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Remee Halcyon "If you reduce the entire world to evil people with money and power, and good people under their heel, you'll just wind up leading victims to the slaughter in the end."

"Maaaay-be! But that wasn't... really my argument," says Remee. "Someone does need to have the power. Someone needs to be the captain calling shots on the ship in an emergency or for the small everyday things, instead of putting it to a vote every time they need to turn the wheel. I'm with you on that."

"But you're claiming... total responsibility here. Responsibility is a burden, sure, but that doesn't just mean that you can hoard it all to yourself, just because you aren't sure you'll like the result if you hand off the responsibliity to someone else. You aren't absolving yourself if you share the load, you're just..."

She pauses for a second. Has she been doing that, for the things she sees as 'her' responsibility? That it has to be her dealing with the other Halcyons, just because they're her family? ... She'll have to worry about that later.

"I mean, you aren't absolving yourself if you don't share the load, you're just putting your own worries first if you don't."

Liza shows up. Remee is glad she took a step back. She's also wondering how soon she can go for the gun hidden in her vest, if something comes up.
Rita Ma      Rita isn't built for verbal confrontation- not to start it, and not to endure it, even by splash damage. As Liza and the guards argue, she shrinks in on herself, drawing closer and closer to Liza's side as a source of security.

     Physical confrontation is a different matter. When the guns are pulled, she gets a little tenser still- but her eyes are only briefly on the ones pointed at her. Her gaze lingers instead on the ones pointed at Liza and (secondarily) Berislav.

     Back to verbal, again. Under her breath, Rita murmurs: "How long have you known her for, Ms. Grier? It sounds like..." Like this is uncomfortably personal. The picture she has of Anita remains queasily blurry, for someone they're going to put to death. Her grip on Liza's arm stays tight right up until-

     "There isn't a cell in your fucking brain that can even comprehend being responsible for people's lives instead of just their deaths!"
     (Oh. She's a liar. That's a relief.)

     Concealed against Liza's side, one of Rita's jacket sleeves unravels into nothingness. Active-camo tentacles snake out and silently wrap around the barrels of each nearby gun. She whispers: "Don't worry about the guards, Ms. Grier. They're not going to hurt you. Okay?"

     Even trusting Liza's judgement implicitly, it's nice to give her fewer reasons to kill other people.
Petra Soroka     Petra should've known better, but the single-minded violence with which Liza crashes through the checkpoint still shocks her. Even without any guns pointed at her, her breath seizes up in shock, and when the shouting starts, she presses herself up against the wall. Petra sucks in shuddering breaths, like her chest is being crushed inwards by the pressure of imminent violence, and wraps her hand around the grip of her revolver inside her jacket.

"All you ever do is destroy things L! You don't know the first goddamned thing about building anything!"

    It's kind of hard for Petra not to agree, a little bit. Maybe a lot, actually. What the fuck is going on here? Liza barging in to a former, bitterly former, colleague's retirement project, just waiting for the first excuse to drop a nuke on it?

    But it's out of Petra's hands now. She's on this side, and right now, this side is shooting the leader of a co-op and bombing it to ruins. If she can't do good, she can at least contribute to this.

    Petra doesn't have it in her to warn Liza about the sniper trained on her head, though.
Liza Grier     The hostilities abate between Liza and Anita only in as far as a man of the cloth barging his way in to begin talking about someone's soul can be persuasively distracting. Even the armed men at the checkpoint glance sideways to watch him, though nobody else thinks to turn their rifles away from Liza to track such an individual. Or nobody dares skew the ratio.

    The word 'family' makes Anita glare daggers past his head at Liza. "First name basis now?" she says. "I'd have thought you'd gone soft, if you weren't even crazier than when I met you." "You're the one who's lost her edge." "Fuck you. And sorry, father, but this isn't a spiritual matter." Anita seems unusually leery about taking her eyes off Liza for even a second, but her frustration, the need to talk to someone about how utterly unfair this all is, partially wins out.

    "Yeah, it's true, and no, I don't really trust them, but it doesn't fucking matter. We're short-handed and under-armed. They'll do what they're told for the same reason they did before. And even fucking CorpSec doesn't want someone else appropriating their home; they have just as much to lose as we do, and that's something I can trust!" Anita replies. "If you don't like it, then vote on it! The whole point of bringing fucking outsiders here is to blow this emergency over so we can do shit like that!" she yells, escalating. "Yeah, the money comes from here! Mine is in with the rest too! The whole point of electing representatives was to have people they trust to represent them handling it, and I have the accounts because I'm the one who knows more than jack about what this place needs, financially, materially, to run!"

