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Kayoko Kirenai     The crack of magic caused by Sarracenia touching the two blades together sounds very little like a gunshot, but it's sharp and startling enough to be reminiscent of one to someone culturally but not personally aware with the phenomenon. Especially when so strongly primed to the image of 'government secret agents' as Polly is right now. She flinches, a short scream strangled in her throat, and when the guns actually start being drawn and Arina guides her to turn around, she puts up zero resistance.

    Facing away from the yard, down by the wide doors of the destroyed power plant, Polly is effectively rendered blind to the goings-on of the investigation, and with Arina looking over her, she's not going to be sneaking any glances either. Unless she's like Kayoko, but what are the odds of that?

    It also means that she can't be entirely certain if any of the guns are being pointed at her. "H-hey, hey, if you-- if you need to check my student ID or anything, if I'm in trouble, it's in the back-- the back-right pouch there on my backpack. Just, um, please try not to touch anything else, if you can? I've got a lot of carefully calibrated equipment in there, you know?"

    That's not entirely the truth, to any even surface-level scan of her mind. Any deeper probing reveals that what she really doesn't want touched-- and more importantly, discovered-- is the tape recorder rolling throughout this whole conversation, clicked on before she even descended from the rooftop. She's still thinking of how to get out with what *she* wants; and alive, too.

"The truth *is* out there, and you've clearly got the head for finding it."

    And that's a hell of a thing to get on tape. It's also really conflicting with everything else Polly's being told, mostly by Lilian, who's the only person to have shown her both a badge *and* a gun. "I, uh... well, ma'am, there w-was a ghost I was tracking for a few days, but then I got caught and put in detention and lost the trail. There was... hey, I could always be more helpful answering questions by *showing* you things, rather than just talking, right?" The chances of the stuff she'd show you being legitimate is pretty low.

    Polly stiffens up, taking a tense breath before firmly asking, "... Are Kayoko and Meika safe with you? I don't have any reason to be worried about them, do I?"

"There seems to be no avoiding it. Dame Commander, I think these came from ... Vermilion. Or rather, her ''transformed'' state."

    Kayoko, already jittery-unstable despite her calm expression, only gets more agitated at Satsuki's admonishment, and then significantly more when Tiphereth accuses Meika of having been the source. Partly for the open acknowledgement of Meika's uncontrolled form, and partly for the content of the accusation itself.

    "It's-- no! Vermillion *can't* do something like this, don't say that! This is what the monsters do, not *us*! We all know what you think of us already, you don't need to ruin the investigation by making us seem like *that*."
Lilian Rook     'H-hey, hey, if you-- if you need to check my student ID or anything, if I'm in trouble'

    "Please don't worry. Stay calm. Don't move and I can make sure you're safe, okay?" says Arina, though she is only just barely audible over holding her hands to Polly's ears.

    '... Are Kayoko and Meika safe with you'

    "No one is trying as hard as we are." says Satsuki. By 'we', her face says she means Lilian, but the rest of her shows too much professionalism to name names. Despite how she is off the clock, she has a rank and a title besides.
Kayoko Kirenai     Flamel's scans of the blades on the psychic level is dramatically different from what magical or physical examination got. They're psychically concealed, sure, soaked in the kind of stuff that lets the image slip past your frontal cortex to be contextualized as 'what ought to be there' rather than 'what is there', but it's not a *delicate* job. It's violent, messy, half-assed; like sharpie over your ex's face and slashes through a photograph and shouting over someone to drown them out with your voice.

    To passive observation, it works, sure, but any civilian paying close attention with solid willpower could force their perception through it; it's out of disinterest that most haven't. Kayoko and Meika should theoretically be immune, willpower or no, but if they're both being treated as civilians by the effect for some reason...?

    That's notably different from how the crater's concealed from the world. The direct impact of the Temptation-- presumably the Temptation, since Kayoko said it 'melted things', and the hole blasted in the wall of the power plant is softened and slouching around the edges-- is similarly brutalistic, but a lot more thorough and complete. That, clearly, *could* be caused by some sort of generator failure, as the news and public consciousness seems to agree it is; it's the blades outside that cast doubt on the entire story.

    And though Tamamo's threads of fate suggested that the event was *because* of Kayoko and Meika, the 'cause' is someone-- something?-- different. Even beyond the perception of the magical blades, the psychic residue of their source is similarly tattered by force, and the glimpses he gets of what's there are barely comprehensible either. Sort of as if the memory altering effect is more like some kind of infection passed along by its source, than something intentionally added to conceal their presence.

    Taking one and studying it, wandering around Kagoshima and potentially even the world beyond it with more appropriate gear could get more answers. But that takes time, and Meika's already practically out of it.
Tamamo     Tamamo startles at the sound, her ears folding flat. Her charm still being in place, the ear motion registers as a completely normal thing for a human to do to anyone looking. More fortunately, she isn't close enough to get cut up by the blades, the existence of which she was only made aware of a minute ago.

    She isn't worried about Lilian shooting Sarracenia. That could only happen if she had a good enough reason for doing so. Obviously. That means there's nothing for her to worry about.

    'I just can't transform, not the right-'
    'This is what the monsters do, not *us*! We all know what you think of us already.'

    She's a lot more worried by the implications of this, and feels immediately vindicated for not yet having shared her findings beyond Lilian. It takes her several moments to remember what she'd been doing just beforehand.

    "Mr. Parsons, would you see to Captain Petunia?" Lilian could handle it, but that's not something she can ask at the moment.

    Tamamo looks at Sarracenia, and hopes someone else will deal with telling her off for... no, was it just the phrasing? It wasn't technically wrong... but she still deserves, and gets, a frown, before Tamamo's gaze moves over to Meika. "The truth is not yet clear. You have no memory of doing such a thing, no? In that case, we can only continue to search for answers."

    Not-quite turning, "Ms. Arina? Would you please check for... ah, I will send you the details." 'Securely,' she doesn't say aloud. The message she sends amounts to 'please double-check these divinations for the source of the blade'and ends with an emoji of a fox raising a paw. Or, maybe, it's waving? Tamamo's own expression is noticeably more stern than its is.

    "Would direct examination show a different source...? No, it does not seem so." She purses her lips in thought.
Angela Tiphereth didn't really want to say this where those two could hear but she would literally have to leave the city to avoid them from overhearing. When Meika, and then Kayoko, protest--Rose suggests, "All we know is that there's some similarities here and uh--that we don't have an alternate explanation yet." Her voice is jittery because she is pointing a gun at someone and while Rose is absolutely okay with killing people like every other Fixer, in theory, she's gotten kind of used to the multiverse and is starting to see Hibiki's world more like home than The City and in Hibiki's world, you don't just go off and shoot people in the face.

''This is what the monsters do , not *us*''

"...I'm happy to be wrong," Tiphereth says. "But you also said the monsters ''don't'' do this. I know what Gebura thinks but I don't think you're monsters."

''There w-was a ghost I was tracking for a few days''

Tiphereth kind of believes in ghosts. "What was the 'ghost' like?" She asks--

''No, this isn't her...''

Tiphereth studies Flamel for a moment but she seems to believe him. She can't really look guilty but her body posture slouches and her tone becomes more embarrassed.

"Flamel, what do you mean by turning inside out? Like Corrosion?" She asks, forgetting about Sarracenia as she tries to keep Flamel on task. The Reader isn't drawing much else out for the moment but it's still running.
Madeleine Cadrasteia     Madeleine glares at Sarracenia, thumbing the hilt of her ritual blade, about to draw it when she sees that firearms are already being waved around. Choosing not to bring a knife to a gunfight, she instead walks over to Polly, taking a few deep breaths on the way.

    "Hey, I could always be more helpful answering questions by *showing* you things, rather than just talking, right?"

    "As a matter of fact," she says to the girl, "I think you *will* show us. One thing at a time." She unzips Polly's backpack partway, enough to start removing items one at a time. "Don't worry, I know how to handle this sort of material." Carefully, the huntress pulls items out of the backpack, brings them around to where Polly can see, and inquires about their function, in part to learn what Polly *thinks* she's been up to but also to keep her busy while the Elites with better access to information about the incident, like Flamel and Tamamo, do their work.
Flamel Parsons     "Wait... this can't be right. It's--" Flamel stumbles back from one of the blades, blinking, struggling to adjust his sunglasses. He sucks in a slow breath. "Nnnh. It's like an infestation. An infection? A sickness? Or-- The source of the power, the connection with Meika, it's... changing itself? Being changed? Becoming something not like a person? Already something that humans aren't?"

    He tenses up, pushing forward, kneeling near one of the chunks of metal. "This isn't concealed on purpose. It's a byproduct of something concealing itself definitionally from itself to turn inside-out and become unknown. I can taste a bit of Lilian, and the Sapient Heuristics decompression cases, and-- Is this Vermillion? No, this isn't her..." He mutters, running a finger over its surface and listening to the sound. "Is this something Vermillion drew power from? Was this always there, was she drawing from it? Is it sick...?" He reaches the end of the blade. His eyebrows fire up from behind the sunglasses. "...Is it *poisoned?!*" He stumbles back for a moment, fully tensed.

    What is this? Is this why Vermillion is burning out? Some source, somewhere, poisoned or sickened beyond its ability to sustain, leaking memory-concealment the way a dying person would bleed freely from the face? Is that why the magical girls lose their memories of what happens? Not for some cover-up, but because whatever they drew power from simply tore itself apart, bled its cognitive void into the world, and died?

    Who did this? He can't begin to imagine who would be the culprit, when, by definition, he can barely imagine the victim. He swallows, standing and shaking a bit. But he has something to focus on. He knows the substance now, the unformed cognitive void that the source was depositing. He doesn't have the time to wander around looking for it. What can he do...
Ritsuka Fujimaru The noise from the blades has the duo of Ritsuka and Mash springing to action, mostly out of reflex and in what should have been far more coordinated than it turns out to be. Mash slides herself over between the source of the noise and Ritsuka, but has to chase after her a moment later when she realizes that Ritsuka's interspersed herself between the noise and Polly.

