speech on the speakers puts a dull, pained look on her face anyway. It's an expression her face wasn't meant to wear.      "You had to 'break' her before you could fix her," Persephone answers him tonelessly. "That's what you're saying. But the less in-control she felt, the stronger those hazards got. You knew that, didn't you? From everything we saw together in her house. You weren't talking her down. You weren't giving her catharsis. You were setting her up to explode, so that you could get your big bang."      "She didn't need to be 'forced' to confront it. She just needed to be safe, Flamel."      Characteristically, though she's awestruck by All Time Is Mine's sudden appearance, she doesn't think to defend herself. She's grabbed, because she didn't tell the world not to allow it. And she begins to be pulled apart, because she didn't tell the world that's not okay. It sounds like glass cracking. It looks like glass cracking too, only red on the inside. Wisps of smoke drift up from the magenta fissure on her chest, starry and crimson like a cosmos of human love.      Even though her words are punctuated with noises like a stained glass window crumbling in slow motion, she's unhurried. "Lilian," she says with dawning comprehension. "This shape, in the tree's gem... I've seen it before. Is it really okay if I...?"      Lilian cleaving the sword in half answers that question neatly. "Oh, thank goodness," Persephone sighs softly. For a second, I was really scared that hurting it would hurt her! But if it's just a fake...      Every finger on the two enormous hands grabbing her immediately breaks backwards: I don't want that touching me. Her wounds smooth over as if photoshopped away: I don't want to be hurt like this. And, finally: I wish it couldn't hurt my friend Lilian anymore.      Slowly, by ratcheting degrees, All Time Is Mine's head starts to be twisted counterclockwise. It is physically impossible for it to be turned to the right, and any rotation to the left is seized upon and locked in. The noise is awful. It's a cacophony of groaning metal under unbearable cumulative stresses, an oil tanker tearing apart in a storm.      But it will take a moment or two to tear its head clean off: enough time for Lilian to butcher it further, too, and maybe even beat Phony to the punch. I expected something faster, but it makes sense. For it 'not to hurt her', its destruction has to be satisfying too, doesn't it? Otherwise she won't get the catharsis.
Persephone Kore	"You really are extremely human, Flamel," she says. Her voice is soft and strained, but it carries over the shriek of tortured steel. Her eyes are scrunched shut; her lips pulled back in a grimace. "They made you in the fifties, right? Out of the brains of professional spies. Healthy people. Chosen people. Normal people. Everyone an organization like that could look at, and judge perfect and good."      Sparks. Howling, grinding.      She sighs softly. Her hands ball up, and then relax. Her eyes stay shut. "Not the unwanted kids. Not the broken people. Not the kids who run a marathon before the starting line. And of course not the ones who didn't make it."      The dying groans of a submarine sinking beyond its maximal depth.      Her eyes open again, and she brushes the hair out of her face with one hand. Her smile tries to be sympathetic. "You love us so much. You love our power so much. You want to understand it, grasp it. But we only ever had it because we were free from you. From what you think is normal. From what you think we need."      A trainwreck in slow motion. Ten thousand tons of metal torn apart.      He calls her 'Kore'. She flinches slightly, but stays smiling, a more rueful look. "You say it's your job to empathize with our pain. But there's nothing in you that's felt what we've felt. Girls like us have to stick together. Maybe I really can't expect you to be sorry, if you don't even know what you've done?"      CRACK.      "But you'll never get anywhere by insisting you have it the worst, Parsons. Every girl has it the worst."
