Scene #8974: Somewhere In Nevada-4

Owner	Pose
Lilian Rook	'The in-car audio fuzzes lightly, and when Bryce turns up the volume, you can just barely hear the distant roar of a plane. Katrina reaches back to toggle the roof view. "Stop the car." "Engine won't cool down fast enough. No point. Best to act natural." "If we can hear it then it's already further ahead than its sound-wake. It's passed us?" "Or circling, or descending." "Do you think that jet from last week is back?" "Miss Grimm's theory might not be so bad." 'I can cool it. And hide us. Pull over. Even if they saw us, it's not too late. Bryce doesn't think twice about it. Even if it's only one of Lilian's unassuming friends-- or perhaps precisely because it's one of Lilian's friends he wasn't told about-- he cuts the wheel arm over arm and sends the massive rover into a violent counter-clockwise slide. Luggage clatters over itself and slams into the rear hatch from inside. You feel your bodies being pressed into the seats from the moment of centrifugal force. A cloud of dust flares up on the right side, completely obscuring the corresponding wall monitors, giving you no view of outside. You hear two gear switches in the space of a second, and the vehicle lurches forward. The axels squeal. The road travelled is hardly well-worn, but diving just beyond it is already far more questionable. It's a miracle he even finds a gap between the bony coral growths and weather-worn stone big enough for the rover; and even that rocks you forward on impact as the sides scrape and the rear wheels are lifted off the ground. Veiny red vegetation tears ahead of you, and falls over the roof, but you're still obvious. The radio fuzzes again. This time more loudly, lasting several seconds longer. An ear-piercing whine comes from the electronics, and the interior monitors stripe with a moving band of greywash, sliding over the rover from one side to the other. Both of Lilian's siblings leave their seats. Lilian herself has leapt out of hers. Katrina's entire demeanour changes instantly, hurrying between the aisles and grabbing a submachine gun from the ceiling netting as she goes, performing a magazine check and shouldering open the cargo bay door. Bryce flicks a dozen switches on the dashboard, pops the glove compartment, rifles through for a case that he pockets, then tosses a medical kit down the cabin to Katrina's open hand, snags what appears to be a flare gun, and all the visual monitors cut under blackout. Arthur's and Petra's handheld consoles shut off, then on again. Lilian has moved to the door, Night Mist clutched by the scabbard in one hand. "That's it. Go home." "It's just a plane." "It's not.]" "We know it's not a plane. But we're not in hot water yet." "I'm not waiting until you are." "You're forty years too late for that, Lilian. We can go a little further." "Assuming that thing doesn't . . ." "I can see well enough that you aren't worried about a missile strike." "You wouldn't go to the door before us if you were really worried."
Rita Ma	Rita, leaned forward and gripping the driver's seat from behind, waits tensely for the exact second the rover stops moving. "Ms. Petra," she says, meaning clear. Then-- Rrrip, slither, crunch, ssshhscreek. Something tears a huge hole in the back of her cute cardigan, and something makes a wet slurp-slithering sound inches from Bryce's ear, and something pries the driver's door open three inches; all causeless-effect like telekinesis, but it sounds weirdly organic. Something wraps all around the car's exterior too, wetly audible. And then something turns from invisible to opaque, and all the windows go black at once. A second later, there's bending metal from the direction of the hood and a hissing quench, and Rita scrunches her face up tight like she's trying not to yelp. They need to kill their heat signature. Water is a good coolant. A tentacle is mostly water. Expendable biomass. "We'll have a minute," Rita says, keeping her voice steady and swallowing. From above, when the dust clears, there isn't a rover anymore- just a perfectly convincing boulder dotted with alien coral. As a minor downside, opening any of the rover's doors will now entail ripping through partially-calcified woven chromatophore-flesh.
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: Hide!! Bad situation. Essentially all of Arthur's abilities deal emit more heat, not less, if they interact with waste heat at all. "Gah!" He shuts his Nintendo handheld off, as if that's going to help, and runs through menus, trying to figure out what to do. Stars? DEFINITELY no good. Portals? Radiation burst will be visible for a good quarter mile if he moves the car, or even if he links with a polar ocean in this world to bring in some cold water. Gravity? What good would gravity do? Space-warping? Well, that's heat-neutral, isn't it? >Arthur: Is space-warping heat-neutral? "Well, yeah. Same heat's gonna be coming out no matter how you move geometry, as long as there's the same mass, volume, surface area, and processes happening." Arthur mutters to himself, paging through menus of SKILLS and ABILITIES and SPELLS and FRAYMOTIFS. >Arthur: But is that actually heat-neutral as perceived from a single point? "It's heat-neutral from our perspective." >Arthur: Your perspective doesn't matter. They see what they see "Wait..." He snaps his fingers and begins to trace shining green lines in the air. While Rita makes exotic seafood ("DAMN, what is that DELICIOUS AS HELL SMELL?" Arthur mutters to himself), he does something a little more exotic. The calcified boulder-structure abruptly ripples, shudders, and shifts suddenly, hopefully while there aren't eyes on it. It's now far, far longer than the car, a fair bit taller, and, most importantly, much thinner, with flattened sides that look like they've been formed by some truly absurd erosion. The interior of the car hasn't changed at all. But if someone were to bore a hole through one of the windows and peek outside, they would see the environment out there like it were seen through a funhouse mirror. He's forcibly adjusted their dimensions to make heat emit primarily to the sides, and barely, if any, upwards. It's the stealth-jet technique, applied to a resting vehicle!
