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Evehime Gevurah	The situation has already been explained at length. All that remains is to get there, get it done, and get the hell out.     The surface of Mars is simultaneously sort of what you'd expect, and sort of not. Here, terraforming efforts have been going on for a century, but it's expected it'll take almost a century more for normal humans to be able to walk around everywhere on the surface without protective environmental gear. The place that most closely matches that description is the Valles Marineris; a sequence of incredibly deep canyons that wind around a fifth of the Martian equator. Down here is where the planet's nascent atmosphere has settled into relatively breathable density, and where the temperature is just warm enough for liquid water to flow in canyon rivers, feeding green carpets of hardy plants like crab grass, dandelions, climbing hydrangea, and douglas fir trees. The sky is full of stars even during the day, though faint and hazy and tinted red.     Your destination is hundreds of miles from the nearest warpgate; there aren't many on a planet so loosely settled by a mere 200 million people, mostly constrained to domes and terraforming colonies. Your contact --representing something called 'Firewall'-- has set you up with appropriate transportation; massive, eight-wheeled, heavily armoured martial rovers, with sleekly angled gunmetal sides and thick chassis that keep the interior cabins pressurized (even though you'll be more or less fine down here at the bottom of the canyons), and gigantic tires fit for mantling over the boulder-strewn surface.     It contains a full locker of environmental suits, long-distant transponders, emergency survival gear, signal devices, and weird little desktop computer-sized machines of uncertain purpose. Weapons, too, though those are essentially irrelevant to the people assembled.     You share the ride with three locals, one of whom is driving, one on the computer, and one on the pintle up top. A post-modernist punk-tattoo'd woman who introduces herself as 'Nina', a full body cyborg of the skinny robot variety who introduces himself as 'Bert', and a large and well-muscled man with reddish skin who introduces himself as 'Kleff', all refusing to provide last names or personal histories on a professional anonymity basis.     They don't know each other at all; they are more or less sleeper agents activated by the same dodgy cell. They are also the team that has to actually accomplish the main objective.     The Firewall team's job is to locate and infiltrate where the mind-imprint backup server is being held, extract everyone they can, and then exfiltrate before the Planetary Consortium has it nuked. The local Tharsis Alliance --a wannabe independent government of Mars-- is all that is currently stalling it. Either way, everyone there will die, but with their backups taken back home, they can be given new bodies and go back to their families and old lives.     If not, it'll be months or years before they come back from an old and out of date Consortium databank, missing years of memories and essentially jobless and destitute. It takes a radical freelance agency like Firewall to care, but also, one concerned with existential threats to the solar system to know how this happened in the first place.
Evehime Gevurah	Nina informs you that you're a few miles out from the designated point, acquired via hacking an orbital surveillance satellite feed. A minute later, a strange, harsh glimmer crests the top of the canyon walls over the horizon. Bert asks "What the hell is that?" and spikes the sensors. A split second later, loud electronic warnings go off everywhere in the cabin, and Kleff can barely start to swear before there is a blinding flash and the rover is split in half down the middle by an intense, searing wash of heat. Scalding metal vapour explodes all around. The floor and ceiling split down molten lines. Electronics explode, and the fuel cell cooks off into a raging fire.     Given the seating arranged to the sides of the cabin, military style, nobody is directly in the path of it, but dangerous burns, and nasty falls into the river, are still plausible.     Ringing in ears might clear to first hear Nina coughing in the smoke and hoarsely calling "Status?! Everyone check in ASAP!"
Sleek Shimmer	The premise is a bit difficult for Shimmer to understand. Thankfully her contact network with the Watch has broken it down in the hours preceding this. The situation, the environment, everything.     And she's still having a hard time wrapping her head around the idea that people's souls in this red wasteland can be put in a box and shipped around then stuck in new bodies somewhere else.     Seeing that the suits require human form, she's familiarized herself with the gear, stuck her set into her otherspace storage, and regressed to fox form for much of the ride, sitting up with her eyes closed as she focuses on gathering as much of the surrounding qi as possible.     As a result, she is vaguely aglow... up until the alarm goes off. Then her eyes snap open, the glow vanishes and - kabooooooom!     Well, that sure just happened. And like a bolt of lightning, Shimmer snarl-yelps and PANIC BOLTS out into the great red yonder... well, for about thirty feet anyways, seeking cover behind a boulder or any other handy hiding spot while peeking around the corner and reaching out with her senses to try and figure out WHAT JUST HAPPENED!     Because that just scared the shit out of her. Almost literally.
Ishirou	Earlier: Ishirou was here because he had caught wind of this situation, and wanted to help.  It's close to home for him, for some reason.  It's a mystery to everyone why.   In the vehicle, Ishirou tried to help out with satellite links and hacking to help expand their sight.  He was also genuinely mostly friendly, even if people were more standoffish about their personals.  Sometimes he wonders how people can do it, being disconnected from others but also being around people like this. Now: The transport is split in half, and out of the smoke a coughing Ishirou holds his arm over his face and looks around for people.  His ears ringing and eyes burning he activates the armor suit, without any extensions right at the moment so he wasn't too bulky, and could stop the burning and stinging.   It also lets him divert his senses in other ways, enhancing them.  Pulling himself out, he moves to try and press himself to one side of the canyon, and activate his sensors.  Trying to get more intel on the thing that just split their transport in half, while also getting a better view of the area.  He hopes they aren't being surrounded.  He can't rule that out though...
Darren	AY THIS THING SLAPS LEMME DRIVE     "Don't let him drive," warns Darren with the tone of someone who's made that mistake before.     Before Roswell can protest, the sensors spike. Hidden in the flash of intense heat is another flash. A little humanoid ladybug with an aircraft early-warning system for a thorax emerges, clawed hands pointed outwards.     Protective light washes over everyone in the cabin, blunting the impact of debris and lessening the harmful blaze of heat--it'll still hurt, but it's bearable.     "Still here," calls Darren, as he and Roswell, hovering outside of the vehicle, attempt to keep prevent any falls via their telekinesis, carrying anyone in danger safely away from both a sudden drop and the smoking wreckage. "Gonna need somebody to handle that fuel cell! It's lit, and not in the good way!"
Forte	The concept of a digital populace being forced out into something else, and dealing with the threat of losing 'time' to a backup, is something Forte has no small amount of sympathy for. It doesn't take much to get him to sign up for this. He posts up in a corner of the crawler, just sort of being there, floating in place instead of taking a seat. Anyone who happens to be picking up surface thoughts gets... essentially nothing. It's not meditation, exactly, more of an idle state while still maintaining awareness. If need be he can float in one place like this for a whole month (and at one point he has, literally). ... And it's an idle state that gets interrupted when the crawler flashes. "What is-" AREASTEAL A, EXECUTE! Forte blips out of the crawler, clear of the explosion, and floats down to ground level. "Nominal," he calls, eyes out for what might have caused that. "... And I'm on it," he says to Darren, flying at it, glowing red hand extended to just simply delete the fuel cell out of existence.
Corona Arclite	A lot of things about this mission were twitching Corona's nerves. The objective was pretty clearly laid out, but all the little bits of limited information and unidentified sleeper cells on the sides were like little prickles of suspicion... But those could wait until after the primary issue with the big government/company organization holding multitudes of minds and souls hostage in middle of incoming purification. In the meantime she spent most of the trip obsessively going over her gear, checking weapons, and what not. Because otherwise she'd be annoying the driver with a flurry of questioning of this martian iterations technology aspects and how much horsepower the rover actually packed and being a bother of a tech nerd as usu-- --And then it's a non-issue as a sheering wave of heat slices cleanly down the middle of the transport rover. Corona, to her credit, barely flinches at the abrupt change in the scenerio, other than her ears slicking back at the pitch of noise accompanying the slicing. It's hardly the first time she's been in the middle of a craft going through sudden forceful disassembly so she remains calm. Even split atwain momentum would keep the halves movement for a bit even as they fall away from each other. Long enough for her to hit the release on seat safety restraints, grab her pack, and use the boosters in her boots to power-double-jump out of the split roof of the vehicle and clear what's about to be wreckage. Someone threw up a protective boost, but she didn't really catch which passanger it was before enacting escape from vehicular destruction. Coincidently she lands not far from the boulder Shimmer took hiding behind, landing in a neat little roll that comes up with one of her blasters already in her hand. "Well now, Ah reckon that was one rude welcoming." Beneath the brim of her reinforced stetson the fennec narrows her eyes a little. Someone decided they didn't want company coming to collect their collection of brainwaves. "Ah know some of ya are shook, but standin' 'round in one spot pro'ly ain't a good idea."
Persephone Kore	Persephone, for her part, spends a lot of the ride over craning her neck to stare out the windows in softly marveling awe. The star-speckled red sky, the tenacious plants taking root in rocky ground, blue water flowing over crimson soil- some essential quality about it absolutely captivates her.      "I want to terraform my own Mars," is her firm takeaway. "Let's do that later."      The local operatives aren't much for conversation, though she tries to make some small talk in that effusively sunny way she does. (That mental pull she exerts passively probably doesn't do her favors here.) Eventually, to pass the time, she ends up asking parts of the vehicle itself why are you the way you are? Who sculpted its components, whose hands formed it, what were their intents and what were they feeling?      She is looking out the windshield when the wave of heat approaches. There's no time at all to form a wish that it wouldn't hit them. Despite having avoided serious bodily harm by pure chance and narrow feet, Persephone takes it with the innocent surprise that only someone who's forgotten what 'danger' means can wield.      "Oh, wow. I'm fine," she answers Nina. The Orbeetle gets a warm smile and a fawning "Thanks~ That was really fast thinking, ahahaha." Her seatbelt unbuckles itself, and she floats a good ten feet up into the air above the vehicle's smoking wreckage.      "I've got the fire handled, Darren. Don't worry." Indeed she does. Someone's already deprived the fire of its original fuel source- "Thanks, Forte!"- but it'll probably still flicker for a while. I wish those flames were put out, and Persephone's telekinesis pulls all the air away from the fire, encasing them in little bubbles of hard vacuum that utterly deprive them of oxygen with which to burn. A moment later, I wish people didn't have to deal with the smoke either, and it disperses in a sudden gust of wind. There. That's better.      "That was pretty scary, wasn't it? But there really isn't anything to do but keep moving forward. Let's stay on our toes, okay?" As if anyone but her might let their guard down here. She floats lazily towards the source of the heat wave.
