Scene #8590: Wish to Slay Voracity

Owner	Pose
Evehime Gevurah	The city of Omaha, in the year of 2082, is something very different than it was in 2080. It was different than it was in 2000, then too; as part of the neo-nation of the United American and Canadian States, it'd spread and sprawled until it engulfed the entire Missouri and Platte River bend, and grown so far skyward that its downtown amounted to a riotously glowing tower of babel, reflected all the way across the water at night. Even now, it still crackles with radio traffic, sparkles with the erratic blinking of transceiver, car, and aircraft lights, absolutely buzzes with the non-stop activity of the Net, and shimmers with the accumulated heat of the day slowly being released through the night from all that asphalt and concrete. But it's different now, because a considerable slice of the city disappeared two years ago. An entire wedge of darkness, cut from its edge and near to its downtown heart, once laid to smoking ruin, now near fully rebuilt around its leading edges, but left fallow deeper in. Half-flooded, lit by bin fires, squatted on by the teeming multitudes the city streets wouldn't accept, now thriving as a lawless refuge, it's easy to forget how recent it was, with skeletons left in the streets, only the milspec wreckage reclaimed, and the molten brass left to gleam solid in the concrete cracks. Two years is like two months to the woman who carved that scar into the city in the first place. It's always a little tough to read her, but standing on a barren rise on the far side of the river, just within the bounds of the officially 'uninhabited zone', Evehime's faraway stare and the faint press of her lips looks like something you might venture to call 'rueful'. Despite the overwhelming damage she'd caused to the territory, it doesn't seem as if there are any means to detect a return performance. It's sort of ridiculous, how she can boldly stand on the same ground she cracked into a million pieces before, to no real consequence. But it's convenient, because it allows Warpgate travel from inside or just out of town filter towards her without so much trouble as, at the very most, perhaps an enterprisingly stupid gangster. It's only when they've gathered, upon a heap of concrete bones, surrounded by the gentle trickling of a polluted-black river, that Evehime uncrosses her arms, and points into the high distance, at the constellation of helicopter and VTOL lights swarming around the 300 storey behemoths drowning out the stars with their titanic neon logos and after-hours window blaze. "Tell me what it is that you believe is responsible for this." she says. "That all may see their fragility, all may know how easily their world of 'it was always and must always be' is shattered, and know the means how, yet always return to this." Her fingertip glides indistinctly between the mesh of pulsing corporate signage and glimmering penthouse panoramas, studded with sapphires of glass balcony swimming pools and diamonds of executive landing pads. "I will hear, before all other things, why it is that you know that destroying these towers, killing these men, is akin to cutting down weeds."
Redshift Operators	Red Dwarf is here. Optics narrow. Posture tense. He clambers out of the junker jeep that his astronaut companion has driven up. The looming giant in the back has poked his head over the top of the jeep to look over, and the cyborg ninja has exited and is leaning against the side of the vehicle on its opposite side. Only that gruff gunman approaches. "Simple. When everything blew up, it didn't hurt the thing that kept them like this. It never pretended that it couldn't and wouldn't take a wound like this." He plants one of his hardsuit boots on a lip of concrete. "The egregore never says it'll make things better. It never says it's invulnerable to harm. It just says there's no way out of its territory. When a disaster happens and the system fails, that matches up with the story it's been telling since day one. 'Better things aren't possible.' I could -- would, should, hopefully will-later -- kill every last c-suite shitbag living it up large up there. But they'd get replaced. Could just keep killing, that gets the job done. But doing it without waiting ten, twenty years? Gotta do another scheme."
Angela	Angela believes in throwing agents into the deep end right off the bat and letting them figure out how to swim. In this case, it is Shajo and Nonon here in their EGO Gear, Gebura once again supervising silently until she deigns to step in.l it. "Egregore?" Shajo asks. "What's egregore?" "Autonomous psychic entity composed by and influencing a group of people, possibly unintentionally created." Gebura says dully. "Wow! That's a Color for ya!" Nonon chirps. "How'd you learn that one, Gebura?" "Wikipedia." Gebura blows smoke into the air. The two Agents take a moment to take in their surroundings. Nonon grins and throes a wave towards the looming giant, looking positively thrilled to see hin. Shajo takes in the environment. He whistles at the dark fissure ripped through the concrete. "Who the 'ell did this?" Shajo says before grimacing at the river and then up at the logos of the building and the endless light that doesn't bring comfort. "Well." He says. "Almost feels like we're back home." He shoves his hands in his pocket and looks to Red Dwarf. "...Yeah. Giving them the axe ... Well even Wings fall. But there's always someone lookin' to be the next Wing." He draws out a cigarette and starts smoking. "I get it, haha, because you killed 'em with an axe!" Nonon grins. Shajo smiles despite himself.
Kukuru	One of those coming through the convenient warpgate is someone that's actually grown rather fond of Evehime ever since their first meeting: Kukuru, dressed in an outdoors-y jacket and shorts getup that's somewhat transparently an attempt to look rougher than she usually does. Even her usual glasses have been stowed away in favor of... Nothing? Nothing, to really try and look like she's changing things up. Upon actually seeing Evehime, though, her expression softens with her usual warmth, and she raises a hand in a loose wave before teleporting right over to her, staggering slightly in that haste to greet her before looking over at the swarm of flying machines in the distance. "Evie...~ Oh, we're.. Okay. Hm." Raising a hand to the front of her face and pushing a finger into her eyebrows her temple out of sheer habit, Kukuru peers at the lights, the towers, the attempt at looking like everything's okay and not surrounded by massive amounts of damage in the streets further below. "They want it to look like they can't be hurt in a way that matters. Like... To inspire whoever's underneath them?" She starts charitably, but Red Dwarf's reasoning has Kukuru pursing her lips in thought. "No, not to inspire. To... Make it look like there's no other choice but to follow them, yeah. Like things are... Stuck forever, even if something breaks, so nothing ever has to change." She lets out an uncomfortable noise, then looks over at the LobCorp agents and Gebura with a relieved noise. "Have you all met Evie yet? She's really kind, and smart. Powerful, too, so you'd be able to learn a lot around her. And speaking of... Do any of you want anything to eat? Or drink?" Kukuru slides a few bottles of ice-cold water and fruit juice from her pockets for emphasis, ready to fork them out at a moment's notice as she considers Evehime's call for answers. "If these towers are like weeds, then... Oh! I've got it." She claims, coming to a conclusion far faster than she usually does. "Weeds are really tough to get rid of if you just chop off the top because the roots go super deep. So... You've gotta go deeper to really dig them out! Then they can't choke out everything else around them, and the flowers you want to grow can grow right."