Tamamo	Tamamo is, firstly, through around, within the confines of her seat belt, teaching her that she was right to respect the tradition of using them, though she's non-rigid enough to still find the experience distractingly uncomfortable. What strikes her, next, is the sight of Katrina picking up a gun. Did she already have one, before? Tamamo has to stop and think about why that sight surprises her. Lilian, of course, has long used various weapons. It was being ever told that she was some sort of traveling doctor that had given a contradictory impression, maybe. They had recently discovered that there was more to the older sister Rook than previously known, of course. Still... That this delays Tamamo from doing anything about the present predicament doesn't particularly matter. While she could do something about hiding a vehicle, it's questionable whether she could do so quickly, and she definitely can't do so while inside of the same. With the windows and doors blocked off, there's no way for her to draw the space outside it.
James Bond	The heavy but compact pistol is a familiar weight; the grip is well known by the contours of Bond's palms. The grip knows him, too, as does the hammer, expressed in the subtle canyons worn into one and the faint thumb-shaped fade in the other. Click. It isn't strictly necessary. The Walther is double action--but it might save a fraction of a second on the first and most vital triggerpull. His back was pressed against the opposite side of the door from Lilian--he isn't sure when, wasn't consciously aware of it any more than he gave active thought to the pull of his weapons from their places on his black fatigues. I can see well enough that you aren't worried about a missile strike. You wouldn't go to the door before us if you were really worried. Yes: weapons, plural. The knife, too, is familiar. Not this one exactly, but the feel of one in the hand, blade down, index lined alongside the trigger guard of a gun. For the first time in a long time, the blue eyes reflected in the blade seem familiar to Bond, too. It's another gadget; the blade mounted on a motor and coated in a reflective polymer to allow checking sightlines from behind cover. The blade turns, partly from the motor and partly from his wrist, allowing him to see the door, and more importantly, the perpetrators of any would-be breaching attempt or otherwise who might stand on the other side.
Xion	The trip through Nevada (in fancy APC!) had gone so well that Xion had forgotten the tenseness inherent in the journey. It was a big bus ride, with mostly people Xion knew and liked! The air of 'party' had been missing, and instead there was something. . . else? Xion hadn't really been on road-trips. The whole thing was a kind of sitting adventure, spending time in a particular place while terrain moved past, a Corridor of metal and rubberized wheels and plushed seats and crash netting and gear clipped to the sides. Spending a little time with Tamamo in aside had given her a chance to speak again on things that felt-as-yesterday but were now a year or more ago. > "That is new, is it not? I have not often heard you speak of it." "Well, we've been fighting against Heartless, Roxas an I, but we never seem to get anywhere. The thing's that changing is the frequency. It got worse and worse and worse and then just all of a sudden stopped. I was hoping to ask you and Lilian about it, since Lilian found a magic book a long time ago and I was wondering if there was anything new--" > Everything: Get Worse "What's going on?" Xion asks, as the vehicle spins and she's caughht in a moment of motion that gives great credence to all the seatbelt ads ever shown, bounced and smushed around the cabin for a moment and pressed to the wall. The noirette snaps out of her bindings by skipping the act of unbuckling and pop-teleporting to her feet. With her left fist gripping tightly to the spun-about keychain around her hand, Xion rests a knee on her still-belted seat-edge, not stepping into the APC's aisle until Katarina and Lilian had moved past. "Is it the Antegent? Or, something else? A satellite?" Having thoroughly lost the plot on what is pursuing them - or what would be so investigative as a fly-by, one that could be heard on radio, Xion steps besides Tamamo and thinks, also locked in to the car. Her foot taps the plated floor, frowning at the back-access that Lilian and James stack up against. "Arthur, I don't feel anything," Xion announces, closing her eyes and reaching farther with her feelings, searching for something more tangibly-connected than a communications satellite. Why a plane?