Hiromi	Word of this mission reached the ears of the Archwolf, but, with apparent distinterest, she declared it to be, if not in so many words, someone else's problem. 'Fetch' isn't a game she particularly cares for, even if the thing to be retrieved is a prison of condensed souls. She's the type who prefers to keep what she picks up, and dare others to take it.     Instead, there's a smaller girl here, closer to 5' than 8', still with the ears and tail of a wolf, brown-haired, slight but deceptively fit, dressed in the red and white garb of one who cares for shrines. She's carrying a bow, stowed and unstrung on her back by a leather strap, and keeps a pair of polished, bronze half-gauntlets near at hand.     She's introduced herself as 'Hisako.' One or two people here have already met her, if only on a particular world. She keeps politely quiet, watching the others with wide eyes of the lightest brown, during the ride. If asked, she's not here to represent anyone. This is a 'personal journey.'     When the vehicle is destroyed, she briefly disappears from sight, and it's her voice that calls back, first, "I'm here!" There's a short delay before, "Minor injuries! I'll catch up." She's still not showing herself. Remaining close to where the blast had thrown her, sticking low to the rocks and behind a piece of wreckage relative to their direction of travel sounds much safer. She didn't get out of that unscathed, but the numerous small cuts are healing themselves over into merely ugly scars with the application of the miraculous magic contained in the talismans she carries. She has to rely on that sort of thing, in place of having the regenerative abilities of certain monsters.
Evehime Gevurah	The rover does have a satellite uplink! Bert hands it over to Ishirou. Mars has plenty of satellites (and even plenty of space habitats) of various persuasions. One is just about to pass over the target site in five minutes. The rover explodes in three. The fuel cell vanishes when Forte takes care of it, preventing a much larger secondary explosion. They're designed to be safer than gasoline tanks, but they're also not designed to be hit with that much energy either. Really, nothing is.     The flames are snuffed out of existence by Persephone a moment later, leaving just smouldering hot metal. Kleff staggers out of the smoke, waving it away from his face without coughing. "Good thing the ammo didn't cook off. By that I mean good thing I packed ammo that can't. And good thinking. We don't need a smoke signal here for hours." The Firewall operatives quickly gather themselves together, scavenging the lockers for communications and emergency gear, and arming themselves with heavy weapons and a wild variety of tools that are all so ergonomically minimalist that they all jus tlook like pleasingly contoured blobs with logos stamped on them. Motioning forward, they begin moving on foot.     Ishirou's (passive, unless he wants to die) sensors pick up a huge amount of electmagnetic interference from the blast. The profile matches that of a solar event, rather than any kind of energy weapon. In fact, the glowing point barely visible over the horizon matches the spectrum profile of a white dwarf star. Bizarre.     Moving ahead through the canyon is tedious, but not difficult. The problem doesn't respond to your pedestrian presence, and the way is relatively clear, if taxing on the body and the lungs to trek for a good five kilometers. Climbing the canyon walls would be a problem, so it's good that you don't have to, because suddenly the canyon opens up.     Specifically, the deep, winding trench splits into a wide, almost perfectly circular crater. It'd briefly appear natural at first glance, but the walls are clearly sandblasted and slightly curved, so, possibly an immense meteoric impact. This is not the site of a secure bunker with a server farm squirreled away down it, because there is an entire . . . town(?) Here.     Up close, the atmosphere becomes thick and richly breathable, in this area alone, making the head buzz with a little too much oxygen even. The greenery expands into a dense, semi-tropical forest, bursting with colourful flowers. A waterfall runs from the other end into a crystal lake that never seems to drain. Blue sky hovers overhead, stars barely visible, shrouded in rings of clouds. At the very far end, a sun that is not Sol shines in the sky. It is a sort of pale gold, that shimmers with a short of glittering, liquid surface, fractalizing a geometric corona of rainbow glare.
Evehime Gevurah	That sun sits at the apex of a 'tower' of sorts; a brightly burnished double helix that smoothly forks into a spirograph of ten tines to support it, ensconcing a black obelisk within. It forms the head point of a strangely geometrically arranged settlement, divided up like an occultic diagram by white stone roads, a cluster of construction at each point.     Here, a glittering greenhouse dome of wild plants. There, a complex of steaming buildings from which issues the sound of saw and pneumatic hammer and plasma tonch. Over here, a block of interconnected towers hung with vines and windows. Over there, a windowless black sprawl festooned with sensor equipment that emits a constant, electric hum. Beyond, in some field past the tower, a distant sound like violent clattering steel.     The whole thing is interspersed with seemingly merely artistic pillars of geometric design and complex etching, some crystal, some onyx, some gold, mostly some variation of all three, arranged seemingly without meaning, like natural structures. Even from here, their warmth and glow and intractable energy is notable.     The 'lost souls' are not so lost, either. There are people here. Thousands; possibly all ten thousand. None of them look like the three scrappy sci-fi punks you're with, dressed in unfamiliar clothes that are impossible to culturally place, and given to a tiny coloured tattoo mark each somewhere inconspicuous around the face, though altogether looking perfectly normal. But hurried. Busy. Extremely busy. Talking, living, but bustling around as if perpetually late to work at a major metropolis.
Sleek Shimmer	THEN:     "F-fellow shifter," A shaken - terrified, really - Shimmer stammers out to Corona, "I don't understand what just happened. Why did the metal wagon explode?"     It takes a good further fifteen seconds for her to gather her wits and start trotting along with the others, giving a sharp wordless screechy bark to announce that she's still okay.     And onward they all go. But now she's keeping her senses on high alert...     NOW:     Eventually she starts sensing real life and Shimmer's ears perk up. This place is much nicer than that endless barren wasteland!     Enervated by the livery and the energy and the greater ambient qi, Shimmer's form smoothly 'melts' upwards and a minor flicker-flash of light sees her fur replaced with clothes. "Rich air! Plants everywhere." It's hard to imagine that anyone would really want to blow up such a place...
Forte	FORTE GET EQUIPPED WITH: FUEL CELL ... No, not really. Technically Forte has, briefly, the totality of the fuel cell in digitized form, but it's ultimately inconsequential data. It lets him top off a few internal metrics that weren't that far from being topped off already, but that's about it. "... Well. No way out but through." He keeps his awareness up, in case there's another attack, but continues on, floating a few inches above the ground... "... Mmm." Forte watches the settlement for a moment. "Likely best to not let the settlers know they are about to be nuked," he reminds the group, and then turns his attention to the tower. "And... that looks like the thing that shot us." "Shall we?" He reaches out, trying to feel out wireless access points - or if not, then anywhere he can get hardwired access into the tower's systems. Presumably there's aiming controls inside somewhere, or at least some way to turn it off or sabotage it.
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite adjusts her hat, pulls her goggles into place, and settles into stride with their trio of guides. She's a frontier woman, long hikes are not an uncommon practice. Eyes ahead, on the destination. Weapons at the ready, just in case. She shrugs her metallic pack onto her back. The vehicle getting trashed was an annoyance, but they'd manage. "Someone or somethin' split it with a big heat beam," she explains to Shimmer in the interm. "Why, dunno, coulda been an accident, coulda been someone not wanting company." Up until they reach the end of the canyon, and the crater it opens into. An entire settlement. That.. was not what she was expecting, and takes Corona aback for a moment. "... Huh..." No, she was anticipating some geometrically static corporate complex, not a living town of people. A tilt of her head flicks one ear aside as she glances towards the trio. "So much for ev'ryone being neat and tidily packed in a server still, eh?" Now her suspicions were being all tingly again. Between the habitated settlement and the destruction of the rover, there's something not adding up in all this. It's only visible in the irritated twitch her tail gives though.
Ishirou	Yes, Ishirou doesn't want to get blasted by the beam again, so he keeps his things more general instead of specific.  Instead, he keeps a passing scan going, even as he takes the uplink for the sat, connecting it into his suit's systems temporarily.  He also, thankfully, ignores the effects of walking in a low atmosphere environment.  This suit is handy. On the walk there he keeps a lookout the best that he can, but he wasn't expecting it to open up as it does.  The climb might have been rough, so this is a welcome change.  Of course, it's...weirder now.  He takes time to take everything in.  Detecting the nanites swarming the sun like a Dyson swarm.  The sun at the top of the tower, the people hurrying around.   People are likely going to start asking questions, so quietly, Ishirou attempts to subtly biohack people.  Not trying to control, but listen in on their thoughts, trying to detect 'Capital Words' and translate their meaning so he can understand them.  Are these the people who were in the back-ups?  If so, what happened to bring them back, and what has them so busy?
Darren	POST-CRASH      "My man," says Darren to Forte approvingly as the fuel cell is just deleted. Saucer, in turn, chirps his appreciation at Phony's praise, scratching the back of his head bashfully--when she snuffs out the flames and smoke, he even does a little flip mid-hover for her.      Somewhere in hiding, Hisako calls out that she's mostly fine, and that she'll catch up. You sure will. Shoot, last time we hung out, felt like it was me catching up with you!     The QB and his pokemon friends are hovering a foot or soo off the ground, following behind Persephone in short order. They take to the trek well, though it is enough for Darren to work up a light sweat by the time the mysterious town is upon them. THE MYSTERIOUS TOWN      A friend-shaped plesiosaur emerges of her own accord from Darren's pack at the sight of the waterfall and the lake nearby. She looks hopefully between Darren and the water. "Sure," says the QB. "But don't wear yourself out, and be ready to run it back if we need you." Nessie flaps her fins excitedly, craning her head to hug Darren with her long neck, before hurrying over to the lake. While it's mostly for play, she does delve beneath the water's surface out of curiosity, looking for anything useful or interesting to share with Darren telepathically.      "Well, it's neat and tidy in a different way, you feel me?" says Darren to Corona, peering past the frolicking Lapras to narrow his eyes at it. "Looks like Silph isn't the only group experimenting with sacred geometry and artificial suns. But these guys have got that ish on lock. Directed energy blasts... sheesh! They got everything they need, plus a self-defense system. Of course somebody's gonna wanna blow that up," says the experienced conspiracy theorist to Shimmer.      While Nessie checks out the lake, Darren, Roswell and Saucer hit up what locals they can, to ask general questions about the settlement. How long has it been here? What's the name of it? Does Tharsis know about it? At that same time, Darren's pondering about lost civilizations and government cover-ups--trying to see if there are any useful parallels that might provide insight on how best to keep these people from harm's way without asking them to sacrifice what they've built.