Dysnomia	To see the power of Evehime Gevurah firsthand, was one of the things she told herself she was here for. Or to see for herself what exactly Hibiki had done to Nephra. Half-truths, behind which hid the deepest truth, that the time curled up in the dark had become just that unbearable to her. The desolation shook Dysnomia more than she liked to admit, but she had time to gather herself before arriving, propelled through the air as her suit hummed. She landed gently, a little distance behind Evehime, helmet retracting to reveal a mop of silver-blue hair, and eyes that glowed. Her gaze followed the woman's finger, biting at her lip, for a moment, as the others talked. Giving her some context. "Cutting down weeds, like a chore you need to do, to make a better garden? Or cutting down weeds, like a useless chore that won't ever end?" She looked between the devastation and the great weeds. "Because, I guess it'd keep them from drinking up anything else. But, I guess Red Dwarf is right too. Another would just take its spot, wouldn't it?"
Nephra Tangent	A month of avoiding Elite business is just a bit beyond 'laying low', and the time and wear of it is etched into Nephra's demeanor like acid into metal. The dark brown roots of her usually way-too-blue hair extend a good inch beyond what could be seen as worthy of re-dyeing, the bandages once more replaced with her leather and canvas ensemble, all futilely hidden behind her silly transparent jacket and its increasing quantity of duct-tape patches. The last time the Gevurah had beckoned people out, Nephra showed up drunk- the hollow and bleary expression on her face might be worse. Notably, the collapsed form of her suit is not bolted onto the spinal port she's prone to wearing it through, its absence explained by extreme structural damage and the mountainous quantity of manhours needed to fix it, even if replacement parts were available on hand- instead, haphazardly soldered wires thread from some of the electrode domes within the port, and extend up to her shoulder and down her sleeve, held in place by tape and crossing over a handful of beige patches on her skin, capped off by a socket plug not yet connected to anything. The duffel bag held over one shoulder bobs like its heaviest near the bottom, chock-full of metal. Height, glare, and a stooped hunch are enough of a vibe deterrant from city denizens bothering her, a more familiar sort of locale than an old castle, a bridge through nothing, or a now-glassy mesa, but the encompassing ruin is informative despite any homework done- knowing it wasn't the work of some natural disaster gives the weed-sprouting pavement an air of being a minefield more than a healing wreck. "...Haha. Weeds keep stickin' around 'cause of their seeds being everywhere, ah? And grow whenever nothin' else chokes them out? Don't know what the seed'd be, here, but. Tower seeds." Nephra's voice sounds hoarse, like she's on the edge of coughing with every word. "...Oh. Don't think I've seen a big building get demolished in a way that didn't have people scrambling with the 'we can rebuild' sortsa rallies. Haha. Don't think that's it, but." She trails off with a small shrug, gloved hands pulling at clumped fraying threads of her bag's straps.
Evehime Gevurah	Watching the lights in the distance, regarding the swarm of constant air traffic in and out, Evehime regards it in the way of a cloud of flies buzzing around something just out of sight, rather than anything of nature that would deserve a beautiful name. The constant, dim roar and buzz of rotors and cars and blaring ads and thumping music washes over like the tide, yet is oddly quiet-- barely present-- just around her, as if her disinterest were a shield against having to hear it at all. It might just be acoustics. But she does, unhurriedly, turn her head over her shoulder to look at Red Dwarf, with just one eye bright in the darkness, and say, "A good answer. Perhaps even a very good one." She glances to the towers without turning her head back. Even the little saccade of her eye is oddly measured and poised. "It is true that terror is one means that the beast 'Egregore' may be kept at bay. If it is known to all that to wear these crowns means certain death, they will learn lesser ways to seek power. But only until the terror is gone, or the terror has outlived the beast by so long that the living forget its memory. And even then, only until they invent it once again." 'Who the 'ell did this?' "I." Evehime says, so matter-of-fact that it's nearly boring to hear. Nearly. "In earlier days, before a long haze had begun to lift. Because it is so, I expect that you will listen and understand that I do not speak from a place of ignorance." That causes her attention to hang, and then with only a degree of reluctance, she severs her lingering interest on the skyline and turns her back to it. The light tinges just a little strangely around her. 'Like things are... Stuck forever, even if something breaks, so nothing ever has to change.' 'I guess Red Dwarf is right too. Another would just take its spot, wouldn't it?' 'Don't think I've seen a big building get demolished in a way that didn't have people scrambling with the 'we can rebuild' sortsa rallies. Haha.' "It is strange. You know it to be so." says Evehime. "It is not commonly known, but neither is it rare. Many have this revelation; that no natural law bids them tolerate what they have built, been born into, and built upon, and yet they all, collectively, participate in furthering their own misery. Most make excuses, or delude themselves, or ignore it, yet not nearly 'all'. Enough think as you do that there should be challenge to it. You know this to be true as well." Motioning for the group to follow, Evehime needs but take one step to slide down from the rubble, and begin trudging through the wastes of the Omaha Uninhabited Zone. For a while, it isn't clear if she's waiting for something or not; for someone to say something, or to arrive somewhere in particular. Her silence, save for the apathetic crunching of gravel and shrapnel underfoot, is oddly restive, for such a grave place.