Petra Soroka	Petra is Gaming. Against two of the most finely tuned gamers in the Sector, she's losing, of course. Petra doesn't have some fucked up magical-mental fixation on the concept of playing Metroid Prime Hunters like Nika and Arthur do, she just Plays Videogames Sometimes, so her competitive ability is fueled solely by good old-fashioned obsessive comparison and dedication to both a discrete goal and the broader ideological intention of expressing care to someone important who needs it in the language they understand, which, in Nika's case, means trying and failing to combo her into oblivion. "Do you think that jet from last week is back?" Aw, geez, looks like it's time to immediately put down the game because it's a critical mission situation even though she's not mad at all. Despite Sakura, despite the potential life-and-death of the American jet spotting them, it's still specifically important to Petra to shoot Nika a message explaining that something came up, rather than immediately snapping the DS closed. This, too, is mission-critical. "Ms. Petra," Petra is in the process of being tactically useless for stealth, pulling her transteam gun off her hip while fumbling with her seatbelt with her other hand, when Rita's voice cuts through the fast-paced back and forth talk. She looks wide-eyed at Rita for just a second, and then ducks her head down to her lap and clamps her hands over her ears, incidentally lowering her center of gravity enough that she kind of just rolls over halfway into Cinder's lap when the APC careens into the brush. The physical demonstration of hear-no-evil see-no-evil is necessary, because she unfortunately can't help hearing some squelching even through her hands. Surely, someone else is squelching, not Rita. Who else could make wet slurping noises? All the men are immediately disqualified in Petra's mind for unknown reasons. Xion tends to make vrooms, and Lilian's noises are more often slaps. Cinder and Tamamo are fire-aspected, so wet noises are right out. This only leaves... Petra? That train of thought makes zero sense at all, but it distracts Petra enough that the car is fully encased and calcified by the time she raises up her head again. "What's the plan; wait them out if we can? I mean, even if they can't find us now, I don't think they'd just ignore seeing a heat signature that suddenly disappeared, so we might have-- have lost the chance to be totally unexpected."
Trudy Grimm	Trudy jolts in her seat the first time. For all remaining jostling, the witch clings tightly to avoid being tossed around any further; eyes wide and jaw set. The rover rumbles to a halt-- Rita and Arthur do things. Katrina and Bryce break into a flurry of readiness activities. Lilian voices her disapproval for it. Trudy... understands. I'd worry about people I loved, too. As James readies himself, Trudy unfastens her seat harness and rises to her feet. In the environment of sudden tension, her hand goes immediately to the spine of the Grimoire, though she seems reluctant to lift it from where it hangs by the strap. There is precious little she could contribute to either hiding the rover or surveilling potential threats, she decides. And so the witch closes her eyes and exhales. Forcibly relaxing herself. "They would detect magic were I to use my runes, no?" Trudy speaks up just as her eyes open, glancing sidelong towards Katarina at the cargo doors, "And so I will prepare instead for what may come." Inwardly, the witch sifts through heaps of detritus, broken bleached bone, and rot. Picking out and setting aside severed hands, fingerbones, and carpels elsewhere in the void she keeps her materials within, for easy access. "I should rather like not to see them ever again, but perhaps it is best to prepare in the case of interference from those unsavory acronym sorts."
Angela	Angela is still in 'Eggpack' form and Cinder's still with the team. They both probably would've been happy getting to know Lilian's family better for the rest of the trip. Angela managees to smile at the show of concern for one another the siblings have, however much a struggle it might have been to get to this point (something Angela is only vaguely cognizent of) and the best part of it is, she only feels a little envy. Or maybe, she thinks, she just feels the same loads of envy that she'd expect but because it's Lilian it's largely offset by the chemical of appreciation that Lilian has family in her life like this at all--to say nothing of the true companions she has been able to seize in the past. Angela's ability to distrust lilian has essentially corroded more and more with time and evidence. If Lilian is leaping out of a seat and at alarm--that means it's time to be extra attentive and foucsed. Before that she was watching Petra game and is extremely interested in 'Metroid's progress and character at least until someone points out her name is Samus. She hadn't been paying much attention by the look sof it, her eyes flicker over and then back periodically as the blur of very slowly moving gaming occurs. She has to remind herself occassionally that the game is progressing considerably faster for Petra than it is for her. But as she's a backpack there's not much she can do to invesigate a not-a-plane. She does give a small nod to Cinder for her to get ready for ... Rita gives the car a hug. "...You're very clever, Miss Rita." Angela says, getting cozy vibes.
