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Lilian Rook	The Paladins outpost, still lacking a name, somewhat too diverse in purpose to be registered as a firebase, and much too small and task-oriented to be called a colony, has more or less achieved its 'stage one' state.     A significant portion of the bare plateau has been processed into glittering greenhouses and clean white single story cabins, cheerily steaming forge presses and printer shops, of humble and efficient design. Split six ways by the brightly marked crossroads of leylines, which become shimmering walls of aurora borealis at night, a smoothly packed vehicle yard contains a handful of rugged Paladins transports and a reburbished local megatrailer of antigravity design, with gated access to a road marked with pylons and flec-rope down the side of the incline.     The forest has been carved back as much as necessary to allow for a cleared ring yard with fenced checkpoints, bright spotlights, and night towers. A shiny new radio mast and blinking signal lights is visible up top from afar, near a simple landing pad, across the nexus from a windowless arcane workshop of locally hewn and quarried materials, with a cottage-like upper floor addition, and the beefy white concrete 'command room' next to a nearly identical clinic building.     The supply yard outside is nearly empty, bulk supplies largely moved down a simple cargo lift into a more spacious underground stockpile, with connected chambers housing armories, freezers, and a cooled server room, with cheerfully colour-striped composite wall facades and neatly organized ceiling-hung wire bundles, all powered by the hydrogen cells connected to the stills aboveground. All that it particularly awaits is the presence of convenient natural water, the closeby creek being the promising choice, and the finishing of carefully prepared nexus 'storm gutters' laid in small circular chambers interspersed around the plateau's geomantic points beneath ground.     That, and the roped off hole guarded by a more-than-token force of mechanized marines, down which a rope ladder is dangled into a scattered pile of supply crates, floodlights, tarps laden with weapons and computer equipment, and some of the cheaper automatic defenses moved in from the perimeter, now that the wards that drive the unwanted away are operational.     The '''reformed''' Bluekill bandits have been helpful beyond anyone's dim expectactions, and have made zero attempts to test the fence guns having their IFFs registered based on proximity. No meaningful volunteer force has materialized from Commonwealth interests yet, but visits from Boothill, a mere fifteen kilometers away, have occurred repeatedly ever since the eradication of both the local petty demon bandit lord and the psychic monstrosity menacing the town. Even for people simply riding on horseback, it's an accessible and interesting journey along the gravel road now lit and signed and manned with a tiny midway guard station by the Paladins.     Mostly they show up to hawk fresh produce, frontier odds and ends, ply minor requests for spare parts and niche medicine, and spread local news. A few extra hands of little success at home are negotiating talks to move in and try their luck at a different lifestyle, made possible by the abundance of unoccupied cabin-bunks. Those more permanent visitors have gone ahead and informally renovated one of the cabins into the beginnings of a bar, to little complaint from any of the soldiers, and much appreciation for those visitors keen on seeing Multiversal TV and gambling on things other than cards. %
Lilian Rook	The only real task worthy of immediate anxiety is the exploration of the ancient underground accidentally tapped into during Elite excavation. The leyline stabilization points are arcane busywork, but they would be influenced by the geometry of tunnels below. Diverting a tiny river could be accomplished by annoyed soldiers, only mildly trustworthy bandits, or rugged locals provided a visa. To that end, Elites are simply waved right through, being a familiar site, down either the cargo lift or bulkhead-covered emergency ladder exits, and bid gather at the pitch black world of gunmetal floor and inch-thick petrified dust below.
Ishirou	Despite /everything/ that has happened to Ishirou since the last time he was here on the frontier, besides doing some busy work, he was still very excited to get to dig into the past. Old machines, ancient knowledge, relearning lost and forgotten arts...this is the stuff he /lives/ for. The excitement is plastered on his face. This is very much in spite of some recent happenings. Also, his body is very much like a sponge right now due to how beat up he was...also his mech is very heavily damaged to unusability. But here he is, with a wide grin and rubbing his hands. If he remembered right, the first issue was they needed the power to get the first door open...and for some reason, the first door needed a /lot/ of that.
Mack	Mack's contribution to the bar-in-progress is a bunch of mugs. He repurposed some salvage he had lying around into polished, neatly-assembled jigsaw puzzle-looking tankard-alikes. He apparently did this via some 'ancient mutant secret,' a thing that a couple of superstitious townsfolk have taken and run with. It's been pretty funny. His contribution to the search, on the other hand, is being early and present down into the depths. He's already setup a local tactical feed with his numerous bionics, handling mapping duty for the assembling team, and, until they're all there, is scraping patterns into the petrified dust with a sculpted chrome fingertip. Mack looks like a hunched scrapyard goblin who is wearing the extremities of a piece of art. It's always a little weird. "On the bright side," Mack says to nobody in particular, "pretty unlikely we'll find any more psychic monsters down here. Might be some Golden Age robots, though. So, you know; eyes and ears out."
Hellwarming Trio	Although they had a bit of a rocky time while dealing with the psychic asshole beast, the youkai that have made Boothill something vaguely resembling a third (or is it fourth now?) home for themselves are once again here to enjoy the fruits of their labor! Enjoy really is the key word, too, as they've opted to make a quick pit stop at the bar to see if there's anyone getting into fights before heading towards the strange underground doors proper. Utsuho: "You think there's going to be anything cool down here?" Rin: "There's gotta be! Everything back home's cool, so it should be the same out here." Utsuho: "Unless it explodes... Wait. Unless it doesn't explode." Rin: "We don't want anythin' explodin'! We'll get yelled at if it does."     Spotting Ishirou in his banged up state, the pair circle around him a few times, invading his personal space and sniffing around before just stopping right in front of him while glancing between him, the door, and Mack. Rin: "You okay, bro?" Utsuho: "If you need a hand with that, you could just ask." Rin: "Yeah! Uhh.... So what're we doin', anyway?" Utsuho: "Looking for... Robots? Wait, would they still be working if they're this old?" Rin: "... Hey, it's okay if we blow /those/ up if they attack, right?"