Evehime Gevurah	Yet, the journey is not one that is entirely liminal. Following where the river has flooded into an enormous fissure in the earth, Evehime walks past a narrow bank of green-growth flourishing in the mud under the peeled-back concrete skin, along the still peninsula of at-least boilable water. The earth has captured some of the river filth, but as you go, it's hard not to notice the plastic pontoons and old nets strained across the mucky water, by some many deliberate hands. Here, broken trash heaped in a broken street corner, dredged from the water. There, the smouldering remains of a recent fire under a repurposed grilltop, blackened around the circle of a water pot. Helmets dripping with condensation, used as scoops. Beyond, the dull glow of an active flame, too large to be contained to a simple drum. The shadows and chatter of what must be three dozen souls, all over the remains of a parking lot, upheaved so ferociously that its luxury vehicles are now little more than twisted benches and tables, covered in the detritus of chores and salvage. Outside it, the little lights of windows glowing with joyfully stolen electricity, advertising the presence of those who live in the serendipitously undamaged corners of random office buildings, their rooms bigger than near any apartment here. The little things, like potted flowers left along the mangled hulk of a tank in the streets, hopscotch drawn in coloured chalk winding around brass-filled cracks. Evehime apathetically crushes a human bone underfoot. She doesn't seem to notice the rifle she kicks away by walking. There are no gunshot sounds, come to think of it. Not one 'help' in the night. "Contemplate." she says, after a long time. "Why it is that order has been shaken, toppled, and re-established; that those kings have been laid low and exposed without true power, only to be replaced with the callous swiftness of faulty axles; and, yet, there are those who choose this ruin over the city." The tone of that demand is nearly conversational. "You are right to say that it exists because it is inescapable. The way of this world promises none 'a better future', but only that they all exits from it are barred. The observation that these people, and your own, consider their way of life all-pervading and inescapable, is based in reality. And yet, here, there are those who have 'escaped to' a new place; one carved within the body of the old; that is the furthest from the beast 'Egregore'. Amongst those subjugated by it, those with the least to lose have come in droves to settle a place and time that was never meant for anyone to live at all." "You know that there is no singular guiding hand. Even for those who live in the cracks and margins of these city-blights, these ruins hold nothing for them. Only that the powers that would own their souls have no sight and no reach, here. Think, and give no half-answers. 'That they are poor, they are desperate, they have nowhere to go' is neither true of all of them, nor a reason unto itself; it is the lazy and erroneous partial-completion of a full thought."
Redshift Operators	Shajo gets a nod. "Change takes a lot of time and blood. Looking for a faster way... well, I can settle for plan B, but I don't want to." The gunman shakes his head a bit. "Rather strike decisive blows. Feels better, works faster. It's more right too, really." The faster you change things, the less pain people have to live through. The gunman follows the walk. His companions trail behind, in a loose cluster. He crosses his arms. "Ruin? Maybe. I know why people walk out. My pal Newt taught me." He jerks a thumb at the astronaut walking behind him, who is busy watching one specific window in one specific building. "Got an impulse inside everyone to walk out from behind the counters and the desks and the assembly line stations, walk out of anywhere and anything where you spend twelve hours a day making nobody happy, and just go live somewhere where you can make people you care about happy and support people. Further you are from the egregore, lower down, whatever it is, that blood in you burns harder and you feel hungrier for it. It's the tribe. Tribe's gotta stand. And here's one place where it can, mostly."
Angela	Nonon says to Kukuru, "Gebura has. Kind smart and powerful huh..." Nonon now wants to fight her but...there is already somewhere here she wants to spar with. "Oh hell yeah, I could snack." She will take a bottle of water. Shajo says, "...How did you fit all that in your pockets?" Shajo whistles at Evehime's words, in admiration of her combat skill but he dwells more on the words she has to offer. As a guy who never quite stopped being angry, he kind of admires Red Dwarf for sticking to his guns even after saying his dream wouldn't actually stop the weeds from growing. Nonon seems to be chowing down without a thought in her head. She is really a 'live in the now' type of gal. But she does have an answer for Evehime. "Eh? Isn't it just that those with less to lose are more willing to gamble and those with a lot preoccupy themselves with holding onto what they've got?" She rewinds a bit and realizes that's the half answer Evehime warned about. "Well, sure I don't think that'd count for everyone. Some folks would seek freedom even over security..." "And well people being people don't tend to go where people aren't welcome. Danger can bring more freedom." Shajo frowns, cupping his chin. Gebura knows someone like this. "Even a wealthy person with a bucket full of possibility might dive into danger cause it feels more real. Might step amongst the weeds and find they are more comfortable there than at the fancy dinner parties." Gebura closes her eyes, sighing. "Some are swept up in a dream. Anywhere there's an egregore I imagine, there's gonna be be resistance. A preacher," Her eyes slant towards Red Dwarf. "Or somethin' else. Maybe nobody at all. Some people when they see the injustice inherent to a system don't find their old lives fit so well anymore. Maybe their old lives never fit." Gebura nods to Red Dwarf. "Got a pal back at the Corp that was from an influential family, could've gone anywhere he wanted. Any Wing. One day I kidnapped him on accident. Thought he stole Carmen's wallet. Despite the mishap, Carmen got him to agree to help look for the thief too and, well..." She rubs at her neck. "He just kept sticking around. Despite everything, he never claims he made a mistake that day."
Kukuru	The Egregore is an unfamiliar term for someone like Kukuru. It's an interesting one to consider, and it's certainly an important one to have in her mind now that it's come forth, especially as she continues staring at the towers in the distance. When Evehime speaks of the damage, Kukuru's gaze goes back down to the scarred city below. "So they've already forgotten... No. Like they're trying to ignore what happened, then. And they want everyone down there not to think about it, either, even if the ones down there are the people that have to live near it all..." It really isn't rare, even from Kukuru's own experiences. How many times did things need to be rebuilt back home? How many times has she been the cause of other peoples' homes needing to be rebuilt? How often did anyone really question the need to rebuild things in the same way, just to keep things the way they were? Exhaling lightly, She resumes following Evehime, albeit with smaller steps thanks to a smaller stride, and sliding downwards in a shakier manner that eventually leads to her just sitting down to slide the rest of the way instead. Nonon gets a water battle as requested, along with a slightly damp towel to clean up afterwards. "Mhm! She's given me a lot to think about, and..." She smiles finally, looking over at Evehime for a moment. "Today's not any different." It's rough thinking about some of this, but it's thinking nonetheless. Shajo, meanwhile, gets an answer that's not particularly informative at all: "Um... Dunno! I just reach in, and my stuff is all there." She demonstrates by reaching in again, then taking out a well-seasoned frying pan. There's no way her jacket pocket could even fit half the circumference of the pan, but she still manages to get it out without so much as stretching it. It's in observing the city at ground level and the signs of humanity struggling to survive in such dismal conditions that Kukuru whimpers briefly, trying not to let it get to her despite it visibly getting to her. She almost looks grateful when Evehime speaks again, even if she doesn't answer right away to instead contemplate the next question for far longer than the first one. No half-answers. "People like different things, and that's okay. Some of them like having nobody on top, or at least... Nobody like the ones up there on top, but they're okay with somebody they really trust and know doing the thinking for them. Some of them might not even mind having to do certain work if it feels good, like... Farming, annd drawing your own water, or making your own trinkets to sell. Even if it's not as glamorous or pays as much as working with the Eggler..." She pauses, carefully enunciating and nodding at Shajo and Red Dwarf. "Egregore... Doing what they like and being around their families is worth more than that."