Hiromi	A long trek through a canyon with a mildly hostile atmosphere and low oxygen levels is, at least, something Hisako is pretty good at handling. That's just a matter of enduring, and it gives time for her injuries to fade to pale scars. Given her relative lack of other scars and how little attention she pays them, it's reasonable to assume they'll keep healing, if one doesn't instead assume that this is totally new to her.     She keeps to the rear of the group, but only so she can spot anyone falling behind, and use her excess energy to keep them moving, while she continues to watch above, ears perked high, waiting for any sign of another attack.     Once they find the settlement, she looks to the Firewall members for any sign they know what to do now that the people they were sent to rescue are no longer neatly contained in a box (however it was they had stuffed them in there). When no wisdom is forthcoming, she looks dazed, uncertain of what to do next, until she visibly steels herself, fists tightening, and takes another, careful look over the visible landscape.     After calling out, briefly, to Ishirou and Darren, and signaling that she'll begoing out on her own, Hisako walks into the jungle, crawls over the ground, rolls around until she's thoroughly replaced her scent and eye-catching coloration with 'local environment,' and then prowls toward the black sprawl. She hopes to catch what people are saying along the way, but since Darren went to ask people in the open, she won't afford much of her own time to it.     The pillars she gives a cautiously wide berth.
Persephone Kore	Persephone, on the long trek (float) to their destination, keeps something clasped in her hand. Every now and then she looks at it. It's not a happy look.      What could she see in a seatbelt buckle that leaves her so morose?      The appearance of a jungle, and of a strange town, ought to put anyone on edge. For her, though, it does the opposite. Persephone breathes in deeply through her nose, shuts her eyes for a moment, and then lets it out in a sigh. Relief?      She comes up short on the edge of the crater. As Darren catches up to her, she overhears his conversation with Shimmer, and turns to look back over her shoulder at him with a small and rueful smile. "You feel it too, don't you? When people are given things they don't 'deserve', there's always going to be a reason to take it away. Maybe it's too soon for me to be saying things like that. But..."      Phony looks down at the buckle in her hand again.      "... Well, let's find out."      Persephone walks- floating here feels a little too carefree, doesn't it?- through the jungle and towards the closest thing the settlement has to a 'center' or a 'plaza'. Assuming she isn't stopped or greeted by anyone, she finds a peaceful place to sit and 'peoplewatch', though her eyes are completely closed.      It's more like stargazing than peoplewatching, really! From their psychic glows and gravity, she tries to read the townspeople's mental states, motivations, and the general directions of their thoughts. By zooming out into the constellations of their relationships with each other, she tries to parse their attachments and social roles.      How do they relate to each other? How do they feel about their current state? What do they want? How is their society organized, in terms of interpersonal bonds and interactions?
Evehime Gevurah	Forte finds a rather strange dearth of wireless activity for a world as advanced as this. Not none, just less than a tenth of what it should; there should be a buzzing cloud connecting everything to everything filled with too many inadvisable smart chips, but it seems to be mostly limited to communications between the vaguely industrial-sounding node and the humming black node.     The tower, as far as he can tell, doesn't have systems. Nothing is generating that sun; it's just sort of there. However, there's plenty of low-level activity in the glittering, semi-liquid haze surrounding it. Ishirou is correct; it appears to be a coordinated, low-level nanoswarm, riding the electromagnetic skin of the tiny star. They don't appear to be responsible for the firing either; their purpose appears to be harvesting energy and broadcasting it to everything else. It's a bizarre mixture of local technology and Something Else.     The Martian river isn't all that exciting, but as Nessie moves closer to the lake itself, she finds that it is exceptionally deep and appears to gradually drain into a previously empty underground table; perhaps originally a thick ice sheet. It's also rife with water plants, and even molluscs, crabs, eels, and weird, hardy fish. Which doesn't really make sense, because who would import those to Mars? The rivers were lifeless.     Enquiring to the Firewall group gets a short period of uncomfortable silence. Nina is the first to break it. "It doesn't change anything. They'll be vapourized in the blast, and their backups won't remember any of this. It'll be fine." She sounds as if she's trying to reassure herself as much as the others. "Come on. We lost a lot of time to that walk. The clock's ticking." The three of them reach for their bags and thrown loose cloaks of some weird, shimmery material over their bodies. A pixellated ripple passes over each of them, and the material becomes semi-invisible; by that, meaning the person inside too. They begin stalking off. "Split up and locate the server. It's not showing up on wireless, which means it's been isolated to its own circuit. Our problem actor knows cybersecurity."     Hisako creeping around finds that, even from a distance, the pillars are mysteriously warm. Actually, they seem to account for most of the warmth in the crater, heating the near-freezing air from before to a localized feeling of a little less than body temperature. The black complex looks a little menacing from a distance, but up close, people move in and out without issue. She notices that almost all of them have the same, or similar, coloured marking too.     Listening to them talk makes the purpose of their work fairly clear; though she can't see inside, they're animatedly conversing and debating about 'medical tanks', 'anthropomorphic design', 'biohazard waste', 'raw materials', 'body demand', and strangely, the difficult pressures of restoring hundreds of damaged bodies to workable condition, day after day.     Rather than sounding like simple overworked technicians though, their chatter is primarily about iteration and improvements, theorycrafting how to make their work more efficient, discussing how they can meet and exceed some unnamed third part's interests, and other things that usually only the owner and immediate executive staff would talk about. It is a mystery why their role includes so much severe medical attention.     Darren and Phony are noticed immediately upon entering. They're regarded with a minor amount of suspicion, but when they show casual comfort in the area, their audacious is taken as an assumption of an allied status. Darren is greeted with friendly, if clipped and hurried, camaraderie. He's immediately asked a lot of questions about which part of the planet he's from, or if he's from one of the habs, if he's 'with the Barsoomians', or perhaps a 'Gatecrasher'.
Evehime Gevurah	The former proper noun, is something that Ishirou reads as 'local frontier-settling pioneers who were here previous to some catastrophe, disgruntled about their jobs getting shittier under hyper-corporate management and the massively increased demand by the new-ish Planetary Consortium to terraform unreasonably fast; mostly independent former indentured workers, or still working but part of the rugged culture, with extreme tensions with the government seizing their land. The latter is a term that more or less translates as 'adventurer'; they speak to Darren with some vague mentions to 'the Pandora Gate', which Ishirou reads as a weird alien artifact that leads god knows where. It is currently under the control of the Consortium government, but for some reason, these people expect it will not be for long.     hey are indeed backup people. Actually, reading their minds, they were previously 'infomorphs'. Rather than being on ice, they were conscious and more or less stuck in a digital environment. They don't have great memories of it. The Consortium is what passes for a solar system government, and promised them jobs that would get them physical bodies; which they were waiting patiently for.     Darren confirms that the settlement has only been here for a month or so, which is an utterly outrageous timeframe for all of this to pop up. It doesn't currently have a name; none of them dare name it, and its architect hasn't given it one. The Tharsis League knows of it, but is still very leery of it. Namely, because it borders so closely on 'the quarantine zone'. Ishirou reads this as some sort of war-stricken hellwaste filled with all sorts of strange anomalies and fates worse than death, created by a machine-singularity uprising in the past; a shared trauma amongst every person here. The government apparently credibly considers them compromised by proximity.     Darren can't peg any of this as similar to an Earth civilization he knows. He gets the vague feeling, though, that it isn't from 'a different past', but one that might yet exist; the use of modern technology on top of these old-fashioned and seemingly semi-magical fixtures is too familiar; too expertly done. The government has of course told no regular citizens at all about this, spinning it as a terrorist attack that has temporarily taken the servers offline; they are notably terrified of losing grip on their presumptive authority and face, but also deeply disturbed by the fact anyone even pulled it off.     It's tough to imagine how they could be transplanted back where they belong, if everyone is suspicious of them being contaminated, either physically or mentally (or both), and it's not as if the Consortium would stop at just a nuke if they somehow prevented that. They aren't supposed to have gotten bodies at all yet, and having them eliminates the government's leverage to enforce the contracts they signed.
Evehime Gevurah	The people Persephone passively scans are a little odd. Very few of them know each other from a long time ago, but they're all relatively familiar with one another from their shared virtual environment (ver. low budget), and have never seen each other in the flesh before this. They have a vague sort of communal bond, and a shared dissatisfaction with their previous lot.     They are all very, very busy, and focused very much on their work, yet somehow don't appear to feel mental fatigue at all because of it, even if they have extremely little time for leisure or bonding. The way they're split up is a strange sort of ten-part caste system, each responsible for major roles that seem semi-sensible and semi-arbitrary, which matches their marks; these have been assigned with informed details, not self-chosen.     They're also very happy to be outside of a computer again, but all of them have friends, families, and things they miss quite a lot, and they aren't able to contact them here, or even passively catch up through the internet, in an isolated environment, instead wholly dedicated to their work. They don't have a lot of time to really introspect or survey their own feelings. They feel harried, but motivated; they believe in what they're doing, and have hopes that eventually the people they know will come to them here. Heartache and homesickness at missing the culture they were used to is prevalent, but they seem optimistic about creating a new home.     Which is all well and good because none of them are quite in their right mind. A tiny spark of unnatural fervour burns within all of them; a pinprick of light that they follow everywhere. It's not an active sort of control. If she had to compare it to something, Phony might think of it as a sort of 'divine revelation', as if someone had briefly heard the word of God and become obsessed with fulfilling it through the way they live.     It's difficult to say whether they'd want to be here without it. A great many of them have lingering fears, but Phony becomes passively aware that most of them have died a few times. The memories are strangely un-traumatic, like a minor workplace accident, but it seems that, at some point, they've all bonded through being pushed into some kind of gruelling mass combat exercises a month in the past; the best performers now serve a permanent role involving intense training, dying and being reborn like the mythical Einherjar of Valhalla.     It'd be deeply, grievously mentally scarring if they weren't all sort of inured to it by their quasi-divine inspiration, which makes it a sort of 'would rather not'. They seem to recognize the necessity of it, fearing more than anything that they'll be forced to start from scratch all over again, with a secondary fear that they really might become, or even perhaps already are, contaminated in some way by some invisible threat. They don't seem to contextualize it as the same thing as the object of their worship; a person, who was the first they all saw upon awakening anew, and they feel suicidal loyalty towards, desperately wanting to please and impress.
Corona Arclite	Corona Arclite nods a bit to the Firewall trio. That's kind of the sort of answer she expected, given the situation. "Easier to save their minds than try to move all these bodies," she rationalizes. Good enough for her. Well she lacks fancy stealth cloaks but that's okak because parkour is her prefered means of moving about to avoid notice anyways. She makes for the nearest structure she can walljump and grapple her way up onto the roof or equivilent surface of. With a vantage point off the populated streets she can get to work. Corona turns her attention to the analytical scanner device on her arm and starts fiddling with its settings based on what they already know. The target isn't connected to a wider network, so that's not a search venue. A storage server would still need a source of power, though. But going to need to filter out possible interference from that tiny sun and the nano-aura surrounding it... though if those nanos are what are collecting the energy from said minature celestrial body... Corona adjusts a few more settings. Maybe she can pick up the energy being collected and transmitted and trace it down to where it's being sent to use. Surely a reincarniation memory storage server would take a considerable amount of energy to keep at the ready.