Tamamo	Tamamo (Wild West vers.) has, once more, made her presence known. The deep blue neckerchief and soft leather gloves might be new, but it's an otherwise familiar outfit, at least for anyone who's seen her in this area. And that wide hat brim! So convenient -- or it would be, if it wasn't largely immobilized by the need to put her ears through it.     "Now, how best might that channel be dug? By hand, I can only imagine, or rather, by handtool and larger plow, but of whether I might assist, I wonder. Too much effort to do quickly what might be done by hand in solidly lasting fashion, perhaps. Still, I wonder..."     Having spent a good deal of time bothering Arina during prior working visits, she goes to see Satsuki, first, this time, greeting her to then ask, "I wonder, have we yet spoken of your own arts? Perhaps only in passing, yet should it please you, it would be to my own convenience to know your preferences." Arina, as she recalls, is most comfortable with air spirits. Not quite the thing for unearthing, usually.     Finishing the leyline gutters really does need those tunnels mapped, which calls Tamamo down to examine whatever is first standing in their way.
Ioanna Langstrom	Delegation is the heart of command.      It's not something Ioanna ever took to heart before. She wasn't really a *commander*, before. She was a grunt - one of the ground-pounders. She took orders. Sure, sometimes she *had* to give them, but that was different. That was on-the-ground snap-of-the-moment orders delivered on a small scale. There's no need to delegate that kind of thing, not *really*. Everybody already knows their role. The demolitionist does demolitionist things. The sniper does sniper things. You make decisions about where they go but not what they do.      And even then commanding a whole five people doesn't really measure up to this project.      She's been nervous about it for a while now. What ifs normally weren't part of her life - she was career-minded and centered on her own struggle and ability to reach things. But this relied on other people in a big way. Not just the Elites but the people like her. The people who were shouldering the load. If the bandits had decided to revolt, if the people had decided to take up arms, if invading presences from the nearby larger countries had began moving, if, if, if.      For a few days she was doing literally everything herself in the way of management. Everything. *Everything*. It was only after other people warned her that that was how projects fail that she relented and started practicing...well, delegating.      Nobody told her that that, too, would be exhausting, but in an entirely different way.      So she almost welcomes this. It's one part soldiery and one part archaeology and archaeology is just anthropology in the field. It plays to her skillset.      This time the MCM has chosen to help her blend in *and* stand out.      She's in power armor.      It's not the power armor of the Commonwealth, precisely, nor is it exactly a Glitterboy. It's big and bulky and resembles plate mail, with a helmet like an old medieval knight's - long and pointed with lines down the middle and an open visible mouth. But the lines are glowing with faint blue light from the holographic screens inside and the open mouth is covered by a force field.      Also, ancient knights usually didn't carry what looks like a combination of a high-powered laser cannon and a longsword.      Usually.      Every so often you get somebody like Bercilak though.      "Is everyone ready?" Her voice is slightly tinny, like she's speaking out of, well, a medieval helmet, but that little bit of static that makes it a speaker. The helmet tilts towards the duo. "We don't want to blow up anything we can avoid blowing up. Structural issues might bring part of the base down on our heads. Alternatively some of these things might be worthwhile for our own tech - or even just getting a better understanding of how the world's technology evolved."      She looks at Mack. The light from her helmet sweeps over him. The light swings down to look at the patterns. "Is there any significance to that, or are you just bored waiting?"
Strawberry Princess	Strawberry, while chewing on a local-grown radish like it's an apple, checks up on one of the former Bluekills. "How are you doing?" "They're not working you too hard, are they?" "Is there anything I can do for you?"      She landed them in this situation, after all. She can't help but feel a degree of responsibility for their situation.      "Ready," Strawberry says, coming up behind Ioanna. Out of costume, she looks painfully normal save for her height and that scar. "Me and Mr. Ishirou have been here before, but we didn't get the chance to go far. There's some kind of computer system, I think, but..."      She glances back at Ishirou and smiles a pained smile. "Hey, are you going to be okay? I mean- sorry for saying so, but you look rough. What happened?"      With a moment's focus, Strawberry's invisible scouting 'ghosts' emerge from her body and swoop out into the gloom. The lack of lighting is a real obstacle for them, but they can at least 'feel' their way along and transmit a tactile map of the area back to Strawberry. What paths are open to the group?
Hellwarming Trio	Once the word is given to provide maximum POWER, meanwhile, Utsuho is ready and able to dump as much or as little energy is needed to start working on getting that door opened. Her control is quite good, too, if a little worrying to look at.