"We're okay, Polly! It doesn't look like anything's happened, just some freaky sounds."
"We should still be careful, though. That wasn't too dangerous just now, but if those pieces create anything other than sound..."

Jeanne, meanwhile, heads straight for Sarracenia to get a closer look at the blades. "Hoiw did you do that? Don't do it again, unless we need to scare someone off." She warns, glancing up at the destroyed power plant and seeking out stable-looking footholds to leap onto so she can get a better look around the area from higher up. "If anyone starts figuring out it's not a dangerous thing, they might come snooping."

And then all three of them turn to Kayoko when Polly asks about their safety, and when Kayoko refuses the possibility of Vermillion being the source of the blades. Jeanne still looks distracted as she mulls over what Kayoko's said, and Ritsuka and Mash exchange brief looks before turning back to Polly.

"Safer than they would be on their own, I bet. If anything, they're probably safer here than anywhere else right now."
"You probably shouldn't put it like that... Um. But she's not wrong. "

Jeanne, meanwhile, has her gaze firmly fixed on Kayoko, eventually approaching her so she can lower her voice for some small semblance of privacy from being overheard too easily. "Why not? Why couldn't she do this? Is there really anything those monsters can do that one of you never could?" She asks without a hint of her usual mocking tone, turning briefly to glance at the blades again. "You heard that sound before. Do you know anyone else that could create noises like that?"
Hibiki Tachibana     In the midst of confusion over this entire situation - over how Meika could even /do/ something like this in the first place - guns being pulled out is a sudden snap into the immediate reality. If Lilian's overly casual unholstering and aiming wasn't enough, even knowing very well that she would never shoot to kill, then /Rose/ doing it is definitely enough to get her to act.

    It's the agent Hibiki moves next to hastily, at her side to lay a hand half on top of Crimson Scar, and half on top of her hand, to try and not force but urge her aim downward towards the ground, her expression somewhere between lingering confusion and pleading. "Hey, we're not shooting anyone here, okay!? Especially not with Polly right there...! It's bad enough she got caught up in any of this already, isn't it?"

    She looks Lilian's way while saying such too, even if Rose is the one she's trying to stop physically. Eyes away and ears covered or not, you don't just pull the trigger on someone and not have that affect them. She'd also prefer if Sarracenia didn't just get shot as like, a general matter of course.

    In the middle of all of this though, it's hard to not be aware of Meika's expected defensiveness... or Kayoko raising her voice as well. What they think of them...? Just what does she think of how everyone looks at them? Still, she can't put together how it works either, until Flamel starts rambling on.

    And that gets her to blink in even more lack of understanding, instead of more. "Wh--...? Something not like a person...? Something that humans aren't...?" No, more than just confusion, there's a breathy and raspy quality to her words as she repeats them. More than just from the sheer tension of the situation. Like she's suddenly not feeling well herself.

    "Are you saying-- are you saying it's something wrong with where her power comes from? Why this is happening? Is that it...!?"
Sarracenia      Sarra points and says those things to Meika. Guns are drawn. Sarra blinks in surprise, then her fists clench. "What is wrong with you all?! Is this not a good thing? This means that you can use powers without your drawings, Meika! Once we figure out how it happened you can keep being a ma-..."

     Sarra realizes that there is someone here who isn't supposed to be here and that this stuff is supposed to be secret. She looks toward where Arina is guarding Polly. She loses some of the fire she was talking with. "...a...um...major help?" she tries to finish in a more tactful way.

     Everyone seems to be glaring at her and/or holding a gun on her. "W-what?" she asks, genuinely confused. Then, she hears Flamel. "Wait, poison?" She didn't touch the blades directly, but she still looks down at her hands before looking over at Meika again. "...are you...like actually sick? In the should be seeing a doctor kind of way?" She seems genuinely concerned.

     Sarra has already dropped the one blade she had picked up, so the light pole and the pipe are likely lying beside each other now. When Jeanne approaches she just shrugs a bit exasperated. "I just...touched them together. They were humming, and it got louder when I touched it, so I figured if they touched each other...something would happen."

     Hibiki steps in to try and keep any shooting from happening, and Sarra will give her an appreciative look if they happen to glance each other's way. "...whatever it is, we can...help fix it, right? I mean, that is what we are out here for in the first place...is it not?"
Flamel Parsons     What can Flamel do here? Well, first, he should make sure Meika, and especially her mind, is safe. That, above all else, is essential. Polly has some excellent willpower and the ability to see past things, and she's *also* properly paranoid and making sure to keep herself safe and achieve her goals, so she represents a local healthy mind. Meika is actively on the verge of losing access to everything, from the sound of it, and clearly affected by whatever has become sickened -- whether it's her, or the source of her power.

    He rushes to Polly, skidding to a stop with his scanners brandished. "I don't know if Meika's safe right now. I need to establish a baseline and cross-reference it, so that I can keep her as safe as possible. Do you understand? And for that, I need your help. I can't explain everything, you know? But I need to point this at your head, and at Meika for a while, and I need you to make yourself as *calm* and *kind* as possible, for Meika's sake. Think about how much you'd want to help her if she's in need, and think about how much the *captain* of the occult investigators has all the grit and focus she needs to do it."

    Is what's happening to Meika the prelude to the burnout? Is this anomaly, this self-keeping secret, the final stages, a kind of auto-censoring death-throe for the source of her power, and that's why those empowered by it can't pierce the barrier? Is the source of Meika's power sick? Is *Meika* sick?

    Flamel should be able to get the answers to some of these questions, by comparing a kind of psychic x-ray of both minds, finding the differences -- and then surging a part of his mind deep into astral space to examine wherever Meika's readings peak. Maybe he can bounce off of Meika's link, follow the smell of sickness and death, and find the source. Or dive into an alternate perspective that can see this human-unlike-a-person and find them.

    Someone, or something, *is* sick. It might be dying, and it's been ignored. Something invisible, unknown, hidden from what anyone can see or maybe what anyone is willing to try to see. Flamel Parsons has to help.
Lilian Rook     'Hey, we're not shooting anyone here, okay!?'

    "I decline." Lilian thumbs what passes for the safety on Winter Crow. The bolt cycles. An alloy rod spins into the chamber. "She just can't stop. I'm so tired." And there's no prelude. Lilian's crackling-unburdening tone runs its course through drawing priming and firing in one smooth action. Numb to the audience; the Elites, Polly, the Kirenai sisters, the light behind Lilian's eyes dulls, and reflects only the harsh light of muzzle flash against her face.

    A tiny magic circle flares and disintegrates in an eyeblink. A single magically charged shot paths through Sarracenia's middle and into the light pole behind her. The muzzle smokes. Hard report echoes back off the asphalt. A gold casing clinks against the ground and tumbles downhill.

    Ignorant to the fact that Sarracenia was actually trying to help; uncaring that she actually, accidentally did, as if she hadn't just shot someone on Meika's behalf, in front of Meika, Lilian says "If you really believed I'm as bad as you always say, you wouldn't dare act like this around me. I'm not nineteen anymore. Stop thinking I won't do it and start being scared of me."

    Not particularly invested in harming Sarracenia beyond the jarringly horrible rebuke it takes to make her point, Lilian lets the gun smoothly lower to her side, and doesn't holster it again. She turns back to the gathering as if nothing at all happened. "Don't say you 'taste me', Parsons." Lilian says, nearly a monotone if not for the sigh. "Don't use those words. Meika isn't ruined like I am. It's something else."

    'you don't need to ruin the investigation by making us seem like *that*'

    "Meika isn't well. What happened at Lobotomy Corp isn't something you brush off." says Lilian to Kayoko, walking by her with a smoking gun at her side. She means it about Meika, but it's clear from a single look that it's true of her too. She isn't over it. "We don't know what the residual effects are. If this has something to do with her then consider her ill." Slowly panning across the crowd to find Meika, Lilian's gaze overshoots, then corrects back. "Now say what you mean about 'transform right'."
Kayoko Kirenai "No one is trying as hard as we are."
"Safer than they would be on their own, I bet. If anything, they're probably safer here than anywhere else right now."

    That does sound a *little* bit threatening. The idea that if the Kirenais got away from the 'secret agents', or if *Polly* got away from them, that the situation would become worse for the girls, is implanted firmly in Polly's mind. Her thoughts stray to escape routes-- diving to grab the rope she rappeled down on, swinging to snatch up Kayoko (just her?) before the Elites catch; yanking her tape recorder out of Madeleine's hands to sprint to the police with it, and so on. Unfocused, scared, impractical, and tremendously mistrusting.

    "That's... good."

"I think you *will* show us. One thing at a time."

    "Ah...." Now distinctly feeling like she's being arrested or maybe robbed, Polly's hesitancy is clear in every expression and word she says to Madeleine, because she isn't nearly as neurotic about attempting to hide them as the other Catholic teens are.

    "... that's my EMF meter, for detecting hauntings... and my Polaroid camera, I used to use a digital one, for convenience, right? But Kayoko really got me into them, and a physical print is better suited for catching occult traces and being safe from interference anyways..." When Madeleine pulls out the tape recorder, actively recording their conversation, a note of awkward hopefulness enters Polly's voice. "That's for... personal note taking? Eheh."

"Why not? Why couldn't she do this? Is there really anything those monsters can do that one of you never could?"
"But you also said the monsters ''don't'' do this."

    The direct contradiction from Tiphereth and Jeanne's attempted seriousness aren't taken too differently by Kayoko, like she can't tell the difference at all. Glaring at both of them, with her hand unconsciously lifted up away from the blade once her attention's turned away, Kayoko just emphatically repeats herself like brute force is the way to assert her correctness.

    "She *can't*. It's the Temptations that do memory stuff. Meika does a little, but it's different, and... she can only do it with little things. There's been Temptations with sound powers, but it's always *different*, so we'll just find some way that this is different." Conspicuously not mentioning whether she's familiar with Temptations having her own thematic powers, though. "... And she can't make things either. Whenever she uses her magic, she just uses it through something else, like her hockey stick before it broke. If she could make her own weapons she would just do that. The light her magic makes isn't as strong as mine is, either, so she can't use that as a weapon."