Forte	"... hmm." Forte focuses on the tower. "Let's see if we can't solve this..." CROSSSYSTEM.MDF LOADING APPLYING W.QRY Forte's armor changes - becoming green on one side and black on the other. "Opening a search to the Gaia Library..." "... And downloading results..."
Evehime Gevurah	Corona (aptly named here) is in luck. The power is being wirelessly transmitted. Which is weird. The dyson swarm clearly isn't actually built like a 'real' one would be, but someone was necessarily familair with the concept already, as well as . . . strange magic sun stuff. It's hard to tell how it's being broadcast; the nanites themselves obviously don't have the equipment to do so, because they're too small. Still, she can tell that by far the most is going straight down into the obelisk within the golden helix, secondarily to the 'body building' Hisako is at, and third to the industrial-sounding area.
Sleek Shimmer	Shimmer's senses are assailed in such strange ways here! She shakes her head rapidly to clear it, and starts on a path towards the center of the complex. She's not trying to be stealthy... though at some point, she spots Corona heading upwards and decides to do similar. Her form ripples as she steps forward and FWOOOOOOOOOSH.     Just like that, she's halfway across the city, standing up on a rooftop and gazing up at the tower, wondering if a better vantage point will help her learn more.     But she doesn't stop there. She continues to approach the tower. Every ten seconds or so, performing another null shift across blocks at once. Seems she feels confident in using up that much qi in this environment.
Darren	Darren proves very sociable with the townspeople, even with what little time they can spare. "Hey, what's good! I'm from outta town, but don't worry. Self actualization and independence from maladaptive social hierarchy's mad important to me. I'm tryna see what can be done to keep y'all kickin' it, 'cause this is a really remarkable accomplishment for a month and change, you feel me?" He smiles brightly.      This is the kind of place that pictures, as useful as they'd be for an enlightened scientist, could do more harm than good, even if Tharsis is already aware of it. So Darren takes notes on his phone, no video or pictures. Exhibit A -Town itself located very near 'quarantine zone,'; subject to suspicion from Tharsis League, local governing body attempting to forestall nuclear strike. Quarantine zone and technology are both being used as convenient excuses by psychic vampires to re-establish corporate hegemony by destroying town and consequently wiping memories of settlers. Exhibit B -Artificial sun; source of unexpected energy surge. No known connection to lost civilizations of Sol System; at least, not any that I've studied. However, blend of occult and technological infrastructure is undeniably familiar all the same. Placement within town appears to be deliberate; reminiscent of 'sacred geometry' taken with other structures around town. Exhibit C -Lake fed by waterfall on approach to town. High number of flora and fauna within, biodiversity at odds with planet's ecosystem and the age of the settlement (approx. one-two months). Exhibit Deez (Darren smiles despite the circumstances). -No sign of backup server in question within town, according to experts, who state it may be isolated on its own circuit. If so, reasonable to assume additional tampering?     Nessie has had her fun, and returns to Darren, who lets her back into her pokeball. "I think I've got the rough idea," he says aloud. "We're not gonna get these guys out of here in time to avoid the strike." Based on the radio conversation, it might even be fair to assume they wouldn't want to leave. But...     Darren, uncertain of where they might have run off to, broadcasts telepathically to the Firewall team. Hey. How likely is it they updated the backups? Would they have the ability to do that? If not... how long would it take *us* to do that?
Evehime Gevurah	Nothing untoward happens to Shimmer, though people certainly stop and point and talk about her. The rooftops aren't terribly contiguous here. It's not packed together like a dense city, and plenty of space has been given over simply to natural beauty, weird monuments, and Geomtry.     The tower is almost kind of intolerable to her senses up close, like sitting too close to a bonfire where the heat prickles one's face. It feels like the sun and the warm life force of a human being at the same time.     From up high, she can see beyond it, where the crater ends and the canyon valley resumes. Not far away, the chasm diverges widely into rocky river lowlands split up by high wind-scoured rock formations. It appears to be the site of a fight-- no, a mass training exercise? Thousands of little human blips, the noisy sounds of familiar steel on steel and faint scent of blood familiar to her. Which is weird, because the rover was full of guns.     There appears to be no particular way into the obelisk save an enormous onyx door on the bottom level. It is gilded with extensive geometrical patterns of ten point connections, seemingly in actual pure gold. It is tremendously large and heavy; probably several dozen tons.
Ishirou	Ishirou has a LOT of information to go through, he gets a better feel of what's really going on and actually kinda hates it.  Probably because of Indus.   Definitely because of Indus. What they need to do is free these people.  Maybe someone else could put them into their bodies again, away from the corporate slavery they were in before, and the religious slavery they're in now.  He taps on his chin for a moment, his blue eyes looking around him.  Magic stones, people busy with religious fervor.  Ew. He looks up at the 'sun' and the nanite swarm.  They were met by one person that seemed to put them on this path, and that person should know where the backups are, and they might figure out what's with these people.  So he attempts to reach his senses out, looking for someone that sticks out. They all had energy, right?  The person who started this should stand out against the others.  If he could just find a direction..?
Hiromi	Hisako spends a while talking over the radio as she grows increasingly confused at the topic of copied people, privately wondering if it isn't terribly unhealthy to split one's soul into an arbitrarily large number of progressively smaller pieces. She can understand why people would want to avoid doing that, but the presence of the 'backups,' and worse, multiple backups at different points, makes her head hurt to think about. This is the kind of pain against which her great, wolfish endurance doesn't help.     She'd really like to go see the mentioned combat grounds. On the other hand, it sounds like this place is going to be destroyed, anyway, and that its big defense tower won't be enough, probably. That makes her feel worry, but if there isn't anything she can do about it... then it would be best to finish the mission, so some aspect of these people can survive, and to which their soul-pieces can return. Her thoughts are loud and unguarded, but as long as there aren't any mind-readers paying attention to her, that shouldn't matter.     Judging that it's most likely in the place they're building the bodies, she stalks the windowless buildings, staying above or below the eyesight of the people hurrying to work, looking for where a 'fresh' body might be leaving.     The gauntlets are special. They were a gift or, more accurately, a reward, and she fits them with over her hands with reverence, covering most of the arm up to her elbows, though leaving the inner side uncovered. Hisako flexes, noiselessly working each finger to refamiliarize herself with the personally-fit almost-bronze. With this, she won't have to use her talismans quite so constantly, just to emulate that strength.     'Being still' is in her arsenal, as it 'being quiet' and 'being aware.' 'Being invisible' isn't. Whether the ability to pinch handholds in the ceilings of building materials is enough to provide her with a stealthy route inside the medical facilities is something she'll just have to chance. She'd try opening her own holes, but that has a greater tendency to be loud, and she can't dig underneath without a lot of time and effort.
Evehime Gevurah	The Firewall team responds to Darren through encrypted radio, not being psychic themselves. Bert is his contact here. "Backing up isn't a fast process. Human brains contain massive amounts of information that has to be transferred in exact memristic order; it's exponentially more difficult when you aren't basically comatose too. Rich people get it done monthly, maybe weekly if they're sweating. The rest of us make do with once or twice a year."     "There's no way that they have ten thousand people backing up every single day. The technology just isn't there yet. If we tried it, we'd be here all year. Think about it. Even an hour each, ten thousand hours four hundred sixteen days."     There's an uncomfortable radio pause. "So I really don't like knowing that they did it anyways. They might be using TITAN tech."
Corona Arclite	Having helped get people oriented on their primary objectives Corona flicks off the scanners of her device for the time being. So far the 'anti-tech defense' hasn't appeared to pick up on her, maybe due to the weird anachronistics of her own technological methodologies not being 'high tech' enough, but she's not going to push her chances. Still, best to keep moving. The building layout not being a compact city of many buildings in one space is actually fine with her, her style of parkour is built around crossing distance between structures in more spaced out frontier colony settlements. Double-jumps and using her grapplers should still get the job done, even if people on the streets look up and wonder what some goofy person is doing jumping between buildings. Though rather than head directly towards the obelisk at the center of town she's moving to get closer towards the industrial sounding part of the settlement. She wants to know what these people are working on in an isolated location that they'd not want 'advanced technology' interruptions to the point of blasting possible instrusions with The Power Of the Sun. When you're potentially properly suspicious of Big Companies and Governments on the regulary, those sort of things are pretty big Red Flags.
Sleek Shimmer	As she nears the tower, Shimmer feels that energy getting worse and worse. And within the same city block, it grows too oppressive for comfort. She stumbles out of her final null shift and drops to her knees, gasping in a mixture of surprise and mild pain. A hand goes up over her heart and she grimaces, brow furrowing with tension.     "T... too oppressive here. Great for ascendant arts, but no time..."     But thankfully, while oppressive, her senses aren't entirely blinded.     Then other things nab her attention. Is... is that an arena?     Checking that out might explain what's going on here! And so she focuses her senses, locking in on a crowd, and steps their way - once more blur-warping with a blip-whoooosh across a vast distance, appearing rather suddenly near a crowd.
Evehime Gevurah	As far as Hisako can tell, 'bodies' aren't leaving at all. Logical intuition posits that if the 'souls' are at the center, and the flesh is over here, and the tower is that difficult to enter, empty bodies probably aren't being wheeled across town in stretchers to get plugged in, but the souls are somehow being sent here. Which would fit the fact that she occasionally sees people with red markings (as opposed to the usual white) starting to trickle out already, uniformly larger and stronger-looking people than the local workers.     It's actually not that hard to get in, using a door. Ten thousand people sounds like a lot, but a tenth of that is actually at this point, and most aren't going in and out a lot. Furthermore, there seems to be no form of security surveillance at all. Quietly hanging out over people's heads is entirely sufficient; no suspicious owner is watching out for thieves and vandals or unhoused people sleeping in a lobby.     Contrasting its exterior, the inside is warm and bright, all pleasing shades of eggshell and soothing mint and aquamarine, as if she were inside a very bright aquarium tunnel, furnished with no shortage of greenery. It doesn't seem a practical workplace, but it's incredibly easy to relax here. Most people seem to be stationary inside rooms that are all isolated from their nearest neighbour by a web of halls, but are mostly glass in actual structure, making it easy to see inside.     Which makes it easy to divine their general purpose. In one, numerous white-marked men and women poring over three-dimensional schematics of a human body and arguing animatedly. In another, luminescent tubes filled with some transparent gel and backlit with green light, somewhat disturbingly containing everything from individual organs to entire limbs, suspended in networks of wires. A bright, sterile white room in one place, filled with bloodied corpses --apparently injured by blades and blunt trauma, if she looks closely-- laid out in much larger, blueish equivalents-- if she looks very closely, she'll see them healing at a nearly, but not quite, imperceptible rate, dense clusters of brighter, opaque blue forming around their wounds.     One stands out for being incredibly lengthy, involving endless rows of incongruently black and gold 'tables' of some sort, with fogged crystal coverings. It's here that she sees 'doctors' of some sort helping the occasional person up out of one-- mostly 'red caste', coughing up clear solution and reaching for towels and clothes. Names are inscribed on each table, though the personal effects seem quite generic.