Flamel Parsons	Flamel's savage memory splits and twists. A pane is cut through it. It splits open, and bleeds. Just like the body Persephone begins to twist. While it soundlessly crushes and swipes and grabs and tears, it bleeds. As the blade is torn through, it bleeds mirror shards, and photographs, and piano strings. As its body is twisted, it bleeds engine oil and sheets of scrawled red paper and thin strands of hair. As its hands smash against and around their bodies it bleeds makeup and torn cloth and shards of old, carved wood. It bleeds light. Thin drops of true blood splatter around. Parsons grunts and, at one point, screams with the pain, gasping heavily after a wet cough ends in the PA speakers leaving a few lines of crimson dribbling out of them. After enough twisting and rending and slashing and stabbing, it starts to go limp. Weakly twisting floating hands stop trying to flatten and start trying to grasp, and eventually, to clutch. They weakly grasp, at Persephone and Lillian.     "I'm... hhhhh, hhhhh..." Parsons' breathing is struggling with the pain. "I'm not built to understand. Not made to know what that was like. Pain is corrective. It resets pathways back to how they're supposed to be, if you apply it right." The hands shake for a moment, then fall limp. The whole hallway seems to breathe heavily. The elevator at the atrium at its end descends towards this far-underground floor.     "But I don't know if I have the pathway you think it correct. If this pain will get you what you want. Need to understand humans more, before I can understand regretting that. Right?" There's a long static from the PA system. "It was all... it was going so well. It was going so right. Every good ending for everyone, even if it wasn't a perfect one. It looked so good. God dammit." The hallway shudders. Lights flicker. "Maybe I shouldn't have gotten involved. I can't make someone feel safe, not like that. And I guess I couldn't take the confrontation approach without getting hurt too much. Beheadings, lithobrakes... Nnnh. Fuck."     The PA picks up nothing but somewhat tense breathing, then a whine of microphone equipment, and it cuts out. That's when the elevator dings open. There's... a man, standing there. Thin, tall, a little hunched. Balding but with a tremendous volume along his remaining hairline. Thick, bushy eyebrows and moustach. He's wearing Psychonauts field uniform, the tactical turtleneck jumpsuit sort of thing. But it doesn't take Persephone's senses to tell this isn't the real deal, it's just a psychic construct.     His voice isn't even remotely close to Flamel's "Nothing in him that's felt what you felt, huh? Not wrong. Get on in here, you two. What have you two gone and done to Project Mystic? Sheesh! You want out at the ground floor, or you planning on smashing a little more in here?" His finger hovers over the elevator buttons, a bemused offer. He's hoping they'll join him in the elevator, but whether they do or not, he's going to be the one to answer Persephone. "Went and found yourself the gap in here, huh? I built him to solve the end of the world. Big outbreaks! Messy times. Never really tuned him to get a girl's heart, just understand angry men with insecurities trying to point nukes at each other."     He crosses his arms. "'There's nothing in you that's felt what we've felt.' Lady, there's barely a damn thing in this skull at all! He's a seven year old brain smoothie with the empathy of an answering machine. I gave him *adulthood*, I never gave him *childhood*, 'cause you can't get a donor child brain. You hit that bullseye, keep pushing through. And tell him to stop throwin' his problems into the lower levels!"     The PA system comes back online. "This didn't... this isn't the ending I thought would happen. I thought we'd all be satisfied with it. Please... don't hurt me. I can't take a stand-up fight with either of you." He mutters, as if off-mic, "I regret... guh. Everything that got us here."     The old man slams a fist against the top of the lift, rattling it. "HEY. LOUDER."