Nephra Tangent	As the motion comes to set out across the zone, the urge crosses Nephra's mind to just stay there, or turn around, or otherwise betray the decision to even show up here, for no good reason at all- Haha. Hesitation does take enough of her time to leave her at the back of the group, walking awkwardly fast to catch up, when her feet finally do move beneath her. Gravel and dried plants scuff under heavy boots, awkward steps taken without her usual method to steady them. Nephra's nose wrinkles at the smell of old and current smoke wafting through the area, and she raises a canvas-gloved hand to cover a wincing cough. "Who's Newt? He make good on that? Haha." That verbalized laugh is flatter than the shattered pavement. "It work out that way for him? All peachy-keen?" "...It's gotta be nicer here than it was day zero, huh. Haha. It's quiet? I don't know. I'm no thinker." Nephra is fluent in half-answers, and barely conversational in anything else. Quietly, her gaze shifts to the hopscotch, and she starts to slowly go through its little motions as she chews her lip. "Artists and stuff always seem to at least say they like places like this. Sorta. Haha. Smaller ones usually, at least. Or something. Kinda seems lonely, though." The area around them all seems distinctly not. Nephra's mind is elsewhere. "Haha. Guess for most of them it's probably just some sorta whim or luck, ain't it? Are you sure desperation, or whatever, ain't a lot of it? Haha. Maybe I'm seeing it wrong." Teeth gnash against one another with nothing to chew on, her hands shakily being used to balance a one-legged hop on the hopscotch array.
Dysnomia	"I." Dysnomia grew quiet, looking over the devastation around them, and back to Evehime. Searched for so sign of discomfort or regret, and found only stoic...Indifference? Was that the word? It didn't feel like it. She swallowed her awe and pushed onward. "Tribe's gotta stand. And here's one place where it can, mostly." "Egregore... Doing what they like and being around their families is worth more than that." "If the half answer is 'they're poor,' the other half is 'why.'" Dysnomia's mouth set in a thoughtful frown. "Some people, they don't belong. Because they can't do the work, because they aren't convenient or they just can't stand it. So they're cut off and left to die, or killed." "But people are stubborn, and it doesn't always take." Dysnomia's arms crossed, looking around her. "These are the ones who are still alive, aren't they?"
Evehime Gevurah	The long walk through the nearly-dark night takes the group further. Less a 'see-here', and even less a journey to a destination, and more and more a kind of night procession. Even in the quiet, what develops over time is the air of the wandering march of a queen and her retinue-- No, not quite. More like . . . A foreign prince, being introduced to the scorched lands he has been gifted as spoils of war, and will here be entrusted to raise, by that . . . Evehime watches Red Dwarf carefully. "Time and blood are inevitable. Some believe that they are intertwined. I have heard 'blood measures the time of humans, and thus time is the blood of the universe'. Though we disagreed, in days old, I see the wisdom in that supposition. You may shed less blood in less time, and you may trade one for the other, but you may never go without expending one." Past the windows of the factory floor, assembly belts used for hyproponic trays; looking closely under the sun lamps, the illegal grow op is producing tomatoes and corn. Past the police station, the bleached shape of 'KNIGHT' something, clean on its concrete face from recent teardown of its electric logo, partially covered with a spraypainted murals and guarded carelessly by locals with dishevelled gear scavenged from the dead, in the midst of a smoke break. The procession continues towards the west. "'Tribe'." Evehime repeats after Red Dwarf. Then, something very approximate to it. "<Tribe>. It has been ages since I've heard that word." She starts to slow near the rising wall of buildings less-flattened on their face. A field of wreckage more thoroughly ground to pieces is before it. The earth, heaved into spires here and there. A circle oddly bereft of corpses. A place to accidentally kick the empty hull of an anomalous foam grenade, or the brass casings of a wildly out of date carbine. The husks of withered vines. "The impulse is there, but you need not complicate it so." she says. "Indeed, the masses pour from place to place, of least to most welcoming, as fronts of air shift to fill void, or vital salts bleed from water to cells to water again. But there need not be 'danger'." She keeps going. "Most suffer some lesser or greater blindness as to the hostility of their place to their lives. The hunger grows as they gain awareness. They realize the mistake was their soul crying out." says Evehime. "As all things but Truths, comforts are relative. Desperation and whim are a matter of one's awareness to their need. Whether such 'takes' is a variation amongst individuals, but only that; noise in a single value." The procession heads into the last of the broken buildings at the front, able to walk right through an opened wall and up flights of stairs as Evehime speaks. It's hard to say it 'diverts', because you feel oddly certain that you hadn't curved left or right at any real point; as if you'd been aimed at this staircase from the start. And then, finally, she stops. You're implicitly bid to do the same, on the windy roof of an abandoned building ten storeys high. Before you, a wall of prefab concrete and barbed wire. Beyond it, a bundled artery of highways, over and under and side by side, the lights of vehicles passing hurriedly in the dark. Behind you, the pitch black ruins. Ahead of you, the blazing lights of the city you'd seen from afar, glowing like a noxious hallucination of fumes and headaches, growing up to the clouds. Above the barrier, the sound of car horns and helicopters, advertisement boards and blaring announcements, carries over like a nauseating smell.