Evehime Gevurah	The industrial portion, to Corona's eye, is more of a matter of 'what aren't they making?' New building materials are being fabricated seemingly from raw martial rock and soil at a fantastical rate. Pieces of fine electronic equipment are extruded from smaller machines that certainly aren't being fed the precious metals they produce. Organic compounds harvested from the valley are being processed into what appear to be endless medicinal(?) supplies, some of which seem like rather anachronistic pills, poultices, and sealed drinks.     And yet, still, there are hundreds of labourers here, yellow marked, working by hands to put together the actual tools that others will use. They aren't just screwing and soldering together new machinery to fill the buildings either, but ostensibly working extremely hot forges and manually smithing much more archaic items, up to and including literal swords. Nothing to do with the obelisk, pillars, or tower appears to be here; ostensibly, someone else made those.     The purpose appears to be little else but rapid expansion, getting this settlement up and running, bigger and better, at a clip that would kill normal workers. The focus appears to be on tools and medical supplies above all else.
Evehime Gevurah	Shimmer has no difficulty getting down to the training fields. What she sees is simple to comprehend. Hundreds of people, all red-marked, are engaged in combat, seemingly divided into two sides based on simple white and black clothing. It seems to be an exercise, live fire.     They are all unarmoured, and equipped only with hand weapons no more complex than a crossbow, despite this world's level of technology, which is typically not condusive to anyone surviving an exercise. In fact, she stumbles across no shortage of dead and wounded, who are promptly removed from the field by men and women with blue markings. The red-marked must certainly be genetically modified (right?), because their size, strength, speed, coordination, and qi circulation, is all well above average, equivalent to a nascent professional martial artist from her home.     They are locked in extended battles of swordplay, brutal grapples, exchanging projectile fire from concealed vantages, holding fortified positions in small groups, and moving others in secret for ambushes. The purpose seems as if it involves capturing some central point to the other side, as if in simulation for a later operation, yet it's also almost ritualistic; certainly, nobody else on this planet will fight them hand to hand.
Darren	TITAN--hypothetically, what would the issue there be? What's that, a precursor race, a blacksite? Assume the worst, here. If they were backed up with influence from TITAN tech rattling around upstairs, what are the long-term repercussions?      Awaiting an answer, Darren taps two fingers to his temple and peers five minutes into the future every so often--never hurts to have a little heads up.      Roswell, meanwhile, floats around and begins gathering information of a different nature. Using telepathy to communicate, he's literally asking:      AYY TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER YOU FEEL ME? DAMN I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO SAY THAT NO LIE      This place is in danger--it'd help to know who, if indeed there is a human mind responsible for such things, can move the necessary resources and labor to prepare for the kind of crisis this place is going to be facing very shortly.
Evehime Gevurah	Ishirou's assumption is logical. The normal, unaltered locals don't have measurable magical energy, and bog standard 'life energy' (except for Bert, who is, unfortunately, a clanker). The people here, who may have somehow been altered, augmented, or contaminated, have a lot more. So, whoever is responsible for doing it, and working with that weird alien sun, probably knows about it in-depth, and probably has a lot of it themselves. Like a wizard or something.     Attuning his Indus mana sensors to that wavelength, and more specifically trying that of the 'sun', he discovers a loosely matching signature to the east, which Nina informs him is the direction of the quarantine zone, sixty kilometers away.     He can detect them from sixty kilometers away.     Three seconds later, they are fifty nine kilometers away.
Persephone Kore	"I'm from somewhere else," Persephone explains simply to the townsfolk who greet her. "Out near Pluto, actually. I heard about this place, so I wanted to see what it was like. And I like it a lot, to tell you the truth."      She holds the seatbelt buckle in both her hands, hiding it like it's a dirty little secret.      "Can I ask you a personal question?" she says, to whoever seems willing to humor her. "What are you trying to build here? What kind of future are you working towards? It's really beautiful already, but you're still working so hard. So there must be something even greater, right?"      Once she's done with that, she starts walking out towards the town's periphery- specifically, in the direction that Sleek Shimmer had mentioned as having a 'great presence'. This isn't part of the mission at all. It's for the sake of her own curiosity. Phony isn't fast at all, but she doesn't need to walk all the way.      When she's a little ways out of town, on the lip of that crater, she sits down on a rock, shuts her eyes again, and reaches out towards the brightest presence out in that direction.      You did this, didn't you? I'm not sure we've ever met. But I feel like I know something about you already, if this is the world you want to make.      You know, it took me a while to figure out why? But I think I understand now. It wasn't made to produce something- if it was, it's to produce a kind of people. It was made to be home. To exist in itself, as something worthwhile.      Is that it? Did I understand your wish right?
Corona Arclite	The mix of supertech fabrication and good old fashion elbow grease work would make Corona feel at home if this wasn't in middle of a potentially delicate and definitely time sensative operation. Though, no sign of connections to the brain storage and other transhumanitarian (can you say that when you yourself are not human?) activities. An effort to be self-sufficient, sure. Which probably plays into how fast this location was established. But there's not really anything 'wrong' here it would seem. At least not in relation to the primary objectives they came for. After listening to the comms for a bit, Corona snorts softly. Personal curiousity and suspicions will have to wait, sounds like there's about to be a big pile of bronzehorn dung hitting the oscallation apparatus. She better get back to the rest of the party.
Evehime Gevurah	Bert replies to Darren: "Machine intelligence. Singularity. Responsible for the Fall of Earth, decades ago. Wiped out most of humanity, then vanished. Earth is a hellhole crawling with their robots, brain hacks, nanoswarms, weird anomalies we don't understand. Part of Mars is too. Lotta people only got off the planet by beaming their brains into space; the poorest refugees in history. Infugees mostly get out by taking on a company contract; they do indentured work for however many years, and the company covers the cost of a body to actually do it with, which they keep at the end. The Consortium is the easiest to get a contract with, but they'll work you twenty five years. Terraforming's backbreaking, I hear. "     Nina interjects: "Tick fucking tock. We took over an hour to get here. Do you wanna be here when the bombs drop? Central spire; we're working a solution, but we don't have enough explosives to crack that door, and our dissassembler swarms are going to take too long; it's so fucking thick. Nothing to hack. Someone, get us in. This isn't a field trip, we're running ten minutes to midnight!"
Forte	Forte looks over from where he'd been considering the spire. "... Allow me, then," he says, heading over - hurrying over, a bit faster than his characteristic unhurried floating. "Make a hole," he says, to whoever's running the nanite disassembler, and focuses - bringing up his right hand, channeling the getability.bat program through it, and connecting the other end to the hungering void within him...
Sleek Shimmer	This... if Shimmer hadn't been told far in advance that death is a mere nuisance to these people, that their souls can be put in new bodies they create somehow, she would be driven to a rage and disgust at seeing this. It's far more vicious than she was expecting. The purpose of the red and blue markings is clear straight from the get-go, and yet...     Why?     She takes a prodigious leap and lands on the edge of the fields of brutality, feeling a need to actually shout. "Why train so bloodily and brutally, even using real weapons?! What frightens you so much?"
Darren	<J-IC-Scene> Corona Arclite says, "We ain't really got the time rawht now for debatin'. Gotta get a job done and get out." <J-IC-Scene> Persephone Kore says, "Forget about the bombs. Do you think you could really believe in, really set your heart on, an ending where they all go back to just working to earn a body?" <J-IC-Scene> Darren says, "Nope!" <J-IC-Scene> Persephone Kore says, "I don't think I can." Tick fucking tock. I got you.     They can always decide what to do with the data after it's safely retrieved. In an instant, he's beside Forte. Darren's feet spread apart, arms up in a classic out-boxer's defensive stance. When Forte begins to channel the disassembler's ability and speed it up, Darren applies brute telekinetic force, making a sudden left haymaker to rapidly pummel the entry point further open.
Ishirou	Ishirou assertions were correct.  That's great!  Finally, some headway and the eye of Sauron didn't immediately wipe him out.  This does indicate that either the eye couldn't or wouldn't fire this close, or that his signature isn't that big.  Or human enough or magic enough... Then he notices it's out in the contaminated area.  And that it's making its way towards them.  Worse, they're also starting to run out of time.  The first thing he does is attempt to get close to Persephone.  If anything happens he knows being near her orbit is the best place to be.  Also, she's nice. The SECOND thing he does is attempt to use the sat link he was given to try and connect to the satellite network.  He's trying to find the place they'd launch the nuke from.  He's going to attempt to either shut down or try and delay the launch.  They need time, and at this point, they need to buy it forcefully.
Evehime Gevurah	Persephone's small talk is met with a pleasant reception. 'Oh! Someone from the Autonomist Alliance? That's really nice. I didn't know we'd made contact. I'm sure if your people throw in with us, everything will turn out just fine.' That sort of thing. A green-marked woman regards her with more interest, and is plied with Phony's question. She takes her time to think about it. Not like someone put on the spot, but in a way that simply naturally assumes patience and care for the quality rather than speed of speech in another; uncommon traits in the modern age.     "A place that is ours. One like Earth forgot. Ever since we were just infugees, sharing that cramped server, using what little resources we had to customize the virtual environment, we talked about really making one of our own. I'd like a future where we all know each other. Where we all trust each other. One where we all listen, we all care, no one works for another for their survival."     "I think, even if I miss it, I don't mind losing the old comforts. It feels good to do something for a reason. To work for everyone's betterment, instead of something pointless to make money. It's 'real'. Authentic. All my senses are alive instead of numbed. I'd like that for everyone else too. One day, I hope I can bring my wife and children here too. Humanity decided to live forever, but what's the point if you just buy immortality? What's the point if you spend all your life working to pay for it? Does that answer your question?"     Phony doesn't need to try hard to feel closer. It gets closer and closer, alarmingly quickly, but she has a few minutes still. Enough to think, to feel, to ask.      It is an imperfect recollection. I am not all-knowing, all-competent. But it is the best I can remember. I wish it to be everything I remember. And in the places I remember nothing, something new will be created, by the living.      I would destroy this planet. Destroy its people. None of it should exist. Not one part of it deserves to. But if I destroy it, I will be alone again. And so I will share with these people what I know. I will bring to them what I know gave us meaning, what brought us happiness, and they will grow strong. They are better off, now that they belong to me.