Tamamo	'I was hoping to ask you and Lilian about it, since Lilian found a magic book a long time ago and...' Xion had Tamamo's attention, up until the point where everything gets worse. A note for later, if the memory isn't shaken off by realized dangers. She has to take off her seat belt by hand, and does so mostly for the feeling of being able to move, rather than for the sake of having anywhere to go. She smooths out her tails, and ruminates upon the thought that there is, surely, some form of safety restraint better balanced for her body. Remember why you're here. 'I can see well enough that you aren't worried about a missile strike.' "The Agency of whom were spoken can do somewhat worse than-- explosive rocketry." 'What's the plan; wait them out if we can?' Surely not specifically responding to Petra, "We should likely take some action to move, whether back or forth, rather than an indefinite wait, if only for..." Tamamo stops and considers, then makes a sweeping gesture with fingers outspread, summoning her mirror. "Lilian, please tell me when a 'reasonable' time has passed, and I shall peek into the waves past the wall. I cannot do so with none being able to spot my 'eye,' of course, or I would do so now."
Lilian Rook	From your position on the ground, it's difficult to see a plane even before the vehicle is fully encased in mimetic tendrils and badly stretched spatial planes. After that, it is functionally impossible to do anything but hope. Lilian flinches away from the door, and Katrina makes a loud noise when Rita both punctures and then ensconses the rover, but the period that follows is mostly filled with the fading roar of a jet engine and long quiet after that. The radio fuzz disappears well before the noise; mediums with different speeds. atrina looks apologetically to Tamamo, then situates herself with an oblique angle on the door. Bryce ducks well under the cargo netting and retrieves something else of his own, gently pulling down sunproof weather jackets as if the slight rustle could tip off an aircraft. All three of the Rook siblings seem to hold their breath for entirely too long, and then, finally, release them in uneven sequence. 'What's the plan; wait them out if we can? I mean, even if they can't find us now, I don't think they'd just ignore seeing a heat signature that suddenly disappeared, so we might have-- have lost the chance to be totally unexpected.' "Probably." says Lilian, nearly groaning, but seeming to accept this as a matter of fact. "It was already dubious that we'd approach undetected if the place is being actively used. I had faint hopes, but this is probably as far as we take the car." Katrina mutters "Still, that exact same plane just feels like rotten luck somehow. It probably doesn't matter, but it's the more unlikely option, so it's . .." Bryce frowns. "Don't dismiss a gut feeling. You have too much experience for them to be wholly irrational." 'They would detect magic were I to use my runes, no?' "Probably not from an aircraft. But we were about to hit a likely sensor net anyways. Get anything you could need on hand out now. Anything that won't light up later, cast it ahead of time." It feels kind of weird to hear a guy like that say 'cast' as if he's planning pre-combat buff spells at a tournament tabletop RPG session. "We could always hope that your friend recognizes you and greets us nicely." Katrina mumbles. 'We should likely take some action to move, whether back or forth, rather than an indefinite wait, if only for...' "Agreed. Rita, can you keep disguising the rover? Even if it won't fool visual." Bryce asks, and little else. "How far are we?" "Twelve kilometers until we're right in the foothills, I think? You can already see the peak." "That's too long to go walking in the open." Lilian turns around to Tamamo. "Can you scan outside now? I'm going to see to the engine as well. The heat signature won't be a problem if we only have to travel a few minutes." The landscape, scryed outside, is as it was. Unfortunately, the tire tracks in the dust from the sudden swerve are . . . smeared enough to not be obvious for what they are, but not invisible to anyone hypothetically looking closely. In the distance, Tamamo sees the tiny black dot of the aircraft circling in for landing. You'll arrive very shortly after, at this rate. 'Is it the Antegent? Or, something else? A satellite?' "I don't know what that EM wash was." Katrina admits, apologetically. "It's probably--" Lilian shuts her mouth by reflex in front of her siblings, then at their staring, gradually defeats the automatic habit.
Lilian Rook	". . . something like they use in the inner city, where we came from. Like Kent's gear, way back. Or like . . . NAZCA's disruption gear. Mounted on an aircraft. Hopefully it's just stealth equipment to keep their travel from being spied on, or intercepted by Antegent. But we should be prepared that it'll get in the way of magic. Anything using geometry or language." Which is, again, unfortunately most people in the vehicle, including, partially, Lilian. "This ride has been too clean so far. We haven't even seen sign of Antegent moving around. They like clustering around human inhabited routes, but they're not that uncommon in No Man's Land. It's been purged far too effectively." When Tamamo gives the all clear, Lilian gestures for James to follow her, and disembarks for a couple of minutes. She has him check the engine while Bryce and Katrina settle back in, not being a car mechanic herself, reliant entirely on Rita's cooperation. What matters either way is that Lilian uses her own magic, while the group is still ostensibly out of viable detection range, to accelerate the cooling process of the engine by several factors, skipping hours of idling to reach the ambient lukewarm air of the desert. Clouds are close to rolling in from the east, by the time she's finished up. "Arthur." Bryce calls out, seemingly delayed until after Lilian has left. "If you're our evac, then prepare an exit solution ahead of time. Please. That girl needs to know that we're not helpless, but you should know I'm not stupid either. If we have to, we need to be able to vanish at a moment's notice, detection or not." Katrina spends a while staring misgivingly at Rita. It's not the same as the way she'd looked at her when they first met, but it's not altogether dissimilar either. Whatever her feelings are, they're muddled up with being able to tell, "It hurts, doesn't it? Is it something you can let me see to, or something that . . . isn't like that." The way she euphemistically evades 'can't show me' feels excessive, and older than knowing Rita.