    "What the fuck is your problem?! I gave up my entire past life to come here! I spent two years --two years-- working to bring Aphorian down! I burnt all my assets, cashed in all my connections, worked my ass off, got jailed half a dozen times, beaten more than that, to have this finally happen, and now that it's not a utopian little paradise in three weeks, you're here to do another coup? Fuck your purity test. What are you going to achieve in three weeks that I can't? And are you going to roll over when someone comes to get you too?"

    She snaps at Remee next, laughing as bitterly as she does joylessly. "This is a real place with real people who have real needs, not an armchair debate. Have you ever been on a ship? Stuck with other people in space for years? Have you ever run a coop? A shelter? A home? Have you ever commanded a team of people whose lives depended on you? Organized a strike? A union? A riot? A rebellion? I bet not. I can tell by looking at you. You look like someone who's never been hungry or scared or brushed with death in her life. You look like someone who enjoys holding a gun and cries like a toddler when things go wrong."

    She even steps forward, aggressively, to jab her finger into Remee, before stopping as Liza's gaze tracks her and her wrist tenses, gritting her teeth and having to keep spitting instead. "Fuck off. All of you think you know how to do it. You all think it's so fucking simple. You sit around on your asses, content to let everything go to shit, you keep your head down and you stay away from anyone dangerous. You only come out when it's personal, or when you're already winning."

    "You have any idea how long I've been doing this? I'm sick to fucking death of people like you being part of the fucking problem, until I show up and bust my ass making friends with them, persuading them, deprogramming them, begging them to consider listening to me; risking my ass to help them, taking bullets to protect them, opening my door for them when they come crawling back, splitting my bread to feed them; and then and only then, when you've been coddled and carried all the way to the finish line, I have to fucking pack up and move on and you people decide it was all your idea and fuck it all up again!"
Liza Grier     "You don't know shit! I do! You wanna talk about responsibility? Sharing the load? Tell me that when giving up responsibility to please limp-wristed couch quarterbacks like you gets people killed! I have real people's real lives in my hands right now; I'm not letting you ruin this! And I'm sure as shit not letting you ruin it!" She points right through Remee, through Berislav, into Liza, as if they were all heads of the same Hydra. "The broken people who couldn't give any less of a shit about the people who actually make this happen --who tip you off and give you the keys and leave the doors to the bad guys open, and die for it-- because all you can think of is the action! People who can't sit still for three fucking weeks without blowing something up! People who kill and kill and kill and then look away from what comes after! I'm not turning anything over to a bunch of flying monkeys whose big objection is that their friend doesn't like it!"

    Anita finally runs out of breath for the moment, staggering back over the checkpoint line, pushing her bangs back to wipe sweat from her brow. The laugh that comes after is still bitter, but much less unamused, at Berislav. "Hahahahaha! You want the cults and criminals and psychopaths and deviants and predators out of the picture? You're working with them, idiot! Who the fuck do you think I called? Who do you think she works for!" It's striking how similar, yet different, the unhinged cadence of her laughter is to Liza's at certain times. "The fucking Syndicate is the devil you sell your soul to for the power to hold off the Ruin! You know that!"

    "You done?" Liza growls. Her fingers overtly squeeze the handgun grip at her hip, but none of the guards dare take it as the absolute sign to fire. "Long enough." she says to Rita. "A long time ago, she understood me, and I understood her. Now I understand her and she doesn't understand herself." Anita hisses aggrievedly. "I understand you perfectly fucking well, L! Or, 'Liza' now, right? You planned on this from the start. You burned it all down for free, and decided you'd send a message if someone picked up the ashes in a way you didn't like. You're here to fuck it all up again. You're going to kill me, kill all the former secStaff, blow our Warpgate and launch ports, kill everyone you can find in all of the satellite CorpHQs, and tell all the people here 'congrats! you're free! figure it out!' and fuck off to let them wallow in the filth and blood. Aren't you?"