    "It's not how Temptations usually work... and we're supposed to be immune. But there's a reason. There's always a reason for things, and it's *not* that Vermillion is like one of *them*." As if it's an irrelevant thought, added on afterwards just for completion's sake, she says, "Besides. We're only immune to what Temptations to from *after* we became magical girls."
Meika Kirenai 'Is this Vermillion? No, this isn't her...'

    Flamel's train of thought ramblings make Meika more and more tense the longer he goes. Poisonous, infected, her-or-not-her, the types of comments where thoughts fill in the blanks with unintended guilty bitterness, overheard fragments through a thin wooden door. Meika looks pale in the face, like she feels sick. "I don't draw power from anything, I just *have* it, that's not..."

'This means that you can use powers without your drawings, Meika!'

    I know I can. I know I can. I didn't start out with the drawings, I made them because I needed them, or else-

'...are you...like actually sick? In the should be seeing a doctor kind of way?'

    "No! I'm not *sick*! I'd know if I was, don't- don't just latch onto whatrever everyone's s-saying about me, or... I'm *fine*! I'm fine.")] Well. As fine as she ever is, really, which isn't that fine at all. Fingers fiddle with one another, thumb still bleeding.

'Are you saying-- are you saying it's something wrong with where her power comes from?'

    Anyone perceptive enough might pick out the conscious seam of Meika purposefully trying not to flinch at Hibiki's words. For how adamant she is that this wasn't her doing, she's still radiating guilt and shame over something.

'I don't know if Meika's safe right now.'

    Before Flamel's followup clarifies his meaning, Meika is quick to back-step away from the grouped-up Elites, pre-emptively assuming he means safe for others to be around. Her mindset is still in the frames of infectious, wrong, poisonous and sick to the marrow feelings, which is making the challenge of responding to words as-intended a nigh impossible task for her. And, as if him confronting Polly with the device he does reminds Meika the other girl even exists, Meika freezes, cognizant that some of this is now being witnessed.

    {"... What's that going to do, or see, Mister Parsons?"} She whispers, lips moving inaudibly to everyone else. {"... Is it going to hurt?"} It's effort, and more effort, to not fight being scanned herself. Panicked glances at Rose and Tiphereth remind her, and those two, that it's become less of an unusual procedure for the magical girl.
Meika Kirenai 'This is what the monsters do, not *us*!'

    If anyone's looking her way while her sister spouts off the defensive tirade she does, Meika's hands shove themselves into her jacket's pockets, and her eyes bore holes in the nearby dirt. Stop saying 'us' like that when you won't let me fight at all. I don't do *anything*. Not any way. I want to, even if it's only like that, but- A huff, and the scowling expression she'd held fades into something more frantic, her eyes even less focused. "I- I'm sure it's not... I didn't do this. Or... either way, I- I can prove it."

    "If it's like the gym, r-right?" What gym she means feels slippery to harken back to, still. "We- Cobalt and I need help seeing it, too, if we're not seeing this, if we can't, m-maybe it's like that was. W-whatever happened was..." A blink, and she loses her train of thought, nervous energy oozing out in her tone. Part of it is the shock and surprise of this whole situation, rattling her. Another part, though, is the worried fear that she can't, truthfully, be sure yet of the merit any thrown accusation holds.

    "That's- this is what Cherubs are for. I'll get Drop- you'll see, hang on," Hands come out of her pockets, trembling worse than before. It takes her a few tries to undo the latch of her dull messenger bag, to pull it where she can rummage, to find the right item to grab, to pull free-

    A manila envelope, containing one very displeased Cherub gets hastily opened up, and wrangled by the scruff. Drop, Meika's imprinted familiar, a gangly humanoid critter smaller than an undersized housecat, gets unceremoniously pulled free. It really doesn't seem to want to be. Odd, given how eager it often is to make things worse for her and everyone else. Eventually, it stills just enough to face Meika and listen.

    "Drop, there's- I need you to check out some stuff here. I don't really know what, or h-how, but... like, that pipe over there isn't how it should be, s-something happened, and-" There's a split second moment, where Meika relaxes just enough to start leaning over and setting the complacent-seeming creature free, as it tilts its head up at her, patient, where it tenses-

    And before Meika can react, the Cherub, instead of doing or saying anything related, twists free from the magical girl's grip-

    And bolts, scampering on all fours, as fast as it can, out and away from the group.
Tamamo     'Meika isn't ruined like I am.'

    "Eh? Lilian, what do you mean? Are you feeling unwell? Would you like to stop for tea?" Tamamo, who had been lost in thought after telling other people to do things, refocuses not on the gun retort, but on a particular line from Lilian, dropping several other threads in the process.
Lilian Rook     'Ms. Arina? Would you please check for... ah, I will send you the details.'

    Arina, jolting at the sharp noise, is hasty to reply. "U-um, yes! Of course, Miss Tamamo! We've worked on this kind of thing together before, so . . ." She dithers on whether to let Polly alone for this, but Satsuki is quick to come to her rescue, quick to take on guardianship (and screening her from the worse sights) while Arina hustles over to the nearest blade, retrieves her mask from her bag, and kneels to begin drawing the handful of characters she needs, sparking ritual incense the size and shape of a cigarette straight from the carton. She has plenty of experience supporting Lilian's precognition with her own spiritual divination.

    When Lilian spots Polly's tape recorder in Madeleine's hand, her chin tilts back by degrees of displeasure, and "Give me that." comes out so easily that it is crystal clear she only expects one answer.

    Satsuki watches Drop scurry off with an uneasy grimace. "That thing is running back to tattle on you, isn't it?" she says. "That's what it's for. It isn't like you to rely on it at a time like this." She hasn't actually known Meika long enough to say that, but she must have formed her confident assessment from something or other. "Stop. The more you panic, the worse this gets. Consider it a crisis okay?"
Kayoko Kirenai "But I need to point this at your head, and at Meika for a while, and I need you to make yourself as *calm* and *kind* as possible, for Meika's sake. Think about how much you'd want to help her if she's in need, and think about how much the *captain* of the occult investigators has all the grit and focus she needs to do it."

    Instantly, Polly's thoughts flicker to the dubious '*if* she's in need?', but Flamel is the only one here to tell her things that seem to be truthful-- and also incredibly exciting, she hasn't let go of that, and the danger's only intensifying it-- without also feeling like he's threatening her. "Not sure I understand it all, but I asked how to help and got answered, so I'm gonna do it, yep. Activating 'calm' and 'kind' mode, sir; prepare your gizmos because I'm chock full of it."

    At their core, Polly and Meika are more similar than they are different, which isn't surprising; they're friends, at least through mutual association with Kayoko, and until recently they were peers at school. Relatedly, both have a massive radioactive core in their psyches that simply reads as 'Catholic', oozing psychological damage to the very edges of their minds, and though Meika's is measurably more severe, Polly's is plenty unhealthy too.

    Meika is more stressed, more unhappy, more full of dread and fear, stewing in the trauma of five years of monster fighting and solemn grave-marking. As a baseline mind, Polly is very well suited to be a comparison, since besides the clear emotional aftereffects of being Chevalier Vermillion, they're comparable on almost every reading. Primarily, though, Meika's mind feels like 'dragging herself day by day to her inevitable execution', and Polly's feels like 'being in a bad situation, but staying hopeful that she can figure out a way to overcome it'.

    And that's... it. There isn't a single magically wrong thing with Meika's mind. In particular, there is no evidence at all that her powers are waning, sick, or under any threat internal or external. There's not a single trace of the kind of thing evident in the blades, and not any indication that this is something that *will* happen either.
Angela At least Rose lowers her pistol when Hibiki tells her to, though this is because Hibiki is telling her to. "Got orders to. And the Dame Commander's not gonna pull a gun on someone without it being unearned. She's not an amateur like I am." Rose manages, but she can't really stand against Hibiki, orders or no orders. Fortunately, Tiphereth is wholly distracted from insisting and seems to be thinking about other things now that Flamel got going and she's in a (kind of) fight with the sisters.

"You shuld be careful, it's got a hair trigger." She adds, on Crimson Scar, which is probably true but Hibiki probably could tank a shot from that no problem anyway. That's not really the point for Rose.

The latest scan completes but Tiphereth doesn't have a proper chance to look at it immediately---unlike Angela, Tiphereth has to read at a 1:1 rate.

And Lilian does fire! But only once.

''Now say what you mean by transform right.''

TIphereth doesn't have much to add on that but her eye does squint at the phrasing. She nods along to what Polly has to say but Kayoko spouts off her own contraditions.

"Well Flamel said that it wasn't her so it wasn't her, but--" Tiphereth's eye slants down at a screen. "There's ''something'' but..."

Lilian shoots Sarracenia! Rose flinches but doesn't really argue about it. Being basically treated as an Unofficial Color means that she isn't going to argue about it. It's taking her full social link and friendship memories with Hibiki to not go off shooting Sarracenia too in an attempt to follow a Color's lead. There's this pressure--a strong cultural pressure--that Rose can't really resist. Maybe no Agent can all that much, but particularly not Rose who is always tempted to return to the wolf's belly.

Drop makes an appearance. Rose immediately looks disgusted.

Then unexpectedly, the creature bolts.

"Don't let it leave--!" Tiphereth begins.

Rose pulls away from Hibiki and chases after the creature, determinedly. It's entirely possible that Rose is just seeing an opportunity to escape an increasingly tense situation though. She doesn't really feel the Courage as much as of late, even with the Corrosion.
Kayoko Kirenai "She just can't stop. I'm so tired."

    Polly's breath hitches in the instinctual silent pause before the gunshot, and then-- what else can she possibly do? The thought had already been present in her mind before Lilian fired the gun, and she's not about to turn around and *look* at what happened, and Polly has a reasonable-enough perception of herself to know that she doesn't have the ability to help in a gunfight.