Lilian Rook	The buzz about directing the stream is mostly regarding the inherent issue of getting it to come up a plateau, and various bandying about of ideas from aqueducts from a higher waterhead to moderate cheating with magic, or a more reliable, heavily engineered pump system.     Tamamo hunting for Lilikouhais in the place they most often consistently are does not find it difficult. Her prowl is well-practised, and her targets are not used to escaping older women. "Arts? As in martial arts?" is unfortunately how it starts off. After some clarification (and gentle interruption of Satsuki going through the entire history of her specific school), it arrives at the general point "Well, I wasn't born with any special affinities. I studied enough True Onmyodo to get by, when it wasn't really clear who was going to inherit the title, but I don't consider myself a real spellcaster. Actually, I've been doing really well in picking up Kotodama techniques; on recommendation of the Operations Director actually! But otherwise, it's just that and . . ."     There's a private silence with Tamamo, where Satsuki fingers her sword and glances around a lot. "This Muramasa piece. People say things about it, but only because nobody else has been able to make it work for generations. It's the only reason I got the title, actually. But even I don't know everything it can do."     Strawberry is a welcome sight amongst her bandito compadres. They are keenly aware that she is the reason they hadn't been shot or vapourized back then, and show it. By the sounds of what they tell her, the Paladins are working them pretty hard, but they don't seem to think much of it, preferring it to waiting around in hideouts and ambush spots most of their lives. Nobody from Boothill actually recognizes their faces anyways, so they have ample opportunity to get shitfaced after ten hours of manual labour each day, instead of only after a big score. As with all things, weeks of being here has just made them so familiar that people can't be all that tense about them.     Arina hovers around in the background, less sneakily than she thinks she is stealing glances, and declares that this is, in hushed tones, "Cute . . ." When cornered, her awkward exclamation is that "Th-the Commander said that English people don't understand hospitality! But you're so . . . different!"     Ioanna gets a number of crisp salutes on the way down, as the acting officer of highest rank here, and the squad guard around the breach hole reminds her of what useful things are in the boxes at the bottom, then make space. Satsuki makes the executive decision to accompany the group into the RIFTS HOLE:tm: despite having other things to do.     The way northeast, angling past where Boothill would bem is a previously explored dead end; a launch hangar by last analysis, buried under centuries of sediment shift, with its stockpile of robots and power armours emptied out for study. The massive computer terminal is as useless as before.     The only other way, southwest, towards the nearby mountains, is blocked off by the sequence of gigantic emergency doors, sized for a corridor just big enough for the mecha to move through, and also to meaningfully withstand their destructive efforts long enough to buy time for an evacuation or heavy response. Ishirou's check of the power grid shows that there are no local generators anywhere around, the structure of it leading credence to the idea that this is the fringe of a much larger one. All the wiring is still intact, but the reactors somewhere far away are dead cold.     Strawberry phasing her many hands through the first barrier finds several more behind it in staggered, airlock sequence, along with suspicious vents in the floors and ceiling, a vast empty space behind a full sequence of six.
Mack	"Golden Age tech tends to be nuclear- or fusion-powered," Mack asides to Utsuho and, to some extent, Rin. "If the place has been sealed up since the Apocalypse, there's no reason they shouldn't be in tip-top shape, right? Even on backup batteries. If they're in spots past where our mind tormenting pal was laired up, anyhow." He shrugs an elegant shoulder. Crude-looking armor mesh scrapes across it with an uneven hiss. "Can't really say for sure, though. Could be it was just a stapler warehouse. Wouldn't need killbots for a stapler warehouse." "Probably not, though. Unless they're giant robot staplers." He scratches at his chin. "Hmmm." Mack glances up at the source of the spotlight. His eyes polarize, giving him an eerie gaze. "Basically graffiti," he says. "The Mamono sect is big on the artistic expression side of their patchwork heritage, so I dabble in a few things. Here, see?" He hauls himself to his feet. He's left a minimalist rendering of the group on the outside of a yawning tunnel in the crust. It's like a pencil sketch, but done with a power claw instead of a traditional implement. The Headhunter moves down towards the southwest. He looks over the doors with another itching motion around his long, metal-sheathed neck. He starts sweeping the general vicinity with his sensor suite, looking for any evidence of old motion trapped beneath dust. "Do you suppose they were keeping things out, or sealing them in?"
Ioanna Langstrom	"Oh!" Ioanna says brightly (in that tinny static voice) as Mack explains. "Does your sect tend to work with impermanent mediums or more persistent ones? Do you have a musical style that can be called Mamono, or unique instruments, or special tools for scribing and painting, or-"      She catches herself and stops. The door provides a convenient excuse.      "Ishirou, sir - Mack makes a good point. See if you can access the inside remotely with the power Utsuho is providing. Strawberry, ma'am, get ready for contact, just in case - and see if you can feel any tunnels going any other direction nearby."      To Tamamo, she says, "Set up a ward along the door. I feel like something other than Boothill drew that monster here, and I don't want to be taken unawares." She tilts her armored head at Mack. "Would you agree?"
Tamamo	"Oh, no, not that manner of arts, but rather..."     After getting through to what she'd meant in asking Satsuki, she nods along, commenting, "Kotodama, is it...? While I have done little with this, myself, it has some relation to many other styles, in principle, if not in focus, and so, though I do not use kotodama, as such, I do make use of shingon... this is an art I had wondered might be lost, on what the wielder of the sacred lance calls 'this side of the world.' Ah, but that is of little consequence, now."     Golden eyes glide down to the hilt of Satsuki's sword. "I have some interest in the blades by that smith, a man with a certain, however tenuous, connection to myself. Should you wish me to read the blade, I may do this for you, when we are not otherwise occupied."
