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Persephone Kore      The Sapient Heuristics laboratory is a space station just outside the orbit of Pluto, in an unremarkable but well-connected world. Arrivals are by artificial warpgate or shuttle. Both will find you in a landing area and cargo bay with a beautiful view of space.

     Further in, the hallways curve and flow organically like rivers. It may seem impractical compared to straight corridors and right angles, but it produces a psychological effect- a mood- and for that it's very practical. In their shallows and eddies are little meeting-places: spots to gather and drink coffee, or read, or peoplewatch. The whole thing feels a little like a library or a park, but those are imperfect glimpses of the same principle: a public space where people can simply exist together.

     The color of the walls, floor, and ceiling is a deep tempting apple-scarlet. It really shouldn't work as a soothing background color, but somehow it does. It makes the omnipresent houseplants that sprout from pots or cubbies seem supernaturally vivid in contrast.

     It feels like home. Maybe not your home, but the closest thing to it.

     Researchers and subjects mingle freely here, at a ratio of ten to one. Age is the only consistent way to tell the difference: none of the subjects are past their mid-twenties, and almost all the staff are over forty. Some- but not all, or even most- of the subjects wear little bracelets with colored stripes that correspond to SH's psychic color-coding. They must be optional.

     There's time to relax, and the space encourages it. Make yourself a coffee (free, of course, but please leave the space clean). Pick up a well-loved, scribbled-in-and-highlighted book from a pile on a table. Join in the game of cards being played by some teenagers. Strike up a conversation with a jovial older researcher, or maybe the odd-but-wholesomely-smiling identical triplets who are all squeezed into one big armchair and sharing a book.

     After a couple of minutes, the people who are meant to escort you show up. One's a tall, pale, blonde man in slacks and a sweatervest, looking (unlike literally everyone else) as if he were attending some snotty private school. His demeanor is stiff and alert. The other's a short girl with messy dark hair that might form loose curls if she ever let it grow out; her skin's a couple shades darker than Phony's, and she's dressed in a baggy short-sleeve tee and sweatpants. Her eyes are happy, but her expression feigns grumpiness.

     Both are twentysomething, marking them out clearly as subjects rather than staff.
Persephone Kore      They're bickering as they come around the bend. They're definitely not related, but it feels like the way that close siblings bicker.

"-best behavior, alright?"
"God, or what? You're gonna scold me for it?"
"They're not merely our guests, they're our benefactors."
"Ughghhhh. They're people, we're people, we can just act like normal people, okay?"
"We can. Will you?
"That's- will you?! Oh my god, don't turn this around."
"... I'm a little worried, is all. That they'll judge us lacking. Aren't you?"
"Yeah. ... Yeah, me too. Even though I know there's nothing to worry about."
"Well, I'm here, so don't be so tense."
"Ugh, don't you talk to me about that."

     The proper young man notices the Elites before his rambunctious friend does, and nudges her arm with his elbow to alert her while he waves. "Sorry to keep you waiting. I'm Marcus-" "Everyone just says Marc." "-Heller, shut up. And this is-" "Dylan Cruise. How's it going."

     'Marc' shuts his eyes and rubs the bridge of his nose.
Flamel Parsons     Flamel might be here, but even when he's at work, one might be able to listen closely and hear the sound of the Parsons Anomalous Containment Institute cleaning up inside his skull, soft sounds like construction equipment behind the sunglasses that he peeks over his coffee with. He's looking a little worse for wear in some ways, bruised a bit and moving delicately. But he's okay enough to wave over to Marc and Dylan! "Hey, Mr. Heller! Hi, Dylan. Things are alright enough here, Persephone's made sure of that." He adjusts his sunglasses and flashes them that cheerful smile. "How about you? And how about SH? I'd love to see how things have been." He's up on his feet, ready for the chatter and the tour.
Arcadia Labs and research weren't specifically Arcadia's type of place. But being she was a designated guardian of those who gather and acclimate information for others to better from it's still the sort of place the technorganic sphinx would turn up. Particularly if it's as an entourage of other Elites ensuring the Concord's support is going to a cause her own masters would support.

She's one of the easiest to make out amongst the group, being the winged catgirl in crimson and gold magitek armor. And a.. well, bored isn't the right description for her expression. But it is clear she is mainly here as part of her duties for the time being.

She turns her head as the duo approach, bickering with each other. "This are going. Better than them suddenly stopping." Sounds normal for someone from The Line to say when offered such a greeting.
Darren      Darren came with his pokemon, as usual--and as usual, Roswell feels like being out and about. The little alien passes the time with some friendly card games, getting to know some of the teens and making small talk (telepathically). Darren, however, spends almost all of the time waiting for Marc by chatting up any researchers he can find. He's excited to be here. He's so excited that it's bubbling around him, beyond just the animated way he gesticulates or the slight bounce in his heels even when standing.

    "Hey, what's good?! Marc and Dylan!" Darren comes in for a homie shake with both of them in turn, bringing it in for a chestbump both times. "Yo, I'm hype. Like, not gonna lie, Dr. Carpathia's work was a huge inspiration to me in a personal journey of mine."

    Roswell looks up from the card table and adds his two cents.

YEAH Y'ALL GET READY CAUSE HE'S BEEN ON THAT ISH ALL DAY YOU FEEL ME?

    Darren waves a hand dismissively at Roswell. He's dressed nice today--blue button up, white blazer and slacks, dress shoes. "That's Roswell," he says. "I got other friends with me, too--they might come out, if they feel up to it. We grew up together so he's almost always out."

The little Beheeyem's attention seems primarily on the card game, at this point, but he does wave a flashing hand towards Marc and Dylan.
Raziel Once more, Raziel was in space on a ship to Pluto to talk to those who were considered partners, investments, or investors in the Concord.  A little of a tangle in the necessary elbow-rubbing, but it was at least something more interesting this time for Raziel to get involved in.  Off the ship, he walks towards the entrance.

'Upon exiting the ship, what greeted me was not what I expected for a laboratory.  The setting was warm, instead of sterile.  There were plants, instead of various medical or data readouts.  There was a cafe, instead of a waiting room.  There were places to sit and do quiet activities, instead of nervous chairs to sit and wait for procedures. '

Raziel continued on, taking in a better look than from the entrance and looking past the bickering siblings for a moment, continued to observe the location.  The Spirit himself was dressed in an old fashion, but high-quality clothing.  Leather pants made to cover his legs, a tunic crated with fine interweaved protective fabrics that covered his upper body and tried to hide the desiccated form the best that it could.  

Instead of simply looking like a corpse, he just feels more abnormally thin.  Very thin.  /Deathly/ thin to the right medical, or discerning eye.  Around his face was a cowl, with a symbol on it.  Two mirrored images, almost wing-like and seemed to be stretching up.  The cowl itself was red, offset by the cream color of the tunic.  

His hair was black and split down the middle.  His eyes glowing blueish orbs.  The skin that is revealed is blue and very unnatural looking.  His hands and feet are clawed, and only have three digits instead of a normal five.  

'This was made to be a home, a place where the subjects and doctors would live together, as much as work with each other.  Despite everything, it gave me the tiniest feelings of nostalgia for home.  For Nosgoth.  For the place that I abandoned...'

He looked directly at the two bickering siblings for a moment, before speaking.  "Hello, I am Raziel, Partner of the Concord.  It is nice to meet you Marcus and Dylan," he says, with some amusement to the situation.  He does offer a hand in greeting but is not offended if not taken.  

Raziel is also very specific in what hand he offers in greeting.  Only his left hand and those with sharp eyes can sense swirling energy around his right arm.  Those with the right senses can sense a hungry spirit wrapped around it.  Those who have seen him fight know that it is the soul reaver, attached to his arm and spirit.
Staren TODAY'S STAREN-CHAN
    This is a nice informal social meeting, not a battle! Or a time to look intimidating or as cool as possible. A white beret with silvery trim is awkwardly perched between her ears, sometimes it slips over one. She still has the black, round-framed glasses Persephone suggested so long ago, this time with a matching choker because for once, she's not wearing a big flowy scarf. Instead she has a short white mantle covering her upper arms, with silvery trim that kind of comes off looking like hi-vis stripes; she's got a red vest and long black skirt (there's a hole in back for the tail) with similar trim over a long-sleeve white blouse, and finally... big black boots with lots of metal buckles that would go better with some sort of goth clubbing outfit. She's trying things and learning, okay?! And still has her trusty blue messenger bag.

ANYWAY,
    Staren steps out of the warpgate immediately looking around for Persephone because of course she is. Still, even if Phony's not here yet, this place *is* oddly relaxing, and she gets a coffee with a lot of sugar in it. "So, um... how are things?" she asks someone at random, realizing she hasn't really kept tabs on the regular happenings here.

    Staren's ears perk up as the bickering couple approach. As they introduce themselves, she steps forward with a smile and holds out a hand to shake both of theirs. "It's good to meet you again. And really, don't worry. You're doing *incredible* work here... and the whole point is to find a better way of living, right? We can't have that if you're worried and can't enjoy yourselves. So just call me Staren... don't worry about titles, I only call myself "The Gifted" when I have to sound impressive, it's not even a current rank in the Concord anymore." She chuckles a little. "I guess we both worry about impressing people, huh?"
Lilian Rook     Lilian is always on time. To everything ever. She always has been and likely always will be. But today, Lilian is not merely 'on time', but so far ahead of schedule it's a question to wonder on if she'd ever cared about the schedule as anything more than a plausible excuse to be here. Hour(?s) early, Lilian is already aboard the station before anyone else arrives, and has completely settled in to a point that shouldn't be possible for a human being to achieve without having fully adapted to a new environment over weeks. People look less comfortable after moving back to an old house recently.

    She can be easily found by anyone, not needing to move far from their reception, in one of the cubbies along the way, seated behind a little table with a thick sketchpad opened midway through, a small arsenal of finely graded pencils laid out before her, sharpened by hand with a hobby knife, and accompanied by an entirely separate watercolour case and iridium pen inkset. Her hair is let down to her lower back and functionally unstyled, only ornamentally pinned with the orichalcum lily. She's only wearing one layer, mostly in the form of a prim but loose white blouse with a black ribbon, knee length skirt and tights, which is about the most dressed down she's ever been. Her fingertips are smudged with graphite, and so is a little streak across her nose and under her left eye, following the small, pink scar, having unconsciously touched it at some point.

    What she's been occupying herself for the past little while is plain to see by the number of page stubs left in the binding rings. She has been entertaining children, or rather, the Children, including those who are twenty, with a one of a kind novelty, comprised of this old hobby she had abandoned and put away for so long, and the power that she is here for; Children are free to 'commission' anything they want from her, and within moments, are instantly gratified with a professional grade pencil piece that should take half an hour to produce, sometimes accompanied by twins layered over the original with gentle watercolours or bold inking that would logically take far longer to dry. The only limits are that she takes it in turns, and will only do things she's seen before.