Evehime Gevurah	"As all true things, it is a very simple thing. The nature of wisdom is fundamentally to separate all unwise things, and cleave to the singular seed of understanding within. An indivisible concept that teaches itself. All true understandings can be reduced to a seed from which the reality of things grows, planted anywhere." says Evehime. She isn't just looking at Red Dwarf, here. Once again, 'contemplate' had been a genuine demand. "It is thus. 'They have gone to it because it is there.' Regardless of their values, regardless of stubborn nature or careful delusion, every human soul possesses the senses to discern 'weight'. The weight of the world pressing upon it, the weight of other souls that pull at it, and the weight of itself in comparison. No matter how dimly or imprecisely, they feel where the weight is unbearable, and where it is less so, and no matter their own hearts, they will, eventually, once the difference is sharp, come to it. Even the heaviest stone will always roll to a lower place, when the hill is steep enough." "The lie that you believe, is that they cannot find it themselves. That you must have 'near-perfect', as their alternative to 'this', or else you may only justify the blood you shed with 'nothing. It is yours to build'." "The truth is that you need only offer them 'somewhere'."
Redshift Operators	"Rather the blood than the time. Status quo is a slow bleed." The gunman asserts his value. "Every worse kind of world is a wound kind of time to spend." He regards the hydroponics, the efforts to make this place liveable, exhaling heavily. "Used to try our hand at that. Had to move around too much to keep much in the way of hydroponics -- though Giant loves the plants we've managed to keep." He looks to Gebura, and listens to her story. He runs a thumb along a dirty segment of his helmet, rubbing something between fingers as he replies. "Tangibility. That breaks the curse. The blood screams a little too loud for any egregore when things are right in front of you, when they're real. It's why the rich and the powerful sometimes suddenly collapse all that cruelty down into something like kindness, for the people they know, even the ones that aren't rich. It's because the truth living in their blood can shine there, where it makes sense." He tilts his head at Evehime. "It's because part of the trick is separation. The gated communities and the regimented lives. The algorithms in the social media circles. The cliques. Don't talk to the neighbor. Don't spend time with each other." He ascends the flights that they'd targeted from the start. "So when that breaks down, when the service goes out because of a big disaster, you're saying they revert to fluid and start flowing. Trying to say something like, people as a whole can get rendered down to liquid, if you do things just right, and you can get them flowing where they're meant to be." "Not much of a builder though. You know that." He looks out over the lights, the sounds, the advertisements offering guaranteed satisfaction, half off, thinner, lighter than ever, the latest model, while supplies last. "How am I supposed to get the incline better, Gevurah?"
Dysnomia	Dysnomia bit down at a corner of her lip, her eyes darting. The pressure of Evehime's stare made her want to squirm. Her eyes strayed to the burning barrels in the waste, to the wall, in search of something to hook onto, and found people. She watched them in the night, living on the wrong side of the world, as though the fallout were on the other end, and for a moment it felt almost as if the wall was there to keep them safe from the city. ...But she knew that wasn't it. The city wanted the riffraf kept away, somewhere it could be penned, controlled, and cleaned up when it became unruly. And even this was less weight than life in the hum of that world, where life and blood was just a resource to be spent like credits at a vending machine. Mia understood why someone would prefer this desolation to that. She stared, morosely, over the land. "Their lives are horrible." Dysnomia said, thinking aloud. "But they're here because this is where the weight--the gravity--is more bearable. Where expectation is less heavy." "That's what you mean, isn't it?" She stole a glance, almost shy, at Evehime. "If they'll come to this waste, just to get away from it, then, if you build somewhere else where the weight is more bearable...They'll come? Not perfect, just...Better?"
Angela	"Makes sense," Gebura says offhandedly on he matter of time and blood, though she repeates the line 'Makes sense' when Evehime says what she has to say about all true things being simple. Gebura hasn't really dwelt on the philosophy but it is a statement after her own heart--but she does grin a little when Red Dwarf says he'd prefer blood. He's not the only one, certainly. "You know, that might be why The City is so regimented," She asides to Red Dwarf. "It's not just the Outskirts, the Backstreets, and the Nests. The Nests themselves are divided between Wings and you need traveler visas at minimum to travel between them." "But even if you go somewhere, step away from it... You can still find it difficult to break free from how it has reached into you." Gebura murmurs, almost under her breath. Nonon and Shajo have quieted down considerably though this may be because they're snacking. Nonon pounds away at that water bottle until it's completely empty over the span of like 30 seconds. Shajo stares at the frying pan for a moment too long to come off as completely unflappable.
Kukuru	Even though she usually looks groggy enough to make every step look like an ordeal, Kukuru's actually able to keep up pretty well through that long nighttime trek. Perhaps in another world, she might have been exactly the sort of person to march alongside a benevolent queen, but with far more hair compared to the benevolent queen she's already working for. "We spend blood all the time, right? But time-" She pauses, snickering briefly at her own inadvertent pun. "-goes by without us ever having to think about it, even if we're not bleeding at all. And if we lose too much blood, then we might pass out, and then... A lot of time goes by really fast." Murmuring to herself after that, Kukuru lets out an awed noise as she gawks at Evehime in wide-eyed wonder, clearly impressed with being led down that train of thought even while following along all the while. She soon turns her attention to the things and places passing by, though, eyeing the factory belts curiously and pausing to look at the KNIGHT-something sign, then gazing at the locals guarding it with that same curiosity and waving pleasantly the moment any one of them looks in her direction. It's reassuring to see other people nearby, especially since she doesn't know who they are, and that she'll probably never see them again. It reminds her that there's still people working hard to survive, even in a place like this that doesn't make much sense to her. It might look weird to her compared to home, but that's exactly what Evehime means about blindness, right? Kukuru stops on that particular rooftop, peering over the side briefly to take a long look at all those highways, then at the great lights further around all that. She purses her lips as she listens to Evehime, not looking over right away as she tries not to let even gestures and body language cloud her own thoughts on the matter, to try and work through what Evehime means for everyone to contemplate. It's not literal weight. It's... Soul weight? No, or at least not just that. Mental weight? Like stress? Not quite, but she's feeling something. A 'somewhere' that even the beaviest stone would go to, if the incline makes staying in place impossible. "... Somewhere comfortable enough? Somewhere that's better than where they are, even if it's not even near-perfect, as long as it's better. Or not worse, if where they are is gonna get worse soon enough that... That they can't stop it from being too much worse?" Red Dwarf speaks of gated communities, cliques, and isolation. "Is it easier to get people moving if they're... Oh. If they're not connected with neighbors? Since then they don't have roots laid down, or friends they wanna stay with, to make their place right now better instead of just moving when things get bad like that... Um. That fluid."