Lilian Rook	As Mack says, the grid is ostensibly designed to work on nuclear power; which actually doesn't mean much this far away from anything approaching an engineering section, save for what amperages and it is rated for and how many capacitors and breakers are placed. The massive obstacle that would present days of effort or a small sub-adventure for an ordinary party is quite trivially bypassed by beaming a charge into each door's emergency capacitor (responsible for fail-securing the door in the event of power loss while open, as Mack determines (it sure worked)) and allowing Ishirou to hack the individually secured consoles to each one.     It's sort of weird that the computer lockdown would be this wildly inconvenient, but whatever.     Wandering down the grandiose corridor opened up, ostensibly for the purposes of moving heavy military hardware, given the enormous tracks down the middle and the narrow raised paths and railings to either side for pedestrians, you come across the 'vast space' Strawberry's eidolons had drifted into; a tremendous rift (without the trademark) has been torn into the earth, completely bisecting what looks like a massive rail station, and pluging two of its four exits into a bottomless chasm of terrestrial darkness. The sheer scale of tectonic violence is bizarre for how solid the plateau above is. Running power here lights up the area with the abruptly restarted flashing of red emergency lamps and fills it with obnoxiously loud siren blaring.     The sole remaining exit appears to have been blocked by three heavy trains that could have once been considered 'maglev', crashed into each other, clogging the way through with hundreds of meters of chassis and cargo. The signage that is painted on the walls instead of buried in a computer somewhere directs backwards to 'LAUNCH TERMINUS F-41', and directs forwards to 'NEMA OBSERVATORY SUBSTATION CHARLIE'.
Ioanna Langstrom	Ioanna sucks her breath in through her teeth as her eyes fall from the big crash to the words painted on the walls.      "I don't like any of those words in that order."
Tamamo	Tamamo lays down some wards along the way, as Ioanna bid. "It does not yet seem clear as to whether we are on 'the inside' or 'the outside,' does it? That being the case, I do wonder as to whether danger was expected, from this direction, by those who built these doors. Ah, but for us, there must be an expectation of danger in either case, no? 'The inside' is just as likely to house something we would wish to stay away."     Though these defenses aren't immediately necessary, it turns out, as they move on.     "'Nema'?" Tamamo sounds it out. "I am unfamiliar with this name."
Hellwarming Trio	Mack gives the youkai the good news, and Rin nudges Utsuho's side. "You hear that, Okuu?" "Crystal." "What?" "Isn't that what humans say?" "Not like that." "Oh. Uh. Anyway. Yeah, if it's still running on that kind of power, it'll probably just need a little cleanup." "And then we'll get our own robot staplers!"     With enthusiasm running high, Utsuho gets into position to get the simple task of powering goddamn everything necessary for the door-opening task to happen for as long as Ishirou needs. She lingers a while longer even after the fact, though, to see if she can 'feel' her way towards the original power source to see if she can't feed it enough juice to kick it back into a functioning state. At the very least, she'll try and put enough power in to keep the door running in case everyone needs to use the door again when Utsuho isn't stuffing her control rod into it and pumping energy into it.     Once it's time to head on in, they're more than ready to start hurrying down those strange halls, gawking down that big chasm, and pausing to eye those dimmed lights. Naturally, Utsuho's going to try putting power in them for the hell of it, only stopping when the sirens come on (although the damage might already be done).     When they encounter the trains, meanwhile, they do the smart people thing of trying to just physically pull the trains apart despite lacking freakish amounts of physical might. That won't stop them from trying, though! "Geez... How hard did these trains mash into each other?" "Must've been goin' super fast... Geh. They ain't gonna blow up if we shoot 'em, are they?"     Tamamo mentions NEMA, meanwhile, and they pause to actually read the words. It takes them a really long time to finish sounding everything out. "Maybe whoever wrote it spelled it wrong." "So... 'Name Observatory'? What would they be watchin' names for?"
Lilian Rook	"Shingon? I'm . . . That's really surprising actually! I mean, even if they're tied in at the temple and all, I would never have guessed that you practised anything to do with the tantras. It's not like you were ever in need of enlightenment, right?" Satsuki appears to find this academically fascinating in a way at odds with her usually affected informality, and hassles Tamamo with unusually educated questions the whole way (while stealing lots of sneak glances).     "A lot of people do." Satsuki says somewhat more glumly on the subject of the sword. "But it's not like just owning one brings anything more than prestige to your house. It takes a certain kind of person to . . . understand what he was trying to convey, in each one. Like they're all fragments of a single idea that even a mad genius couldn't fit entirely into his head. Between appointing the male heir, or the idiot who somehow 'got' the Muramasa of Moments . . ." Satsuki shuffles uncomfortably. "There's a good reason I'm the only clan girl at Arx Zenith, never mind in the Paladins."     A short while later, Satsuki holds a teeny blob of false sunlight up to the signage, mouthing it out in English. "It has to have been underground already. There were elevators in the hangar, and there are load bearing columns. Military installations being underground usually means they're likely places to strategically bomb. Or they're secret." She thinks a moment. "Or both."