    Lilian is currently working on a peoplewatching portrait of the triplets in the cubby directly across, regarding their tripled up reading with a faint, warm smile. At popular request of a Lot Of Kids since last time, she has pulled some strings (really, they're her strings to pull though) to get someone else aboard the station too: an older woman with dark hair that seems as if she might've rather individualistically decided to cover up early grey streaks with hints of purple, who is currently deeply absorbed in the apparently very satisfying task of standing behind the armchair and braiding the three girls' hair. She is fondly sketched into the work in progress as well. After all, it'd been that woman who had held out hope for so long that Lilian would return to doing these little things she actually enjoys.

    For anyone interested, it isn't too hard to see why this entertainment is somewhat popular. Lilian's art is something else. Not so much in the sense of technical proficiency, though she is quite skilled, and not in the sense of creativity while drawing from reference, but in a way that art isn't meant to be.
Lilian Rook     All of her subjects are rendered in exacting, crystal clear, nigh photographic detail, but rather than appearing perfectly preserved and weighty on the page, each drawing somehow evinces the opposite feeling. All of her shading is very subtly inconsistent and wrong, leading the eye around so that what should seem 'statuesque' instead exudes the sort of smooth restlessness of life. The silhouettes of shapes are all slightly inaccurate, as if they've been averaged across multiple different similar views, rather than precisely rendered from one, creating the strange illusion that they're being perceived in a natural 'arc', rather than still and motionless. For someone who must be spending the better part of an hour on each image, that must appear perfectly frozen to her, every piece teems with a kind of vivacious motion perpetually just about to happen, like wishful thinking rendered on paper. The way humans see each other in a living conversation, not in a photograph.

    The last thing that stands out is that, within a twelve meter bubble or so, anyone can tell what she is thinking. Lilian has put in a lot of practice since the last time was here, and gotten much better at solving a rather practical problem:

    Given that practically every subject on the station can feel each other's thoughts, and are used to the social dynamic of doing so, and also given that Lilian would be the only one who cannot join them, rather than standing out as a singularity --a black hole of unknowable safety-- she has sweat over cultivating her own pseudo-psychic ability's passive control and modulation to turn her thoughts inside out, conveying her feelings as accurately as she can recognize them into her surroundings as second nature; ostensibly there is no useful purpose to this whatsoever but allowing the other Children to 'feel her' in the way they want to, even if it is a slightly synthetic solution.

    So, within twelve meters of her, it isn't too dissimilar to what Persephone makes entire buildings experience simply by existing. The feeling is bright and pale, yet deeply and softly shadowed, cool like a moonlit autumn night. Without a need for guardedness, without frost, without spite, without jealousy, without contempt, without boredom, all that comes off of her is a sense of deep, serene decompression. Little hints of nostalgia, errant amusements, distracting fragments of daydreams, are like the groans and pings of a cooling engine --a house settling at night-- against the background of simply being happy to be here-- happy to just be me. Because it's just always my turn here.
Cantio This isn't the first time Cantio's seen the Sapient Heuristics station, and this certainly won't be the last. What makes this particular trip different, though, is the purposes of this particular visit. There's some warning signs in her head that she's working hard to suppress, and there's even preparations she's purposely avoided making, all because... Well.

Persephone hasn't steered her wrong before. She'll trust in that more than her own gut, at least when it's here of all places.

Arriving in her usual white and purple jacket and skirt combo, she raises her hand in a light side-to-side wave while staying quiet during that little bickering session between Marc and Dylan. "Cantio. Pleased to meet you! You're..."

She needs to behave today. "Pretty close, aren't you?" Cantio asks with a teasing tone, not behaving right out the gate. She might have promised herself not to come in prepared, but certain people might be rubbing off on her more than she'd expected. "Have you and everyone else been doing okay?"
Persephone Kore      Dylan pulls an arm behind her head and and stretches, shutting one eye. Flamel is met with a little grimace. "God, don't call him Mr. Heller. His head will- actually, why am I just Dylan and not Ms. Cruise, huh?? ... You're taking it easy enough, right? We haven't met, but I heard you got banged up pretty bad." She offers him a hand; unclear if it's to shake or help him pull himself up. Plausibly deniably, both.

     "We're doing pretty good. The little kids were spooked for a while after the Paladins stuff, y'know? But everything's settled down. Actually, it's kinda better than it was before. If we made it through that, then there's not a lot to be scared of, right?"

     Marc and Dylan both have the adult politeness not to gawk openly at Arcadia, Raziel, and Roswell. But everyone on the station is very human, and it's clear by the kids' open-mouthed reactions that they're not used to seeing anything else outside of picture-books. "It's going," Marc repeats. "About five kilometers a second, this time of year. If Phony hasn't tweaked our orbit for some reason or another.

     (Roswell is, in all likelihood, getting his ass beat at cards. These kids cheat hard, to the point that cheating with powers is a game within the game.)

     Marc's eyes narrow a little and his lips stretch in helpless unease as he stares at Raziel's outstretched hand. "Go ahead Marc," Dylan teases softly. "Shake the man's hand. Shake it. Don't be rude. You're all about manners, aren't you?" "Gh." "Do iiiit~"

     Finally he does, but only with eyes scrunched shut. A little breath of relief escapes him when the handshake ends. "It's. Great to meet you, Raziel. Very good."

     Shaking Darren's hand, by contrast, he takes to fine; it's the chestbump that catches Marc off-guard. Dylan perfectly reciprocates both, maybe even a little too hard. "Personal journey, huh? It's kinda weird to think of people off the station having heard of her. I mean, I knew she wrote some books, but she's like..." "Your mom." "No!?!" "I've heard you slip up and say it." "God shut UP."

     The 'random' person Staren ends up asking is a tall woman with long dark hair in a comfy jacket, likely a subject by her age. "How are things?" she repeats while looking up from her book, trying to guess at the intent of the question. "Well... I'm thinking about switching from piano to something easier. Maybe guitar. Reading sheet music is hard, but I might do better with tabs. What do you think?"

     If she's thinking about casual things like that, there's probably nothing too badly wrong.

     Lilian and Cecilia, predictably, have been mobbed by overenthusiastic grabbyhands kids for a while since getting here, but the number of kids is finite, and so are their attention spans. The triplets whose hair Cecilia's braiding seem cozily exhausted by now, burrowed into the cushions of their armchair with no intent of leaving soon; they still tell her jokes or hassle her with questions or ask her to read difficult words, but at a more sedate pace. There's a steady trickle of people still wanting to be drawn by Lilian, but more have already gotten their drawings and are holding them close or pressing them tight between the pages of a book.

     A smaller number of older subjects are just sitting at a small distance from Lilian while doing their own things, enjoying- consciously or not- the aura she now projects, and silently reciprocating with their own happiness in an intoxicating sort of way.
Arcadia Her tail occasionally twitchs but for the most part Arcadia doesn't seem very phased by the gawking looks she does get. It just means people are paying attention to her, and she's use to being the one that stands out for one reason or another. She spent a few moments trying to remember if she knew Staren was a girl now or not, but in the end decided it wasn't important. Staren is Staren.

She does snicker a little at the ongoing exchange between the two. Very much like two bickering siblings. But refrains on commenting on how 5 k/s is still a fair bit slow where she comes from. Orbits aren't about speed, they're about stability. Especially when you have a lot of sensitive work going on.

The sphinx folds her arms, making an effort at remaining engaged despite being more the protector than the actual investigator. "This place is interesting in appearance, though." She turns her head a little to look around again. "The lack of sharp corners is nice for efficient mobility." Any time you don't have to slow down to turn is a good time to her.
Staren     Random conversation! Staren dredges her memory for a response. "Mom says she doesn't actually read sheet music, she just tells whether the note is going up or down and guesses a note that sounds good... but I guess that's no good if you have to press a specific key, huh... or wouldn't it still work? If you're right about it still being a good note... Or can you not tell what a good note is in the first place? I, uh, I don't really know much about music..."

    And then Marc and Dylan!

    Staren chuckles at Marc's joke. "I imagine she's kind of mom-like to everyone on the station, isn't she? ...At least the" Kids? They're too old... Experimental subjects? Too dry and cold. Uhhhh... "y'know. All of... all of you."

    Approaching the pair has brought her into sight of Lilian, and now she notices as she takes a step closer, into the 12-meter bubble... it's *weird*, seeing her like this. Staren's seen her as the scary untouchable goddess of martial and social skill, and as the awkward, frustrated, and strung-out protector of a system she is devoted to which also causes her problems. She's never seen Lilian just... hanging out. And is that... Cecilia? Is it different because Cecilia's around her, or ecause Sapient Heuristics has that effect on people, or both? Also, What the, what the... is that Lilian's thoughts? How? Uhh, hi. Don't mind me. Just... keep doing what you're doing. You deserve some relaxation.
Persephone Kore      After a bit more hanging out and conversation, Marc and Dylan start trying to lead the group further in, down long curving hallways and through a starry glass-domed arboretum with real grass and a real willow tree where more people congregate or play.

     The atmosphere is sedate. It's a place that is deeply artificial, but it somehow feels natural and authentic, too. Assembled with care.

     Their destination is a more austerely functional, less decorated place. The Decompression Chambers, as Marc refers to them, are found in a long and unusually straight hallway. At intervals one finds a heavy sealing door, a thick glass window looking into a bare bedroom-sized chamber behind said door, and some kind of sophisticated control panel on the outside. The same design is duplicated a half-dozen times over.

     One of the rooms is already occupied by one of the younger subjects, a half-tanned half-freckly girl with blonde curls whose fashion sense seems to be taking after Dylan's. There are a couple of researchers standing outside and watching the control panel, which reads 0.15ca, contrasting the empty chambers displaying 1.00ca. The girl has her eyes shut in deep concentration, and is manifesting some kind of flickering fog around herself.

     "The Chambers are for training up subjects who can't yet manifest their powers in full reality. We create a small bubble of 'unreality' for them- of varying concentration- so they can learn to impose their wishes on a more malleable world. Eventually, they'll work up into being able to sculpt the world even under full reality-pressure."

     "Like putting weights on an assisted pull-up machine." "Not at all like that, actually." "You've never even done a pull-up, Marc." "You're making the comparison, so I know it's dumb already."

     "But anyway, they're good for getting a clearer picture of those powers too. Pushes out everything else, so there's no other influences getting in the way. Like recording music in a soundproof room, right? And that's what we're here for today."

     At the far end of the hallway, past all of the Chambers, is a closed door. It looks out of place, with visible seams around the doorframe, in contrast to the careful engineering everywhere else. Like it was installed hastily later. On the other side is a subtle otherworldly presence; anyone can feel it oh-so-gently tugging at their heart if they regard the door with a quiet and open mind.

     It isn't malevolent. But it's not natural, and it's There.
Cantio "I can imagine. If they're doing better now than before, then that's probably the best we could ask for." The relief in Cantio's voice is genuine, and she looks over to where Lilian and Cecilia are sitting with the children while still listening in on Marc and Dylan. "I mean, if things have improved so much that they can relax like this after..."