    Finally, she shakes her head at Kukuru. "No. We're not going to talk it out. We've had this fucking debate again and again and again. If she brought her friends, it's to kill me and ruin everything. You can't reach her. You can't make her see sense. She's broken. All she can think about is murdering everyone who crosses her personal line." A sigh. Emphatic. Exhausted. Adrenaline-filled. Almost-guilty. To Wisconsin, too. "I'm sorry. This is part of the reason I called you here. I didn't lie. My main request really is that you help us deal with saboteurs, from other companies, out to ruin our independence, but . . ." She looks straight to Liza. "The Syndicate is a company too, in everything but name. She's one of them."
Liza Grier     And then, past her, to Petra. "You know I'm right. You know what she's like. I can tell." To Remee. "You don't want to be like her. You're taken in by the fact you know her and I look metaphorically ugly first thing in the morning with my makeup off. You don't like her killing either. Not really." To Berislav. "You care about this community for real, don't you? You want to see these people be happy. Be free. Thrive. Like I do. Like I spent two years and everything I own doing. You know I mean it. And you know how they're going to react --how things are going to fall apart-- if you let her slaughter their heroes in cold blood and ravage their home. You have more good left in you than her."

    Even to Rita. "No matter how angry you are, you know there's a difference between me and the people you hate. You'd have shot me already if you didn't. Listen to that voice. Try talking to someone, building something, helping people with your own hands, instead of letting her drown your soul in blood. Please."
Wisconsin     This has broken down all the way, and there's not even any shooting yet. The raw emotion coming off both Anita and Liza is just... tangible in the air, and Wisconsin's just watching this awful scene unfold. Two lives, twined so tight, yet frayed so far apart.

    <Tac-Concord> Wisconsin deep breath. "I can get Anita's... body out if it comes to that. I know you can handle the rest after that."
    <Tac-Concord> Wisconsin says, "...But that's not going to stop this woman from burning the rest of this place to the foundations."
    <Tac-Concord> Kukuru says, "She... She wouldn't do that. They're sisters. She wouldn't do something like that."


    Wisconsin just keeps looking right at Liza. She's still in a covering position for Anita, though this may be dicey either way. "...Anita. Are you asking for the Concord's protection, right here, right now?" The words are firm, commanding, and spoken for the benefit of everyone involved.
Kukuru As things become more heated between Anita and Liza, Kukuru's gaze becomes more unfocused, more frantic as she looks between them rapidly, hands raised in front of her in a feeble attempt to try and get their tempers to stop flaring as though gentle hand movements could really do anything about that. The explosion of emotions going everywhere has her flinching slightly, too, not out of actual fear, but out of a complete dearth of ideas on how to proceed.

It's not that Anita's not making points Kukuru can agree with, because she is. It's not even how tired Anita seems, because it's completely understandable to Kukuru just from everything she's heard. What truly bothers Kukuru is what Anita says about what Liza's ready to do, about how she already knows what Liza's planning to do to her and everyone here, and what she says about their relationship and the folly of trying to connect.

"Maybe you did before, but... When was the last time you two really listened to each other and... And cared about what you both said? You're sisters, aren't you?" Kukuru bites her lip anxiously as she steps over to Anita, grasping her shoulders gently to try and help keep her in that semi-calmed state. "Maybe things did get bad before, but it's never too late to... To try and fix this between you both. She gave time before, so I'm sure she'll do it again."

Smiling shakily, she steps away from Anita to approach Liza next. "Liza... You're not broken. You've just gone through lots of bad stuff, and it sucks. It sounds like Annie has, too, and... I bet neither of you are as bad as you're saying.  I don't believe it, and I bet she doesn't really think that, either. Maybe you two did make some mistakes before, but every family does. Sisers are supposed to be more understanding of that kind of stuff!" She pleads, holding her open hands out to Liza as though that might help calm her down some.

"It's not like she's doing any of this because she wants to make things worse. If you two worked together, I bet you could do even better than trying to..." She really doesn't want to acknowledge the reality of Liza possibly plotting to kill Anita. "... You've given her a chance to fix things before, right? Please... Believe in your sister. You're both better than this, and you two working together to fix this place and all those others? I bet you'd make a great team at that! You'd even have everyone else helping, too, and then you'd really be able to stick it to the Corp...-as?"