Mack	Mack is caught off-guard by the sudden interest. He gives Ioanna a bit of a double-take, and eventually goes, "It's -- sorry, I'm just real surprised at the sudden interest. Everyone always asks about the martial kind of art, not the other types." Door excuse happens. Mack smiles to himself, shaking his head a little. He provides security between each airlock, stopping to extend his sensors down into the ventilation system they keep finding while he's at it. He's got his archaic-looking pistol held easily in one hand all the while, expecting trouble to pop out of... well, one of the vents, if we're being completely honest. He advances into the chamber, glancing down into the void. Mack is momentarily relieved it doesn't shoot him a pointed look right back. Without much pause, he manifests his telekinetic power with a thought, buttressed by a hazy glow like a slow-motion heat mirage. He floats forward, intending to advance right on the wreckage he spies over yonder. The huge pile-up of maglevs is, after all, strangely nostalgic. Mack navigates over, around and through them with the practiced ease of a post-apocalyptic tunnel-dwelling New Yorker, getting himself to a vantage point with which to get a good, hard look at the wall markings. He inhales sharply, uttering, "Lady's light," with the intonation of sacrilege, "I didn't honestly expect to find anything from the Nemans down here. Hot damn!" He actually jumps for joy. Apparently, this is a Big Deal. Mack looks back at the group, gesticulating as he explains. "The Nemans were the people who made the Golden Age possible. They were an absolute juggernaut of scientific advancement. Every major technology we still use today, and basically all of the ones we hope we dig up, can be attributed to them. Heck, these are the guys who invented the Glitter Boy! That's reason enough to give 'em at least a measure of awe!" "Imagine what could be buried down here...!" Mack, in his excitement, does not intend to wait overly long for everyone else to figure out how to fly.
Strawberry Princess	"Huh- cute??" Strawberry says, visibly surprised when she finally notices Arina. She rubs the back of her neck awkwardly, turns her face to the side, and laughs just a little.      "Well, I wouldn't really know if that's true. About not knowing hospitality. After I was twelve, it... I mean, I moved somewhere else. It seemed nice in my memories. But if it wasn't really, maybe that's why I'm different? Lilian only mostly grew up in England too, and she's okay." That last part is said with a joking smile. It's a little sad, but then, lots of her expressions are.      ----      "I'll be ready, Mi- uh, Lieutenant Langstrom," Strawberry says. One hand stays on her discreet shoulder holster. The other reaches for her wand, not yet powering it on. She gravitates to the back of the party. "I could get us through the doors, but..." But everyone knows there's cleaner solutions than just Strawberrying it.      'Do you suppose they were keeping things out, or sealing them in?' As the party walks past the now-opened doors, Strawberry speaks with newfound anxiety: "It'd have to be 'out', right? I mean, those mechs back there... that's the kind of thing you'd want to keep other people from getting." It sounds a little like she's trying to reassure herself.      She eyes the vents suspiciously. There's nothing odd about them, right? Right.      "'Launch Terminus'," she says, squinting at the signage. "I don't- it doesn't mean missiles, I think. It'd be back the way we came, right? Maybe it meant those mechs me and Ishirou found. They had... sort of an elevator thing, to the surface above." That, too, is terribly optimistic of her. It could just also be missiles.     The vast chasm provokes respectful awe from her, but the sirens scare her more than the enormous plunge- fear of heights is not one of Strawberry's flaws, mercifully. Barring any more expedient solution to the trains blocking the path, she volunteers her beam for the purpose. A timer on her wand's side flickers to 04:59 as it grinds and squeals to life.      Compared to its usual applications, it is remarkably easy on the eyes and ears in this finer use. Well, for something capable of reducing hundreds of tons of metal to 'hot nothing with a bit of dust'. You still shouldn't look straight at it.
Ioanna Langstrom	Ioanna moves over towards the trains as Strawberry's wand powers up. "Be precise," she says as she taps the side of her helmet. A screen pops up. She points at the Duo. "You two, help me with this. We'll have Strawberry Princess cut through the edges to make it easier to pull out without a collapse - and if it does collapse we'll be able to catch it and hold it up easier."
Hellwarming Trio	Mack just flies around the mess, and that gives the duo an idea! Strawberry busts her magic rod out afterwards, and they instead hang back for a moment to watch the imminent lightshow. Ioanna's instructions giving them more of a chance (and an excuse) to watch it up close, then, is met with excited glee as they get right back into position. "You got it, sis!" "Bet I can hold onto the hot parts better than you." "Wh... What kinda challenge is that supposed to be?!" "Hehe. Scared?" "N.. No! Just focus!"     Utsuho is totally going to lord her ability to grab really hot stuff with her bare hands over Rin once it's time to start pulling things out.
Strawberry Princess	"Oh, sure thing, Lieutenant. Let me try to..." Strawberry does not, in fact, turn the maglevs into a sparse ashtray. Instead, she sights down the feathery wings on her wand and fires a smaller, ribbon-like beam that sweeps the edges of the tunnel like a cylindrical melon baller.      She doesn't actually move the wand to do this; the beam just bends itself precisely in midair to end up where she needs it to be.      "Will you guys really be able to move that?" she says rhetorically, with soft amazement. "I mean, I can cut it smaller if you want..."
Ioanna Langstrom	"The MCM is extremely strong," Ioanna says, "I'm sure the three of us can move it without trouble thanks to you."
Lilian Rook	"Nemans . . ." Satsuki stops to ponder this for a while, at the confusion between Strawberry and Mack playing out via the local comms. "It could still be the name of a country or something, right? If this Earth was super advanced, maybe America was long gone already?" The corner of her mouth twitches. "Or never existed, probably. But you know. Germany. Germans. Russia. Russians. Canada. Canadians." A little more thought. "Are they called that actually? I can't remember the last time Canada was ever relevant to anything."     She snaps her fingers in recognition when Strawberry starts talking again though. "You launch aircraft, right? The JSDF had these carriers that'd shoot planes right off the decks, back when people still used those. If you have a secret hideout, you'd have to launch those out, wouldn't you? You couldn't just open a front gate."     She mostly just stands back in awe when Strawberry slices the wrecked tunnel to bits. RIFTS(tm) Megaverse(c) M.D.C Metamaterials(r) are actually not up to the task of surviving 100 million degrees of heat, despite what some might believe. There are, unfortunately, some small explosions in aftermath, as the shimmering heat bleed cooks off what is probably very expired ammunition packed into sealed containers on those trains.     With the way cleared, Satsuki says "The Commander told me two important things about this." First, she removes one of the heavy 'scroll cases' off her harness, and hands it over to Strawberry, which weighs about 'too many' pounds and contains a uranium rod no doubt fashioned by alchemy on-site, in a lead-lined case. The other thing is apparently relevant to Tamamo, to whom she says "Pardon for the intrusion! Don't worry, she gave me permission!", then gently grabs, and after a weirdly prolonged breath and subtle crouch, utters two syllables takes a single step that flashes them both over the giant fissure.