She pauses briefly, clearly trying not to word things insensitively. "... Before. I'm really glad to see that things are going okay now." Nailed it! Maybe. She opens her mouth to continue with some small talk, but stops as she notices something over in the direction of the crowd of drawings and hair braiding. She doesn't approach them, however, instead content to just observe from a distance for the time being while realizing that she's looking at... Paintings?

No, drawings. Good drawings, even, that have her losing the forest for the trees in trying to get a better idea of the technique behind that apparent motion, the fluidity, that detail despite the imperfections. What gets Cantio even more confused is that outward projection of thoughts from Lilian, contrasting sharply with everything she's seen before today.

To Cantio, the sensation is both calming and bewildering at the same time. It takes a while before she finally manages to remember where she is, and a small bit of that confusion and tension melts away. "They've been able to come this far..." She murmurs to herself, finally breaking into a relieved smile that's only partially for herself before following Marc and Dylan down those hallways to and past the Decompression Chambers.

"There's nothing wrong with getting some assistance during workouts. Start small, build your way up, and you'll be able to clear it with your chin one day." Cantio gives Marc a reassuring thumbs up, peering into the room in use briefly to see how that's going for a while.

Upon reaching the end room, however, Cantio can feel her inquisitive nature coming right back in even as she shivers a bit at the feeling from the other side of the door. "Is that another Chamber? Or is there someone else in there?" Cantio starts to approach, but stops to look over at Dylan and Marc. "Would we be disturbing anyone if we went in?"

Only if they say no does she actually head for the door and see what's what, poking her head in slowly at first to not startle anyone. Otherwise, she'll wait for the official explanation of what's going on with that room.
Raziel Raziel starts to pull his hand back right as Marc takes it.  It is cool to the touch, but also very much not a human hand.  The coolness, though, is definitely not natural, as if Raziel does not make his own heat.  Though despite just being more dry and cool than it should be. "A pleasure.." he says, looking towards Dylan.  Almost /expectantly/.  After all, Marc did it.

'Being as old and jaded as I have become, I felt some amusement in the pair of children being afraid to shake my hand, baiting the other into being braver.  While I normally felt trepidation for what I have become, this small bit of fear brought a small bit of amusement to it.  But with it a stark reminder for what I had lost.'

Raziel recognized Arcadia, though they had not interacted much.  It was at least good to see SOME familiar faces.  He does notice Darren, who was new to him, at least face to face.  He was sure he had heard him before.  It was similar with Cantio, though from her look he surmised she was from an 'advanced' world.  "Hello, I am Raziel," offering the same greeting to both.  Staren, well was already near Lilian.

'Seeing Staren run off towards Rook was something I had really only gotten to understand through radio.  Staren's obsession with winning her approval was something of constant chatter on Concord Radio.  Though, I feared that it'd likely turn more to tragedy if she kept going the route she was.'

Raziel walked with the tour group as they explained the basics of how the place worked.  He listened, noting the numbers, and the person inside who was working.  "So what powers manifest..?  And how do these powers first come to your attention?  Is it intentional marking, or are they natural but unobtained without training in these places?" he asks, curious.  "And would such chambers work for our own abilities?"

The end of the hallway catches his attention.  The seams in the doorframe, the patched porthole.  The presence inside, really was what caught his attention.

'I could feel the presence of another being in this room, which seemed to be stressed at containing whatever was inside.  No, containing was not quite the world...these were not prisons.  Rather, it seemed unable to withstand the stress of what was being done.  The presence was there, it did not feel malevolent.  However, it was not natural either, but it was very much there.'

Walking towards it, he too decided to see what was inside.  Curiosity, and perhaps a desire to explore all parts of the map for clues to open up puzzels later on.  
Arcadia "Scaling levels of reality" Oddly this what gets Arcadia's attention. Or maybe not so oddly, considering the effects on it's own reality The Line had while under the effects of the legendary treasures pushing it farther and faster over and over again. She wags a finger at the duo. "No, she is not inaccurate in that metaphor. Maybe not with weights, but in the general comparison. You make it easier for them, then slowly pull away the assistance bit by bit until they're doing it under normal conditions and probably not realizing they're not longer being aided until after they've done it."

Arcadia's gaze shifts down to the control panel for a few moments. Talking about alterating interactions with reality makes her think of some of the JoJoVerse adventures she'd been on. "By what criteria do you verify this strength of reality? Since reality in itself is somewhat subjective to the manner we percieve it through, it could be complicated to quantify."

Her attention is at this, she hasn't even noticed the doorway of oddly presence yet.
Flamel Parsons     "I can call you Ms. Cruise if you want. But, I kinda get the feeling you don't wanna be 'Ms. Cruise'! And he *does* wanna be Mr. Heller." Flamel says, pushing those sunglasses up with one finger. He goes for the hand, and sort of does both at once. "Eustress helps the mind comprehend its own limits! Knowing that something's beyond the limit can be hopeful, but knowing that something's *within* the limit is also pretty good! Knowing those metrics sure does help. Plus, knowing that government enforcers only have so much power helps anyone who lives in the modern age of global conspiracies."

    He gives Lilian her distance, something she needs from him right about now. If things come up, it won't be on account of him.

    Heading to the Decompression chambers sounds good. He's been meaning to go compare data there with the data he gathered from the big event! But... no. The mental machinery isn't there for that today, so he won't. He's taking a look at the chambers anyway, though, just in idle curiosity. "I always liked these. Feels like a psychoportal in reverse, even though I know the mechanics aren't actually like Astral Eversion under most circumstances." And they're up to that door... "Isn't that...?" He tilts his head, looking to the pair. "We learned about that one before, didn't we? Or am I thinking of the wrong one? The... inside-out case, I mean." There's still some incorrigible curiosity and interest on his part in what's in there. "Still feels almost like an Astral Projection impulse..."
Darren      Roswell is indeed getting his ass beat at cards--Darren is the precog, after all, and the pokemon's mental talents are more in line with physical stuff than reading. He is protesting about this, as well--but strictly in a playful and non-serious manner, and acting a little of a clown by telekinetically waving his 'cards' in frustration. The presence from him is like a sunny winter morning--cool, but not chilly; bright, but not blinding; peaceful, but not stifling.

YOU GOT ME BENT LIKE ELBOWS MY G, laments the Beheeyem.

     When Dylan mentions that things might actually be better now than before, there is a nod of agreement, or perhaps understanding, from Darren. "All my haters make me greater," he sagely imparts.

     "I actually have one of 'em with me here," he then mentions, on the topic of Carpathia's book. "Was kinda hoping for an autograph," adds the quarterback with a hopefully hushed tone. "But, check it." Roswell's empty pokeball is levitated from Darren's pocket (they're evidently capable of getting quite small) and into his waiting palm. "It's not Jungian-Newtonian--you wouldn't find any streaks on a color plate from it. But... but it's mine, and her ideas about self actualization were mad helpful to me in learning how to do it, you feel me?" There is a quiet pride in his voice, and about him generally, as he says 'but it's mine.'

     "...if she's here, you think I could meet her before we go?" Darren's presence, by contrast, is like a noontime meadow in the summer: open, full of life, and seeming cheerful for the former two. Neither he nor his childhood friend have the ability to conceal their thoughts, but both, evidently, understand the importance of good vibes here.

     Roswell trails behind, having asked to be dealt out, once Marc and Dylan usher everyone further in. Darren, for his part, pockets the Quick Ball when he starts to follow behind. The remark about pull ups draws a grin. "Feel my young blood in the space station not doing pull-ups," Darren teases Marc, nudging him with an elbow. "You got it in you!" Roswell jumps in to egg him on with a psychic barrier shaped for easy pull-ups.

FITNESS CHECK HOMIE LEMME SEE FIVE RIGHT QUICK Roswell motions with flashing hand-lights to the pull-up barrier.

     Darren snorts, taking to looking around. Of course he does--actually getting to see something he's read so much about is evidently a thrill. When he thinks no one's looking, he even touches the nearest wall, as if to make sure that it's real. Naturally, his attention is drawn to the door, even before Cantio brings it up.

     He hadn't brought it up, but he does give her a grateful smile for asking a question he'd evidently had, too. "What's her name?" he asks, nodding to the girl inside, attempting to concentrate. It probably isn't necessary, but he's keeping his voice down. "How long's she been with y'all? Long enough for Dylan to mack on?" Yes, he noticed the choice of clothes.
Lilian Rook     It actually takes Lilian longer to notice anyone else than it takes them to notice her. That's a first. Even without the use of supernatural powers, she's always so twitchily hypervigilant. Of course, she's focused on providing for the last few children still hanging around her, but part of it is simply the way she's soaked herself up to her neck like a hot bath in that strange, warm mesh of silent, invisible, communal togetherness.

    She looks up as Staren walks by first, and thinks 'loud' enough in her direction to stand out. Her pencil pauses, her eyes slide sideways, and though not a single muscle twitches anywhere in her face, the fact is that--

§ It's obvious that she's thinking about Staren's mismatched outfit. The gleefully ignorant experimentation and enthusiasm that must have gone into it. The innocent excitement that went into preparing to come here, to this place, for fun. A sense of queasy dissatisfaction disturbs the calm night of her gravity. A complicated mixture of wistfulness and bitter resentment, with a sharp edge of defensive contempt. Dim wall-shadows of bad memories ripple the surface, but are bleached away and smoothed back down again in short order. She can't bring herself to get too worked up. She promised herself she wouldn't.

§ Flamel elicits a dim little flicker of anger, indignation, of freshly scabbed hurt, but there's nothing visceral about it. It is neither bright nor hot enough to catch fire again without the most dedicated fanning. Wandering thoughts go to a recent memory that doesn't reach the surface. An uneasy sort of gratefulness accompanies it.

§ Raziel is just as she remembers him fro Seifer's world, and from Hyrule. The needle only twitches as she looks over him.

§ Recognizing Cantio is here is another whispering rustle of reflexive unease, and a light frost of residual guilt --and then double checking and consciously confirming that's what that feeling is, like a new word. There's the feeling that she is being intensely studied. Watched for warning signs, like reading bones for ill omens, and then after a few seconds, a breeze of relief.

§ She has no clue who Darren really is; she'd barely seen him before. But there's a sort of fond regard for his obsession with Carpathia, like meeting a mutual fan of some obscure favourite band.

§ Marc and Dylan are immediately welcome sights. Of course she greets the both of them mentally, Dylan with a little more of a warmly daring edge, Marc with a sort of understanding properness to it. It's clear that she likes them both a lot, but feels no need to express any memory of why, never mind what they've been doing specifically.

    Lilian finishes off the last quarter of her current page in an instant, then starts to primly put her pencils away, and then consciously remembers that nobody will steal or destroy them here. Nobody will scream at her if they're left out for a while. She passes it along to the Cecilia to give to the triplets, and says to them and the others "Alright, I need to get up and get moving for the time being. But I'll be back in a little while to finish, okay? Everyone will get their turn. Please don't move any of my things in the meantime. Cecilia?"