    After flinching and squealing in shock, Polly tugs forwards out of Madeleine's grip on her backpack, slipping one of the straps loose so that the entire bulky pack comes off her shoulders. Clumsily, without any kind of the emergency-preparedness that would make this a practiced routine or thought process, she tries to yank the tape recorder out of Madeleine's hands and sprint down the hill through the woods to get back to the city proper. "K-Kayoko! I'm sorry!"

    She doesn't get far, obviously.
Madeleine Cadrasteia     Madeleine is getting a little too excited about Polly's sundry occult-hunting devices. "That's right," she says after Polly explains her camera, "there's a lot of stuff that only shows up on film. That's why I've got this fellow right here." She taps her camera for emphasis. "Anyway, what's- oh."

    "That's for... personal note taking? Eheh."

    Madeleine's holding the tape recorder in one hand and about to resume her safety lecture when Lilian shoots Sarracenia. It's a loose enough grip that Polly can yank it out of the briefly-distracted huntress's hand and make a run for it, but Madeleine is too fast on the uptake. She's got a firm grasp on Polly's shoulder before the girl's made it even three meters. Madeleine eases the device out of the girl's hands, leads her by the shoulder back over to Alina. "Flamel, do you want a look at this recording or should we just dispose of it?"

    Then Meika produces Drop from her bag... and it promptly runs off. After a brief hesitation, Madeleine hears Tiphereth's directive to Rose and sets off after the creature herself. Unless it has some extraordinary powers up its sleeve, a small creature like that on foot in open terrain stands no chance escaping the huntress. She runs it down, picks it up by the back of the neck, and turns it around to face her. "Well, aren't you a wretched thing. Where are you off to in such a hurry?"
Lilian Rook     'Eh? Lilian, what do you mean? Are you feeling unwell? Would you like to stop for tea?'

    "Yeah. I'd like that." Lilian sighs, her voice growing hoarse. "But I have to finish this first." The pause afterwards seems conclusive, but she drags herself on to say one more thing despite herself. "Nobody should be so free with those words. 'Something humans aren't'. They're too heavy; and just to avert their eyes from the ways human beings can break."
Sarracenia      'I decline'

     Sarracenia's eyes widen. "Wh-what are you talking about?!" Sarracenia exclaims. She is frozen. Is Lilian actually going to...she wouldn't, right? There's no reason to...right? With a mixture of deer in the headlights, stubborness, and indignation, Sarra just faces down the gun.

     She flinches as the shot goes off, and a high pitched yelp escapes her as she is hit. She looks down, her white shirt quickly turning red from the through and through shot. She stumbles back a bit before falling to a knee. She's an elite, but not a particularly sturdy one.

     A gloved hand moves to the wound, then comes back coated in red. "Are...you serious...?" she says quietly, then with a winces as she screams out "Are you serious?!" which ends in her coughing because a shot through the middle is likely to hit some important things.

     Expecting no one here to offer any aid, the princess reaches into her satchel and pulls out a green mushroom. She gulps it down and the wound closes somewhat...but not completely. If one were at the proper angle...one might be able to see -through- Sarra. Sarra gets back to her feet, hands and teeth clenched tightly and some red still flowing. "I have said you are bad, but not this bad! I did nothing wrong! And even if I did, which I did not, it was not worthy of this! Have you lost your mind?!"

     Now full of anger and righteous indignation, Sarracenia starts toward Lilian. "This is far beyond some slap! What have I even said that would warrant this?! I certainly have not attacked anyone you care about!"

     As Sarra approaches, she reaches into her purse and pulls out a certain tanto. She keeps it sheathed for now, but is gripping the sheath and the handle in separate hands, ready to use the blade for something other than its intended purpose. It is likely she kept it specifically for a moment like this. "You were not like this before. I do not know what happened during the year or so I stayed in the castle, but it cannot possibly have all been my fault! So, apologize or let us just get this over with now! If hurting me will somehow lighten this...darkness or whatever has gotten to you, then fine! And you know perfectly well that I cannot just let this go! If you are so tired, take a break already! The Multiverse will not collapse without you!"
Sarracenia      She looks to those gathered after. "And what of all of you? Do you -really- think some mean words that have been returned two or three fold deserve something like this?!" The princess coughs again, then pulls the tanto just enough for the blade to be visible. "Just like last time...you started this, Lilian! But, I am quite happy to finish it! Because I am tired of all this, too! I just wanted to help here!"

     Sarra realizes Polly is still here, and her anger loses just a bit of its fire. But, she can't exactly back down now. "So, what will it be, Lilian? An apology to these kids and me? Or do we go off somewhere that they will be safe from us and finally have it out?"
Flamel Parsons     "Nothing is going to feel painful." Flamel assures Meika. "But I can't say for sure you aren't being hurt right now..."

    And then, nothing. Nothing? There's nothing there? No anomalies, no power being drawn from anywhere and no sign it's waning. "Nothing. *Nothing*. Nothing's wrong. Why is nothing wrong? There's obviously something wrong. Something's falling apart, it's poisoned, but I'm picking up nothing. Am I being hacked? Is someone messing with my perception? This can't be right. This *can't* be right." He forcibly bypasses his own ocular cortex, reroutes in mentally circuitous ways, even tries Mindswarming an archetype or two to check his work. Is he being deceived somehow? No, that can't be it. He's so focused on this that he barely pays attention to Polly bolting, or the princess getting shot. He's just so *fixated* on the data.

    "None of this makes sense unless *something* is sick. There's blood-spray to analyze, but no wounds and no corpse and nobody and nothing missing. What am I missing? Where am I not pointing this?" He looks to Madeleine, blinking once or twice. The tape recorder? "These kinds of things seal themselves up, she won't... It's like this situation. She would never tell this to--"

    The Cherub gets involved. Drop. That knows something. Flamel looks to it. It just bolted. And it's the one thing that might have what they need to know. And it's *probably* not covered under any protection acts. "Get that thing over here and I'll get a Psychoportal on it!!" He calls out, urgently. He's gotta wring any information he can out of whatever mind it has! "I need an *explanation* for this before we lose something we can't get back!!"
Ritsuka Fujimaru Sarracenia's explanation for touching the blades together has Jeanne shrugging lightly. It's not a dismissive shrug, either, but one of those 'yeah, I guess' kind of shrugs that doesn't indicate any kind of annoyance or mockery on her part like she often tends to have.

Instead, any newfound annoyance stems at the comments about Meika's powers. Jeanne raises her hand to pinch the bridge of her nose lightly, then looks up and over roughly when she hears the gunshot from Lilian. She opens her mouth as she looks over at Sarracenia again, closes it when she looks over at Lilian's gun, then nods slowly in approval before turning back to Meika, apparently unconcerned with the aftermath of that shot.

Ritsuka and Mash, meanwhile, are still already on edge from the earlier noise, and Mash is still keeping herself firmly between Ritsuka and the actual for-real gunshot. Despite hiding behind Mash, Ritsuka still peeks out every now and then, and she flashes Polly a quick thumbs up when Madeleine pulls out the tape recorder. "Smart! Or stupid, if we were yakuza or something." She rattles off quickly, then inches a bit more behind Mash again afterwards.

Mash, undeterred by the presence and use of guns nearby, tries to keep things together by smiling akwardly at Polly. "Say, that EMF meter... Does it work? Is it just for ghosts, or does it detect other kinds of supernatural things?" She asks with genuine curiosity, partially to try and keep Polly from freaking out at the gunshot, and partially to find out if it would work on herself.

"So she's capable of memory manipulation, too? Hm. That's quite the interesting addition, isn't it?" Jeanne raises an eyebrow at Kayoko, then holds her tongue for a moment again before rubbing her face and trying to pull back on her usual tone after seeing Meika's expression. "I don't doubt that whatever Meika can do isn't like what you've seen of Temptations, and her light isn't as strong as yours, but..." She pauses again, looking over at the blades, then at Kayoko once more with a slight frown.

"What if her powers were stronger than they are now? If her powers were wielded by another's hands, would you still doubt this so strongly? Not that she would do such a thing, but that she even could?"

When Meika brings out the Cherub, Mash and Ritsuka conveniently continue to stay roughly in Polly's direct line of sight to keep her from seeing the strange little creature. They're pretty nonchalant about it, at least, between Mash asking questions and Ritsuka watching Flamel intently as he gets to work. Once again, Ritsuka gives her a thumbs up and a broad smile, but she stays quiet so as to (try to) avoid interrupting any of that.

That leaves Jeanne to hear what Meika's asking of Drop, and to see the Cherub bail shortly afterwards. "What's that little thing off to now...? Tch. Stay put."

She slinks around out of what she thinks Polly can probably see, then starts sprinting right after the Cherub, trying to keep it in her sights for as long as she can.
Hibiki Tachibana     There's a sigh of relief when Rose relents, and if it were anything but this tension-wracked situation, Hibiki would probably also have a small smile of appreciation to go with it. Instead, she just gets gentle squeeze of her grip before letting go, voice still strained with the inability to wrap her head around Flamel's deductions. "Deserved or not, this isn't-- this isn't the time or place to be pulling weapons on each other. This is already getting crazy enough..."

    Of course-- Lilian takes the shot anyway. The echoing clang of the heavy bullet being loosed comes with the squeal of Polly expectedly trying to run in fear, and Hibiki's breath hitching as her eyes shoot wide. She's not sure what she's feeling, or what to say. There'd be a hundred logical arguments about why that was a bad idea, but none of them come to mind in the face of a bile-like feeling somewhere in her gut.

    It feels like her mind is spinning, and it's only a certain something that snaps her back into the moment and into actual action. When Meika opens up her bag, and...

    I don't know much about God. But they're mean. Drop was so mean to her.
    ...If 'God' stuck those crappy Cherubs to the girls...
    If they're supposed to be straight from God...

    "...It's not just going to tattle, it /knows something/!" The one time that awful little creature isn't jumping at the chance to spit back people's words in the worst way possible, this one time something terrible has to be going on with Meika and nobody knows what, Drop is running - and her talk with Love is the first thing that jolts back to her mind like rushing heat.