Lilian Rook	Shovelling onwards from there leads to a rather boring trip along the rest of the rail. Subways aren't known for being terribly exciting, and this is one of those. Even the odd comically teeny metal door in the sides of the cylindrical concrete megastructure just leads to some dusty little power station or maintenance terminal for a handful of greasemonkeys to work in.     The 'observatory substation' at the end certainly seems to confirm that this complex could never have been outside. The trains (would hypothetically) stop at a T junction (both ends sealed, one by rock, one by doors) and allow disembarkment onto an escalator (now merely uncomfortable stairs) that leads up into a greatly oversized, dome-shaped chamber, absolutely stuffed to bursting with wall to wall screens, arranged as such that all them are visible from all points in the room, save the personal computer monitors that are built right into circles upon circles of concentric desk rows. With everything utterly dark, it has the spooky, liminal atmosphere of a condemned business, made even more strangefamiliar by the universally recognizable design of roller chairs and coffee mugs left as if someone were coming back to them.     The circular carpet space in the center is emblazoned with an enormous, heavily faded crest featuring a globe and eagle. Discarded papers, clipboards, and the odd dropped smartphone or lost keycard, caked in dust, give the impression it was left in a hurry, but there are no signs of weapon damage. It seems the power failed all at once, so it was probably in-use up until that moment.
Tamamo	Satsuki makes a very reasonable misunderstanding, which Tamamo seeks to gently correct in the midst of her excitement. "Ah, please pardon me for having not specified. I do not mean those teachings given by Kobo Daishi, though he was known in the time I last walked the land, but rather..."     She trails off a moment, tilting her head in thought. The habitual flicking of her ear is only partially constrained by her (very American) hat. "One might say that the mantras are descended from the same shingon of which I speak, if not the tantras." She gestures, fluidly if not particularly easily followed, the brush strokes in the air. "Shin as in 'truth' gives that which those to the west called 'tantra,' words of truth." Another set of imagined brush strokes. "Shin as in 'god' gives one that best known in a prior era, the words of the divine. They were a more favored means, long before that now-distant time, in effecting thaumaturgy, for those with tongues both precise and swift, and who knew that language of the long-gone age. Kotodama, techniques concerning the soul of words, is not dissimilar in principle, though its language and its history paint a distinct picture.     "'Moments,' is it...? To cut apart a moment, I wonder just what he was thinking, while quenching that particular blade. That he had not, or would have not enough moments in which to do his work, I suspect. Such is 'obsession,' in its broadest strokes."     Giving her a sidelong glance at that particular word, 'the idiot,' Tamamo says, "Such language should be avoided, even without credence given to our prior topic, no? You are the one my Lilian chose, after all."
Tamamo	"Oh, my!" Tamamo's eyes widen as she's grabbed... with Lilian's permission? Just what has Lilian been telling her juniors? Tamamo reflexively grabs onto Satsuki at the beginning of her motion, though it is, to her surprise, only a single step that's required to cross the chasm.     She'd expected at least three.
Hellwarming Trio	"... And we're done!" "I moved more than you did." "Th... That's because you had a head start! And I had a cramp!"     With the hard part of getting the path cleared between Strawberry Princess' firepower and Ioanna's guidance, the Duo start to float along above the rail, watching out for cool stuff that doesn't actually exist. The observatory ends up being a welcome (yet creepy) sight, then, as there's actually stuff to look at even if those things that aren't actually on.     Naturally, Utsuho's inclined to change that last bit. "If you're worried about anything turning on that shouldn't, stop me before I finish!" That's all the warning she gives before floating a good two feet into the air, once again gathering her power into her control rod to begin the process of pumping power into this place.          It's less a science of figuring out exactly where to pour that power into and more of a vibe thing, following the flow of her own energy to see where it wants to go, what subtle pulls there are to guide it towards something that might readily gobble it up so she can start making things function again for the smarter people in their group to figure out.
Ioanna Langstrom	The room is like a slice of time. Everything is frozen from a Golden Age, trapped forever. Ioanna almost doesn't want to touch any of it.      On the other hand, she's an anthropologist and, well, archaeology is just anthropology on the past, so.      She crouches down to pick up some of the phones and keycards. The keycards she stows in the pockets of her armor, little segments of steel that slide away for storage (she has a moment where she silently blesses that the MCM is smarter than fashion designers), but the phones...      She shuffles through them morbidly as she connects them to the FluxComm to power them and hack in. She chooses the phone closest to the most important-looking desk as Utsuho starts powering things up.