Kukuru looks over at Rita and Remee in the middle of her plea, as if trying to gauge if she's using that word right.
Rita Ma      Having heard the way Anita's excoriated the others, Rita flinches in anticipation when it's her turn. It's not as bad as she's expecting: as Anita addresses her, she shifts from tense anxiety to troubled resolve.

     It's easier when they're at least a little wrong.

     "I don't know what Ms. Grier was like when you knew her, Ms. Greene." Rita relinquishes her hold on Liza's arm and takes a half-step forward, chin lifted. "But I can tell you that she's a really kind person now. Even if-" a slightly chagrined look back- "you're not getting to see it, right now."

     "You're right. I do know you're different, Ms. Greene. I don't really want to hurt you. But I've helped build things, too. I've seen really beautiful things grow from the ashes. And, listening to these people... even with all you've done- or especially because of it- I think they'll do okay without you."

     "Please, take Father Berislav's hand." Rita half-nods towards Wisconsin. "Not hers. Whether or not there's blood is up to you, I promise."
Remee Halcyon Remee takes another step back as Anita goes to take a step forward. "I-"

... She doesn't have a lot to say, directly in response, to what Anita is saying about her. Mainly because... a lot of it is true. Pretty much all of it, maybe.

"... I mean, it doesn't make any of what I said less true," she says, softly, and looks like she's about to say something else, but loses confidence at the last second. That hit home a bit too hard.

She looks from Anita to Liza and back when the comparison comes up next. She pauses. She rubs her forehead. "I... don't like it either. You're right. There's a lot about her methods that I don't like."

"I've seen... enough of things from the top, though. You're right, I've never done any of those things, I've never had people depend on me in a way that matters. But I've seen enough, from the other side. Where people don't care at all about those that depend on them. And I don't think... half measures will fix that. I don't think a simple changing of the guard will fix that. I don't know a lot of things, but I do know those things pretty well, I think. And maybe or maybe not burning everything to ash like you're describing her as doing will be the solution, but it's at least a solution she seems confident enough in."

She shrugs. "To tell the truth to both of you, though, actually, that's a large part of why I'm *here*. I wanted to see you work, Miss Grier. I wanted to see if you *were* a person I wanted to be like. If you're someone I should try to model myself after."
Petra Soroka     Petra wavers. Of course she does.

    She steps away from the wall with teetering force, unsticking her legs from their rigid position. Suddenly afraid that her abrupt movement will draw the guards' attention to her, she freezes again, like a deer in headlights. She's not able to look directly at anyone in particular, fixated on an empty spot between the two angry women. Her vision refocuses, and she's actually looking directly at Kukuru. That works, actually.

    As Petra forces out a dissenting opinion through her constructed throat, her voice creaks with anxiety, less like a warship stirring into motion, more like a floorboard under a child's foot at night. "H-hey. Anita's done a lot more to, to help this place, than we have, right? Sh-she's put the work in, to organize, and build this co-op up from nothing, and make compromises for that goal. Because," Petra's pleading dies out with a hoarse squeak, and she coughs.

    "It's only been, just three weeks? This place is just coming together. It's still messy. We don't need to, um, burn it all down and salt the fields just because it's not perfect yet. It takes a lot of work, compromising with a lot of viewpoints, to make something like this work, and..."

    Petra reconsiders each of her companions with a building discomfort in her stomach. "M-maybe you all aren't the best to criticize the way that someone else is helping people, when, uh, she's clearly a lot more experienced, at the kind of help that this place needs. Working with others. We just, you know, blow stuff up." Her voice fades into nothing by the end.

    Petra winces, curling her shoulders in, at the expected backlash. "At least, we don't need to kill her, right?"
Father Berislav      Berislav's composure is unbroken, even with guns pointed at Liza. He doesn't acknowledge them; even if he must surely see them his silver eyes don't flick towards them in the slightest. His expression, still, is of gentle concern bordering on polite admonishment.

     Where Annie escalates, Berislav's voice is still at the volume of a particularly uncomfortable conversation. "I'm afraid it *is* a spiritual matter. Do you imagine Christ was crucified only for claiming to be the Son of God? Why, then, do so many such people, then and now, making the same claim, evade the notice of 'law enforcement'? Then, as now, solidarity and mutual aid are good in the eyes of the Lord, and called evil by the gardeners of sin--which you refuse to disavow. If you believe that you will evade their snares where others have not, you are mistaken. You cannot bargain with people who want you to suffer."