Nephra Tangent	"Spending blood doesn't really sound like it buys much time. Isn't it important that stay inside, and all? Haha." A pause, and teeth grind, for a moment. She's a noticable amount quieter speaking up again, with words less gut-reflex defensive. "What's, like, the way you meant it, by 'trading'? Don't think I'm picturin' it right. Haha." A gloved knuckle raps against the side of her head as she follows along. Winding up at the top of the abandonded structure the procession pauses at, Nephra's hesitance to be outside in such a tall place is obvious, the girl nervously shifts weight from foot to foot as conversation goes on, and hovers as close to the center of the rooftop as she can- at first. But, as she listens in, shifting turns to pacing, and pacing turns to ambling over towards the edge of the terrace, and looking out across the cityscape rather than at the speakers. Rooftop wind ripples against the nylon of Nephra's jacket akin to shaken laminated paper, uncomfortably plasticine. Canvas gloves gaurd the palms she's pressed against the terrace rim, rough masony texture unfelt, as she locks her elbows to support her slightly-leaning posture. Her eye fixes on the distant car lights, moving with the clustered lives they carry within them. It's blurry for her to stare too long on anything that far away. "Haha. That boulder thing's a funny little metaphor. Get the right bit of friction, and you can still work it up to damn near-ninety degrees 'fore the numbers say down's the path. It hardly counts as rolling then, don't it? It's kind of just falling. Pretty fast too, probably." She shifts, raises one hand, and then whacks it against the masonry with a surprisingly loud thump. A sudden forced grin hides whatever impact pain must have shot through her palm's heel. "Haha. That's a little scary." The duffel on Nephra's shoulder shifts and clanks, awkwardly, as she turns around, and hops to sit on the parapet. Her heels dully knock back against it, scuffing the ground at the end of their paths as she kicks them up and back, lethargic and ever-so-slightly off-beat.
Evehime Gevurah	'How am I supposed to get the incline better, Gevurah?' Evehime had seem passively pleased, in a general way, by Red Dwarf's ongoing comprehension up to that point, but that sentence, for some reason, is what conjures a thinly amused smile to her lips. "Again, this is a simple thing. After all, you already know the universal truth of 'inclines'. The essence of 'hill-ness' that sends stones rolling down it." Holding up two hands, Evehime clearly orients one above the other, both facing each other, and spreads them widely apart. "To raise the 'weight' that people suffer, and drive them out of unbearable lives, is one way." She raises the upper hand to her left. The imaginary incline is slightly steeper by its height. "To lower the 'weight' of another place, and lead people to lives of joy and plenty, is another." She lowers the hand down at her right. The line drawn between them is, again, slightly steeper. "But this is the way of hills." she says, and then simply pulls her hands in from her left and right, such that they are nearly directly above and below one another. The invisible line is now nearly vertical. A steep wall. "The 'length' matters less than it's 'sharpness'. And the incline is sharpest when the zenith and nadir are close to the other." She doesn't even need to say what she means by looking past the group, to the semi-inhabited ruins right beyond. "Amongst all those who grasp domination agains the will of their people, the sharpest of them know this." she says, in answer to Dysnomia. "If you do not, you cannot defeat them. You will fall for their grand stratagem as others have before you, and waste both your blood and your time in the attempt to 'outbuild' them, or to tear them down to the roots." Though she has to look at Gebura on the screen, she doesn't really seem to mind. The talk is worth it. One gets the sense she hasn't gotten to talk this much in a very long time, and is still enjoying the sound. "Barriers and rails. When the hill is sharp already, and its end can be moved away no further than the height, the resort of the wise is to erect obstacles all along its length, such that none of their ten thousand stones roll away beyond arm's reach. As surely as smoke betrays the flame, where there are 'railings', the dominant know of a sharp hill with a low place, very near them. You would do well to follow their gaze and see for yourselves." Then by sheer cosmic accident, the Gevurah looks at Nephra as if patiently explaining something obvious, and by nature of the laws of physics and humanity, reinvents Arthur Lowell. "Indeed, it is vital that you possess blood. That is why your flesh produces it in such excess. You know this well enough, for how you prefer to shed it than to allow your armour to come to harm." A moment goes by. "Falling is good enough. It is fine that they should fear you during their journey, so long as they land where they should be. It is only that fear suits some and not others." In response to Kukuru, Evehime sweeps her hand out over the wreckage. The general shape of it, edge to edge, is ephasized. The wedge shape with its trailing wake, converged on this single point, completely uninhabited. Lead lodged in an entry wound, infected on every exposed surface behind it. But the wound is in the beast 'Egregore', and the infection is of human life, and so it is both viscerally dirty and exactly what the Redshifts want. "Think upon 'weight' more often, as you have time." she says. "Those words are imprecise, but they are facsimiles of something true. Take from what you see. That this place offers nothing, and that from which they flee is only one half 'Hell', yet they come by the scores each passing month, for all they need do is cross several roads in the night, and be there by the sunrise."
Evehime Gevurah	Evehime reaches for something, but it doesn't seem to be on her person; only the gesture of 'reaching' is intuitively obvious. Extending her hand, the Gevurah grasps loosely at nothing, near to her side, and then she grasps tightly, and the air bends in glass-marble-divots around her fingertips; it cracks, and pulls apart, and Evehime sinks her hand up to the wrist in the shifting mass of spherical darkness. She pulls back out of it like removing something from thick mud. Shaken droplets of blackness spatter onto the concrete, turn white and all colours, and vapourize into chaotic tendrils of iridescent mist. She tosses something underhand to Red Dwarf. It thumps cleanly off is breastplate and into his hands. Fist-sized. Heavy. Stone? All kinds of stone. Sandstone and granite, slate and quicklime. It smells of pine tar and daub and old rain, and has the texture of wood grain. Looking at it, anyone can see only a jumble of hard angles and clean ridges grown outwards like the squares of natural bizmuth; save that there are cubes and arches and domes and steeple-shapes studded with minute holes and seams that let the air whistle quietly through it, and faint trickles of smoke waft out. It's warm. "This is from something long ago. A conquest taken from a civilization-godling. It is a City Seed. It is yours. You will plant it, somewhere on the other side of that 'Warpgate', and you will build nothing. You will take no responsibility for its size and shape or what it possesses. You will think nothing of comparing it to anywhere else. You will plant it, only entering through that Gate, and no others, so that it is close, and you will allow it to grow, and then you will return here." "Your companions may build as they wish. Even those amongst your own <Tribe>. Those you command may build and stock and store and seed welcomes as they wish, but you will order them no such things, and they will inform you of nothing that they do. When it is grown, you will return to this place, and you will tell all who you can reach that it is there, and it is close, and you will point them towards it, and shelter those who run towards it, and once that 'city' houses one thousand of these six hundred thousand souls, I will send people learned in building to you." Evehime thrusts her grasp back into unreality, and the tear in space splashes and widens, overflowing its spherical edges and staining the space around it, in some way of dimensions you can't quite grasp beyond two. You can hear the creaking of old metal and the subtle cracking of glass as she tears more from it. "I will give you no limit of time, but you will find that you have one." A leather-bound pack thumps heavily onto the concrete, and clatters like an industrial accident. It appears to be an enormous bundle of what must be hundreds of metallic rods-- beams? Lances? They're subtly flanged, the hue of tungsten, and come up to your waist. "You will not be required only to tell. You may shed blood as well. But your purpose is to catch all the blood spilled from the wound that you are able to." She reaches in again.