    These shitty things apparently hand-delivered by God himself would be one of the only leads she can think of to what's really going on here.

    Which is why Rose isn't the only one who's giving chase to the fleeing Cherub. Hibiki sprints ahead at full speed, only stopping to take her school blazer off and nearly barrel into Sarracenia before bundling it up and pushing it against her midriff, apparently to hand it off. Her words are hasty, impatient, and forceful. "Use this to stop up the bleeding! Don't push yourself! And /don't get into anything with Lilian right now!/"

    Whether that'll be upheld is a little beyond her ability right now, as the now blazer-less Hibiki is joining the pursuit of Drop at full speed. And at this point, guns have been fired, Temptations and powers have been openly talked about, psychic phenomena have been put to use, and everything has hit the point where she's more concerned with their one lead slinking away more than anything. The moment the chase takes them out of Polly's immediate sightline--

    "Balwisyall nescell Gungnir tron!"

    One flash of light later, the asphault in front of Drop will hairline crack with the speed and force Hibiki drops down in front of it to try and cut off its escape by planting a metal boot against its face. Her downcast glare is not a very pleasant one.
Kayoko Kirenai "She just can't stop. I'm so tired."

    Kayoko flinches at the gunshot too, and her eyes are wide, watching Sarracenia and Lilian and Polly running away simultanously. Rather than moving to do anything, or even say anything, she just completely freezes up, still kneeling on the ground beside the blade.

    "Th-this is awful." Her voice is quiet, attention mostly directed towards Polly panicking and being grabbed. "This isn't right at all." She doesn't notice the limning incandescent light f-f-flickering at her edges.

"Meika isn't well. What happened at Lobotomy Corp isn't something you brush off."

    The grass around Kayoko's hand is negative-blue, reflecting black gleams and bleeding pinpricks of incandescent white from her nails. When Lilian turns her question towards her, it all instantly snaps back to normal. She stares up at Lilian, shaken and critically afraid of disappointing her again.

    "R-right. Of course, Dame Commander." Kayoko doesn't know anything about Meika's non-Chevalier form being revealed to Lobotomy Corporation, so she assumes it's about Walpurgisnacht. "L-Love and Justice have seemed fine, ever since then. If Meika got sick from it then... I haven't seen anything from them that would suggest that they are too. Miss Tamamo-no-mae's cure is still working" She hasn't talked to Love or Justice that much, to be fair, but it's better to not qualify her answers when trying to seem helpful.

"What if her powers were stronger than they are now? If her powers were wielded by another's hands, would you still doubt this so strongly? Not that she would do such a thing, but that she even could?"

    "Yes." Kayoko is resolute, even childishly stubborn at the suggestion. "Magical girls aren't like Temptations. Even if she can mess with memory a little bit, there's a *way* it works, because it's just part of her powers. Why are you all so insistent that we're anything like the *monsters*? We're--" Her voice cracks, and for the same instant patches of the world around her flicker to negative color. "We're *not*."

    Drop might be a horrible, feisty little thing, but it's not like it's capable of teleporting or breaking the sound barrier-- and if it could, the Elites would easily catch up to it even then. Hibiki cuts off its scampering escape, and it can't scurry around her foot fast enough to keep Madeleine from grabbing onto its... the hopeful term would be 'scruff', as if it's some sort of cat, but really it's just a tiny, human neck. These things are *horrible*.

    It can't get free no matter how much it squirms in Madeleine's grasp. But from the direction where it was running, peeking out of shadows between tree branches, are a trio of ethereal white eyes. Staring unblinkingly at the Elites for a moment before slinking down the bark with upside-down vertical hands and feet climbing, the slate-black cat-eared Cherub with faintly luminous eyes and a smokily hazy outline that normally sits on Kurokawa's shoulder appears.

    It crawls right past the Elites, as far as it's allowed, in the direction of the blades. It doesn't even bother to look at or acknowledge them, until being stopped. A minute later, a... second one of Kurokawa's Cherubs, identical to the first, appears on the edge of the treeline too. Are there normally two of them?
Tamamo     For Sarracenia not to be dead after being shot is about all Tamamo particularly cares about, to the extent that she can stretch her attention to care about anything else when Lilian is so clearly in need of aid. She barely manages to affect her usual, 'natural' tone in saying, "Thank you, Ms. Arina," when the latter goes to begin her divinations.

    'Nobody should be so free with those words.'

    "It did strike me as a rather odd choice. Is that a particular area of focus for the, ah... agency from which he hails?"

    '...transform right.'
    'Nothing's wrong. Why is nothing wrong? There's obviously something wrong.'

    "Does this mean..." There isn't time to fully form the thought. Drop appears, makes a run for it, and Madeleine deals with both that and Polly's escape attempt. Handled, but distracting long enough for Sarracenia to get up again.

    'But I have to finish this first.'

    "Let us stop by somewhere calmer on the way home."

    'An apology to these kids and me? Or do we go off somewhere that they will be safe from us and finally have it out?'

    "No, princess Sarracenia." Tamamo interposes herself in a way that's visually obviously protective. "We will not be dealing with that pair of options at this particular moment." She sighs, the particular reason left unclear. There are a lot of things to sigh about. Most of all, as is quickly apparent as her mental gears finally shift, there was no way for that shot to have resulted in a more positive outcome. That thought sticks unpleasantly. Somehow, it couldn't have occurred to her beforehand.

    Though it just looks like she's sighing at Sarracenia.

    "We remain under what appears to be a time limit regarding the present mystery -- in which, please refrain from further accusations toward the Kirenai sisters based only upon speculation. Whether there is any merit to that sort 'lightening' can wait for at least a fortnight. You may trust that I will make all necessary insistences upon Lilian taking regular breaks."

    In her usual outfit, the way she holds out her arm would form more of a wall, with those voluminous sleeves. But she's still wearing her sleeveless blouse and ripped jeans combo, so the overall vibe is somewhat changed. The general fieriness is the same.

    "If you cannot wait, nor hold, nor resolve the present matter before pursuing thing, you will need take all complaints through me."
Madeleine Cadrasteia     Madeleine carries Drop up the hill, glaring at it in vague disgust the entire time. She hardly notices the new cat-eared creatures following her, instead keeping her attention on the first Cherub. She's halfway across the field of blades from Flamel when she stops short. "Hold on, this doesn't smell right."

    She draws her ritual knife.

    It's an ordinary blade - not innately lethal to divine beings like her spear would be - but with just a little prick on the thigh it's still enough to draw blood. She tastes the droplet on the end of her knife as she walks the rest of the way to Flamel. "Alright, I'm done. Do your... psy-portal thing."
Angela Rose returns with Madeleine in time to see MORE of those 'varmints' (cherubs) appear. Ever since Lilian drew her gun she has been pretty tense--Lilian has stopped her from firing that gun but it's still in her hands and she's still tense as all heck.

"...They haven't transformed since..." Tiphereth says of Love and Justice. She doesn't repeat Kayoko's words on the two of them but it seems like it's true. She's not sure they could do it for all Abnormalities but some of them are already practically human--they certainly all came from humans. She doesn't argue iwth the rest but well--Lobotomy Corp's more skeptical of the notion that there's nothing in common. She's more not arguing because she doesn't see it as helpful and she's already been wrong once today.

Instead she says, "It's incredible that was even possible, if it is permanent maybe we can give the others happier homes once the project's over."

More cherubs appear.

"Rose." Tiphereth begins.

"Shoot ''them'' in the face right." Rose says, taking a couple of pot shots at--well the first cherub she sees with her EGO Gear.

"...I was going to say to just keep a bead on them." Tiphereth says.
Lilian Rook     'Are you serious?!'

    Lilian sighs, in one of her myriad ways. Communicating in the relinquishing of breath. This time, it's like throwing herself into bed after a long day.

    "That's what I wanted to hear." she says. "For all this time. You and the others. I finally got one of you to say it." Lilian's head lolls back as she turns her gaze over her shoulder, looking at Sarracenia in skewed portrait.

    'Have you lost your mind?!'

    "Yeah. A little." The admission comes so easily that it's like Lilian doesn't even see it as worth arguing about. "It's the best I've ever felt. I feel cheated for having ever been afraid of it."

    'You were not like this before.'

    A satisfied grin spreads across Lilian's lips, off-kilter with the angle of her half-hearted look. "You finally noticed. That makes me happy to hear." Lilian says, and for all the world, sounds like she means it. "I believed a lot of things that weren't true, and gave people a lot of me that they didn't deserve. In the end, I learned that it was all pointless. I thought it'd all come true someday if I tried hard enough, but when I finally needed someone, the only people that came were the few who never asked for anything." The word 'darkness' makes something like a low giggle happen deep in her throat. "How do you keep believing in keeping the peace after that?"

    'The Multiverse will not collapse without you!'

    "That's the thing." says Lilian. "It does." Her finger taps thoughtfully on the side of her gun, playfully contemplating a second shot, without really committing to it. "You were always parasitizing off my effort. You all felt so safe fucking around and gratifying yourselves because I was there to shoulder everything in the end. When I don't fix it for you, it never gets resolved." The tip of her tongue runs over her teeth, and her finger stops moving. "Quicknest, for example."

    'And what of all of you? Do you -really- think some mean words that have been returned two or three fold deserve something like this?!'

    That, finally, makes Lilian laugh. It isn't even a laugh at Sarracenia. Not at her expense, at least. It's as if she's joining her in the joke, after the princess has just clued into something hilarious. Turning back around, Lilian sweeps her hand over the gathered Elites, mindfully skipping Tamamo and hovering only close to Hibiki.

    "That's just it! Right? None of you think I'll ever do it. Everyone thinks I'll always be a good girl forever. I'm always the responsible one. The disciplined one. The one who always comes through. To nearly everyone, I'm a nasty, unlovable bitch, but I'm fundamentally so well-behaved that you treat me like I'm harmless. I can draw on you right in front of everyone and only one or two people even believe I might do it."