Hiromi	Once again, Hisako's left unaware of what she should be doing. Do they have enough time to find what they're looking for? Does it still exist? If it isn't here, does she still have time to search somewhere else? It's usually not this difficult, when she has a mission. Following around people exploring an underground labyrinth full of death traps, without being spotted or caught by anything, was a lot easier. <J-IC-Scene> Ishirou says, "A few minutes."     No, she definitely doesn't have enough time to try another building.     Hisako drops down near a group of the white-marked maybe-doctors. She resists the urge to shake all the dirt off, despite her earlier roll in the jungle.     "Please excuse me, but nukes will be launched, or maybe dropped, on this place, soon. I don't want everyone here to die and forget. Can you please keep your memories safe? Then you could be rescued, I think."
Corona Arclite	By the time Corona rejoins the group working on the entrance, Forte and Darren are already there trying to accelerate breaking through the doors. All the same she stops, and shrugs off her pack. Which proves to be more than meets the eye as it clunks the ground and unfolds into her jackalope robo-buddy. "Give 'em a bit of help would ya?" Hopalong ambles over, opens his mouth, and spews out some of the molten slag from his internal furnace to help with burning through the heavy doors.
Evehime Gevurah	A few things happen in the next three minutes.     Several white-marked caste members step back from Hisako in surprise when she drops into her midst, gravitating to the space of their red-marked brethren out of reflex, who surround her as a matter of course. After it becomes apparent she's here to deliver a warning, though, a couple of them laugh, surprisingly at ease. The words are more alarming. "I wouldn't worry. There's no way a couple of nukes would undo Her work. There's no way She would let it."     Ishirou cannot link up to the satellite. It's a nuclear launch platform, so that only makes sense. Kleff radios to inform him that "After the Fall, they don't leave nukes in the hands of machine. Human staff, round the clock. They get orders to fire, verbally, from high command, on quantum communicator channels. Sorry bud. The three of us, Firewall has our backups. We'll lose memories of today. You guys, worry about yourselves."     Shimmer hassling a wounded warrior waiting for pickup gets a weird stare. "Frightened? I feel no fear. Feats of arms are the thing nearest to Her heart. That which she knows, and can teach us, best. I will become strong, and I will take the Pandora Gate for Her, and my story will be sung. I had no high hopes before, but now that I have been reborn in the crucible of blood, my heart burns with that desire. To be stronger. To be remembered in my lifetime. To matter. To be acknowledged by Her."     Forte and Darren's combined efforts alongside the cloaked Firewall trio make real headway. Each of them have emptied out some of their blobjects so that a silvery swarm of semi-liquid is gradually eating its way through the stone(?), but it is, indeed, ridiculously thick and dense. Forte deleting a hole through it is a little tough, but within his capabilities. Darren hammering at it makes it gradually wider. It goes on for feet and feet and feet. A tank couldn't break it down. Only once they're all the way through, do they find out that there is no mechanism to open it all; not so much as a pulley. It only has a track to be lifted up, like a portcullis. God knows how.     They have just enough time to duck inside, if they want to be out of view, before the rest happens. The interior is dark at first, but lights up on its own, flames simply springing into existence along walls of black marble, brilliant gold, and white frosted crystal. The halls are enormous, but the interior is simple, with winding staircases (Jesus, the steps are so steep) to each side, and a central room dedicated to some sort of thrumming power column, surrounded by diamond-shaped shelves filled with racks of onyx-capped glass-cased scrolls split away from futuristic hard drives.
Sleek Shimmer	That response gets Shimmer blinking a few times. Quite the thing for the warrior to say. "I wonder who this Her is... and why she inspires everyone so much. I don't know how strong you'll get using methods like these..." Just whacking at each other all day, doing military drills?     She reaches with a hand and gently presses a finger against the wounded warrior's forehead. A finger that faintly glows at the tip. The light spreads when it reaches his forehead. ... She breaks contact in about ten seconds later... and, with that strange presence approaching swiftly, decides to briefly meditate herself and circulate her qi, trying to bring four very different powers into harmony as she breathes steadily. Four of the major elements. Enough to be ready for a fierce battle... or to escape very swiftly.
Evehime Gevurah	The energy signature is approaching. Thirty kilometers. Twenty. Ten. Five. Three. Two. One.     Dust explodes from the lip of the canyon plateau kilometers above, at the opposite end of the crater. It'd be easy to mistake for the nuclear drop, at first, though there is no fireball and no atomic annihilation. The soundwave follows after, rattling your teeth in your skulls and flattening the surface of the lake, bending back trees and flowers for a few minutes from the wind pressure.     The Martian dust takes forever to settle in one third Earth gravity, and so is sent far and wide rather than choking one particular point. At 'ground zero' above, something massive has landed. Looking closely at it, it appears to be a building. One that is mostly intact too. Seven or eight floors, seemingly battle damaged, but somehow not a million little fragments by now. Looking through the windows, you can see that it has been jam packed full, every room on every floor, with materials that seem too organized to simply be clutter. A second later, the building falls about twelve feet down and six to the side, crunching the ground. Someone walks out from under it.     Darren and Persephone recognize her, though it'd be impossible to mistake her either way. The woman who somehow seems infinitely larger than the eight storey building behind her, half-clad in black and gold, red-marked around her piercing eyes in that culturally ambiguous way. To Shimmer and Ishirou, her qi-presence blots out the false sun. To Persephone and Darren, her presence sends a wave of quiet, hushed awe over the people here, who turn to look and stare, but also something ever so close to feeling deeply 'safe', along with a slightly cultish hope for her to speak to them.     For those unfamiliar, it isn't hard to tell why these people fell under her sway. Something about her --everything about her-- is perfect beyond perfect. More human than human. More real than real. Her presence is naturally unignorable; even looking away, one can feel it as easily as they know the sun is out. The human mind has been studied well in its subconscious reactions to certain kinds of people. Tall, athletic, good-looking; these evolutionary qualities subtly compel the primitive brain to assume competence, crave interaction, and defer authority to, someone who has them.     Normally, this sense is very subtle, below the threshold of consciousness. That's only because normally people never lay eyes on a human being who embodies all three so perfectly.     Persephone had 'spoken' to her directly, so it takes no effort for the Gevurah to find her; not with those eyes, even from so high up. Her voice carries for kilometers with ease. "Hesed. Tell me the meaning of your presence here. My people have much to do. Even I am hard at work. The Gate will not wait."
Corona Arclite	Once there's enough of an opening for people Corona is on the move inside with Hopalong living up to his name following aside. Though even as they rush inside the sheer lack of an opening mechanism to what's suppose to be a door doesn't escape the machinist's notice. "We should pro'ly be concerned that door was made -to be lifted manually- by someone. Not someone we wannt run into." Probably that someone that's on their way right now that everyone is getting all jumpy over. And if that door is any indiciation, rightly so. No time to be fussy about potential countermeasures, they're really on a time-limit now. Corona flicks her analyzer back on, bringing up her previous energy scans, and gives the internal structure of the obelisk a once over. They had to find that server backup... and this place's weird combination of technologics and almost-magic deserves proper, if hasty, documenting besides. And while doing so that -something- comes calling outside. Even not immeadiately present at it, the sound is enough to make her sensative ears lay back entirely. That presense is mindboggling powerful, even not being in it's direct proximity. "Lets get this ov'r with." Moral implications aren't in her concern right now.
Darren	Time is still of the essence. Darren, followed not long after by Roswell, zips into the opening of the spire. His telepathic message is sent to the Firewall team, Corona and Forte. Aight. Me and Roswell're just start grabbing ish because we don't got time to figure out if the hard drives are the backups, or if they went the whole nine with the mysticism and made the scrolls the backups. Firewall homies, stop me if I'm about to break something. <J-IC-Scene> Persephone Kore says, "Are you sure about moving the backups, Darren? That feels wrong to me." <J-IC-Scene> Darren says, "For sure. Check it out--if you... and *her* stop the nuke, then they can make new ones. Like, alarmingly fast. Then that obviates the need for them. And if you can't, which I seriously doubt, then the setback is considerably less." <J-IC-Scene> Persephone Kore says, "Do we trust anyone else to hold them? We know how these people were used before." <J-IC-Scene> Darren says, "Oh, hell no."     Scrolls or hard drives, whatever's easiest to get ahold of and stuff into his backpack (which is alarmingly spacious for such a simple, drawstring design), Darren secures as much as he's able, until...      Until he can no longer resist the temptation to go outside. He appears, with a portion of the backups, knelt before Evehime. "Our presence here is protective. We believe in your mission, but weren't aware it was -your- mission specifically, wise one. Persephone wants to stop the warhead being sent here, and me, I wanted to preserve the backups as a... well, a backup plan."
Hiromi	Hisako's okay with being surrounded. Confident, even. Her gauntlets fill her with strength, and if she lacked those, she'd still have the surety borne of knowing exactly who and what she is.     At their words, she's less assured. "Are you sure? I don't know how big a nuke is, but your sun-tower won't be enough to stop it, the others think. Are you going to trust her to take care of it, without doing anything, yourselves?"     Her shoulders would fall, dejected, but they can't right now, because being surrounded has locked her in a tense ready state, ready to spring in any direction. It's not so much that she needs to as that her reflexes were trained that way.     There's a sound, outside. Her ears twitch. That has to be the one. She really wants to go see.
Evehime Gevurah	Hisako's answer is confident. "The sun is the sun. Sol is too distant, so She created a new one for us. Wasn't it always said in our ancient history that those who fly too close to the sun are struck down? But I don't mean that. I mean She wouldn't let it happen. There is nothing in the world She can do. There is nothing She fears. Not the Consortium, not the TITANs, not Earth. If She can take from the Consortium whenever she wishes, wander the quarantine as she pleases, I just can't imagine a bomb doing anything. I can only think this planet would crack before Her." The others just sort of nod along with her. The boom outside draws their attention. "You should see Her yourself. Then I'm sure you'll understand."