    "I appreciate your honesty in the matter of the security officers. I do believe that *you* believe you're doing good, that you want this community to succeed. I don't hate you, Ms. Greene--and even the people I do hate get a chance to repent. But you are putting these people in danger, whether you mean to or not. My 'big objection' is that your 'begging and pleading' with the devil has put these people on a map they will not easily escape. Your answer to this is 'vote,' yet even now, you talk about all that *you* have sacrificed, as if this entire endeavor was not born of collective labor. I won't dignify the stones you've thrown at Liza with a response. Your options at this point are a one-eighty, or a departure. I have danced the dance which you now attempt, in pursuit of building the same things, and I am telling you that it is doomed to fail."

    He nods, once, at Rita. "Avert your course or step down--because if you step forward, I will do what is best for this cooperative."
Rita Ma      Rita doesn't take her eyes off of Anita, but her spine stiffens when Petra speaks, and she turns her head to show she's heard.

     "Maybe you just blow stuff up." She regrets it- her next words come slower- but not soon enough to stop, or strongly enough to apologize. "What happens here is up to her, Ms. Petra."

     She doesn't usually say it that way, does she?
Petra Soroka     Petra had braced for Liza, not for--that. The wind is knocked out of her as if Rita had physically struck her, and tears prick in her eyes as she struggles to suck in a breath.

    From an outside perspective, Petra has just gone completely motionless, eyes downturned, shoulders and head drawn into herself to look smaller. Even inside her head, she feels quiet, like the moment where broken glass tinkles onto the ground after a car crash.

    All she manages to whisper is, "Okay."
Liza Grier     "I just did. Explicitly." Anita hisses to Wisconsin, then sighs. "But I'm asking all of you, to do the sane thing. The right thing. Whether you always do it or whether it's your first time."

"You've been talking a whole fucking lot, Anita. You wanna put it to a vote? Decide what the outcomes you like are and deign to permit everyone the luxury of choosing between them? Fuck off. We both know all this materiel and firepower you're moving isn't for the cops. It's for me."
"Eat shit."
"Die. You thought you knew me inside out and you were wrong."
"I know enough to be able to say for fucking sure that if you get your way, a lot of people, good people, are going to die, and if I get my way--"
"Then you can set everything up just perfect for your family."
"What the fuck did I ever do to you to lose that much trust?! What paper did I sign to become a fascist?! Why do these people all believe you just because you say I am?! I don't recall ever stabbing you in the back, L! Why can't you get that there's all this time, space, all these chances, between something getting a little rough and burning it all down! Why can't you even try trusting me just enough to talk!"
"We used to talk all the time. Back when--"
"Don't you dare say it."
"That's why."

    Anita turns to Kukuru. Liza turns to Remee.

    "The last time I listened to her, the last time I really cared about her, was three weeks ago! The last time she ever listened to me or cared about what I wanted was six years ago. But you know what the problem with her is? The same thing is with the fucking corps! The fucking government! All fucking tyrants! They monopolize violence, completely unchallengeably, and then you can't talk to them anymore! You can't sit them down, can't talk to them, can't relate to them, can't make them listen to you, can't force them to care, because they can snuff you out in the blink of an eye and you can't dent them back!" She points wildly to Liza. "That's the problem with being 'unkillable'! You're not a fucking person anymore, you're just a one woman institution!"

    "You don't want to be like me. You don't want to model yourself after me. I'm not saying that because I think nobody should be like me; I'm saying it because you don't get it. You won't understand that there isn't such a thing as a line; that acceptable conduct, proportionate measures, rules of war, are all shit that they make up to make you follow. They hide behind the lives of people they put in their own hands, and make it like it's your fault they die when they take cover behind them. I know enough about you to know you can't contain that truth. But that's fine, because--"

    Anita switches to the Watch, Liza switches to the Concord.
Liza Grier     "She never expected to rely on your help at all. She brought you here as canaries, and she's already prepared to shoot right through you to get me.

    "We've both been through enough that it doesn't matter anymore. The playing field's level. The past doesn't matter to the present. And we aren't sisters. We used to be something, and now we're not. The only thing you're right about is that I'm not broken. It's everyone else who's broken."

    "See?! Even the kid can tell! That teenager you brought along, even though you were ready to kill her if she got in the way! You're the one always talking about 'the default settings on children', L! You want to talk about human shields?!"