    The older woman smiles warmly, still occupied with the third triplet. "Oh, would you really like me along? Well, as you can see, my hands are a mite busy, but I won't be a few minutes if you need." She actually looks at the group too. "And don't be afraid to ask for something if the need arises! I haven't a clue whatever it might be, but fetching a thing or two while you're up to your important business wouldn't bother me in the slightest."
Lilian Rook     Lilian smiles and picks up a messenger bag, which seems rather heavy and square this time, and falls in with the group easily, though clearly with the intent of flanking Marc and Dylan's row rather than get mixed in with the Concord pack. There's a little nervous energy to her, though it doesn't show on the way, and then a little vicarious pride at the sight. She remarks, distractedly, "Effie is really trying her hardest isn't she? I'd like to see the decimal point she's moved later. Point fifteen isn't bad at all.".

    Something strange and uneasy settles into her gut when Cantio asks a perfectly innocent question. Whatever that feeling is, it simply isn't comprehensible. A feeling people don't feel. A little bit like longing. A tiny bit like hope. But neither. She chooses her words carefully.

    "You would be, I think. I don't know if they'd mind, or if they'd even notice you, but I think it'd be rude to simply go in uninvited."
Darren      "Hey, what's good," Darren quietly, conversationally asides to Lilian. "Good to see you in a different context than the last few times." Those last few times being, of course, when one or both of them were either fighting or in crisis response mode. His presence is welcoming around her, warm, but also, for some reason, relieved.

     "You're good with kids," he notes. "You have little brothers and sisters, growing up?"
Raziel "Ms. Rook," Raziel says, respectfully. Though they haven't seen each other in a while, Raziel also isn't in the rags he was clinging to for a long time. Something he was both embarrassed about at the time, but also had not done anything about until Lilian said something.
Cantio Cantio returns Raziel's greeting is returned with a light wave and dip at the waist. "Cantio, pleased to meet you! I'm a Partner, too, from Cadenza. If..." It's only after she says that that she notices she's staring at him a bit longer than would be polite, largely because of his thinness and and also the cowl. ".. If you ever need music back where your from, let me know."

She takes a mental note to add some cool cowls and scarves to her wardrobe.

Being able to comprehend Lilian's thoughts so plainly , meanwhile, really has her reeling. Cantio had known her for so long as an adversary, after all, that being reminded that she is, in fact, human actually puts her on the back foot again. Although the lingering tension is still there, Cantio does get her shit together enough to actually respond with words by the time Lilian speaks to her.

"That's... True, yeah. I mean, on closer inspection, it does kind of have some obvious warning signs." She gestures vaguely at the door looking so different from everything else, then laughs awkwardly as if that might be funny to someone. "So... Um. I didn't know you could draw that well. That sense of motion... How long did it take you to learn how to do that?"

She still sounds awkward, even if she's trying not to.
Staren     Staren's not *running*, but she stops as the thoughts focus on her. Mentally wincing slightly as the outfit is... 'called out.' It looks that bad? Ah... It's okay. You've seen what happened when I couldn't filter my thoughts... I'll try not to blame you for it but yeah, I can see how the emotional impact is... hard to completely overcome now that I'm on the other side. I'll give you some space...

    Staren backs out of the bubble and goes to see what the others are doing.

    Door.

    With how the rest of Sapient Heuristics is designed, the out-of-place door stands out. Her eyes, her focus, is drawn towards it. "What... what's with the door?" She feels vaguely uneasy about it. Why is it able to stick around, in the perfectly-curated world of Sapient Heuristics?

    Also, Lilian's coming this way, though it's the thought bubble that alerts Staren of that. Oh, hi again. Um... Okay, I'll just try to get used to this mental thing. I clearly need the practice if I'm going to hang out around mind-readers.
Lilian Rook     Lilian, out of politeness, but also out of anxious restlessness, responds to Darren. "Katrina is sixty. Bryce is ninety two. And they weren't around much while I grew up." Simply nodding back to Raziel in the way of those contextless greetings, Lilian finds something smugly endearing about the fact that he'd actually obtained something like dress sense since last time.

    She needs a few more moments of deep thought to figure out what to say to Cantio at first. "It's not dangerous. But I want to respect someone who was braver than I was, even when they had less hope. Besides, I don't think there'd be much of value to you in there anyways. Or anything." She laughs, a little uncomfortably. It's the laugh of someone who has learned to pretend to be fine in all circumstances. "I picked up traditional art when I was fairly young. Cecilia really liked it. My parents sort of lost interest when I started doing it wrong, so I stopped for a long time. I can't quite . . . I don't like putting something 'rendered' to paper. I see enough frozen and still things on my own time, so creating more feels wrong."

    §It's not . . . that. You really can't read a situation to save your life, can you? Whatever. It's probably better that way.§
Persephone Kore      "She is absolutely not like my mom, oh my god," Dylan says to Staren. She looks mortified. Marc smiles at her smugly, then adds: "She's more of a parent to the older subjects than the younger ones. The project was smaller once, but one woman can't keep track of fifty children."

     "He acts like he wants to be called Mr. Heller," Dylan explains to Flamel on the way over. "Actually he wants to be called a-" "Do not."

     To Darren: "Your own, huh? God damn, dude. Starting from scratch, with nobody to teach you... that's a whole lot harder than what I did, for sure. You're driven, aren't you?" She claps him on the shoulder, beaming. "Yeah, the doctor's gonna be here for sure. Wouldn't miss it. She's just a little slow on her feet is all. I don't think she's ever been asked to autograph anything before, haha."

     Throughout the walk over, the two of them stick fairly close to Lilian. A companionable silence exists between the three of them; a quiet acknowledgement contrasting with Marc and Dylan's endless back-and-forth. They've said everything to Lilian that particularly needs to be said, and vice-versa; now they can just quietly bask in each others' company.

     Marc grimaces at Cantio's thumbs-up, and Dylan elbows his ribs with a smug grin. "Thank you for the... let's call it 'advice'. But I'm really more of a jogger. Too much muscle would-" "Too prissy to work out." "You weren't *asked*." "Scared he's gonna chip a nail." "You should be scared I'm going to chip your teeth." "Ooooooh."

     Darren ribs Marc about his fitness. He sighs despairingly and casts a glance over to Dylan, who only wiggles her eyebrows and grins like she's gonna put the peer-pressure screws to him. When the push-up bar materializes, Marc stares at it like a frostbitten alpiner regarding the peak still thousands of feet away.

     He grips it. He lifts his chin. He struggles and strains and pulls up his legs... and totally fails to make any headway, dropping back down with an exhausted "Ghhh." Instead he grabs the psychic bar with his telekinesis, wrenches it out of place, and pulls it beneath his chin while standing five times briskly. "There. That counts." "Oh, c'mon! Totally doesn't!! "Shut." "I can do thirty." "I said shut."

     In response to Cantio's last question, Marc flinches a little; Dylan doesn't, but eyes Marc with visible concern. She intercedes on his behalf: "There's... someone in there. Sort of." She glances over at Lilian, smiling a little and shaking her head. "It's okay to go in there. Just be quiet and respectful, and... don't mess up anything, okay? We keep it like it is." That's given a little more ominous context when she nods towards Flamel. "The inside-out case. Yeah."
Persephone Kore      Marc adjusts his collar and fiddles with the buttons on his cuff. He's immaculate already, so it must be a self-soothing fidget. To Raziel, he answers: "'Jungian-Newtonian' powers. To sum it up without an essay: perceiving things that are less than real, such as 'hearts' or 'stories'. Or making one's own wishes more real than the world, such that the world yields. We take in unwanted children- there is nothing special about them at first- and plant the seed of those powers within them. But it must be cultivated further to be any use. I'm afraid the Chambers would be of little use in the development of other types of powers."

     "It is our hope, however, that as these powers can be taught, someday soon they might be shared to all of mankind." "You're really gonna give 'em the sales pitch huh?" "They're representatives of our sponsor. Of course."

     Arcadia's praise of the metaphor makes Dylan even smugger than before, and she nudges Marc exultantly, but he very firmly pretends like he didn't hear anything. "How do you measure it? Well... It's kinda complicated, and I don't know all the stuff. But, like... what's the difference between something that exists, like a brick, and something that doesn't, like a dream? There's a quality that makes one physical, able to directly affect the world, and the other not. What's the threshold of that quality, that 'realness', that something needs to become physical? How un-fake does something have to be for you to smash a window with it? That's the reality-pressure we care about and measure."

     Darren's last remark works Dylan up. "Mack on?? No! She just has good taste okay!!" A little sigh. "That's Effie, like Lilian said. She's been here eight years. Point fifteen is, like... a seventh of full reality-pressure, right? She'll probably outgrow the chambers in another year or two. Maybe sooner."
Raziel Raziel simply observes the attempt at social pressure to get someone to do what you want, AKA bullying, to see how Marc handles the pushup bar.  He doesn't show any emotion or disappointment.  No this is all slightly amusing to him, and he enjoys the banter.  It's...a break from what he normally does.  Social interaction is something easily forgotten you need when you have been starved from it.

"Only thirty?  I am afraid you'll have to do more than that to beat how many I can do," Raziel says, teasing.  Knowing very well that he could do them forever if he wanted.  Dylan didn't shake his hand, so she'll face some of his 'tricks'.  

Raziel listens to the explanation of the powers, and how they are implanted in others.  Unwanted children, spaces that reverse reality's grip in them...there is a running theme, though his eyes raise a bit at the idea of giving it to humanity.  Was the idea to create a new level of humanity?  "I have an important question in this then...I ask all of you here to answer.."

"If given this power, do you think that humanity would change with it, or would they not sub come to the same things they do now.  Hatred against the other, wars of greed, and other vanities that they often submerge themselves with?"

"I see this place, and the great care created into forming it, but the idea that it could be shared with humanity concerns me.  This is because it'd take more than powers to change the human heart...it would take years...decades...probably even longer than I have been alive.  I will also be honest, but while I have a great deal of respect for humanity, I have also seen its worst atrocities."

"I assume this is more than a simple dream, but I want to understand how such steps would take to create a world like this, as opposed to what it is now."
Arcadia 'Reality-pressure' is such a weird term, but it presents the concept with a comparitivity that probably makes it easier to grasp at than going off into all the scientific terms and theories. Arcadia tilts her head, ears perked towards Dylan as she explains the concept. "So it is more of a scale than a rigid measurement. As those values could vary greatly between individuals." Okay a lot of it still goes over her head since she's not a researcher herself, but this is the sort of conversation she has on a regular basis with Argo Alexandria's various researchers and scholars so she's at least getting some grasps of the concepts.

"Want and believe strong enough and they can impress upon the world to make it true." In the end the results are what matters. Though she's still taking mental notes even if she doesn't comprehend everything. It's better to know and not entirely understand than not know at all.