Persephone Kore	I wish it couldn't hurt my friend Lilian. Crunch. I wish it couldn't hurt my friend Lilian. Crack. I wish it couldn't hurt my friend Lilian. Snap. I wish it couldn't...      Persephone's expression becomes unsettled, and then pained, and then worried. Sometime around the flecks of blood and the scream over the PA system, she stops and inexplicably gasps for air, exhausted by the exertion of forcing herself to wish for something she only almost wants to be true. It's a state Lilian has only seen her in once before: the way she was exhausted after the big telekinetic crush in the Decompression Chamber.      "I hate this. I really hate it," she says softly, laying a hand on the hand that grasps for her as if to soothe a dying animal. Her eyes are shimmering with unspilled wetness. "Having it out like this is supposed to make things better, isn't it? I can't stand it if it makes things worse. We're supposed to communicate, aren't we? We're supposed to grow. I can't keep fighting if it'll be like this."      She looks almost nauseous again. The elevator doors opening is like a breath of fresh air. She glances up, eyes widening, and then straightens her back and dons a fragile little smile.      "Hello, doctor."      Neither Flamel nor Lilian have ever heard her speak those words, but it sounds like she's said them thousands of times before. Even though she can't know him, her attitude is familiar: she has deeply known his archetype. The tone she uses to address A Doctor is warm, patient, perhaps excessively gentle. One immediately gets the sense that she is prepared to soothe and reassure anyone who looks like they belong in a white coat. It's the nature of things that parents are eventually looked after by their children.      "I liked this ending," she says to both him and Lilian, stepping towards the elevator. "Maybe we could have had a gentler one. But if it went differently, would me and Lilian still have the special thing we share now? I don't know if there's any change that isn't also a loss. I don't know how we'd find our way back to this special thing, if we did it all again. And that makes it hard to be really angry."      "But there was a loose end after all. Something that needs to change, that shouldn't have been ignored. That's why I'm dissatisfied. It's him." Phony steps into the elevator with the old man, expecting Lilian to follow. "I can't tell him he should've given us a better ending unless I've done everything I can to make this one good."      "'The end of the world' came from two hurting girls, instead of a lot of angry men. And it messed him up pretty bad to deal with it. So, tell me, doctor: how do we make this better? You made him, didn't you?"
Lilian Rook	Lilian removes herself from her self-made micro crater one foot at a time. Her heavy breathing is too prolonged for just that level of physical exertion. She looks at Persephone like she's been exhausted in some other way. "Yeah. If it was . . . If it was really that shape then it wouldn't have broken like that anyways." she sighs. "It's . . . more special than that. So I don't like seeing it this way."     A long and difficult pause follows. Heavy silence in the wake of her footsteps. "How would he have done that, though?" Lilian murmurs out loud again. "How could anyone have? It's . . . I hate saying it, but . . . Was that really possible? If everyone just left me alone, if nobody got involved, then I really would have just waited until I could get you at the worst possible time. Alone. And I'd have made sure to cut you off from everyone else. Or maybe even put someone who can't fight in the way. If I'd had all the time in the world, I'd have done something that didn't have room for people to intefere the way they did. I . . ."     Then, for seemingly no reason, Lilian laughs again. "No, but that's right. I knew I wasn't ready to do that. There were still feelings in the way. So I spent three months away from everything, everyone else, trying to hammer that feeling out of me. Like how Xion put it; stripping and whittling away all the branches, becoming a spear. So if Tamamo and Xion hadn't meddled and done what they did, maybe the ending we got wouldn't have even been possible either? If I'd succeeded in carving that part of me out . . ."     "I really am surrounded by incredible people, aren't I? Even after all of that, what everyone wanted to do was to protect me from myself."     'It was all... it was going so well. It was going so right. Every good ending for everyone, even if it wasn't a perfect one. It looked so good. God dammit.'     "God, just shut up! Don't do that! Don't you dare do that!" Lilian bites back at Flamel over the intercom. Her raised voice overshoots its target pitch and comes back sounding a little desperate. "Don't you try to make me feel that way! Don't try 'reminding me of the good times' or whatever! I'm not ungrateful for the way things turned out! I'm not unhappy about where I am now! How can you still not get it?! Is it really that impossible to imagine that something might be something you have to do and something you shouldn't at the same time?! Can't you conceive of something awful even though it'll work?!"     Lilian's hands ball up by her sides, shaking hard enough that the point of her sword taps against the ground. "I hate this too! I caught you out in the middle of a lie! A really bad one! You did something terrible! I'm the victim here, not you! You're supposed to feel bad! You're supposed to get punished! You're supposed to apologize! Even if you don't mean it at all, you're at least supposed to be scared! You're wrong and I'm right! You're to blame and I'm blameless! You're awful and I'm innocent! So why--! So why . . . ?!"