    "If you planned on talking it out then you'd have called the Watch, not them. You thought I was coming in three months, and that'd be plenty of time to be ready. You thought you knew everything about me. The way I operate. You never fucking respected that I had anything to me but the violence. You still can't grip that I can outthink you too. You figured you could be the one that finally takes me down, if you did everything you could to be ready, with all the knowledge you had. That's the backstabbing, Annie. And you're the one taking her as your shield right now."

    Anita looks on in exasperation to Remee. "That's it. That's what you're always like. 'I know you're right and everything you're saying is true, but I'm standing by the strongman anyways'. Because taking responsibility and thinking is hard. Backing down is hard! Changing your mind is hard! Doing what you were already doing is easy and making a decision based on what you know instead of what you're afraid of fucking sucks! I would know! It's my job to do that for you, and I've been doing it for twenty years!"

    And then she looks pleadingly at Rita. "Please. It's not up to her. It's not even up to me! It's up to all of you! Everyone here, even just a little! Why do you people keep talking about everyone's role, but you'll treat her like she's a one woman hero holding up the world?! It can be up to you too! That's all I've ever wanted! For someone else to back down and change their mind and make the hard decisions and take risks and help carry the weight with me! I thought that was her, once upon a time!"

    An evil, awful, teary, desperate, frustrated, vindictive, bitter, exhausted, heartbroken gleam flashes through Anita's eyes when Berislav delivers his ultimatum, and when Rita makes it hers. "Watch me do it right now." she says. "Because I'm not a falling rock. I can master my own inertia. And I'll do whatever it takes to keep these people safe. I'll prove it."

    She reaches out for Berislav's hand. "I get it. It's not like you're wrong. It's just, three weeks isn't much time, and you didn't see it. Come on. I'll take you to the worker's council. We'll talk about it there. If you convince them, I'll abide by whatever it is you want. I'll even ask you to negotiate with the Concord instead of me, so we can all-"

    Steel clears kydex faster than guards with fingers on the trigger can react. Liza fires from the waist, elbow in, squeezing off a dozen rounds from the machine pistol into Anita, moving her aim only so far as to catch her Concord bodyguards with the first couple of shots and spray around them. A half-second later, the sniper, already aiming, fires. Liza's head jerks forward, and she stumbles into the checkpoint rail. The report of a gunshot catches up. The back of her hair stains red. The checkpoint minutemen register the action and start to react. Liza slams her hand against the gate rail and pushes herself back up. Her expression hasn't changed. Anita looks horrified.
Wisconsin     "I just did. Explicitly." Anita hisses to Wisconsin.

    Anita's said that, and Wisconsin shrugs and looks to Yorktown and nods. Both women shift slightly in place, and where there was once just Anita, Kukuru, Yorktown and Wisconsin in that room, there is now a whole lot more. Both of the ship girls manifest their rigging in that elevator, making the bulk of the space fill up considerably. Wisconsin's hull and turrets come into existence, around herself and Anita, and as the bullets spray into their direction, Wisconsin turns to interpose her hull plating letting the hastily fired shots spang off the armor, caroming around the area.

    Behind her, Yorktown manifests her rigging, a long black flight deck appearing at her hip, floating in mid-air. And from the deck comes a sudden rush of ghostly little airplanes, energy sprites swirling around the elevator like a haze of angry wasps. All of them boil up and out of the elevator, forcing the Watch members to either take steps backward or be stung.

    And through the wheeling fighters, steps Wisconsin, princess carrying Anita, safely ensconced inside the confines of her rig. "I am the USS Wisconsin, and this woman is under my protection. Stand down."
Kukuru Rita's committed to Liza's goal. Kukuru can't blame her there, since even she seems to believe in Liza's capabilities despite the current situation. Remee, too, looks like she's throwing in behind Liza, and Kukuru can't blame her for having that sort of faith in her ally. Petra seems like she's on the same wavelength at first, but getting cowed by what Rita says...

Kukuru definitely can't imagine what that's like. And Berislav... He's still mildly terrifying to Kukuru for the same reasons that Liza might have been, if not for seeing her at work a few times before.

She still has Wisconsin at her back, at least.