Then her attention turns as Raziel goes into a speech very similar to one she's heard from her elder scholars as well. "Ooooh, he's got a very good point," she murmurs with a nod of her head, making her sidebangs with their adornments sway a little. "It's not that humanity can't change. It -can-. It has, many times. But it often takes decades, even generations, for such social and cultural changes to complete."

A flick of her tail at the thought, and she looks back to Dylan and Marc. "But with everything else of time and effort put into this operation, one would presume steps are taken to ensure these powers do not fall into improper use."
Cantio Those telekinetic chin-ups get a long stare from Cantio in response. "Come on. We're just saying this because we're worried for you. You don't want to end up in a situation where you're stuck underneath a water cooler or something, right?" A beat, and then she realizes that the telekinesis would totally handle that. "... While you're asleep and... Have a migraine?"

Raziel bragging about his own ability to do shitty chin ups better than Marc does have her snickering afterwards, at least. His question about humanity's nature and potential, meanwhile, has her listening intently for Dylan's and Marc's interpretation of SH's goals (mostly out of curiosity).

"I guess not, no. It's just me being nosy." Cantio admits to Lilian with a chuckle that actually sounds natural. There's a little shame in there, too, but she's still able to find some humor there that isn't just put on to try and ease anyone's mind (especially after Marc and Dylan exchange those looks). "Don't worry. I'm good at being quiet and not making a mess of things. I'm not my-"

There she goes again, thinking about her sister. "-other... People." Definitely not thinking about her sister there. The context from Flamel about the 'inside-out' case certainly gets her attention, too, and she strokes her chin lightly as she looks between the door and Flamel a few times. "I'm guessing there's some other reasons for the entrance being.. How it is, then, right?"

Dylan getting flustered at Darren's comment about the girl in the 0.15 room, meanwhile, even has her sputtering a bit and giggling. "Darren! You can't just say that. You need to be more subtle so it's harder to deflect."

Lilian's laugh, meanwhile, actually has Cantio holding back a snicker, calming down enough once she explains the origins of her artwork. "That... I can't imagine what it's like to have parents like that."

Or at all, but she doesn't say that part out loud. "My sister always encouraged me whenever I came up with something new, even if it was objectively kind of bad. I think I get what you mean about creating 'still' images being unappealing, though. It's..."

Her mouth moves faster than her brain, and she doesn't actually have anything to add to that. 'Hearing' Lilian's thoughts has her flinching slightly on reflex, though, along with a quick "sorry" before sighing once and looking right at Lilian, eye-contact and all. "... Do you want to come visit Cadenza sometime?"

There's a whole myriad of thoughts raging in Cantio's head from that one question: Security issues, safety issues, emotional and logical appeals to herself, the whole works, but they quickly congeal into another, more focused thought. "I wanna bury the hatchet between us. Between... Everything. It doesn't have to be my place, but... You know what I mean, right?"
Persephone Kore      Footsteps approach from around the bend, brisk enough to stand out. None of the subjects, and few of the researchers, ever move in a hurry. Marc seems to warmly recognize it before their source even comes into view: "Ah. That'll be her."

     Dr. Carpathia is a small woman, made smaller by age. Her heavy wool sweater makes her look more solid than she really is, like a cat with puffed-up fur, but her face and hands give away her boniness. Once-blonde hair is graying and cut bluntly to the level of her jaw.

     Her face is wrinkled, but the wrinkles of stress and worry far outnumber the wrinkles of time.

     Persephone isn't far behind Carpathia, and gives the group an indulgent smile and a friendly wave. Carpathia must be where she got the sweater-wearing habit from, though that's where their visual similarities end; Phony is a full foot taller, three decades younger, and considerably less bony.

     Carpathia's sharp eyes sweep over the people gathered. Her tongue clucks scoldingly before she talks. "Such a crowd. Come to see what? Our work is important, but it isn't much for spectacle." "Ahaha. But shouldn't you be flattered, doctor? That they're showing such an interest." "I suppose I should. Forgive me."

     One can immediately sense the dynamic between them, just from that exchange and their body language: Carpathia frets and worries, and Phony soothes and reassures her. They really are like parent and child, but not in the way one would visualize. It's in the nature of things that parents are eventually looked after by their children.

     "Well, Lilian? What are you waiting on? Not me, I hope."
Flamel Parsons     "Oh, I don't think it's possible for someone to be that horrible while they have powers like Persephone's." Flamel says, shaking his head to Raziel. "It's not like that. Circumstances shape people. Sometimes, if you have the right kinds of powers, you shape your environment in a way that you can't be shaped by circumstances into something evil. At least, I think so." He scratches his head a bit. "It'll be pretty bad if we ever run into an evil Phoney."

    "Spectacle, maybe not, but data, absolutely! I've always been more about the academics than the lightshow. When you study enough secret conspiracies, you learn to appreciate the subtle things." Flamel rambles to Carpathia, before he looks... to Lilian. Huh. "Oh, do you have some ideas about the inside-out case, Lilian?" There's that head-tilt again. "I didn't really know what to make of them."
Darren      Lilian can tell that Darren is, internally, trying to guess at which fringe idea or other allows her family such longevity--but he doesn't talk shop. Instead: "Good on you for picking art back up. It's good to have a way to express your inner world."

     There were no pull-ups, but there was a valiant attempt. "That does count. Good boy," Darren praises Marc, with the tone of someone who knows, or believes he knows, exactly what Marc wants to be called. He offers a hand up, too, able to do virtually all of the work to get Marc back on his feet with one hand.

     More seriously, "I am driven, yeah," he answers Dylan. "But I had a lot of good teachers, even if a lot of my learning was self-paced." Roswell floats up to him, and Darren gives the little alien a hug around the shoulder. "Aside from Dr. Carpathia's work, I'd subscribed to True Psychic Tales," with a nod towards 'Mel, "Watched lectures and read published works from my world, too. I'm actually in the middle of some study on cosmology--divine intellect, divine emotions--"

HE'S HOPING THAT EVEHIME'S GONNA 'DIVINE' HIM IF YOU KNOW WHAT I'M SAYING, Roswell telepathically interjects, blowing Darren's cool. Darren lightly shoves him, scoffing.

     "Yeah? When's the last time *you* ran game, blood? Divine deez--" He quiets down when Marc begins his explanation, sitting through the whole of it until Raziel brings up his concern. "That's a good point, blood," he acknowledges. "My answer to that--if Marc and Dylan don't mind me jumpin' in--is 'look around this place.' Sapient Heuristics goes to a lot of pains to create an environment capable of... starving out that maladaptive ish you're talking about. Now..." He's gesticulating with his hands as he's explaining, and it's almost like you're in a huddle on a football field rather than on a space station.

     "Sharing this paradigm with the rest of humanity, if I might presume--" He again glances towards Marc and Dylan, to make sure he understands. His back is turned to Carpathia, and while he feels Phony's presence, he is, in this moment, focused entirely on an impassioned response. "It means normalizing love, care, community and support. There's a lot of externalities that run counter to those interests. The runaway tulpa we call the free market, psychic vampires in our highest halls of power, and so on." His eyes gleam with fervor, with belief. "But that makes this more worth doing, not less, if you ask me. A kinder, gentler future is worth a struggle in the here and now."

     "For real, though, let me know if it's any way I can help. Like, -any way- any way. Shoot, even if you just want me to throw the ball around with the kids sometime, I'll do that with a smile. I'd like to think of us as more than just 'representatives of--' oh, damn."

     Carpathia introduces herself, and he's caught completely flat footed, dropping his copy of one of her books almost totally on the ground before he catches it with his telekinesis.

     "Hugefancouldigetyourautograph?!" The book is hovered excitedly over to her.
Raziel While answers to his questions, or rather, answers to his thought experiment and idea testing and put forth, he does turn to see the pair walking towards him.  It does put a spin on things, where one might imagine one was the master and the other the student, it doesn't take a bright eye to see what has transpired, at least in part.

'To look at them, it wouldn't be hard to identify the parent and child by at least appearances.  Though how the one is carrying for the other would also potentially make more observant onlookers confused by what they saw.  Though I could tell, having seen it myself what time does to all things.'

"Greetings," Raziel says with a wave of his strange hands as opposed to a wave after seeing what happened before.  "I am Raziel.." he says, looking to Phersephone, "Though I believe we have met, even if this is our first time seeing each other in person."

He does not comment on any answer yet, he wants to hear everyone, but he does stare at Darren.  "Vampires are psychic by nature, yes?" he says, confused at 'getting rid of psychic vampires' while literally talking to a physic vampire ghost.
Arcadia Alas farther delving into the topic will have to wait as Carpathia and Kore finally arrive. "Greetings, esteemed doctor." This time Arcadia remembers her manners, and executes a short bow towards the elderly intellectual woman. "And hardly a spectacle, we are here to better understand what it is the research here persues." The answer isn't more elaborate because elaborate ones aren't needed, and Arcadia despite being based upon a sphinx isn't the most wordite of individuals outside of what's necessary to be said.
Lilian Rook     Lilian makes a weird sort of distant smile to the exchange between Dylan and Darren. "Sometimes 'driven' is what we just call knowing what you want. Other times, it's knowing what you need to be and aren't." A little faux-huff follows. "I could have just brought her all the way over here you know. Why force that woman t tire herself out running all over the place?"

    Regarding Dylan doing pull ups, Lilian repeats with the sage air of someone who has just recently internalized something. "Phony would say that it counts. You can't do a pull-up without thinking about it --your brain and your muscles both engage-- so doing the pull-ups mostly by thinking about it is fair game." A beat. "Which she uses to justify her totally wrong take that she'd beat me in arm wrestling." As emphatic humour, Lilian moves her arms as if she's about to flex her bicep, but she gets as far as putting her hand on her arm before she awkwardly flinches and stops. "Don't worry too much. He's right to give the pitch, but if those people hang you out to dry, I'll fund this project myself." She really means it.

    "Eight years, though . . . Well, I suppose I'd know more than anyone that it's the furthest thing from easy to become someone better than you are. I don't know why I envisioned it'd be faster. A lot of un-learning just seems obvious."

    Mainly for the benefit of the others, she expounds a little extra. "You know what air pressure is, don't you? Water pressure? The absence of pressure in a vacuum? Pressure pushes from without, to keep what's inside within. The more pressure there is, the more energy it takes to move. Reality, normality, causality, whatever you want to cause it, can probably be extracted in that sense. A basic level of pressure that keeps thoughts and stories within, by squeezing down from without. If there's less of it, it's easier to move in those ways. Easier to . . . express." But obviously, nobody ever makes that kind of thing happen under ordinary pressure--" She mentally hiccups for a split second. "--so they'd never learn anything by trying something they can't do. Not any more than 'exercising' with a weight you can't even lift."