Lilian Rook	She suddenly grabs hold of Persephone's hand. Forgetting, for the moment, they are not truly in a private setting, Lilian locks wetly imploring eyes with Persephone and struggles her best to convey the feeling she hates so much in the moment. Like feeling the elevator cable snap and the car lurch, frozen. Like hot boiling tar in her stomach, her heart in her throat, her face on fire, eyes stinging. "Please, Phony, just tell me what's wrong with me. I hate this feeling so much. I don't know what it is, but it keeps getting in the way when I'm trying to be so furious, and . . ."     "Why does he get to make me feel awful while I'm supposed to be punishing him for being bad? Did something break again?"     Hello Doctor gets Lilian's attention pretty quickly. "Huh? Who is--?" Her face burns indignantly at the accusation. "What have we done?! He's the one who dragged us in here! If you can get us out, then do it already!" She enters the elevator without complaint though. "Someone who can understand 'people' so well, but not 'a person'. Typical. That's just my luck." A frown twitches at the edge of her lips. "Adulthoods have childhoods somewhere in their memories. But--" She glances sidelong to Persephone, and an inexplicable wince crosses her face. "Chosen people don't have the words to even describe what it's like to be unwanted. They can't imagine it."     "And maybe someone whose job it is to save the world normally shouldn't. Because if you define the world by what's in it, it's mostly made of chosen people too. What 'the world' needs can't be what's good for everyone in it. And the more you understand the people who don't get to be part of the world, the harder it is to save it. I get that. I know that it's by-design that he shouldn't understand what it's like to be me or Phony. Especially not me. But it's not fair. Why is it that I'm still not allowed to hit back? Why am I still not allowed to be mad? Is it just because he's a hero, even when he's wrong?"
Flamel Parsons	"Huh? No, hit the idiot. That's allowed, goofball." The cranky old man says. "What have you been doing down there if it wasn't hitting the idiot? I love him, but he can be a real pill. Give the machine a bump to set it going right, that wasn't wrong of you." Eyes roll, big and somewhat distorted. "You know, you're right. Mental health, that's something that the fringes just don't get for free. What's that, 'unchosen'? Guess that works. Unfair we can't all get our due there." He looks off into the distance, thinking about something. "...Cruel world out there."     He focuses, turning out to watch the floors go by in the slit of the elevator. "Now lookit, you're out of the woods. The big danger is gone. You don't have to feel one way or another. The both of you were real mad. Everything suddenly looked real unbalanced. Something had to change. So you're down here. I'm the *maintenance* man. If I was the real deal, the *actual* head honcho that put this thing together, maybe I could tell you how to fix it. But I'm a couple memories and fond sentiments. You gotta pick what *you* want."     "I can head on down to Emotional Dynamics, run a crosswire from whatever jostled his brain in your big house over to Pain Receiving so he hurts to think about doin' a thing like what he did. Or I can turn you loose on the data he picked up, so you can wipe it. Or I can just toss you out in Light Containment, you can keep beatin' on him. Or you can leave. Heck, who knows what else. But you gotta keep everything intact that saves the world, and you gotta come out of this without a bunch of brain gunk bottled up in there." He pokes Persephone's forehead. "You're the one always tuning everyone's brains. Never learn how to do some of it on purpose?"     Flamel groans in pain. "I can't hurt-but-not-hurt. That's the thing about mental health, you take it or you leave it. I guess you can't want to hurt me as hard as you used to want to hurt people. I don't know how to bleed the kind of blood you want now. Haha... you know, I'm just rocks to begin with. I really love the idea of being a human, being a person, but I'm just... not that sort of person. Maybe I just don't know how to hurt that way." The dead air on the PA crackles softly.     One wet cough breaks it, with a thin stream of red from the elevator speaker. "I'm sorry. I'm... sorry that I'm not the kind of psychological help you two deserved. I'm what you got, and, I guess you needed some kind of help. But you didn't deserve this kind, the kind that got... all fixated, all biased, all focused on seeing the amazing light of the big clash, and seeing all that humanity on display, and getting to learn everything like that. I didn't know how to do much better, but that doesn't mean you didn't deserve better."