    Gesturing loosely with her gun, wildly unsafe with it loaded, Lilian says "Even you thought you were safe right up until you got shot. Bleeding on the asphalt, your first instinct is flinging blame and shame and talking to me like I'm scum, like I'll come to my senses and remember my place."

    Seeing the muzzle bounce carelessly in her hand, like its bearing is an unimportant thing, is getting increasingly nerve-wracking. "Why'd you expect them to help when you didn't even expect to need to defend yourself? Why would they come to your rescue when they know they'd only lose anyways? Better to stay out of it and pretend they're on my side."
Lilian Rook     'Don't push yourself! And /don't get into anything with Lilian right now!'

    Lilian's untethered smile partly drains away. "I'd listen to her. Tachibana will act if she has to. She still believes in being a good girl." Lilian rests her face in her free hand, fingertips across her cheek, one on her scar. "But girls like me don't go to heaven anyways, so I don't really care if you're right or not. It's not like God will forgive me if I'm good enough, so I'd rather just see you with more holes."

    'You may trust that I will make all necessary insistences upon Lilian taking regular breaks.'

    Tamamo stepping into the way takes the last of Lilian's momentum with the outlet. She stops looking at the tanto, and by finally noticing via its absence, stops looking at Sarracenia like so much meat. Tamamo's unwavering, irrational, utterly unfair support, taking Lilian's side for no reason other than that she's always been there, finally uses up all the air the fire needs to burn.

    "You're a mad dog, Sundew. I get that now. You can't stop victimizing the easiest target for even a second; it's just your nature. You need it like you need to breathe." she says. "But try to get it through your head that have things changed now. If you play shitty games, you win shitty prizes." She turns back to the magical girls with a dismissive flip of her her hair with her hand. Holstering the gun comes as an afterthought.

    'Let us stop by somewhere calmer on the way home.'

    "Okay. It's a promise." Lilian says. It's really just not fair. It only takes Sarracenia to get her like that, and it only takes Tamamo to get her to stop. Two on one doesn't embolden her; Tamamo is her brakes.

    'We're *not*.'

    And she isn't in the mood to overlook the obvious. "What's wrong with your magic, Cobalt?" Lilian says. There's no point in trying to pretend otherwise at this point; she's looking right at it now. "Get it under control. Stop getting worked up about amateur theories and work with me. Who else would want to hide this from you in particular? Who or what would want to alter your memories?" The crawling cherubs catch her eye quickly. The first thing Lilian thinks to do is--

    Do they see it? Are the blades-- the messy outpouring of frustration and shame-- hidden from them, too?
Meika Kirenai 'Nothing's wrong. Why is nothing wrong? There's obviously something wrong.'

    "Huh? But that's- what do you mean, something is , but nothing is-? I- I don't get it. S-say what you mean. What's going on?" A fidget, anxious, rambling, unable to look even near to Flamel as she addresses him. Something like that is maybe the worst possible thing to hear when a scanner's been put up to you, barring maybe a sharp, uncertain gasp.

    "I'm not sick. I- I said so. I said I'm not. I'm- I don't have long left, but- but that doesn't mean I'm *sick*, it just..." Does she not have long left? Panicked, in the way of assuming there was something, she adds- "W-what did you see?"

    The peal of the gunshot makes Meika nearly jump out of her skin. She wheels around, hand scrambling for her bag, just to see Sarracenia stumbling and smoke pouring off a gun, to piece together what just happened in staccato. She doesn't stare at Lilian, nor the princess, but at the clattering casing on the ground. "O-oh. You shot her..."

    Either she doesn't know what to think because of shock, or she doesn't know what to think because violence-against-humans sits squarely in a realm of action she's sure is forbidden on pain of horrible things, and yet also very very much is not fond of the Princess. Eyes wide, expression stressed, she doesn't give good indication as to which, beyond not at all springing to aid her. A sickly-hopeful part of her wonders if she'll do it again.

'What happened at Lobotomy Corp isn't something you brush off.'
'Now say what you mean about 'transform right'.'

    The first person Meika's eyes shoot towards isn't Lilian, when she asks this- but Kayoko. A silent, unspoken, barely-even-thought plea to make her vanish on the spot, any sort of cover. Meika knows by now she can't unsay that, for how clumsy she is with her words, the last times she's tried towards Lilian have ended worse than otherwise.

    As if resigned to something, she looks back towards Lilian, after her gaze has settled. "I- I'm not sick." Again, that attestation, with different weight this time. I'll forget anyway. Maybe everyone will. What'll matter if I say? It's too late for there to be a point, and I'm sick of- Far quieter, in an attempt to not be overheard, "Or if I am, I- I was before then, too. If I try and transform, without the pages, I get it *wrong*. C-come out wrong. N-not like me, not like Chevalier Vermillion, but-"

    Faded, wilted, she shrugs. She doesn't have a word beyond 'wrong', the word for knowing how something should be, but isn't. Quiet, silent, she rocks to the toe of her boots, and then back to her heel, to flat and still. "... It's n-not new. So I can't be sick. Just... wrong. M-monstrous, or- or something, I don't... The pages work to fix that. But. I c-can't make them anymore. I've tried. I keep trying. S-sometimes I get so mad the page just winds up scribbles, and- and maybe it's worse that I'm sick of trying that, or..."

    She sniffles- in expression, not sound. She shuts up, and her eyes fall away, uncertain what'll happen next. She doesn't have it in her, right now, to be that scared of inevitable seeming consequence, bracing and slowing her shaky breaths.
Meika Kirenai . . . . .

'That thing is running back to tattle on you, isn't it?'

    As moments pass, a deep, shaky breath bridges the time between Meika's assumption of agreeing with that, and a hint of panicked confusion. "I- I don't know, Drop doesn't usually- usually just run off, like that, even if I messed up, or-" She swallows. "S-something's wrong. Something's got to be. We should-"

    Her trembling fists ball up, and relax- and repeat, before she sticks them back in her pockets. Her breathing slows a faint bit, and she nods to Satsuki, thankful, before trying to spot where Drop might've dashed. Other Elites spot it first, she's slow to follow, and barely, barely catches up when Drop's already been caught. The Cherub squirms and wriggles, uncomfortable with how its black and white pattern sticks static, as if its body is only some lensed prism viewing a wallpaper behind it.

'Well, aren't you a wretched thing. Where are you off to in such a hurry?'

    Madeleine's comment is, in fact, a feed of ammunition towards the creature. It hisses like a livewire mixed with a broken sprinkler, and hacks back up, in Madeleine's own intonation but a voice akin to a rock tumbler, "Aren't you a wretched thing--?"

    It stitches an interrogative intonation-raise right at the end, stolen from someone else, and *laughs*. Uncomfortably, when Madeleine pricks it with her knife, as easy as it is to *pierce*, Drop doesn't seem disturbed or in pain, and the texture of its awful gargoyle-like flesh continues inwards, like a sculpture more than like a living being. It doesn't bleed, if a chunk gets torn off, it just fizzles into dust and then nothing. It curses back, in stitched-together claims and insults, but can barely resist beyond wriggling like a hooked fish-

    And promptly stops, as if in some vague, fallible way to avoid suspicion, when the other shadowy Cherubs make their appearances. Drop looks their way, and faintly gurgles, choked up by the way it's being held.
Flamel Parsons     Flamel speaks in urgent tones to Lilian. "Nobody *wants* to. It's-- it's bleeding. Something is bleeding. Something is *sick* and it's *dying* and its blood is all over, and that blood is affecting them. It's affecting all of us, but it's not supposed to affect them. Something's wrong." He's rambling faster and faster. "It's wrong. It's not supposed to be like this. Something has gotten sick that was never meant to be anything but clean."

    He whips out the little door from his coat pocket. The spy-fiction aesthetic it has almost seems comically out-of-place in this moment of tension. "You. What do you *see?!*" He plants it hard on the head of the creature, unless it plans to escape, then telekinetically holds the face towards the blades, and says, "What is this? Whose blood is this? What do you know?"

    For the first time in a very long time, his tone isn't bright and cheery.

    He forces his astral form through the portal part-way. Enough to seriously override mental defenses. The redundant creatures in motion? The strange Cherubs converging? He'll have to observe those, but he'll draw the data directly out of the head of the one they've got here. "Tell me what you know about this. *Everything.*" His voice is... not intimidating. Not aggressive. It's just unkind, in all the ways that emphasize that every moment up until now has been an effort to engage in practiced and focused kindness. It's stopping now.

    There's a puzzle here, hidden data, and something's life is at stake unless Flamel gets it. But even his experiment with Persephone and Lilian wasn't like this.
Hibiki Tachibana     Content to let Madeleine and Flamel take it from here - as much as a part of her would like to force some answers out of that little creature herself - Hibiki lets out a heavy exhale into the face-covering scarf of her Symphogear. She's extremely tense and on edge now, but there's nothing to do for the moment except wait for the results of their search. No, she should hurry back and ensure there's not any more trouble between Lilian and Sarracenia, even if she's hopeful Tamamo will be able to stop any--...

    Before she gets anywhere on that line of thinking, more Cherubs appearing get her attention. Not just any Cherubs either; from the initial meeting with Sister Kurokawa, she recalls the one she had with her. Her immediate thought is a lack of surprise that the Refulgence has caught on to some bullshit happening around here after how much of a mess it's been, and resolving to deal with it as it comes.

    ...but then the second one shows itself, and even as the first one moves ahead, she turns on her heel to stare back at it, two eyes to three. Her mouth falls open in gawking confusion beneath the cloth hiding it, but soon enough, her brow furrows, and she approaches the treeline with heavy and steady steps. Unless the tiny thing tries to slink away, she's going to get close enough to stand over it, and then kneel down.

    To try and grab it by the wispy body. Not especially painfully, but she's sure going to be trying to get a firm and solid grip on its smoky little head to lock it in place and force it look at her. Her eyes narrowed, and breath still audible and coming heavier than it should in the wake of all of /that/, the hold might come a little tighter than she even intends.