    Lilian sighs a little tiredly at Raziel's point. Tiredly because it's one she doesn't like, and doesn't want to hear, but also because it's adjacent to one she used to maliciously argue with Persephone over all the time. She sighs because it's not fair, that I should finally believe in it, and everyone else doesn't along with me.

    "Humans abuse humans, most often and most severely, because they don't have what they need, or because they find out how rewarding it is when other humans can't do anything about it. I have my own thoughts, but it's easy to argue that humanity becomes less of its own problem when each of them are guaranteed their individual needs, personal sovreignty and some degree of mutual understanding."

    Lilian flashes the ghost of a tiny dry smile at Cantio. "You're right. You're not other people. I look forward to meeting you when you find who you are. I'll come visit then."
Staren     Marc fails at doing pushups. I don't worry about that, I use machines for brute strength jobs. Not everyone has that option... There are also brief thoughts about how unfair it is that she can cheat her body to any look with technology, and does *not* mention that.

    Marc exposits. Staren wonders aloud, "'How real does a story have to be before it affects the world', huh?"

    Raziel asks questions. "Why would people hate, if they never learned to? Who would they hate, when they can see how each other thinks and feels rather than just think of them as an 'other'?"

    Also, Flamel has identified the strange door as the... 'inside-out' case. Oh. Staren hadn't come to this part of this hallway before.

    Her ears turn as she hears more footsteps. There's the good doctor. And... Persephone! Staren smiles wide. "I admire your work! I do still want to talk sometime about the use of implants to awaken powers and why some drive people crazy and others don't, but... this is a social call! Sapient Heuristics is such a wonderful place, it's nice even just to see sometimes, and spend a little time here, talking to..." she fumbles for words for a moment, "...what humanity could be."

    Darren is *much* better spoken, and she gets a little caught up in it, although at 'runaway tulpa' she interjects "egregore" as a term from a manifesto she had sent to a Grand Dorado P.O. box surfaces in her mind. Also seeing even Lilian is enthusiastic about Sapient Heuristics now makes her *beam*. If someone who was as opposed to it as Lilian was able to see how great it is, surely everyone else will in time!
Lilian Rook     Already knowing what he's doing, Lilian does Darren the dignity of just telling him what he's wondering about. "That's just normal for my kind of family. High magical talent is directly correlated with physical longevity for stemming from the same causitive factor. You're a research addict, right? Search up 'Human Template Origin theory'." A beat. "But having five people who all grew up in a completely different world each is . . . well, something."

    When Carpathia appears, Lilian sort of subtly stands at attention. Her posture adjusts, 'string pulling up spine' in a way, but not with rehearsed tension. Like hearing a favourite aunt or grandmother pull up in the driveway on a visit.

    "Actually, yes, I was, though I assure you I've a perfectly good reason for it." She glances off to the side uneasily at the Concord group, but evidently can't contain herself for 'a better moment'. She pops the latch on her bag, and reaching into it, draws out a flat and rectangular matte black case with a red stencil logo on it. "And please, instead of hectically running all over the place for these people, let me do a thing or two for you." Then, properly with both hands, she holds the case out for Carpathia to take.

    "I . . . was thinking that . . . That is to say . . ." A carefully rehearsed pitch disintegrates to pieces in Lilian's head on the spot. Tension rises into the base of her throat along with her heartbeat. Her eyes glance away and back. "These are yours. Please keep them, because they're bought and paid for the next ten years, and I'd rather have not wasted it." It must be a trick of the light that her face is a tiny bit pink.

    Desperate to try a new topic she adds a thin stack of papers to the package. "I wanted to discuss something . . . budgetary with you too. I know the Concord already pays for everything you need experimentally, and you have providers for materials and equipment and labour already, but in the end, I wasn't even able to pay for the repairs. I thought this would be a very good idea. And by thought, I mean I checked and I know it is. Please give it a read over shortly."

    Even by glancing at diagrams, someone with Dylan's level of intelligence can tell that it's a rather heavily detailed plan for an expansion to one of the station's decks, involving an entire room specifically sized, spaced, pressure-proofed, and panoramically exposed, to constitute an 'outdoor' field. The price tag on it has a disgusting number of digits, but only in the context of 'how many installments Lilian plans to pay it in'. "The Arboretum is beyond lovely. But it's not a place for children especially to really cut loose, is it?"

    Clearing her throat, Lilian stops to smile for Persephone. She remembered to do that this time. "Did you bring 'it' with you?" An aside to Parsons. "I do. And I was hoping, actually, if I could talk to Marc, as well as Phony. It . . . well, it may be relevant, but it's been bothering me enough that I won't get any proper rest until I hear it."

    From there, she starts to head on into one of the Decompression Chambers. Her hand hesitates on the handle. "Phony? Could you do that thing vis a vis space expansion again?" And then she pops inside.
Cantio More familiar faces arrive, and Cantio's lightens considerably when she sees Persephone and Capathia. "Oh, hello! Don't worry, not everything has to be a spectacle. Sometimes, just knowing things are fine is more than enough." She tries to reassure Carpathia alongside Flamel even though Persephone is right there. "Are you both making sure to rest up enough, though? Sleeping at least six hours a night, eating properly?"

Roswell blowing Darren's cool has Cantio snickering, but that stops shortly afterwards as Darren gives his IMPASSIONED RESPONSE. It actually keeps her quiet for several moments as she juggles those thoughts in her head, trying to figure out if she's creating a similar environment back home, if she's enabling her people to do something better than what's been their way of life for so long already.

And then Darren fanboys over Carpathia, and Cantio breaks into uncontrollable giggling. "So this is what Darren's like when he's that excited. Aww."

"Humans can be pretty amazing, though, yeah. Their capacity for kindness and cruelty is super high on both sides, so something like Sapient Heuristics being so..." Cantio gestures vaguely. "... Focused? On giving them an environment to harness powers /and/ not have to worry about more mundane worries is... Amazing, honestly. If things..."

She's about to say 'if things weren't like they were at home', but she can't bring herself to say it. She's already stumbling over why that is. Why it hasn't changed yet. Why she hasn't been able to change it yet. That, combined with Lilian's rather direct nudge at finding herself, has Cantio grimacing just a bit followed by a forced smile.

At least it's less of a pained one and more of a thought-addled one. "That's... I'd like that. I still need to figure out... Yeah, there's still some stuff I need to figure out there, too."

Cantio almost misses Lilian just popping into the Decompression Chamber after handing over those papers she doesn't have enough time to really snoop into, but she does stare at that door for a moment before turning to Persephone and Carpathia. "S-so! Um. That room at the end there..." She gestures at the out-of-place door instead, still stopping short of heading right for it herself. "Is that what you wanted to show us? How can we help?"
Persephone Kore      Marc nods firmly in response to Arcadia's 'presuming steps are taken', and Raziel's assertion of 'great care'. "Of course. Even on a small scale, a subject throwing a tantrum could break the station in half. It's part of why the utmost care is invested in ensuring our mental health, and instilling in us a sense of responsibility."

     The pair of them trade glances, and then Dylan starts to answer Raziel's question more fully. "Lilian's got the idea. Bad people mostly come from bad environments. After all, everyone in this environment has turned out good. And if everyone has the power to shape the world... there should be a lot less bad environments. It might take time, but I really do think humanity would grow into this. That they'd become something better, when given more breathing room. And so what if some people misuse it at first? Everyone will have it, and these powers are easier used to protect or heal than to hurt. It's not like giving everybody deadly eye-beams."

     To Cantio, Dylan adds quietly while Marc's distracted elsewhere: "We set that wall, that door, up so we wouldn't just have to... look at it. It's sort of a painful reminder, but we could never get rid of it. ... And I think they deserve the privacy, too. Haha, they were always an introvert."

     "Data," Carpathia mutters as she walks closer, squinting at Flamel. "Oh, you're that boy. I've heard about you. Persephone-" "Ahaha. Yes, it's fine for him to be here, doctor." "Well, alright. Still, 'the inside-out case', hmph. At least use their name."

     The old woman's eyebrows shoot up when Darren pushes the book over. "A fan, are you? My, but that's a first. Persephone, could-" Carpathia holds out an empty hand. In the next eyeblink, there's a pen in it. "Of course, doctor." "Thank you. Let's see here... 'Memetic Eschatology and the New Human'. Frankly I'm shocked. I thought it was my best work, but nobody else has ever agreed." She scribbles a very fancy- and just barely legible- signature on the inside cover, and Persephone levitates it back to him.

     Carpathia regards the vampire with eyebrows only moderately raised. "'Raziel', is it? What bright eyes you have, young man. I'm sure the children absolutely loved you; everyone here is quite human, I'm positive you've noticed. They didn't get you to say lines from horror movies, did they? No? Good." "We've talked! Haha, but it's so different to get to feel your heart in person. It's good to meet you too."

     Then, to Arcadia: "Oh, please don't bow. I mean it. If I have to bow back, my spine will break. But I'm sure it's good to meet you too, dear."

     Lilian's comments make Dylan roll her eyes in deep, years-brewing exasperation. "Oh, god. The 'brain arm wrestling' thing. Marc uses that on me, and it's so fake." "It's not fake." "It is fake! There's a difference and you know it, even if I can't say what it is!! I can do thirty without using mind powers." "Because you used Green to remake your body with stronger muscles." "That's not actively using mind powers!! It's still regular strength!!" "There's a difference and you know it, even if I can't say what it is." "Uuuuuughghghghhh."

     But then Dylan claps her hand on her own flexed bicep, in exactly the way that Lilian had hesitated to, and gives her a firm wink. "C'mon. It's hot, right? Don't jerk yourself around by pretending like it's not. I can't stand seeing you embarrassed of it like that."
Cantio "An introvert? Do they ever come out?" Cantio keeps her own voice down to match Dylan's, already sounding concerneddespite never having actually seen the person inside. "Or... Do they not want to?"

She's refraining from speaking directly about her suspicions already, but it's easy enough to read from her face that she's already starting to come to conclusions about something she may or may not have seen before.

The talk of eschatology and other such words (even though that's the only big word) goes right over Cantio's head, but she can at least understand that Darren just got an autograph from someone he's looked up to. That gets Darren a clap on the shoulder and reaffirming smile from Cantio.

"If remaking your body for stronger muscles, then does using a machine count?" As Cantio asks Dylan and Marc about that measure of strength, Cantio brings out a small cube that unfolds into a floating drone with a gross Cantio-colored face and tiny clamp hands. She lets it head for that pullup bar, and it'll start moving the bar with its clamp hands if not interrupted. It's pretty bad at doing them since its head is bigger than its torso, but it somehow manages to do pull ups.

The talk of hotness and biceps, though, just goes right over Cantio's head.
Raziel Raziel considers Arcadia first, "Humanity can change, but it only wants to change so much.  It wants to change the least amount it can, and live comfortably with what it can do unless the change is either catastrophic and needs to immediately be overcome, or so overwhelmingly makes things better they can't pass it up...beyond that, the will to change needs to be there," Raziel comments.