Persephone Kore	Phony's eyes are watering too, a perfect mirror. Her hand squeezes Lilian's back, and she tries to manage a smile for her friend, but it doesn't quite reach her face as one. "I know. Please, nothing's wrong with you. You're really not broken. I feel it too. It's-" ... No. Does she really not know? A vignette of memories, explaining by example. Persephone is eight years old. She borrows another child's toy and breaks it on accident. When an adult asks her what happened, she lies. It's safe here, but she hasn't yet unlearned the fear of being yelled at. There's a hot weight she carries in her stomach, a nervous electricity that's ready to flinch. It doesn't go away until lying becomes obsolete. Persephone is in the Decompression Chamber with the Paladins, talking about "######### ###- no, we don't need to remember that. But it gutted me for months. It felt like being on the edge of crying without really being able to, deep down inside. It's a familiar feeling for both of them. A foggy recollection of Carpathia gently explaining something. Carpathia looks taller in that memory, so Phony must've been young. "-dn't feel ashamed. Shame is... the belief that you are flawed, and therefore unloveable. But you know that you are loved, don't you? Shame will fade away, and be replaced by guilt. Not 'I am wrong', but 'I have done something wrong'. You see?"      It's because you're stronger now that you can feel this way. It's because you're starting to believe you won't be unloved that you can feel this way. Like you said: you really are surrounded by incredible people! And all of us love you and care for you. When shame dies, guilt can replace it, and help teach you how to be good instead of teaching you how to avoid disapproval.      ... Is that why you thought you barely knew what good was? Because you hadn't been loved enough, so shame always eclipsed guilt? Oh, Lilian...      In the elevator, she wipes her eyes with the back of her arm-warmer and coughs softly. The old man's words make her sigh and shut her eyes in thought. "Give us the data, doctor. We don't have to scrub it, but it's... important, I think. Probably. That we know what happened when I was- we were inside-out. We missed it, but we deserve it too." Flamel's apology afterwards makes her tense up and grimace again, squeezing Lilian's hand tight. The noise that escapes her is somewhere between a choked sob and a sigh of exasperation.      "Fuck you," she says quietly, and then deflates a little more. Her eyes, teary and looking for approval, slide over to Lilian's. She's torn, but leaning towards "I forgive you".      But just like the decision to come here, that isn't a choice she can make unilaterally. I don't have the right to. He hurt her, at least as much as me.
Lilian Rook	§Yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't know how to put it into words.§     §. . .§     §God dammit. I'm being parented by a woman from fifteen years ago.§     §No no no! Don't start that! I already feel dumb enough! Don't embarrass me any more than that! You're already reading too far into it!§     Lilian releases Persephone's hand with a look of genuine flustered embarrassment creeping up under everything else on her face. Like she'd just been corrected about a word she'd been saying wrong for years. A tiny little cough-laugh follows it, with flat affect. "That has to be the first time anyone has ever called me a 'goofball'." Lilian remarks. "It feels like it doesn't fit. It's too . . . It feels like a word for people who make small mistakes. Or maybe I'm just too used to 'bitch'?"     "Cruel. Yeah. Unfair. Certainly. Most of us would probably want nothing more than to move in from the fringe. People squash or crumble under that pressure; they don't often turn into sparkling diamonds, or exotic ultra-hard matter instead. Maybe point that fascination at them instead of us. Anyone who turns out like we did --anyone who figures out a way to be other than chosen-- was already very different inside from the start. Obsessing over the ones that didn't break is just kind of callous, isn't it? Toxic, even."     Lilian sighs in guttural frustration at the comm system. "No shit I don't want to hurt you all that much. It was . . . I don't hate you. I just . . . I just thought it was total bullshit that you'd get to play the both of us like that and walk away paying nothing, with no regrets. That's not how it's supposed to work. The best choice is something that's awful just as often as not; it's not fair that you get to say you did the best you could, feel good about it, and never think of it again. Especially not when you were choosing what you thought was best for us."     Lilian jumps, a teeny tiny bit, at hearing Persephone swear like that. Then she forgets to hold all the tension in her shoulders and chest, and almost snorts. "If he's ready to accept it then I'm ready to forgive him. Mostly. For now at least."     "But yes, I think we have a right to that data too. I don't remember signing a waiver to harvest it."