Lilian Rook	HAZEL: Okay. HAZEL: Thank you for playing! HAZEL: Sakura still says I can't watch just yet. HAZEL: You will be careful, right? HAZEL: See you soon! HAZEL: Say hi for me too! HAZEL: Please!
Arthur Lowell	>Arthur: I don't feel anything "Always gonna be something overhead and not from the side, that's always how it goes." Arthur rambles to Xion. "Getting a little bit more 2D is great stealth no matter what. But hell, zero connection, zero heart? Maybe that's good. Won't call in some shit, at least." >Arthur: Provide a TELEPIPE Arthur glances to Bryce, then looks at the exit, frowning. He nods, agreeing. "Sure, dude." But how? He taps his chin a few times, looking around the rover. He goes to find the ROADSIDE EMERGENCY KIT. Namely, he yanks out a road flare! He puts a finger up, a silent indicator for Bryce to wait, then grabs a nearby pen and yanks the cap off with his teeth. He inscribes sigils and geometric designs onto it, glyphs that glow softly... And then, where the words "ROAD FLARE" are written on it, he writes something. He hands the newly labeled "NIGHT ROAD FLARE" to Bryce. "Probably won't work if it gets too far from me. But as long as I'm not super turbo mulched or power-drained all the way, should be a good power-channel, get anyone near it outta here loud and fast." As for more help than that on the travel... not much he can do at this point. Cover may well be blown as it is.
Angela	Angela opens her mouth to chide Katrina about openly staring misgivingly at Rita, thinks about Gebura's relationship with Rita, and then shuts her mouth. It's fine, she thinks. It'll work itself out (she certainly doesn't recognize the complexities in the look from her viewscreen). She cups her chin thoughtfully and the Eggpack mimics it. She's probably lucky SHE wasn't shorted out herself or maybe that's just Eggman tech for you. "May I count on you to carry me once more, Petra?" Angela asks. Cinder exhales. "If there might be mental attacks--" Cinder begins. "Stay close to Petra." Angela adds, and Cinder's not going to argue with that, but I suspect we'll unfortunately know more soon.")] ''Maintain operaitonal heterosexuality until we've reached the AO!'' "Huh?" Angela exhales before she can manage it. "Why?" She is... mostly certain it is a joke of some sort but.
Tamamo	Katrina looks apologetically to Tamamo and gets a faint smile in response. 'Can you scan outside now?' Tamamo does as asked, and as she said she would. She can catch more than light and sound, even with a mirror as medium, but nothing, in this case, to give her further pause. Conveniently, her peeking skips past Arthur's funhouse. "A plane comes to rest, ahead, most likely. Our walk was how far, did you say...? A hike, it is, I suppose." One wouldn't know, by the reluctance in her voice, the stack of stamina-regenerating charms she carries. 'Get anything you could need on hand out now. Anything that won't light up later, cast it ahead of time.' "I am ever well-prepared, of course." There have been a few times that wasn't true, but those were following dire emergencies. It's been a spell since the last for which she went all out, and her preparation -- the brush of ink to paper, in carefully arranged geometry and semi-visual language -- is all done, along with the spreading of personal wards. Hers isn't the kind to be reformed every hour. "I am not, I suppose, particularly adept in stealthy operations afield. I am not able to hide myself much better than I am, against any looking for sources of magic, as they surely will be doing." That's not entirely true, but it's perfectly plausible.