Tamamo	At least residual heat isn't very much of a problem for Tamamo. She does quite well with even rather oppressively Summery weather. Still, she's just as happy to not spend too much down here, and it's fortunate that the heels of her leather boots aren't quite as high as she often wears, once they get to the oddly uncomfortable stairs. Surely, this place wasn't intended to be so inhospitable. Surely?     Finally to a room of some apparent significance, Tamamo first says, "Oh, now, I suppose I do not understand anything of such places as these, though I know enough that they were concerned with 'observation,' if the signs and naming are to be believed. That would explain the shape of this place, no? Ah, but it is rather strange, still. Would one not wish to have each person watching one window, if not each window being watched by one person...? It was a different style for these Nemans, perhaps. Still, there must be some place they considered the center of their social circle. Now, if I should be able to find it..."     She walks around the desks, looking for something suggesting a more important, or at least self-important, individual sat at it. Once she has her best guess, she examines a discarded coffee mug -- one with some corny or pithy phrase written on the side would be ideal -- and raises it to eye level, touching just her fingertips to the edges. "Now, you... with your master gone, what remains of the spirit imparted unto you? Show me the last of those ever-same days, before all went dark."     A thing used every day, individual to a person, necessary for their day to begin, is among those most perfect places to find a tsukumogami, even if only a tiny one.
Mack	Mack doesn't seem at all bothered by the boring trek down a featureless railway tunnel. He momentarily brightens nonetheless whenever they find the tiny substation doors, even if he isn't expecting much. He's definitely seen them before. "Lived in one, even," he comments at one point during the trek. He steps into the substation. Mack is holding his breath, even if he doesn't seem to realize it, and even if his cyberware is providing oxygenated blood for a short time regardless, making it particularly tricky to notice till there's a warning beep in his peripheral. He twitches a little, head flicking side to side, room immediately recorded before anyone can mess with anything. Then, he just lingers near the entrance, as if he's unwilling to disturb such a pristine tomb. He watches, though. He doesn't know what Tamamo is doing, and he doesn't have any expectations of what they'll see when power comes back on. So he watches, fingertips worrying at his scrap-clad coat.
Strawberry Princess	A live test of Strawberry's reaction time plays out. She accepts the 'scroll case' from Satsuki with a surprised "oh- thank you, Ms. Satsuki!", opens it, and immediately shuts it again like she's pulling her hand away from a hot stove.      It definitely is not that acutely dangerous, but something something lifetime doses. Or maybe she's just jumpy.      In the observatory substation, she picks up a mug and holds it reverently in both hands, her countdown-ticking wand tucked under her arm.      "I wonder where these people went," she says quietly. "Nobody came back to this place, after they left. It shut down for good. So it... it must have been something really big and awful, right? Maybe even the end of that 'Golden Age'. ... I hope they were okay."      She's torn, for a moment, between keeping the mug and putting it back. Eventually she opts for the latter, repositioning it exactly in its circle of dust, as if it had never left. There's no sense in depriving these people of their monuments, however accidental the monuments are.      Tamamo seems to be having a parallel idea, albeit to much ore practical use. Strawberry, for her part, stands next to Utsuho, watching what systems she can bring back online. "It's kind of amazing that anything still works. Right? No, maybe that's not what I really mean. Computers, coffee mugs, phones... those are supposed to be recent things. Not old things."      "Isn't it kind of creepy? To think about how those recent things can outlive us, like this?"
Lilian Rook	The phones are predictably dead. They have civilian lock screens, and then obnoxious 2FA standard. Cracking them open gives Ioanna a peek at photos of long-dead families at the beach and domestic dogs in amusing positions, and lets her scroll through contacts lists for networks that no longer exist, centuries old texts about dinner, work, sports, 'the alliance', and someone called Archie --ostensibly upper management, by complaints about how important his bad moods are-- and 'test subjects'. It has a strangely somber feeling, wiping off hundreds of years of dust and finding some legally distinct flappy birds clone next to someone's last thirty food orders, knowing that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, not even great descendents survive them with any evidence of their existence.     That, and specific mention of the 'Colorado Springs space program'.     Restarting the power all at once is completely overwhelming. Every single system is apparently on the same network, booting all at once with the cacophonous boom of eighty billion startup jingles of-- of course it's fucking windows, though some edition nobody has ever heard of. Fault diagnostics run, blue screens cycle, 'Cyberworks' brand flashes proudly as being the mobo manufacturer across a hemispherical sky of screens. Desktops boot back to lock screens, fans whirring plaintively and ineffectually. Subwindows complain about lack of LAN connection and document recovery progress. But the main monitors flash:     GPS TRACKING LOST. NEMA SATLINK STATUS: 1 ACTIVE UNIT. across an overhead map of the surrounding three hundred miles, blazing with hundreds of pulsing red dots, reporting sensors offline, weapons offline, communications offline, and UNKNOWN THREAT EVENT ONGOING. PRESUME NUCLEAR ATTACK. ALL NON-ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL ARE TO EVACUATE TO SECURE BUNKERS. ALL CRITICAL PERSONNEL REPORT TO STATIONS AT CHEYENNE PRIMARY.     The tactical map indicates the current location is at the very fringe of an essentially city-sized underground sprawl, centered under one of the mountains visible from Boothill. Knowing what the Paladins do, the route back to the main complex is crossed --probably severed-- by no less than two leylines. A window-within-window shows the only functioning satellite of several hundred is marked IN-USE by NORAD: ALLEGHENY.