Persephone Kore	Huh? But I'm not from fifteen years ago. I'm from right now!      Lilian's titter forces a giggle out of Phony too, abrupt and unexpected even by her. "I don't like 'bitch' at all. It's ugly. Let's get you un-used to that one again, okay?"      She doesn't interfere much in the speech about 'the ones that didn't break', except to smile and project warm 'yeah, what she said' energy. At the very end, she finally sniffles softly and looks at the intercomm as if it might appreciate the eye contact.      "I don't know how angry I ought to be. Is it more angry than this? I can't feel it out, and I hate not knowing. There's no reference point. ... But I don't want to be angry anymore. And I don't want to force it either. So I guess I forgive you too, Flamel. Thanks."      A little pause. Then, looking down at the floor, she adds sorely: "I didn't get to use that sword after all. ... Some other time, I guess."
Flamel Parsons	Parsons' voice on the PA stops, the sound crackling just for a minute, before he says, "Alright. Thanks. Just, well, remember, you can forgive someone so that they don't need to be hurt anymore, and that can be different from forgiving someone so that you're friends with them. I know the difference. You can pick and choose as you like. And I won't... hold anything against you, if it's just one and not the other." That part's for Persephone, of course. "Uh. And, well, I know we probably won't ever be friends now, Rook. But if you ever think you're heading back to that mental space, my door's open. Not for beating me up, I mean. I can send Persephone in there, in your mind, if you ever need." There's a long, awkward trail-off. He lacks the mental machinery to have more to say.     "Floor B5. Data, analytics, memories." The old man gestures at the door. The elevator opens out to a walkway, looking over dozens or hundreds of wide glass chambers. Blank MIB men in strict suits, many with labcoats *over* their suit jackets, walk about, peering into the chambers, and others work within. In them...     Various parts of the Queen in Veils, disassembled, are being examined. A mental image of Night Mist is in the middle of something that looks like a particle collider. Armor from the Winter Slayer. Mics from Radio Despoina. And important materials like the cassette tapes and letters from the current MAD-men issue. Several somewhat caricaturized version of people are visible too. Ishirou is biohacking a rotating panel of mice, Shotaro Hidari is performing some kind of complex test, Candy is running some kind of test gauntlet, Staren has a weird batch of medical equipment hooked up to her...     And there's Lilian. Not the Atriarch, but a very slightly caricaturized Lilian Rook (her skin a notable black-with-gold-cracks, her hair a bit too strictly kept, her body a little too weirdly thin). She's running a fifty-foot-long, terribly fast treadmill in effortless time-stopped bursts, always recorded by a panel of scientists. Persephone is here too (in a different style of dress that's a bit more seventies, her body a bit extended to a taller stature), lifting large weights for her observers telekinetically while she relaxes with a book on a soft armchair.     She is not at all phased by the fact that her cell is next to one where what appears to be Persephone's own headshot is displayed, frozen in time. Pure, absolute realism is inescapable truth of the glass chamber where Lilian and Persephone are visible, alone, the former ventilating the skull of the latter. Heavy sensory equipment is constantly sweeping scans over the frozen moment in time, especially what seems to be spilling from the wound. Samples of the Eversion Data are constantly gathered up by robotic arms, bottled, and sent off in cart to a laboratory that's dense with beakers, tubes, and burners.     The old man meanders to the scientists at that cell, chatters at them, and waves the pair over. The MIB sciencemen present a pair of thick floppy disks, a collection of memories that the two can take out of Flamel's brain. Brain-Persephone glances over towards the elevator, and waves at the pair. She does a short little knowing wink before she goes back to her book.     "That all, you two? Ready to head back out?" The old man says, tilting his head. "Sure hope you're keeping that atmosphere runnin' out there, Phony, this guy still needs to breathe and I haven't checked the oxygen deprivation in a minute."     The exit elevator's open. If they head to the surface floor, all they need to do is step out and they're back in their bodies.