Flamel comments that he doesn't think it is possible, while also commenting that an 'evil' Persephone would be bad.  "Not even evil, uncaring, callous...not as thoughtful," Raziel pipes in, "Or even Lazy."

"You are right, they DO go through the trouble of making everything perfect...and on this scale, it works.  It's not the scale that humanity exists on.  All of that you say that would need to happen would need an idea to...effect humanity, let's say."

Lilian also speaks her idea, and Raziel does nod.  "To an extent...or they seek another when it's necessary to lessen their own..." he pauses as Staren nearly makes his point for him.  

"Why would they need to hate?  Because they fear.  They fear the unknown.  Just like you fear the unknown when you can't figure out what to do, and your frustration turns into hate.  Deny it, but anyone in this room knows the example I am thinking of without even saying it."

He listens to Cantio, "The capacity for kindness is not as high as you might think.  It certainly exists, but those who aspire to it are much rarer, and those who instead seek mediocracy and a quiet life are higher.  Again,  most humans aspire to the easiest way of life, which leads way to others to take advantage of it."

To Lilian he speaks again, "I feel one big disaster at the wrong time...or an actor who isn't interested in others but themselves would be devastating for this reach at utopia," He says, looking at Darren again, "The issue is with all of what you are saying..."

The thought is interrupted by Dylan, to which he gives his attention.  While she makes a good point, that the people here have turned out well, even with the near disaster that was the Paladins infiltration...something doesn't feel finished.  There is the feeling that she humans could grow differently.  However, Raziel has a different opinion.

"Is really wanting to bring an end to humanity," Raziel lets those words hang for a minute.  "What you are describing isn't human, it's something else.  Better?  I am sure everyone in this room thinks so, but others may not.  Others who are too used to how things /are/.  And those people would retain not a small amount of ability to hurt those here."

"I can prove it, that fear is stronger than you think it is," Raziel says.
Raziel 'I had expected this, I believe.  That there would be those here that could forget so easily what fear does.  What those who could get away with, would get away with...but it's a lesson I would gladly give.  I felt that this place had...no it definitely had the right idea.  However, a reminder was needed...and if they could not overcome this simple gesture, then better to stop here.'

Raziel, wraps his claws around his cowl, and like ripping a bandaid off reveals the grotesque truth.  Raziel had no lower jaw.  He had teeth, including two larger ones on the top of his 'mouth'.  His facial features were erased, save but those glowing eyes, missing jaw, and two pointed ears.  It was clear he was no human, but this?

"What do you think a human...or a group of them do to see me like this?" he asks, putting the cowl back on, and adjusting things.  "Even though I not asked for this pitiful form?  Even though I asked not to be brought back? Even though the only 'crime' I committed was evolving faster than Kain?  It would not be compassion."

Afterward, Raziel bows slightly to the doctor, "Nothing so crass, they have treated me with respect... distant respect, I believe.  A fear," He comments, obviously referring to the handshake.  To Phony he nods, "Somehow, you are what I expected to see in person, though I warn you not to peel too hard at my heart."
Darren      "Proudly," says Darren to Lilian. He even pulls out his phone right on the spot and saves a memo. 'Five different worlds' seems to draw a smile to his face. "Thanks for the tip, Lilian."

LILIAN: Humans abuse humans, most often and most severely, because they don't have what they need, or because they find out how rewarding it is when other humans can't do anything about it.
LILIAN: I have my own thoughts, but it's easy to argue that humanity becomes less of its own problem when each of them are guaranteed their individual needs, personal sovreignty and some degree of mutual understanding.

     As Darren gushes about Carpathia's work to... Carpathia, Roswell wordlessly floats over to Lilian and solemnly nods his approval, extending a rounded 'hand' behind him in preparation for a solidarity shake. He floats away, when she moves to the decompression chamber.

     The doctor can see a warm, brown blush on his cheeks--he must've heard Cantio, though he's doing an admirable job keeping a straight face. "It was. Undoubtedly. You know," he admits with a smile, "I think I owe at least some of what I'm able to do now to you. When I read this book, I was doing a lot of searching for meaning--internally, and externally. You might say I saw the shape of our current reality, and I didn't like it." He frowns, his brow furrowing, but continues.

     "Lilian said a minute ago that being driven means knowing what you need to be and aren't." Clutching the autographed book close to his chest, like it might fly away, "This book opened my mind to new ways humans could be, and... inspired me to find a new way I could be. Even if I ended up different than your kids," he says, "I've stayed a fan. Thanks so much for the autograph, Doctor."
Flamel Parsons     Flamel's grin falters, but only slightly, at Carpathia's sharpness. "I am that guy! But, I think everything's alright now. Uh, in some way. I *do* really want to see your work! I hope that's okay, ahah. Well, that, and Lilian's." He regards the room again. That particular door. "Sorry, right. Emery Heller." A thought occurs to him. He glances at Marc... and grimaces, rarely, before he's back to looking at the Decompression chambers. "Well, if you and Lilian are going to be doing something in there, I want to see! Last time, I think I decided to stay out of the smoke and coral. I'd like to see what you're planning on doing in there."
Staren     Raziel has much to say. I don't hate the unknown... I want to understand it! Although, I guess I do get pretty resentful of people I don't understand who hurt me... Staren looks over and, yes, feels mildly uncomfortable at the reminder that Raziel is missing a bunch of face, but doesn't feel a need to run away or anything. "I'm *sure*, if it bothers you that much, we can find a way to get you an appearance you like more." She has *always* supported morphological freedom! It's just that when you tell people 'by the way, if you don't like your body I'm sure there's a way to get a better one' they tend to read into it weirdly, so she usually leaves it unsaid.

    Still, she's curious whether the children raised in Sapient Heuristics *do* react fearfully, and looks around at Marc, Dylan, and Persephone's faces.
Lilian Rook     BEFORE ENTERING: "Mostly." Lilian adds, vaguely, to Dylan for emphasis, while letting her continue, eventually adding, again, at the end, "Hey. Maybe cover the doctor's ears for a second." She looks aside to Raziel, just a moment after Dylan finishes.

    "Simply put, I already tried to ruin it all, remember? And I have to be the most dangerous there is on this axis. If it was that difficult for me, one in a thousand, one in a hundred, even one in twenty, random people deciding to try and ruin it for everyone, won't get anywhere. You wouldn't. Nobody here would. It's like Parsons said; if everyone were actually that 'real', then it'd take something like an evil Persephone to upset it. And the more Persephones there are, the less dangerous one being evil is." Her tone is, for that moment, sad, and bitter, and guilty. She makes a little offhanded motion to tell the two that she's done.

    And then she finds the argument supremely amusing. The instant Dylan groans, Lilian's eyes light up and her lips turn with the unmistakable expression of 'finally! yes!' "I know right?! It's like totally dismissive isn't it?! There's no way that counts! There's a limit to how far you can move the goal posts, isn't there?!"

    Dylan is a softcore gremlin as always, and Lilian, somehow, blushes a tiny bit. She's thinking about something that Persephone said about the way she dresses at some point. She feels a little self-conscious about wearing 'only' one layer already, and at the same time, now self-conscious about it still being conservative and loose. "God what is with you girls? You're obsessed. If you keep that up I'm going to start deadlifting you until you stop. I might even throw you." She talks shit, but it's kind of validating anyways. "And besides, that means my pull-ups count the most, since I didn't even have a Green-type power to fix it." She flinches slightly, and briefly wonders if she maybe should have used a different word in their presence.

    Cantio asks a very good question. Lilian's response is shockingly honest, what she's feeling and what she's saying in-line in a way they rarely ever are. "I don't know. Yes and no. I think they do, in a sense, but also they don't, at the same time. They're . . . I'll know the answers soon enough, but I don't . . ." She glances to Marc, slightly beseeching, slightly pained. "I'm not strong enough to find out yet." She looks Roswell's hand up and down, slightly baffled, but mostly by the prospect of shaking a little alien's hand. Ultimately, she decides she can just figure it out with as many fingers as she needs. It'd be shitty to say something she really meant, and then snub someone agreeing with her.

    Flamel kinda gets what he deserves. Lilian feels a tiny, petty glow of schadenfreude. "He's had his. I'm over being angry at him. I don't mind if he's here. It's possible to be grateful and pissed off at someone at the same time, because they did something that was both morally correct and personally atrocious. And I got to see some things that I'm glad I did, because of him." She glances at Persephone. "I get to share a 'weight' I don't mind carrying, for a change."
Lilian Rook     And then Lilian sighs, deeply, coldly, with sharp and sudden fatigue, at Raziel unmasking himself to prove a point. The warm and relaxed tone she'd been using for a little while dissipates into a solar static crackle of hoarse and tired verbal fry.

    "Yeah. I know what humans are like when you're born different. Especially when you didn't ask for it. Especially when you've done nothing wrong. I'm sorry for what happened to you, but you're not alone. You're human, but a little different. And we don't need to look to gods and curses and apocalypse scenarios to find humans, but a little different. They're everywhere, and we ignore them."

    "I can't lie here. I don't care even if you're right. If some people want to fall off, let them. If almost everyone in the Multiverse were to want to be 'human' so badly, I'd gladly leave them behind. I know what you're thinking. What you're describing. What experiences you're fixated on. If that's what you think of as 'human', then--"

    "Yeah. Fuck humanity. End it. Make my day. I'll break up with being human in a heartbeat if that's what 'human' means. And if someone has a problem with that, if someone tries to ruin this for me, I'll take care of them myself."

    They're some pretty ominous parting words.
Persephone Kore      "Oh? Something for me, dear? ... A box of chocolates? You shouldn't-" But this isn't a box of chocolates. The seriousness and earnestness, the gentle concern, of Lilian's emotional state strikes Carpathia a moment later. She accepts it in both hands, only dimly registering what it must be. Gratitude mixes with guilt. She's lost for words. Her hands are shaking a little, so Phony takes the box with her telekinesis, just for safety's sake.

     "... Oh. I see. Lilian... you shouldn't be so worried for me. Please. That I've caused you concern in the first place is..." "She's being good to you, doctor. Don't take that chance away from her." "... No, you're right, Persephone. You're always right. Thank you, Lilian. You're too kind to an old woman like me."

     Carpathia is bad at hiding her feelings. Her eyes are watering a little; her mouth hangs open in an uncertain expression like a bittersweet grimace. Grasping for an appropriate response, she reaches into her pocket and pulls out three little golden candies in paper wrappers, then holds them out to Lilian in cupped hands.

     Helplessly, she says: "Would you like some ginger candies, dear?" Persephone, behind her, covers her mouth and smiles earnestly with her eyes.

     Dylan cranes her neck to peep the schematics that Lilian holds out next, and mouths a quiet "Oh, shit." Carpathia heaves a quiet sigh, already struggling and failing to process the previous gift. Phony- had she seen it coming, through Lilian's mind?- only beams brighter. "I... I don't..." "She means to say thank you, Lily-R. You have a beautiful heart, and she's so glad you've taken to our project as your own." "... Yes, that. We'll... I'll need to get in touch with our manufacturers. The materials- we have processes. But thank you so much."