Ioanna Langstrom	"You get used to it in my field," Ioanna says idly as she works through the coding on the phone she's currently hacking, "It's something you have to come to terms with early when some of the cultures you study are temporally similar to pre-historic or medieval Earthlikes, or far-futures with Earthlike events present."      "You sort of..." She opens the phone and looks through the contacts. "Adapt to thinking of them as primary sources rather than violations of a dead man's privacy. Adapt to thinking of everything being current and happening all at once rather than thinking about what your world's past or future might look like."      She pauses as she looks at the game. A light laugh. Then, "Well, that's what colleagues told me. Like I've said before, I don't really have to wonder what my world's past or future looks like, since..."      She waves a hand as a reminder that she's native.      Still this somber scene has her surprisingly chipper. She's reading the emails with the same fascinated energy she talks about ant-people opera or bee-people violin concertos. This helps inform her about today not just in the tangible immediate way but in a long-term scholarly way. She'll probably get a team down here for research into these long-gone lives, into these families at the beach and these texts about sports, and she'll probably join them and archive them and write a paper about the inevitability of the mundane and compare it to events like Pompeii.      She almost misses the 'Colorado Springs space program.'      Then, "Ah."      And then every single system goes nuts. She has to mute everything for a moment as all the jingles go off.      Once it's over she walks up to the tactical map. The other part of her career.      "I'm going to have to call in a team for this excavation," she says quietly as she stares at the screen.
Hellwarming Trio	"Why wouldn't they last that long? Humans make some really crazy stuff." Utsuho answers Strawberry with a thoughtful hum in her voice that's somewhat matched by the constant hum of energy flowing out of her and into the machines here. "And humans probably live a long time if they don't get killed first, right? I hear they can even live longer than us."  She guesses, leaning over a bit to try and get a better look at that mug Strawberry had busied herself with earlier. Her curiosity is quickly pulled away by the noise of so many computers turning on at once, though, but it doesn't interrupt her energy flow to make sure those machines /stay/ running the whole time. Both Utsuho and Rin can tell it might be important even if they don't necessarily understand it, and Rin approaches the monitors to get a better look at the screens proper. "Those sure are some weird soundin- names." She doesn't even attmept to mangle them after hearing Tamamo say them, although she'd certainly do it worse if she actually did try. "It could be risky bustin' these things open, but... If we do know what they are, then-" She can't get in trouble if anything bad happens through a known source, right? "-we can... Do stuff to try and keep 'em from wreckin' everything else we built here! Or deliver info back home for whoever might know how to make it suck less, yeah?"
Lilian Rook	Satsuki is, first, embarrassed by the mistake. Then, fascinated by the explanation. Tamamo might get the feeling that she has more interest in, and knowledge of, history than she puts on. "Apologies again, but the Commander was quite clear that if this kind of thing came up, it had to be me and not anyone else." says Satsuki, puffing out her chest with just a hint of confusion.     She turns a little bit red when Tamamo uses the word 'chose'. "O-of course, I'm honoured to have been selected out of all the applicants!" she huffs. "Sorry. I just don't think of my past self as being as respectable." And on the other subject . . .     "I've thought about it too. My feeling is . . . If you were to sever a moment, it'd be to separate its beginning from its ending, right? Once something is too late to 'prevent', but not too late to 'stop'. It's not the desire to recapture, or prolong, or protect, a precious moment, but to change something at 'the critical moment'." says Satsuki. She laughs a little nervously. "I don't know why it's so big. It's the forty-second, and all of them after the twenty fourth are a pretty standard uchigatana style."     Tamamo finds an important-looking desk at a slightly pretentious upper level facing the door. It's certainly old enough by now to matter. A mug that says 'Truth, Justice, and My Way or the Highway' paints her a dreamily photo-faded picture.     A severe-looking middle-aged woman pores over spreadsheets and timetables at her PC, moving far too fast for Tamamo to read any more than catching glimpses of names and titles, events and visitations, and a number of military ranks. Beneath it is nested a CAD file titled 'super eagle' and a wallpaper of a golden retriever and a small blonde child. The room bustles with fifty some warm bodies, scribbling and typing and chatting away with a lazy sunday atmosphere, most about some kind of rare astrological event, how it's a shame they can't see it, maybe coopting the cheyenne telescope, and then being called various words for homosexual for appreciating nature and the cosmos. The monitor ceiling paints not just a view of the surrounding miles, but an altogether sprawling map of the entire continent, with what should be known now as Canada and Mexico included, though only the former is lit up like a switchboard as well.     Clutter falls from desks at the first booming shake. The ceiling beams creak and a row of monitors cracks and shorts at the second. A tapestry of warnings blares danger read from wall to wall, and men and women in suits and coats scramble to their desks, shouting for callouts to specific sensor stations, comms lines, and something about 'get the president'. A familiar six-way line of local facilities is wiped out in an instant with a third, tremendous quake. Reports of 'visual phenomena' at the coordinates the Paladins already know are bandied about with increasing fear and alarm. The west coast is blaring tidal wave alerts, the eastern mountains severe earthquakes, the midwest flooding in storm warnings and 'UFO reports', being sent up the pipeline and blanketing the map.     One more tremendous, explosion-like quake is felt nearby, from the direction of the train terminal. The floor lurches. People fall. Main power cuts out, and backup boots up seconds later. A loud, raucous siren sounds over 'DEFCON STATUS' and directions for personnel to evacuate. Armed guards arrive at the doors to bark orders and usher everyone out.
Tamamo	Tamamo says, "I see. And then... no more. All here were left to languish, until such as we might find you, again." It's old enough, but a land starved of 'mystery' might still be expected to have no more than the smallest of spirits. Safe enough to leave where they were found.     She sets the mug down again, where one might be expected to set it aside, while sitting at the desk. Photos -- are they still there? There was no time to bring anything, with the world ending.     She takes a few moments to compose her thoughts, before relaying what she saw.