Rita Ma	Rita's face is a little tight, and her voice a little wobbly, but she still smiles for the eggpack. "I didn't do anything special," she says, serving as both deflection-of-praise and denial-for-Petra. "But thanks." She reaches over to squeeze Petra's hand when the coast is clear, but Petra's already opening her eyes. She's greeted by that mealy-reassuring look Rita sometimes puts on. (The padding of the driver seat's shoulder is scratched where Rita gripped it too hard.) People need to exit to check the engine, so Rita squirms tentacles out of the way; the interior remains safe-for-Petra, but anyone getting an outside perspective sees something like mis-loaded image data. What-ought-to-be-rock-and-coral dissociates into flattened ribbons and compliantly shifts away line-by-line from the door and the hood. For some reason, even though nothing is emerging from that hole in the back of her cardigan, she can't comfortably return to her seat. She just stays awkwardly standing. "Rita, can you keep disguising the rover? Even if it won't fool visual." "Huh?" Rita looks at Petra, weighs how much more cognitive dissonance she wants to heap on her bestie, and then decides that that's marginally less important than reducing the odds of catching a cruise missile to the windshield. "I mean, of course. But why?" Outside, she adjusts the coloration with a thought: lower half sandy brown, top half blue, to camouflage from the side against a flat horizon. "It hurts, doesn't it? Is it something you can let me see to..." Rita opens her mouth, but then looks confused. Maybe about being asked that by Katrina. Maybe about being asked it at all. Her lips shut in an apologetic smile with a self-conscious puff. "Not usually, Ms. Katrina. But cooling the engine did. If you want, you could...?" She tilts her head out towards the hood. A scorched tentacle- uncamouflaged, twitching, jelly-blue- is wrapped all around the engine block, still steaming. It's healing itself with a suffusion of glowy energy, shedding the burnt bits, but it's easy to imagine it still feeling raw.
Trudy Grimm	> "Get anything you could need on hand out now. Anything that won't light up later, cast it ahead of time." "Yes, of course," Trudy hums pleasantly at Bryce's advice. She filters through the countless beads and charms dangling from her wrist, picking out this and that and pulling them free-- pieces of turquoise, obsidian, and quartz, carved into smooth beads tied by leather strips-- and holds them up to her eye for closer examination. "I am unfortunately, quite ill-suited to clandestine affairs. But perhaps I can offer some measure of shared protections." Above her free hand the witch produces the forked rune of Protection, Algiz. As the warm golden light of the rune rapidly fades, identical shapes burn themselves into the surfaces of each bead's surface with a soft, similar shine. Examining them again, she nods once and then holds the bundle out. "Each of you take one, if you wish. It will protect you and ~should~ help you see through illusions and trickery. I imagine such may be helpful should any antegent cross our path. Or if these wretched agents choose to field such in their defenses to pass as such." Her free hand raises, a single finger extended, "Know however that my abilities are quite specialized. I have no way of knowing if charms against the likes of poultergeists will work reliably with such things. Caution is, as ever, the best guardian."
Petra Soroka	"I had faint hopes, but this is probably as far as we take the car." Yippee! Petra is smart about something! Unfortunately, it's something that condemns her to going outside in a magic blighted desert full of monsters and NAZCA military tech, so the brief upside isn't enough to make her happy about that. Exiting the car is a process of gathering up multiple girls, for Petra, in defiance of operational heterosexuality measures. It's far easier to look away from Rita's damning-by-comforting expression and reach out to complete the halfway-initiated squeeze than it is to think too much about Rita's tactical place in concealing the vehicle (thankfully, in the unwilling analyses of Petra's brain that insist on remembering each time she refuses to remember something, she has absolutely no precedent or link for how Rita would disguise a vehicle). She scoops one arm through a strap of the Eggpack to sling Angela onto her back, and automatically scoops Cinder's arm in the other, before heterosexual protocol is declared and makes that illegal. "I mean, of course. But why?" Petra clambers out of the car after everyone else (so that the gap in the calcified tentacle is as wide, and thus as ignorable, as possible, but when Rita is called on to do active mission work in plain eye and ear view of Petra, she makes a little show of busying herself with her mirror. She drums her nails on the compact case, studiously facing away from the car and Rita as if by convenient coincidence, like she was just reminded of this little sidebar. "Oh, yeah, Nika says hi to everyone, by the way. She's sort of cheering for us. So, yeah."
Xion	"Electromagnetic wash." Xion repeats, tone more curious as her bright blues open and move between dark windows and the peeled-open door that an invisible-nothing had prized open and turned off the outside lights. Seaside boulder-core and fully reticulated in their splines, Xion isn't at a full feeling of danger - she settles standing-leaning inside when Tamamo sends her sensor out. > 'But hell, zero connection, zero heart? Maybe that's good.' With a shrug, Xion rummages through a pocket and pulls out a grip of medallions of many colors and lustre, flipping through a half-dozen tokens with a hand-and-a-half of idle shuffling, her frown deepening at her set of options. "A missile doesn't have much heart, and doesn't call for much help, but it's pretty rude and sudden." She agrees dimly, in the sentiment of people awaiting the cruise missile they can't hear but worry about. "And I don't have any stealth abilities right now either." She admits, pocketing most of her medallions and leaving one with a dark earthen brown in her hand. "But I might get those tracks so we've got something to come back to." Slipping past the doorway of definitely not tentacles with an arms-up twist-and-snake around the peeled-away absence, Xion places the medallion against the center of her chest -- and takes one firm step on the solid ground outside, equidistant from the curling-dusted tyretracks. Spreading out from her foot's contact, the ground raises like hair, a carpet of dust-as-fur, and then snaps out like a blanket being sorted and folded. The Archwolf's earthshaping, while not Stealthy, was also a useful authority to apply to the tyre-turned earth to smooth it back to simplicity and unassuming Nevadan ground. Lowering the medallion, Xion looks back and around. "If anyone can find that plane, maybe instead of racing our rivals, we can just steal their ride and bargain with leverage." The noirette suggests lightly.