     "Did you bring 'it' with you?" "Oh! Haha, sorry. I forgot." But Phony just turns around, extends her hand, and in an eyeblink that appears in her palm: a strange, almost organic dark thing the size of a fist. "Did you want it in there with you, Lilian?"

     Regardless of the answer, she's happy to do the 'space-expanding thing'. Without any obvious action on her part, the inside of the Decompression Chamber seems to expand by an order of magnitude in all dimensions, even though this would logically cause it to infringe on the other chambers next door and several other parts of the station besides. "Is that good, Lilian? Did you need more?"

     By now Carpathia has eased herself down again into a calm enough emotional register to process what Staren's saying. "Implants? Ah... I'm really less an expert in the neurology of it. Or in any other paradigm of 'psychic powers' save this. But there is little harm in talking, now that we have all the time in the world." 'What humanity could be' makes her smile. "So they are. So I hope."

     Marc answers Staren, offhandedly: "Exactly one Cambria Unit of realness. But making 'stories' more real is difficult. 'Wishes' and 'hearts' are within a person; the person can be trained, so it's easier. I wouldn't know where to start with making a story more real; would you?"
Persephone Kore      In response to Raziel's demonstration, Carpathia- not being a subject- recoils with the expected fear; her eyes open wide, she staggers backwards half a step, and she brings her forearm up in front of her face as if to protect herself from the sight. A cry of alarm dies in her throat; Persephone's aura of warmth and calm soothes her down afterwards.

     But Persephone just frowns a little; not at him, but in worry at Carpathia's distress. And Dylan gasps in shock, but her first response is concern for him: "Are you okay?? Does that hurt? What happened??" Even Marc's response to the offered hand, earlier, seems to have been rooted in the instinctive germophobia of shaking hands with what looks like a corpse; to the sight itself, he doesn't much react.

     This is a genuine mental phenomenon. The children here have lived lives so devoid of real danger, so shielded from real stress about social or physical survival, that their brains have forgotten those instincts. They can be scared of real and plain threats, or scared of loss, or scared of intimacy. But they've forgotten the fear of spiders, or the fear of snakes, or- evidently- the fear of awful undead things.

     The symbol has atrophied; it no longer connects. Its meaning has been forgotten.
Persephone Kore      When Carpathia's safely distracted, Marc- his cheeks just a tiny bit pink- taps Darren's shoulder for attention. "First of all," he says quietly, "I'm not sure I'm interested. Second, you didn't make me believe it. Say it like you mean it, the next time you try to pull that on somebody."

     He looks down- down, because he is a good few inches taller than Darren- and grabs the collar of the other man's shirt between his forefinger and thumb, pulling gently on it to coax Darren to look upwards in turn. Marc's lips are slightly parted as if he's about to say something. His steely blue eyes bore into Darren's heart.

     They share a frozen, interstitial moment, where anything or everything is about to happen.

     And then Marc lets go, and turns his face away coolly, and puts his hands in his pockets, and clears his throat awkwardly. "You do it like that," he says in an impossible deadpan. "Just so you know."
Raziel To Staren, he speaks firmly, "I am often surprised at your ability to manage to avoid the subject matter in an entire room, with everyone throwing it at you," He says, perhaps a touch frustrated at the point being missed.  Does Staren simply not understand fear anymore?  He wonders, if only briefly if Staren's inability to understand social situations is because she's not human.

"Besides this isn't a body, it is a spirit projected into the physical world.  You could not give me a body I could inhabit that would truly be mine," The last bit perhaps either a bit bitterly or a bit wistfully.  A mix of both, perhaps?

Lilian speaks to him, and he gives her his full attention, eyes focused on her completely.  Those words, carefully said cause him to pause for but a moment.  More than that, 'fuck humanity'.  The parts of it that are awful, while trying to embrace the parts that were good.  "Those parts, I admit, were the reason I was created.  Contempt for humanity was why I was given life as a vampire again."

He takes a breath in.  Not that he needs to, but some things he still does.  

Which is immediately expanded the moment the expected reaction happens.  Carpathia is human, and he is several things that humanity fears in the back of their heads, the lizard brain as one might call it.  "Apologies, Doctor," he says, heartfeltly.  Lilian might guess it is also why he has taken to outfits, to hide what he is better.  

However, the response...not just the lack of, but completely different responses cause Raziel's head to tilt slightly.  The very idea that it doesn't trigger the responses it should...or that they're more concerned about HIM...

He holds a hand up, "I am fine, Dylan.  I have existed like this for a long time, and I will likely do so longer.  I am not hurt, besides what you see as a testament of egotistical cruelty.  The story is not a short one and is also not a pleasant one.  Though you could have likely guessed that one."

Though this...is confusing to him.  It was honest and heartfelt.  He could not detect deception, but honestly a human element to it.  

'There are very few things that could truly surprise me, or shake me to the core.  The response, or lack thereof, from these children, was one.  Combined with the words from Lilian, I think I had a much better idea of what was happening.  Still...the wonder I felt at that moment.  This was, truly, a wish for humanity.  At that moment...I vowed I would make sure it would reach the heavens.'
Lilian Rook     EARLIER: "A-ahah, don't think too much about it, please." Lilian awkwardly laughs to Carpathia. "I realized I was starting to understand how you feel. And how difficult it must have been ever let me come back here. I decided that sort of worrying was unfair, so I'd like to give you, and myself, one less thing to worry about. That's all" She sticks her tongue out a little at Dylan. "That's right. Now praise me more." The relief at Carpathia accepting the idea immediately is palpable. She glows up at Persephone gushing over it. "Yes. Our project~"

    Then her suave teasing smugness kind of falls apart in motion when Carpathia hands her back candy. Lilian's hand is raised, then flinches back, clenched near her chest. As if fearing she will break them somehow, it takes her a good few seconds to take the little wrapped sweets in both hands. Her voice is a little choked up. She's forgotten that even Carpathia can tell right now that she's thinking about something warm and nostalgic, to do with Cecilia a long time ago. She will probably never bring herself to eat these. "Thank you. I'll-- take them gladly."

    POST ENTRANCE:Lilian hangs around on the inside of the chamber, back to the wall next to the open door, while waiting for Persephone's help. Just enough to sulk a little, but mostly decompress (in the classical sense) just out of sight of the Concord. "Thank you." she sighs.

    Her gaze locks on the little sphere. Black and hard and marbled with smooth gold rings, perfectly smooth save for a small scraped portion that is soft and warm to the touch. The 'fruit' that had fallen from the Tree of Crisis. It's hers, and she knows it is. She is afraid to touch it, but wants to hold it more than anything else in the world. It takes most of her courage and willpower to take it from Persephone's offered hands, and then she cradles with the care of as if it were a child.

    "I think it should be here. There's no such thing as an object with a Jungian-Newtonian tidal field in of itself, right? Aren't you curious?" Lilian is. But more than that, it's bizarrely more like she's thinking of watering a plant, airing out a room, rescuing a lost spider, and other confusing parallels.

    "Marc. Phony. Dylan, you can come too if you want." Apparently her intent is to include more subjects too. "Part of this whole thing is . . . how this was even possible, 'out in the wild', wasn't it? How someone with the wrong-shaped heart could get so close, by trying too hard. I can show you all you like, what that work is. And it'll be easier to talk that way."

    There's a period where she deliberates on whether she wants to just brain-beam Staren or say it out loud, and then decides on the latter. "You reflexively identified as human there, didn't you? That's fine. Better that you do. Don't talk up all that rubbish about how inhuman you are when it's convenient. I'd qualify less than you by far. But as a favour to you, and everyone else, here's my suggestion:"

    "Don't try to level with people about fitting in. And don't talk about people's bodies that way either, actually. I've figured out by now that it's not coming from a place of misguidedly affected 'colourblindness' to it; you really just don't know-- you can't know. It's not for you to decide when someone else has to talk about acceptance; those cuts aren't yours to open. You haven't earned it. You can't imagine what they feel like. And all the well-meaning in the world doesn't make it any less infuriating for the people who have to suffer quietly for your naive curiosity. We get enough of it already."
Darren      "What's good, bl--" Darren stops dead in his tracks--two fingers on his collar draw his eyes like a magnet. The 'amiably curious' expression vanishes, something else fading in to take its place. He's in that moment, existing outside of himself, riding that moment. At once, it is blisteringly fast and infinitely slow. His eyes gradually trail up, a journey of a few inches that seem like miles.

     And then Marc lets go.

SPEARS TACKLED FOR A LOSS, BEHIND THE LINE OF SCRIMMAGE

     But there's four downs per possession. "Bet," he says, with a coy little smile. There doesn't need to be more--the tone says it all. 'The next time you hear it, you'll believe it.' The little smile remains on his face for some time--he must be thinking up plays. When Roswell drifts too close, Darren snags him in a headlock and noogies him with both his hand and his mind.

     "I never got tackled for a loss my whole career. Lil busta."

DAMN CHILL I KNOW
Staren     Staren looks annoyed at Raziel's criticism, but then smiles at the children's responses. "You see? People don't have to be that way. I'm with Lilian on this..." She freezes, for a moment, like someone who reached into a bowl of m&ms and got a skittle, as she realizes what she just said, but then nods. "If xenophobia is what being human means, I don't care about being human anymore. Buuut, I think another way to put it might be, that all of this is within the range of 'what humans are.' Embracing the better parts of that possibility space doesn't mean embracing something outside humanity." She looks at the door pointedly. "That's something else entirely."

    Then she looks back to Raziel and smiles. "We're the Concord, and this is Sapient Heuristics. Both accomplish things everyone else thought impossible. I'm sure, if it's what you want, we can find a way. But that doesn't mean you *have* to care about it either. Just be you, whatever that means for you."

    Staren looks curiously at the 'fruit', then double-takes when she realizes what it is. Wondering if she's invited in to see what happens too.

    When Lilian states that her heart is wrong-shaped, a strong urge to reassure her that You're not--! surges up inside her and she alllmost opens her mouth, but somehow she has a sense that it's not a conversation Lilian wants to have.

    Instead, Lilian has a conversation with her. She tries to put muddled, confused feelings into words. "It's... I'm part human, too. Discussions like this, 'human' and 'person' get muddled... I've been trying to accept that it's okay to not be fully human mentally, and... Hearing you reject it like that, *did* make me feel better about the inhuman part of me."

    At being told what's not hers to do, her ears splay but she nods, like a student accepting she's made a mistake the teacher is explaining. "I... That's why I don't usually say it... Well no, it's because it bugs people, but I guess that's *why* it bugs people... so it's more than just taking it as an insult about their appearance, huh? ...was it over the line even there, with him discussing it so openly...? I'll try to remember that. I just, don't want an ally... one of my... part of the Concord family, to suffer."