    "...Have there always been more than one of you?"

    Her voice drops in pitch, rougher. "What the hell is going on...?"

    "Did Kurokawa send you? Or is this something else? What is all of /this/ supposed to /be/!?"
Ritsuka Fujimaru "Why are you all so insistent that we're anything like the *monsters*? We're--" "We're *not*."

"Why not? Their powers are yours, but stronger. Refined. Something to aspire to, to grab a hold of turn them against the Temptations instead of being afraid of if you really wanted to protect this place." Jeanne perks up visibly at the world flicker, almost looking eager as she starts to follow this line of thought. "But to deny it so insistently, there must be..."

"Who else would want to hide this from you in particular? Who or what would want to alter your memories?"

Jeanne actually goes quiet at that, that eager expression quickly subsiding in favor of a more disgusted look as the most obvious possibility hits her head. She really wants to lay the blame at the Refulgence's and Kurokawa's feet, too, but doing that wouldn't really help either of these girls, would it?

She still needs somewhere to direct her ire, though, and the appearance of both familiar and unfamiliar cherubs provides the perfect outlet for that.

"Master."
"Way ahead of you. Just don't break them."

Joining Hibiki's efforts, Jeanne starts moving towards the other Cherub while matching her pace, as if trying not to startle the things too much too soon. Unlike Hibiki, however, Jeanne certainly doesn't seem to care one bit about hurting it when she starts pressing down (or jumping and stomping) with a boot to try pinning it to the ground.

"And don't hold back on the answers now. Nobody's in a great mood today."
Tamamo     'To nearly everyone, I'm a nasty, unlovable bitch,'

    Hmm. That can't be right.

    'But girls like me don't go to heaven anyways,'

    "Hmm," more audibly. She has some sort of opinion on this.

    'Tachibana will act if she has to. She still believes in being a good girl.'

    "She does, does she not? I wondered when you might again notice." Tamamo follows up Lilian's talk of good girls (negative) with her recognition of good girls (positive).

    'Okay. It's a promise.'

    "Of course." They had an earlier promise, too. She hasn't forgotten.

    'I- I'm not sick.'

    Part of Tamamo's attention toward Meika -- enough to make it clear who she's addressing -- though she mainly focuses on the other approaching cherubs. She'd really like to see what they're here for, and the easiest way to do that is to let them act.

    "You have spoken as if your life, or some portion of it, is set soon to end. This could occur only if some other force had a design upon you, or if you were unwell, yourself. As we have not found a problem with you, let us suppose that there is none. This fits with Mr. Parsons' claim that 'something' is ill, does it not? That which is 'wrong...' well, I do not know. I have not seen this thing you claim, this unright transformation. I do not suppose you would show it to me? I am, after all, a healer of some notable skill. It would only be sensible, no? If it is embarrassing, you are due soon to forget it, in any case. Would that more of us could forget some of those mistakes we made in the pursuit of a happier future."

    Tamamo readies a set of paper talismans, having pulled them out with a quick gesture from an uncertain position. If the approaching cherubs try to do anything in the way of disposing of evidence, she's ready to toss out a barrier to hold one of them in place.
Sarracenia      With the situation diffused for now, Sarracenia takes a few steps back from Tamamo and Lilian. "I did not intend it as an accusation so much as a...nnng. I do not know. A sign of hope?" Sarracenia pulls the blazer tighter, wincing in the process, then sighs and looks to Kayoko. "I do not think anyone here is saying you two are some kind of monsters. But...the powers could be related somehow." She looks over as some kind of cat things follow Madeleine in. "...perhaps these cherub creatures are actually some kind of Temptations or monsters? No one seems to be fond of them despite their apparent necessity."
Sarracenia      Sarracenia oofs and blinks in surprise as Hibiki hands off her blazer and says to use it to stop the bleeding. Sarracenia has to release her grip on the handle of the tanto to take it, and lets out a slight 'mmph' of annoyance. "Thank you, Hibiki!" she shouts, anger from the situation but not at Hibiki filling her voice. She ties it around her middle as best she can with a sheathed dagger in hand, then returns to her previous two handed grip.

     Sarracenia listens to all that Lilian says with an expression of mostly shock and disbelief. Especially so at the easy admission of 'Yeah. A little.' which leaves Sarra kind of staring. "...you really have, haven't you?" she says quietly. She keeps a wary eye on that gun the entire time.

     'I thought it'd all come true someday if I tried hard enough, but when I finally needed someone, the only people that came were the few who never asked for anything. How do you keep believing in keeping the peace after that?'

     The dark giggle at the word darkness leaves Sarracenia disconcerted. "...well, at least I can tell Ceri I was right. You did give up. Not that she will care at all." she says.

     Tamamo steps in front of Sarra, and Sarracenia lets out another powerful 'mmmmph'. She eyes Tamamo for a few moments...then lets out another more growly 'mmmph' before with a meaningful ka-tack fully sheaths the tanto once more and lets out a slow breath. "Taking complaints through you would be unheroic, unprincess-like, -and- just make things worse." she says, as if the last one is the least important one. "Not to mention fan the flames of this darkness." she adds. The princess takes a deep breath, then lets it out. "You have been decent enough to me, Lady Tamamo. And you are right. I suppose there are more pressing matters to attend to." She is fairly certain Tamamo is deserving of the extra honorific. She's supposed to be a goddess or something, after all. Sarracenia puffs out a still angry breath. "She is lucky to have you." she says to Tamamo, more in a slightly jealous way than a it is a good thing you stopped me way. Sarra isn't so crazy as to think that she is more of a danger to Lilian than Lilian is to her.

     She looks to Lilian again. "Quicknest will be resolved. But, you are right in one thing. We did rely on the strength of those like you. Because many of us are simply not strong enough. That was obviously a mistake. And with people like you and Petra running around, we cannot afford to merely stand by anymore. I will get strong enough to lighten your burden, Lilian. But, not for you. I will do it for everyone else.

     'You're a mad dog, Sundew. I get that now. You can't stop victimizing the easiest target for even a second; it's just your nature. You need it like you need to breathe.'

     This causes Sarra's anger to rise again, and she grips that tanto tightly. "I am not a mad dog! I admit I may have been one once, but I do not victimize anyone who does not victimize me first! I am working hard on becoming a proper hero, someone another hero would be willing to fight beside! I came here to help Meika and Kayoko! And Quicknest is one of my first stops along the way! We have already struck at the pr-"

     Sarra barely stops herself from giving away what could be vital intelligence. She takes another long, deep breath, then lets it out slowly. "...it will be freed, and all the residents of that area will be released from their robotic prisons. If the Gale Empire is damaged along the way, so be it."

     Sarra glares hard at Lilian for several long moments, then hmphs and slips the tanto back into her purse. "...Lady Tamamo." she says, giving a very slight curtsey. "May I suggest an expensive spa." she adds at the 'somewhere calmer'.
Sarracenia      As Flamel gets more and more intense, Sarra turns her attention there. And...if no one grabbed that cherub headed toward a shard, she moves to quickly snatch it up. "I am quite certain that you reaching that would not be good." she says.
Kayoko Kirenai "Who else would want to hide this from you in particular?"

    'Getting it under control' is as much of a response as Lilian gets for her demand to Kayoko. As long as it goes back to normal, and Kayoko does nothing to acknowledge it or bring attention to it, then it's just like it never happened at all, so she doesn't have to get in trouble about it.

    "... I-I don't know, ma'am. Meika and I don't have any enemies but the Temptations. And those are just a natural fact about the world." 'Stop getting worked up' is explicit enough of a demand to Kayoko that she smooths out her motions and expressions almost entirely, focused on the task at hand to improve her standing. She's trying very hard to not pay any attention to Lilian shooting someone, declaring she's crazy, and saying she'll never go to heaven, because it's scary and averting her eyes is almost always the right way to go about things.

    She *is* thinking about the question, though, brows furrowed. "I can't think of any reason why someone who's also against the Temptations-- well, no one's *for* them-- would want to hide from us. Especially not hiding the fact that they helped at all. But maybe... it's not someone that *wants* to be hidden?"

"If I try and transform, without the pages, I get it *wrong*. C-come out wrong. N-not like me, not like Chevalier Vermillion, but-"

    Kayoko stays stiffly silent throughout Meika's explanation. No help is forthcoming, not this time, and Kayoko can't supply any confirmation or denial without also implicating herself. It's fine. It's almost over anyways. She doesn't look surprised, though.

"...Have there always been more than one of you?"

    This is something that Kayoko knows for a fact, at least. Without looking over at Hibiki-- Kayoko never got off the ground, actually-- she says, "Sometimes there's two of the same Cherub. Sister Kurokawa's is one that has a double. There's never more than two, though, for some reason, and there's just one of mine and Vermillion's. I've counted them before."

"Why not? Their powers are yours, but stronger. Refined."

    "What's *wrong* with you?!" Kayoko snaps into sudden, furious anger, rising to her feet and wrapping one hand around the camera hanging from her neck like it's a sword in a sheathe. "Why can't you *listen*?! Which one of us do you think does *that*?!"

    Kayoko gestures violently at the half-melted hole in the power plant. "And you were there to fight a wind one too, before, weren't you? What about magnets? *Why*, are you so *desperate* to see us as--?!"

    During all of that, while Madeline grabs Drop instead of Polly, while Flamel interrogates it, while Lilian shoots Sarracenia and some of the others get between them, and voices get raised and Cherubs scurry around-- Polly slowly creeps back towards the forest. The investigator's instinct compels her to stay, but it kind of overstayed its welcome shortly after the gunfire started. Tape recorder-less, abandoning her pack and all of its gear, Polly tries to slip away into the night to investigate the occult another day.