Lilian Rook	§You know perfectly well what I--§     §I meant Carpathia. Christ.§     "The funny thing is, once someone doesn't like you, it's the only word they can think of. With boys, it's different. People can think of all sorts of creatively horrible things to say about boys. But when you're a girl and a little mean to someone, it's bitch this, bitch that, maybe a slut or two for good measure." Lilian doesn't actually sound all that fazed. Almost perversely proud in a way. "If you want to sword fight later, I wouldn't mind. It's . . . actually a little flattering how taken you are with it."     Lilian stops to think long and hard at Flamel. not a stop, just a stop. "Complicated equations like that don't spit out their final answers straight away. It takes time to crunch through them. It'd certainly be pretty bold to decide we're friends at this point. But I'm not categorically opposed to the idea that we might be eventually."     "I . . . don't want you to regret helping. I'm . . . I get to be happier, now, than I've been before. And that's . . . real. And it is partly thanks to you. It's not that I don't know that. I'm not that ungrateful. I just couldn't swallow the sense that I'd been lied to; I couldn't leave it alone in the end. Being angry with you and being thankful aren't mutually exclusive. So don't make me have to repeat it!"     The data room is where Lilian gets to wander around in mildly hypocritical fascination, only not reining it in more because of the justification rattling around in her head that Flamel was the one who pulled her in here on purpose. The sight of herself is not one she expects. A complicated sequence of warring emotions briefly grapple for control of her lips and eyes, and then she closes the latter and parts the former to sigh. "I suppose that's a fitting way to look at me." She glances at !Persephone, her face going a little red at the wink. "How come yours is just taller?!"     The sight of Phony's astral brains decompressing from her physical skull wipes away every other look on Lilian's face, but it doesn't prompt anything like disgust or horror. Not even that much guilt (she knows that one now). It was terrible, but it already happened. She 'saw it' so many times in advance. And she's seen it in her sleep so many times since then. Not from that angle, but just that doesn't change it. It happened. And we're past it. She accepts the tape with bland thanks.     "I think so. And I'm sure he'll be fine." She looks back uneasily. "Hey. When we watch this, do you think we should watch it together?"
Persephone Kore	Oh!!!      Well, still, that'd make me your...      Persephone takes a moment to weigh the scales in her head before the elevator doors open. Her eyes shut. A little frown crosses her face. "I think you're a good person, Flamel," she says. "I can't pretend I'm not still hurt. But this is one bad facet you've shown me. And I've already seen a lot of good ones." Slowly, the frown shifts into a smile; her eyes remain closed.      "If I couldn't really hold you as my friend again, I wouldn't be very strong at all, would I?"      When the doors open and she steps out, childlike marvel takes the edge off of raw emotions for a while. Her gaze dances between the other-Lilian, the Queen's pieces, Candy's back, and the bustling crowd of men in labcoats. She returns the other-Phony's wink, of course.      "The serpent devours its own tail," she answers Lilian opaquely. Explaining, with a smile: "My ego isn't just realer than the world, you know! It's also more real than 'the other ways I could have been'. It's really hard to imagine me in ways that aren't myself." Then opaquely again, and warmly menacing: "Haven't you ever dreamed about me? You'd get it then~"      Of course the headshot catches Phony's eye. She regards it with a thoughtful, neutral expression for a few moments; like Lilian she betrays no negativity, but she's briefly so deep in contemplation that for once it's hard to tell what she's thinking. Then, decisively: "It is a really pretty color after all, isn't it?"      "I can hold an atmosphere in my sleep," Phony says to the old man brightly. "Haha, Marc's really salty about that one, actually. I think we're ready to go!" She takes the floppy discs, then beams at Lilian.      "Absolutely. Movie night. My place~?"
Lilian Rook	"What the hell kind of an explanation is that?" Lilian huffs at Persephone. "Do you even-- No of course you'd know the reference. But I'm supposed to be the egotist!" She mumbles something. "At least I get to be 'broken' in the cool way instead of the shitty pitying way."     Her face reddens a tiny bit again. "My dreams are completely accurate and normal. I'll take your word for it."     On the way out, she allows herself a frivolous little laugh. "Hahaha, I'd forgotten all about that! Well, I was going to suggest we alternate, but if you insist~"