James Bond	Pushing away from the door, he reaches up and retrieves a black duffel bag from the netting... Twelve kilometers until we're right in the foothills, I think? You can already see the peak. That's too long to go walking in the open. "Agreed." Slinging the bag around his shoulder by the strap, he briskly zips it open and procures a small, unlabled bottle roughly the size of a bottle of complimentary hotel shampoo. "Something R&D have been working on," he says, giving it a little shake. It seems like she has the same idea, and he follows her outside after zipping the bag back up. A cursory inspection of the engine follows, above and under, before he confirms: "Familiar enough for me to say with confidence that it lived through that little EM wash and Bryce's stop. Good thing, too." He waggles the bottle. "Where's the tank?" The bottle contains a combination adaptive accelerant and engine treatment designed to work with combustion engines (even a hydrogen combustion engine like the rover). What's there will burn hotter, as well as leave a temporary residue along the internals which will aid in the compression and delivery of air to the engine, in effect a two-step chemical turbocharger. The empty bottle is placed in the duffel bag. He shoots Lilian a thumbs up, then steps back inside. "We should be able to get there in much better time," he informs Bryce. "Don't be afraid to give it more than you otherwise would. 'Back' is still going to be up to Arthur." Settling back in near Xion, he fishes around in the bag and almost offers her a smoke, before he realizes this isn't a 1987 Earth and people don't do that indoors here--much less, that he's never once seen her smoke. After a visible hitch in the searching of his hand, he procures a pack of mint chewing gum and offers her a stick, taking one for himself.
Lilian Rook	'The foothills' had been an adequate marker. 'Wheeler Peak', looked up, seems to have no meaningful importance except being the tallest in the state, which matters in terms of how far it can be seen, and thus, see down; and so reaching the second tree cover you've seen in the entire day-- itself a miraculous occurrence, bordering on creepy-- matters. After Katrina disembarks to do 'something' at the front of the car, and both she, Lilian, and Bond return, and Bryce disagrees. The drive resumes; and up until that point, is slower; heating the engine little, kicking up less dust, and making less motor noise, and so it'd take someone at very high elevation actually looking out in this specific direction with a telescope to see the moving rock before it enters . . . No. This isn't reclaimed or curated land. It's the way the wilderness looked before, fifty some years ago. That isn't an uncommon feature in certain places overseas, but the only places you've seen this lasting blots of nature have something in common. The domains of secluded temples or powerful magic families, and hidden places of power. The Siberian coalition's maintenance around their key Urban center, the Fuji sect alliance, the Dragon's Garden, Oreshnika's mountain valley, the Eastern Seaboard reserve, the Oda family's private land . . . That you'd see it here seems impossible. You're more than familiar that America, under the vast umbrella of its singular dominant secret order, has more than adequate means of its own to handle the world as it is, but not far beyond here is meant to be where the nuclear craters begin. There's no sign of it in the wild pines or the snowmelt river. You don't sense the presence of wards as the rover enters. You see no signs of routine patrol. There are no holdout points, compact and well-warded, filled with emergency supplies, for anyone caught outside after dark. The most magical thing in the area is a tiny Buddhist temple you pass by on the way. Practically a log cabin, whatever power it had was never great enough to matter, even before it fell into such visible disuse. 'Good thing, too.' "Hydrogen combustion is G.D.F standard for a reason." says Bryce, as the engine hum starts to fall beneath audible. "You don't want your engine to be susceptible to 'unexpected energies' out here." 'Probably won't work if it gets too far from me. But as long as I'm not super turbo mulched or power-drained all the way, should be a good power-channel, get anyone near it outta here loud and fast.' "Thanks." Bryce says, taking the flare. "Loud is fine. Our identities are already going to be compromised at that point. If this goes bad enough, we'll make the call before there's a chance to split up anyway." 'If there might be mental attacks--' "I don't think the Letter Agency really has 'psychics' that good?" Katrina says, looking to Lilian for implicit confirmation, then continuing. "But since it's basically one giant agency that cannibalized everything else, they've always been not-bad at keeping secrets. I just think if they could do that so easily, they wouldn't get into so much spycraft." 'Huh? Why?' "I'm making fun of lil' Lil!" "It's not working." "Help me watch the trees, Kat." Bryce interrupts the back and forth with an equal level of focused tension as Lilian. Katrina abandons her attempt silently, and returns to the cabin.