Evehime Gevurah	The fracture starts to close in on itself as she withdraws one last item. It seals up on itself, imploding in slow motion, along the contours of the gigantic bow, already strung, she draws from it lengthwise, like extracting a needle. The distortion closes to a white hot point, and pops in a flash of multicoloured flames. Evehime slams the lower prod of the weapon-- solid metal? dark and etched in ten point geometric designs, out of bronze-gold and red ink-- against the roof, and it embeds an inch into the concrete. The design is difficult to place. Recurved but long-armed, asymmetrical but with subtle shelf and riser. "I would tell you to go, now. Run and find somewhere now. You have not the benefit of waiting and seeing and finding the perfect 'place' either. You will settle for as good as your conscience can tolerate." says Evehime, and in doing so, kicks the enormous pile of metal upright, so that the flat bottom of its leather casing lands upright, and allows her to draw a fistful of-- Those are arrows. Six foot arrows made of solid metal, heavy enough to crack the concrete. "I will make a 'cut' large enough for the blood to spill freely. You may join if you wish, once you have done this, but I will not end my work halfway." says the Gevurah. She's already shifting her grip to separate just one arrow from the ten in her fist, without losing hold of either, and pulling it to the string. She turns away from you, towards the city, and tilts her weapon just enough to sight by its diagonal, some top floor of a glowing skyscraper. It looks wrong, almost amateurish, by the fact she hasn't aimed above it at all, like any archer of middling experience would to compensate for drop, but the deep, slow breath she takes is fit to send chills down the spine anyways. The quiet ratcheting of unfathomable tension in the bow's arms makes it feels as if the ground shudders back away from you by inches. The vibration of the string resonates at the frequency of your bones. The muscles in her arm barely tense. You miss the part where she releases it. A sound hammers your eardrums like an explosion, and then you're noticing her empty fingers-- empty fist-- and seeing the top floor of a building thirty miles away turning into so much glittering dust, along with the nine floors below it. The sound of that impact takes seconds to reach you, muffled by distance into a hissing roar. "Go. I am familiar with this city, but I will take my time with it this time."
Angela	Shajo helpfully lifts the screen up higher so at least Gebura doesn't have to bend her head down or anything, gradually kind of getting over the frypan in a pocket. Gebura doesn't answer Gevurah with words, she just smiles at Evehime. What she has to say is well said! She couldn't put it better herself and she's said her piece--but that isn't why she's smiling. Rather, she is smiling because she has noticed that Evehime is enjoying the sound of her own conversation. It reminds her of someone she once knew, and still dearly misses. A long time ago, it felt like the two of them were in their own little world outside the reach of the City and all its problems. It felt more like...they were willingly stepping into that world to try and pull others out of it. But even she couldn't smile so sincerely forever. Eventually the allure of that conversation... Shajo and Nonon remain quiet, Gebura seems to be stepping into the conversation and that means as far as the three of them are concerned, it's her territory, not theirs, and they should be wary of traipsing onto it. Even Nonon busies herself with screwing the top back on that water bottle. Eventually Gebura does speak, "Keep staring." as she draws out her cigarette and puts it out against the screen. Evehime grabs a nothing and pulls out something out of a dark portal. A City Seed? "See?" Nonon reassures Shajo. "I bet she can just take frying pans out of nowhere too. It's nothing to be weird about." Shajo chokes on his own water and wipes at his mouth. Wait, it's just a... brick ainnit?" He isn't the most imaginative person. Nonon elbows him in the side and hisses at him. "It's a City Seed, man!" Shajo blushes and takes a moment to polish his glasses before whistling as Evehime utilizes what Nonon is now mentally referring to as 'frying pan powers' to summon a bow and, more relevantly, ginormous fucking arrows. "I wanna see what you're gonna do with those..." Nonon whistles in awe. "Nah." Gebura says. "We got our job. We can have fun when that's over." And as one might expect, they don't argue.
Redshift Operators	The gunman clarifies how the trade works to Nephra. "You spend blood today so that tomorrow is better instead of next year. Preferably, you spend the blood you get from the other guy -- excess or critical, either works as long as you get that better tomorrow." Red Dwarf holds the odd bizmuthoid up to the light, as if examining it for a counterfeit. The worn optics flicker placidly, as if blinking in a slow and steady regard of the artifact. "Jesus, lady." He mutters, holding it closer to him. "Hell of a challenge. Didn't I just tell you how bad it went when we tried to get hydroponics? And, what, just stay all hands-off? Ghhhhh..." He grinds his teeth, tapping his heel awkwardly. "That's the kind of thing you get from Newt or WD, even Giant." "That is why it's a challenge. A test of soul and spirit. The most powerful challenges pit you against an aspect of self, one that you burn through to overcome." His ninja companion explains. "If you say a single word about dark sides or demon possession--" "I could say many in sequence." "Worse." "We'll help him with learning to stay hands-off about how it grows. I think that still stays in the bounds of the objective." The astronaut says. They won't stop looking at the view from the building, not until the giant firmly grasps their shoulder and tugs them. "We'll be back." He says, in that tone of gravel and dread. The four start on the way back. Run, she said, so they break into a run. At least, three of the four do, with the astronaut under the giant's arm like a football. The leader will have to find the best place he can manage...