    And she'll see Kayoko at school tomorrow anyways.
Meika Kirenai     It's direly unpleasant to stick in close proximity to a Cherub like this. Flamel gets far more aquainted with the creepy, spindly, squirmy and vile little critter than anyone rightly should ever have to. Drop can't fight, not really, beyond spit noxious things out and around at anyone and everyone, but as Flamel's actual dive into the being's mind goes on and on, it starts to slow down in its rebellion. Connections picked through, memories sifted, as the Cherub sits, a frantic action in its words carry significance that might catch by surprise-

    '''The world would be better off without freaks like *you*.''' Drop's echoed words, from someone distant, rattle off in its tone with somehow heroic-conviction, despite how the Cherub stares around. Confident, certain, so obviously stolen, like everything Drop says around others. Sparked up by some frantic, mostly-unthought desperation towards Flamel, there's a hint tying it to something, thrown up like a warning, a call of do-not-pursue.

    Delving however deep Flamel goes, ripping through whatever he can, there is no direct answer to 'who' the metaphorical blood leads to. Of whatever chaotic classifications exist in the Cherub's mind, precious little will stitch together faces or names or stories, not of this all. But the Cherub still, somehow, can call up words and wield them as armament. By the prompting of his ferocity, Flamel got *that* one thread, fessed up like a lanced blister. That, and fear.

    Whatever caused this all, the blades, the slaughtered Temptation, Drop is *afraid*. The inhuman little creature, supposed ally to all those that guard mankind from Temptations, is *scared*, and trying to scare Flamel, too, pitifully. Through all the obfuscation, noncategorization, and general information-oblivion mess, there's just slightly enough texture to grab onto and work with, like faint windchimes ever-distant.

    Luckily, 'slight' is more than certainly enough for Flamel's determination and skill. Something, someone scaring these creatures gives way to signs. Blades like these ones. Places they're scared to go.

     Still squirming, direly uncomfortable, direly afraid, Drop fails to hide its desperate glances- on this hillside, out in the suburbs, on an evening like this, the fluffy cloudcover isn't dense in the still-muggy air to block out the ever-present view across Kagoshima's bay, of the towering stratovolcano of Sakurajima. That is where a helping of Drop's fear leads.
Lilian Rook     'at least I can tell Ceri I was right. You did give up. Not that she will care at all.'

    Lilian rolls her shoulders with a little tensing and slumping exhale. "You're still wrong." she says, without looking back. "These days, I care more than I ever have, and I'm trying things more sincerely than I have in my entire life. The thing I gave up on was you. I stopped pandering to everyone at my own expense and started manifesting some fucking consequences. Grasp what a boundary is or don't; it doesn't matter to me anymore."

    'I admit I may have been one once, but I do not victimize anyone who does not victimize me first!'

    "Someone having a shitty day doesn't give you a license to kill. You're so obsessed with crime and punishment and who deserves basic dignity that it makes everyone around you sick. No one can love someone who's so desperate for justifications to hurt people."

    'She does, does she not? I wondered when you might again notice.'

    Lilian smiles weakly. "When she started believing in it again." she says. "I'm not stupid enough to fall for empty words. I never actually was. But I never want to be someone who pretends not to see actions." She sighs. "I suppose I have to do something about her Gilgamesh money." Lilian mutters.

    'I can't think of any reason why someone who's also against the Temptations-- well, no one's *for* them-- would want to hide from us. Especially not hiding the fact that they helped at all. But maybe... it's not someone that *wants* to be hidden?'

    "Then there are currently three realistic possibilities." Lilian says. She sounds so normal that it's almost easy for Kayoko to believe nothing happened. There isn't even a lingering smell of gunsmoke to ignore. The switch toggles on, then toggles off. The Lilian who acts on her feelings, replaced by the Lilian she knows, all but on the spot. "Something happened to Meika, without her knowing, that made it possible for her to do this. Other magical girls, not affiliated with the Refulgence, are operating in this city while hiding their existence from you. Or, someone is copying, stealing, or otherwise making piecemeal use of Meika's magic, possibly with the intent of framing her."

    A silent beat passes. "Who has Polly?"
Hibiki Tachibana     Sometimes there's two of the same Cherub. Sister Kurokawa's is one that has a double. There's never more than two, though, for some reason, and there's just one of mine and Vermillion's. I've counted them before.

    "Isn't that weird?" Hibiki murmurs bluntly back to Kayoko, roughness still in her tone. She doesn't look away from the Cherub she's holding, but she does let go and stand up to let Jeanne's boot do the physical harassment instead.

    "Why do some of them come in twos and others don't? Why /only/ twos? Did something happen to make it so there was another copy of a Cherub walking around, or are some of them just different somehow?" Her narrowed eyes drift from the second of the three-eyed Cherubs back to the first, that had walked past them. "Does it have anything to do with Kurokawa or the Refulgence, or are they really as in the dark as everyone else?"

    They're all obviously rhetorical questions, because it's not as if Kayoko could provide an informed answer, whether she wanted to or not. The Chevalier is the one her eyes fall on after a moment, however. "I'm not sure how much of this even /is/ a 'natural fact of the world' anymore. I'm a little more careful about believing that now. But if everything going on here somehow is how it's supposed to be, I don't think I can get along with the 'God' that made it that way."

    And even if it's not, Flamel's talk of something important being ill and God having other priorities doesn't paint a very kind picture at all.

    "Whoever or whatever's really responsible for it..." She trails off, but her clenching fist doesn't leave much to the imagination.

    Who has Polly?

    Hibiki glances around, only catches her left-behind belongings, then frowns beneath her scarf. "...It's too late to hide any of this from her. Like it or not. ...I hope that doesn't put her in any danger."

    A civilian roommate abrutply getting involved in this part of a magical girl's life hits uncomfortably close enough to home that she can't keep the worry out of her voice.
Sarracenia      Sarracenia listens to everything that Lilian says to her...and just stares at her in disbelief. "...-I- care more than I ever have, and am trying things more sincerely than I have in my entire life! Do you think I would be here, this close to someone who literally wants to kill me for existing if I was not? If the boundry was 'not in your sight' then you are completely right that I am going to ignore that boundry! I am trying to help where I can, and I will not let you or anyone else stop me! And -you- having a...crappy day does not give -you- a license to kill! Nor does someone having an opinion you do not like! And EVERYONE deserves basic dignity! If you do not believe that I cannot grasp how, since your fanatical followers say you restored their dignity when others would give them none! If wanting people to show basic dignity makes people sick, then so be it!! I would rather make them sick by expecting dignity than -pander- to them by not showing any!"

     Sarracenia is boiling again, but Hibiki and Tamamo already pursuaded her not to start anything more with Lilian right now. So, instead she storms over to Hibiki and hands the school jacket back. "...thank you again." she says, barely able to keep her voice under control. "Will you let me know if there is an expedition to that mountain? I still want to help with whatever is happening here. Those girls do not deserve this, no matter how...abrasive my conversations with Meika might have been."

     Sarra heads toward the warp gate after that. "...I believe in being a good girl..." she mutters to herself. She just...isn't that good at it yet.
Meika Kirenai '*Why*, are you so *desperate* to see us as--?!'

    "As monsters, r-right..?" She fills in that unsaid blank, in the worst way for denying it. A handful of others could fit, thrown to and fro around, that she's familiar with, her way, or caught indirect, this past year especially. Are they wrong?

    Meika doesn't expect help from Kayoko. Of course she doesn't, by now. Her short, pleading glance gets cut off, forgotten, left in the realm of 'yeah, that figures, it's for the best it just be me'. But what she expects less, is for Tamamo to ask to see that. Meika freezes up like a deer in headlights. There is no good answer.

    The assurance that it'll be okay if she does, if she explains, even if it's embarrassing, is a sentiment she's had a framework built for over years of that assurance being impossible to follow through on. It doesn't really matter that this isn't quite that, it strikes close enough that she's already trying to scramble for a way out-

    But Tamamo is someone repeatedly trustworthy, both in action Meika has seen in a multitude of places, as close as to nigh-singlehandedly saving Love and Justice's fates, and there's that similarity between Meika and those two magical girls, put down in record, even, at the company they originated with.

    "N-not here. P-please don't ask me to, right now, r-right here." The odd frantic note in her expression implies even answering that she could, some other time, some other place, feels off-limits to say, out loud, here and now. The best she gets is implying it in the negative, a 'maybe another time, if-', and scared-pleading uncertainty.

'Would that more of us could forget some of those mistakes we made in the pursuit of a happier future.'

    A hard flinch. I hate that. I hate that I will. I don't want to. Even if I should want to lose that, I don't. A soft inhale. Sayng it out loud makes it different. "... I don't want to forget that either." A short glance to Kayoko, as if she's expecting something out of her, worse than a silent ask for help, like some shape of harm or dissaproval is coming.

'You have spoken as if your life, or some portion of it, is set soon to end. This could occur only if some other force had a design upon you, or if you were unwell, yourself.'

    "I- magical girls lose their powers, lose their memories, we stop being *that*. That's what's going to end. I don't know why you can't see that, but- but I really, really don't have long. Maybe nothing seems wrong because that's how it's supposed to be." It's impossible to hide how bitterly uncomfortable Meika feels about the interpretation she herself crafts, built on half-facts and assumptions. A clear answer saying part of her is dying would be helpful, wouldn't it? Knowing that something is wrong, and can be fixed. Knowing there isn't is scarier.

    Unless it's something outside, at least.
Meika Kirenai 'Possibly with the intent of framing her.'

    "... Framing me for what? W-what would that even matter, now..?" She wrings her arm. "Maybe I don't get it. That's- yeah. I don't know." A flash of guilt enters her tone, again, worse, for having piped up to a comment meant for someone else. She continues, anyway. "... Who would *want* to be hidden..? It's- it's awful. I can't- I don't think that could be it. I don't know. Maybe it's not by choice."

'...It's too late to hide any of this from her. Like it or not. ...I hope that doesn't put her in any danger.'

    Again, Meika winces. "... Oh. R-right." A cigarette finds its way to be held in fingers, now no longer bleeding. "... She'll- she'll have to be fine. We'll- Cobalt can... make sure, m-maybe. I don't know. This is all- t-too much. All too much."