Persephone Kore	EARLIER: Persephone receives the green-marked woman's pause with indulgent patience. It reminds me of someone, actually. But it is really nice. "A place like Earth forgot," she repeats, when the answer's finally given. Her eyes shut; her face tilts up towards the sky with a smile. "I like that a lot."      "Thank you for sharing that with me. I think the future you're building is really beautiful. I hope your loved ones can join you here soon, too. I could try giving them a call, when I leave?"      NOW: Ahahaha. You're a lot less generous. I feel like all of it deserves to exist just fine. But... you've definitely made an improvement. So I want to say thank you. Seeing this is really nice. It reminds me of home, just a tiny bit, too.      Persephone stands up on the lip of the crater as the trail of dust approaches, then passes her by. She turns around to face the voice, now coming from behind her. Evehime can see her wave girlishly, as if this were the occasion for that.      "Awww, it is you! I came here to help people who were worried for the missing ten thousand souls," Persephone answers. Her reply isn't spoken aloud, but it's intelligible to anyone nearby, perceived and intuitively understood as shifts in the 'gravitational pull' of her heart. "But now that I see what you've built here, of course I don't want it destroyed."      "Can I ask you a favor? I think everyone who came here, came with kindness in their hearts. Even if they don't like what you're doing. I want to be gentle with them. I don't want their kindness to end in tears."      "So if there's anyone here you have to fight, can I do it instead?"
Ishirou	Well...that's not good.  He can't hack the nuke launchers, which means he doesn't know when they'll launch.  Worse, he can't stop them.  He looks sideways towards Persephone, who is strangely okay with all of what's going on.  Ishirou doesn't like it one bit, it rings too much of Indus.  It rings too much of what he went through, and what those people wanted. Of course, he looks up towards where Evehime would land, his sensors nearly overloading from the sensory input, but he manages to refocus the feed before activating various connections to his suit.  The flight sections connect.  He's expecting confrontation.   Though the familiar radio voice has him a bit white in the face now.  He knows her only by reputation, and it causes a shudder down his spine.  Already the fox person is being cowed, but he's frustrated.  What is she doing here...why is she doing this?   Then Persephone goes to offer to take a beating because of their intervention here.  "We're here to take the people back before a /nuke/get dropped on here.  The people think that the.." he points out towards the hellish landscape.  "Out there got them. Though they're still acting like they're being manipulated."
Hiromi	Hisako finally just nods to the people, slightly relaxes her posture, and makes her way outside. She's just going to march right up and... be in the general vicinity of important conversations, probably.     Something isn't sitting right with her.     If we abandon the mission, then, isn't that breaking a promise? Saying you'll do something, and having the strength to do it, but then not doing it can't be right. We wouldn't know how to find this place without their help. We'd just be using them, then throwing them away again, because of a disagreement. That can't be right... can it? If we say it's because of her... that would just be an excuse. Everyone here would know it was a lie, even if those three forget what happened today.     It feels dirty, but she's sure it isn't her place to argue about it, and she really couldn't fight Evehime, Persephone, and Darren, so she doesn't say any of that out loud.
Sleek Shimmer	It's not long until Sleek Shimmer once more teleports. This time, she has absolutely no trouble locking onto her target - Evehime.     Shimmer appears a little to the left of the grand warrior's path in a flicker-ripple of subdued light, her posture shrunken small, ears flat and tails wagging. "Warrior who outshines that sun. We heard your people are in danger. A weapon that falls from the skies and burns everything to ash within a heartbeat. It falls soon."
Evehime Gevurah	Corona's analysis finds that very little of the tower itself receives electrical power. There are numerous rooms above, one per floor, but even a 21st century apartment would draw more electricity than most of them, simply for basic appliances if nothing else.     The majority of the power concentration is at the very top floors. That makes sense. They're the most inconvenient to get to, so naturally they would be filled with the equipment that seldom ever needs to be accessed directly, rather than putting it on the ground floor and going up a million stairs for everything else. It honestly probably rules out the hard drives being brain storage. So what are they for?     Well, the Firewall team isn't asking. The second they have a direction from Corona, they're storming up the stairs at maximum speed; which is quite a lot under one-third Earth gravity, so at least it's not as exhausting as it could be.     The next floor is filled largely with scrolls and tables, festooned with maps and indecipherable writings, and strangely old-fashioned sable cushions and vaguely eastern-style mats. The floor above, a glass door, frigid by proxy, filled with those medicinal supplies, as well as endless herbal greens, and what might even be meat (somehow?). Above that, blindingly clean, covered in iscrutable geometry, surrounded by a circle of ten miniature pillars arranged around a central mat with possible religious significance. Above that, a room under construction, featuring wall scrolls, a carefully maintain semi-miniature tree, half-finished furniture, jumbled artifacts, sealed ceramic containers, and what possibly could be a bed. Above that, a room packed with greenery, with a carefully maintained indoor pond. Above that . . .     Someone is living here, on all the lower floors. An incredibly organized one-person mansion, with every possible amenity, even what seems like an indoor forge and workshop, judging by the heat and smell of steel and carbonization. The backups, the souls, can only possibly be upstairs because that person believes it is the place nobody will dare go.     The top floors are, however, locked down, with a similar door as the entry, on a much smaller scale. Melting through it takes time, but exposes a room that is dark and arbitrarily cold without any apparent climate control, filled with two tons of server equipment somehow transported hundreds of miles through the Martian outback fully intact, thickly entangled in cables running from above. Bert connects immediately, demanding ten minutes to crack the encryption. Nina is already unpacking an entire 'quantum comms array', as she calls it; obviously they couldn't carry enough raw storage space; they're transmitting it back to civilization.
Corona Arclite	This place boggles all sort of practical infrastructure methods. A sensible engineer would probably have a breakdown at it... Fortunately Corona is more of the inventive MAD SCIENCE sort so it's more of a marvelous peculiarity than a mind blowing affair. On the bright side it makes it easy to point out where power is actually being used, as these drives are barely drawing a thing, and one would presume a brain storage system would require more. Or at least more redundancies to ensure it doesn't go down in a crisis. She directs the Firewall crew farther up, where the stronger energy usage is. Alas no time to poke around the workshop. They have another one of those doors to deal with, and less people to do so with. "Okay fella, it's yer own show this time." Corona picks up Hopalong, who reconfigures into his cannon mode, and with her at the controls his slag fire is a bit more precise when it comes to carving a way through the door. Well of course they weren't going to try and carry the actual servers out. That'd be rediculous. Even Corona's space maniuplation technologies can't hold -that- much. Hacking isn't really part of her technical skills, so Corona will help Nina get the array up and ready.
Evehime Gevurah	Evehime recognizes Darren running outside immediately. Considering where he just came from, she looks deeply unhappy. Her face barely needs to shift by millimeters before he feels withering displeasure like solid lead weights strapped to his neck. "Of all the people to send for soul-servers, it would be your kind. Cowards, all of them." she booms back. "I've laid waste to the Consortium's spies --those they called 'commandos'-- already. So this must be the doing of 'Firewall'. Of course, the people of this world know nothing but theft. They fall upon each other like cannibals, stealing everything from one another without hesitation, until not even flesh and bone remains. It is natural they would come to steal what is rightfully mine next."     The Gevurah rolls her shoulders (from carrying an entire building?), though there is no sound that would indicate skeletomuscular stress; it seems like an old habit. "My mission? There is no mission. I have taught no small number of warriors and craftsmen before, but none from such a pathetic condition as yours. These pale imitation immortals will survive what I hope to see, that is all. I will study the fruits of my efforts, and learn from them if your humanities are worth saving. If they can be saved. And if so, how I might do so."     "These people have been saved from meaningless lives and dull, unmoured deaths, belonging to the incompetent and evil. They live for me alone now. Rejoice for them. Their efforts will lead to a great enlightenment or the deserved destruction of the rest of their rotted world."     Evehime walks forward and drops from the edge of the cliff. She falls several kilometers and lands on both feet without bending her knees. It sounds like a cannon shell. She begins walking into the plaza from there. "By that place, you mean their old battlefield. Their one and only glory, which they somehow learned nothing from. It is an amusement, but the relics, at least, of their creations, are worthwhile. Not as they are, but as long as I lack access to Celestial Engines, to Tenfold Truths, to even adequate Einsteel, I will repurpose them to make do. I've learned some from them already. Their machines --their ideas, their 'culture'-- is demented, but inspiring. If only I could speak to them, and not the profiteering dregs they left alive."     She stops once she reaches the lake, which doesn't take long. "'Nuke'? War-head? Ah, a weapon, I see. From the skies." She tilts back her head and stares intently at the hazy stars. "Tell me which of the stars in the sky are my foes. I have little faith they will even entertain me, so weak is 'modern technology'."     While waiting for someone to answer her, Evehime finally relaxes a little when Phony replies to her. An iota of warmth, bleeding into an expression of familiarity. A silent laugh that moves her shoulders. "If it reminds you of home, which invented and birthed 'Hesed', then my facsimile of mine is at least somewhat correct. Discipline is the domain of Gevurah. Obviously I will punish these people for invading the place I have built, greedily reached for what is mine, and pried into things they shouldn't know. Perhaps one hundred days joining the rest?"     "But you are my opposite, and we have no worthy Tyfereth here to mediate between us. It is in your nature to oppose and balance mine, Hesed to Gevurah. You would really fight, so that these people remain mine? So that this place would be something that resembles home? Mine and not theirs?"     "How amusing. Tell me how a Hesed fights."
Darren	*97,000 frowns, dashed dreams, shattered hopes. More than that, across the country. Carried through the airwaves. I've felt that. But I've never felt it focused through one single mind. At least when I blew it then, I knew the path to doing something right.* <J-IC-Scene> (NPC) Kleff grunts, "Six minutes until the transfer is complete. Keep whatever that is busy. Don't tip it off. Pretend you don't know we're here. Once we have these people out, we'll exfiltrate over the cliffs; they won't airburst when these crater walls will conveniently bounce the explosion back in. Let's get these people home." <J-IC-Scene> Darren says, "Got it."      Did he mean that? One of the mind readers here can tell that, no--he didn't. But it doesn't matter. Not right this minute. Darren finds himself floating slowly after her, head bowed as if he were yet another monk, making some manner of procession.      "Tyfereth. I know that word. I have some flawed mortal understanding of it because I'm flawed and I'm mortal. But I haven't stopped studying the truths you mentioned since I met you. It means Spirituality," says Darren, rising to his feet, touching down upon the ground. "And Balance. Beauty. Miracles. Compassion. The force that integrates Hesed and Gevurah. I told you then that I wouldn't be out here, doing what I'm doing, if I didn't want to be something other than half-formed. You remember that? There's a seed of that within me. Teach me how to water it."