Kukuru	Evehime confirms several things for Kukuru, even when she isn't addressing her directly. Hands are raised to illustrate her point, and things start coming together more plainly in Kukuru's mind. She was already starting to grasp it in her own dim sort of way, but this helps it really start clicking for her. Maybe? Maybe. She's feeling more confident thinking about things in such terms, at least, even when Evehime turns the incline into a sheer drop, and... Her thoughts slow down again when length is brought into play, and there's a visible strain on Kukuru's face as she starts fitting THAT into the equation. Following Evehime's gaze to the ruins and the sweeping gesture to the destroyed area beneath all those bright lights, Kukuru shuffles over a bit to make sure she's not blocking sight of the ruins, then squats in place slowly to let her brain focus a little better on just understanding it all. Here, at least, Kukuru does have all the time she needs to let it sink in better. Humanity, perhaps not thriving in the carved out points, but surviving more than those further above at the top of everything might have expected or wanted. "This ruined place, with nothing to offer, nothing to really look forward to except maybe a... Mm. A view of all these from the very bottom." She looks over at the blinding lights again, squinting after a moment and then looking away the next to let her eyes recover. "I wonder how much of them are here because it's easier than looking at wherever they came from. I mean... Even if all this hurts to look at, it's pretty in its own weird way. Like they can forget about worse things as long as they can dream about something better, or just... Burning their eyes out on something that feels good to look at for a while longer." Perhaps tellingly, Kukuru's not looking at the lights directly again. It really does hurt to look at, and she doesn't have any desire to do so again anytime soon. She still has other people, other things to look forward to seeing herself "But now that they're here... Erm. Like that weight? It's going to be harder for them to move again unless something happens again to make this place, even if there's something a bit better somewhere else. If it's just something better, it'd have to be a lot better to get them to really start moving again, because it's... Easy to stay still. Like a rock."
Kukuru	Sounding satisfied again, Kukuru's head cants ever so slowly to the side as Evehime draws something out of nowhere for Red Dwarf to work with. No, not just Red Dwarf. His companions, too. The kind one, the earnest one, and the gentle one. An important task of something to build, something that would create a new incline for the people here to fall towards. The task reminds Kukuru of something she's seen before. Somewhere? Somewhere, but it's not quite the same. This one... This one feels realer, even if there's no time limit. There's nothing forcing anyone to move quickly despite the gravity of the task, and there's nothing forcing a rushed decision on what they would like to build. Age, perhaps, but... There has to be some kind of reason for Evehime mentioning a time limit without forcing one, right? The long rods come out. The bow comes out. Evehime readies her massive arrows, and Kukuru feels that chill. It's not a chill that she'd feel from being scared of what's happening next, though, and she bears the pain of having the bright lights in her periphery to watch Evehime at work. It's absolutely beautiful. Evehime turns those top floors into what might as well be hell for those that might have survived ten floors below, but Kukuru doesn't look horrified in the slightest. She watches, awed once again at Evehime's display, and then things really start to click in her mind. "... It's not enough to just make something way better, is it? There needs to be... Stuff on both sides to get the blood flowing. Something to start drawing it out, and somewhere for it all to go. But if the work takes too long, then-" She pauses again, counting off on her fingers. "The blood might just spill out everywhere else instead of where it needs to. But..." She looks up as the Redshifts start to run, and she calls out with her hands cupped over her mouth. "I'm sure you'll be able to pull this off! Just make sure to rest up enough, too! You can't stop their bleeding if you're not eating!"
Dysnomia	Dysnomia watches Evehime, enraptured, as she talked, turned from a skeptic into a believer over the course of one walk. Her words felt weighted and measured, wielded with an elegant mastery that made Mia think of a wise old hermit. She suggested, rather than told, as a teacher might, and let otherse fill the space. It was enough to almost forget what Mia had first heard of her, of her immense strength, her boundless power, until... ...Mia stared as Evehime's fingers ripped through the flesh of reality, tearing from it. It was not how reality worked. It was not how strength worked. It was almost abstracted, strong in a way that overrided the way things had to be, that overrided existence in the face of Evehime's grasping fingers. Mia's silence turned almost reverential, as she watched her work. As the arrow pulled back, and as Evehime wrote her violence into the city before them, like a punctuation mark at the end of the thesis of their walk. "Tell me where you pick." Dysnomia said to Red Dwarf, flatly, mind to mind. "And maybe I'll leave a present." Dysnomia stared at Evehime and her work a while longer, never turning away. Eventually, she dissolved into mist, and was gone.
Nephra Tangent	It's just a matter of phrasing, but Nephra snickers at the phrase 'possess blood'. It fades quickly, though. As she hops down off the parapet, Nephra unconsciously pushes away some of the hair strands that've broken free of her bun and tickled the side of her face. "Haha. Well. Mine's not doin' anything special sitting around. May as well make all that goop work for its free ride." There's no hiding that slight accompanying wince with words, though. "Good enough, huh." Teeth clamp around inner cheek-flesh, as her lips twist into a conflicted expression. She stays quiet for a moment after that. "Oh. Haha. Right. Someone elses blood. Wasn't even thinkin 'bout that." Nephra looks more or less Red Dwarf's way, as he gives the clarification. Her shoulders shift in a motion caught halfway between a nod and a shrug, amounting to a small little noncommittal bob. When the City Seed gets caught by the gunman, Nephra's gaze reflexively twists its way, and squints at the strange object. "...How does that..." She pauses, and just hums a faint trill. "...Ah. Doesn't matter, does it. Haha. Cool." That's cute. Planting a city like an acorn. What's it going to grow like? Her thoughts go unvoiced, and her eye just fixes on it, still. Evaporating skyscrapers is as good a point to leave as any. Nephra stumbles at the concussive shock of the arrow just firing, grabbing at the shoulder strap of her bag as she shifts its mass to catch her stumble. The blast from the distant tower, moments after, just amounts to a small flinch. "...Nice shot." How many people worked, or- lived there? At... least it probably didn't hurt. "...Haha." Hands shove into clear pockets, and she turns away, gaze fixed to the rooftop pavement as she puts one slightly-trembling boot in front of the other, trudging a path out and away.