Liza and Anita, meanwhile, don't relent in the slightest. Even with slightly more context about their falling out, it all seems to combine into a nigh-insurmountable wall between them in Kukuru's eyes. She can't even dispute the points they're both making (that she can understand), either, since all of it really does make logical sense between Anita bringing in so many people as shields, Liza forcing unreasonable demands on others, and everything in between, the corporations and tyrants...

It almost makes Kukuru want to cry. Like Petra, she's starting to tear up, but she forces it down with a loud sniffsnort before stepping over towards Anita slowly. "This... Sucks. I hate this. It all just... Sucks. Family isn't supposed to fight like this. They're supposed to..."

She stops herself from sounding too much like a broken record, eventually just letting out a low hissing sigh before turning back towards the Watch members. "If-"

Kukuru isn't exactly fast, though, so Liza's already started firing before she can get out more than that. A few of the bullets punch into her arm and draw blood along with a startled yelp, and Kukuru's first instinct is to throw herself backwards at Anita to keep her covered while Wisconsin and Yorktown send out their swarm of things. "Nn! D... Down. We'll catch up." She utters quickly to Anita while reaching backwards, gesturing at an ominously dark cloud of energy that forms not far behind them on the ground. It's a pretty obvious target, but it's also a portal to...

... Right back at the entrance to the elevator they had came in from earlier. Instead of going in that teleportation cloud herself, though, Kukuru stays right where she is and raises her foot and leg up relatively high (at hip height). "I'm not letting you kill Annie, Liza. Rita. Remee. Petra. Um..."

She still can't remember Berislav's name. "... I still believe she can fix things the way she knows how!" Skipping right over that, Kukuru slams her foot through the floor of the elevator with her disproportionately great strength, then kicks up whatever tile and material she can dig out in that motion to create a spray of debris  and a wail of noise (or just knock the elevator off course entirely) to buy Anita some time to escape!
Remee Halcyon > "You don't want to be like me."

Remee takes time to process that. She *needs* time to process that, really. She turns out to not have time.

Shots ring out. Liza fires first. Remee's startled.She's more startled when, in turn, the sniper fires on Liza.

It takes a moment. Other people likely have much higher initiative bonuses, burned into them by a lifetime of the sort of danger Remee doesn't have experience facing. When she does move, though, she moves quickly. She yanks her pistol out from her greatcoat, starts moving towards Liza, and changes.

It's at least slightly comical. There's an 8 ft werewolf, standing between Liza and the direction the sniper shot came from, holding a comparatively small pistol. The pistol's big enough for her freshly enlarged fingers to use, but just barely. Her ears swivel - trying to track the location of the sniper by any sense she can use, while sighting down the pistol in the direction the shot came from. If the sniper is too stupid to have not made themselves scarce by now, she's gonna go ahead and return fire, too.

"I don't know if I want to be like you, but at least I like you," she says to Liza. It is, in the moment, the only thing she can think of to say, even if it sounds lame the moment it leaves her muzzle and reaches her ears.
Rita Ma      Gunshots. Without stopping to process their source, Rita springs into action. Her camouflaged tentacles wrench the nearby guards' guns to the sky, then crush the barrels. It looks just like telekinesis.

     "Please leave," she begs them. Then another gunshot, and she sees Liza stumble in her peripheral vision. Lunging to support her in a panic, Rita yelps: "Miss-!!"

     Blood.

     Without warning, right there, not a foot from her face. Rita's anxiously-grasping hands squeeze Liza's arm a little tighter than they ought. Her eyes dilate. Her mouth hangs slightly open. "... Grier?"

     But Liza isn't the only source of blood here. By degrees, with a slight shudder, Rita turns her face away from Liza and towards Anita, bleeding in Wisconsin's arms, by shuddering degrees. All that conversation from earlier leaves her mind. There's the target.

     Rita's body blurs and distorts for a fraction of a second before Wisconsin's planes and Kukuru's shockwave wash over it. That's all the warning anybody gets. 'Rita', the flawless illusion, still clings to Liza's arm. Rita, the invisible true presence, sprints along the ceiling upside-down and drops down behind the two Concord members, between them and Kukuru's portal.

     It's a mercy that the chaos hides her, at least mostly, from the rest of the Watch. She doesn't have the presence of mind to ask Petra to look away when she shimmers back into visibility and half her body unravels.