Ishirou	There isn't much Ishirou could do but watch as this person so easily carried that building and handled it as if it weren't a problem at all.  It was utterly terrifying, but he forced himself to swallow the fear.  They still had to get the people out, whatever happens to them /after/ that is something they can work on.   Though Evehime keeps using that word.  'Her people,' causes the hairs on his neck to stand on end, but it also makes him deeply /unhappy/.  "They're not objects," Ishirou says.  His voice is shaky because he can't pretend he can't tell how absolutely powerful and terrifying she is.  He's likely going to absolutely die...especially if Persephone thinks this is /right/.   "They're people, and they deserve the chance to decide /how/ they want to live their lives.  Freeing them from that corporate shit is one thing, and that's good...but this?  You're just trying to use them, saying that their lives are worthless.  It's no different than /Indus/ and I'm going to make sure these people get that choice."
Hiromi	Hisako approaches where Evehime has landed slowly, like wading through water. Worse, like forcing her way through waist-deep mud. An effort of will, as well of the body. She forges onward as if it takes all her strength to do so. That can't be, in this Martian gravity, and with a body as well-trained as hers, but that's the tension building in her, muscles tightening like so many coiled springs. Softer, maybe, than that image, if only in that hers is no mechanical motion. She doesn't move like a robot, nor like an animal.     Despite those features, the results of her transformation and rebirth, into being exactly what she knows she is, Hisako was born human. She hasn't forgotten her old self. Some of that younger girl still exists, in the young woman she is, now. And she'd never thought she'd find a human like Evehime.     When she approaches, maintaining a respectful distance, still, Hisako raises one fist, still in her bronze-alloy gauntlet, and her left arm comes above it, hand flat, as if ready to ward. Then, she straightens, her fist reaches her palm, and the stance becomes a simple, martial salute.     She can control herself that much. Even her tail is still.     It may not be the sort of reaction Evehime is used to, from humans. Blaming it on her being only a former-human, or a mostly-human, would be easy. That's not really it, though, and Evehime, specifically, should be able to tell the reason with little difficulty. Her nature is suited to understanding matters of authority, after all.
Sleek Shimmer	Shimmer... shivers a bit. It's hard to say if her warning was received, with her presence being seemingly entirely ighnored. With Evehime's presence, her own focus is rattled and gathering her spirit is proving tricky.     On the one hand, she's struggling to not wet her pants. On the other...     The other part of her wants to see just what this warrior can actually DO.     Shimmer... has grown unconcerned with the threat of nuclear devastation. She is very convinced that Evehime will not allow it to happen. Absolutely certain that no threat falling from the skies could catch this woman off-guard and no explosion would kill her.     Evehime is much, much scarier than this mysterious nuke.     She's forced to look over towards Ishirou, who has spoken THEM'S FIGHTING WORDS towards She Who Outshines the Sun. "Great courage. But can you win? Must not fight here though... the city will break."     Then she turns back towards Evehime. "I am called Sleek Shimmer. When the danger is passed, I request a match... very curious to see what someone who has reached such heights can do!"
Persephone Kore	"They were trying to be good, you know," Persephone says with a little frown. She's getting closer, walking down the white streets in her lazy way, but still speaking with her gravity instead of her voice. "What are they going to learn from being punished? You might have been doing something awful, for all they knew. Besides, you can't hurt someone into being a better person." % TA little pause, and then she laughs. "No, I think I get it. This is exactly what you mean. 'Giving', and 'taking'. To oppose and balance."      Hisako hasn't given voice to her doubts, but Phony turns and addresses them anyway once she's close enough to use her real speaking voice. She sounds thoughtful and a little confiding. "Is it betraying? I hadn't thought of it that way. We came here because we wanted what's best for these people. And I'm doing this because I want what's best for these people. If we have to argue about methods, it'll be alright. If everyone wants the same thing, I know we'll find a happy ending together."      Persephone looks at Darren with a slightly frowny expression, in turn. "Will the upload be okay?" But, ultimately, I trust you. And I'm not the kind to be in a hurry, ahahaha. "And don't put yourself down," she smoothly continues from something unspoken. "I'm sure you have a way better understanding of it than me, Darren! You're always really smart about these sorts of things. Is it weird that I feel happy when you agree with me? Like I must be at least a little smart, too."      "'How a Hesed fights'," she circles back to, staring up at Evehime with a hand on her own cheek. "Aren't you about to see it? Or do you just want to hear it in my own words?"      "Swords and bullets beat toys and heartfelt wishes every time. But isn't that awful? I can't stand it, that the rules are the way they are. It seems so cruel to me. 'Hesed' is to make plastic that is so sincere it's stronger than metal, to make wishes that could stop a bullet. It's to make hearts, and feelings, and stories, more important than the rules of the world. And to make the world listen. That's how."      "So don't worry," she says to Ishirou, telekinetically ruffling his hair with a little laugh. "You won't die! I really, absolutely promise. I said that I'd be gentle. I'm not strong enough not to be."
Evehime Gevurah	The Gevurah turns slowly in Ishirou's direction with the terrifying gravitas of a tank gun swiveling to point at his head. The way she looks at him is uncanny; her eyes don't saccade. Up close(r), she looks like she might be bigger than even Hiromi. She won't tilt her chin down in the slightest to look at him more evenly.     "They were less than objects. They had not so much as tangible form. Mere memories of people. Stories recorded, unworthy of reading. Their lives are beyond worthless. And I will make them into something of worth."     "These people. Your people. 'Normal' people. They've never chosen how to live. Not once in their entire lives. They are chosen for, always, and merely believe in the delusion it is they who are deciding. Now it is my turn to choose for them, and I have chosen well. Perhaps one day they will be able to decide for themselves. As you have chosen poorly to speak to me."     But, before that goes further, Evehime is distracted by Hisako's walk-up. The martial salute surprises her --at least enough for a brow lift-- but in a way that seems not displeased. "A disciple." It's not a question. She doesn't seem to ask those, outside the merely rhetorical. "Yes, the scent of the Archwolf is upon you. I recognize her strength. If you are her envoy, I will hear what you have to say, little faithful one."     Darren following behind her finally gets her attention, though she doesn't look at him; she is back to staring at the sky, as if hoping to divine meaning from the scattering of the stars above. "So you are somewhat more than mere talk. It is far from uncommon for others to obey my wishes, but I recall no order given to you." She makes a scoffing sound at him. "Your regret is misplaced. I am mortal. And I am flawed, even if I am perfect in the realm of Gevurah."     Seeming satisfied by the stars somehow, she reaches out into thin air whilst Shimmer talks to her, and her fingers pierce it, smoothly penetrating into whatever it is that lies beyond that space, and coming back out clutching what appears to be a bow, black and gold as appear to be her favourite colours, slashed with angled bands of red. A scarlet band of cloth has twenty arrows tied to its side, each dark grey, solid metal, and sized for the weapon, itself no doubt taller than anyone here. The Gevurah withdraws an arrow and nocks the golden string with casual indifference.     "I am Evehime Gevurah, the Last Warrior." she replies. The bow is sharply angled up, and the string is pulled back with groaning, metallic tension that makes Shimmer's ribs vibrate in her chest. The point is smoothly moved by millimeters, ostensibly adjusting for the gravity of Mars, and then Evehime fires. Even from a bow and arrow, the percussive effect is like being next to an artillery strike, tinnitus and all. "And I will remember your name when it is worth remembering." A few seconds later, one of the faint stars shines brightly, flickers erratically, and then winks out. Ishirou's read on the nuclear satellite disappears.
Evehime Gevurah	Evehime turns around to face Phony, and breathes out. "It is so, Persephone Hesed. That is the exact purpose. You begin to see the shape of the Tenfold Truth already. Your truth and mine are but two facets of the ultimate form of all things. Perfection in all things is realized only through their synthesis." She closes her eyes as Persephone talks to her. Something about it feels Nostalgic. As if I expected to hear it, and had forgotten. For a moment, I can forget how terrible everything really is. I can pretend I have known you for a long time.     "Very well then. If you wish something from me, I will humour those demands of yours." she speaks to the others. "If you prove your determination. I demand to see it." She points eastwards, towards the mock battlefield. "If you won't die, you have no excuse to flee."
Darren	"It will be," says Darren to Persephone, with absolute confidence. Star. 20. They've got the ball. Don't jump offsides, Saucer. Wait for the snap.      Saucer emerges from Darren's pack, taking up a position over the spire where the Firewall operatives are still working on getting the backups. The ladybug draws in energy around himself, his form changing and growing larger--he would cast a concerningly large shadow around the base of the tower, were it not for that brilliant sun. Looking now more like a UFO than a ladybug, the massive pokemon lies in wait for the operatives to leave, whereupon he'll spring the attack. Darren had said, after all--he wouldn't trust those backups with anyone who dismissed the influence as malicious. Now that he knows whose influence it is, that's especially true.      Darren, meanwhile, lifts vertically into the air, as Roswell returns to his pokeball. The QB takes off eastward, his vigorous flight enough to kick up a cloud of dust.
Sleek Shimmer	Shimmer's forced to take a step back and clench a hand over her chest at that display of archery. Well, it almost bowled her over. And yet she remains standing, her heart singing with fear and excitement simultaneously.     And boom, there goes the threat above.     And a challenge follows. "I will fight in your arena then and show you what I have learned!"
Hiromi	"I am the Archwolf's disciple," Hisako confirms, "but not, today, her envoy." She sounds regretful. As if she wishes that were the case. 'Today,' she isn't, but she could have been. "While the request that brought us here was unworthy," she can say that confidently, now that she understands the circumstances a bit better, and it was what Hiromi had implied, in the first place, "it was given to me, for the sake of my journey, to accompany Mr. Spears and Ms. Kore." Her voice falters for just a moment, in deciding to correct the latter name to, "Hesed."     Speaking to Evehime is a 'like a familiar thing, but not' kind of frightening, to her. It's a partial understanding, accompanying the natural worry that that part that isn't understood will be dangerous.     She doesn't give her name. It's probably not one worth remembering, anyway. But maybe it will be, when she's older, and stronger, and further on that journey she'd mentioned.     Immediately assuming that Hiromi must have known this would result in a trial by combat under the Gevurah's direction, and that was the plan for her sake, Hisako gives an emphatic, enthusiastic, "Yes!" delivered with perfect posture.     That time, her tail wagged.
Ishirou	"That doesn't bring me any comfort.." Ishirou says with a sigh, towards Persephone.  This isn't good...not good at all.  When Sleek asks him if he thinks he has a shot he looks over at her.  "Somethings you can't stand for, I guess.  This is one of them.." he says, staring right up at Evehime.  Even if she is absolutely terrifying.   "People should get to decide how they live their own lives," he says, firmly.  "You could destroy me without a second thought, and nothing would get me to back down from /that/." Then the platform goes up. That's absolutely frightening. Well, relieved that they don't have to worry about the nuclear part, but frightening that she can just /do/ that.  He realizes that he has made a huge mistake...but it was his to make.