     What looked like clothes and skin and hair unravels in ribbons and drops its camouflage to reveal a half-dozen cruel blue tentacles, tens of feet long. Beneath the unraveled disguise, her mutated true form shines through.

     "Sorry," she says, her voice a little choked. She at least has the courtesy for that. Then the tentacles lunge for Anita in Wisconsin's arms simultaneously, each trying to impale her from a different angle.
Father Berislav >There isn't such a thing as a line.

     Berislav nods in grave agreement with Liza.

>Three weeks isn't much time, and you didn't see it.

     Berislav sighs and withdraws his hand. He looks deeply, deeply disappointed. "Ms. Greene... *Annie.* Even now, you shift the burden, as if the council were ever aware--"

     It's faster than Berislav is accustomed to rendering, but his judgment would have been the same, anyway. The Bible under his arm falls into an orange wound in space. He dips forward before the first guard crumples, his hand reaching for the sidearm pistol and clearing the holster as the body begins to slump.

     Funneling his momentum into a roll, the priest racks the slide and swings his arm out wide. Four trigger pulls, in the span of scarcely a second. The bullets curve in an arc, each one flying a calculated trajectory to slice through any remaining guards at the hands and feet. Where before his face was that of a concerned spiritual leader, now, as he rises from the roll to run along the wall, it is the impassive mask of a butcher at work.

>This woman is under my protection. Stand down.
>I still believe she can fix things the way she knows how!

     "They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious."

     He springs off of the wall, twisting in midair, a burning orange streak in space briefly enveloping his empty hand before it emerges with a brick of plastic bearing a small keypad. As the sprites emerge and the rubble flies, he allows himself to be stung and battered, rolling with the impacts midair to fling the plastic explosive in spite of the deterrents. His cassock is poked through with holes, his face a concentrated grimace.

     He 'programs' it with three trigger pulls. Two set and prime the charge, slamming into the keys and breaking them--'00:02' briefly visible on the timer of the hurtling charge. The third sends the charge flipping end over end, sailing above, so that the blast is directed downwards, towards the elevator, Kukuru, Wisconsin and the sprites, without endangering Rita.

     The blast goes off. "'Peace, peace' they say," continues the priest in the aftermath, "When there *is* no peace. Are they ashamed of their detestable conduct?"

     His feet hit the ground, and he turns his back just for a moment, pistol twirled, to squeze the trigger faster than he has any right to, holding it with one hand. His aim is seemingly at random--but each of the eight shots is calculated, bouncing off of walls, floors, ceilings, support beams, shipping containers, bulletin boards. It creates a tangled, complex crossfire that any sniper attempting to reposition would be suicidal for trying. "No," he says, tossing the spent pistol aside. "They have no shame at all, they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen, they will be brought down when I punish them, says the Lord."

     He hadn't seen the sniper's perch, so he can't assume they've been handled--but rattling them for a moment should be enough, especially with Liza's reaction. His hands reach through space in a twist draw, procuring two massive revolvers. A momentary glance towards Liza. "Are you alright?" Cold. Professional.
Petra Soroka     Petra reacts to the gunshots moments too late, arms wrapped around herself and tightened as if she's expecting to be the one struck by Liza's spray of bullets. The sudden explosion of combat and noise is muffled to her ears, echoing in that cotton-filled void that suffused her mind.

    It all registers at once when Liza collapses into the rail, blood harshly saturated in Petra's swimming vision. She inhales sharply, choking on the metallic haze in the air, and snaps back into focus moments before the tiny stinging pain of Yorktown's planes and Kukuru's debris strikes her.

    Petra shields her face with an arm, and glances at the cluster of Concord elites and Anita. The wall of hull plating greets her coldly, like a betrayal. It's not a rational feeling, but it comes across as cruel, unfair, that Petra didn't get a choice of which side of that barrier she'd end up on.

    Even though, she'd definitely choose this side anyways. She looks to Liza, pushing herself up with blood streaming down her head. To Rita. Probably.

    --Back to Rita again, actually. Petra stares at the flashes of Rita's true form with unadulterated horror, situationally losing the composure to avert her eyes like normal.

    Petra stumbles backwards, falls to the ground, and twists to the side to be sick, finally tearing her eyes away. She scrambles for her gun, pulling it out and gesturing roughly in the right direction, hair plastered wildly across her face with sweat.