Lilian Rook	And there is little to watch but the trees. The fact that an asphalt road, littered in leaves, is still as intact as country roads ever get, spooks Bryce enough to turn off it, sending the all-terrain rover rumbling through bumpy forest side-paths and through a shallow creek without any sign of civilization. Only the misty blue top of the mountain is very infrequently visible. You could almost imagine camping out overnight. But there's only so long a vehicle like this can go before it must either plough through sturdy trees, or navigate a fifty degree incline, and it can do neither. Not too long later, disembarking fully is no longer a choice. Katrina turns to Xion and asks her to work her magic on the rover, being too valuable to her tiny operation to leave scenically gathering moss as a piece of environmental storytelling in an emergency. And it's not a long walk from there, if a rough and rocky one, until you see that you've cut the curve of the highway, and arrived at the outskirts of some 'old world' ski valley. In the summer, it looks like nothing more than a mock city block, disused five storey lodges, staff apartments, convenience stores and parkades. A small slice of a ghost town, transplanted into the middle of nowhere, in the eerie condition of looking like only the day after Chernobyl. Though you can read the signs perfectly well, without people, without noise, without cars, and without snow, it can only possibly feel eerily fake. Plastic. A suburb that had escaped hellfire for no reason at all. From here, there is naturally a far better view of the peak. The actual ski lines have fallen apart decades ago, but the posts can be picked out only going down. Near the top of the mountain, just below the treeline from the ground, skilled eyes can pick out the sight of a cleared space for a landing pad. There isn't space beyond it-- at least that you can see-- for a craft to be taken into a sizable hangar beyond it. A best estimate makes it only possible for two VTOLs and a single jet to rest in a covered berth. Whether the interior, secretly dug into an overlooked minor tourist site however long ago, occupies the peak, or sprawls down into the mountain, you don't know. Either option has concerning implications. But there's no meaningfully better route to take than this. Flying has its most obvious flaw, the trees break up and turn to bare rock lower down the mountain on any other side, planted here deliberately for the scenery. The buildings here are the tallest covered vantage there is to observe anything by far, and certainly the only thing hard enough to shield you from a serious sensor sweep, given just enough concrete. If only it were so easy. Though the timing doesn't correspond conspicuously to your near arrival, it's close enough to hesitate, when the PA system mounted on the ski village's broadcast poles whines loudly enough to hear from half a mile. The audio hisses, old transistors pop, and then the staticy sound of a woman's voice blares through, echoing sharply through the trees. "Come on out now. We're not going to wait here all day y'know. There are some people here who can't wait to meet you." The accent is perfectly generic pan-American, instantly forgettable. The distortion is bad enough that there might be two levels of it. Like speaking through a fighter pilot's helmet radio first, before being processed by the PA. "It's going to rain any minute now. Don't you see? I guarantee it's warm and dry inside." Heat signatures up on the landing pad. Radiation senses and spy gadgets ping from an invisible laser sweep of the terrain. Focused in a general direction, but not accurately directed at anyone just yet. Bryce motions down, and Katrina mutters something about 'probably on infrared. "Get over yourself, Rook. Your caddy boy squealed about you already. Remember? Blue team misses you. Hahaha!"
Rita Ma	Petra clambers out of the car after everyone else Rita sucks in a tight little breath. The disguise-wrapping layer on the vehicle... turns invisible? As in, the vehicle suddenly appears to not be covered at all. "M... Miss Petra!" she says, desperately waving out the open door for attention and forgetting to forget the honorific again. "I think we're driving a little further after all!" She sighs in soft relief and re-covers the vehicle when Petra's back in. Rita settles in next to her this time, though she has to awkwardly gay-sit sideways on her own hip, because her upper back can't be flush against anything. "Thank you, Ms. Katrina," she says, for something having been done up front. Her bangs shift with the endeared tilt of her head. "I don't think anyone's ever asked me that before. 'If it hurts'. No, one... two people have. But you're really sweet." The rover's windows become dimly see-through despite the disguise (which morphs to stay terrain-appropriate), one-way-mirror style. 'Terrain being eerie' is lost on her firsthand- unspoiled terrestrial nature is still almost a novelty to her- but she picks it up secondhand, getting somber. Fingers drum against her drawn-in knees. "Is this what America is 'supposed' to be like?" she says to Petra, presumed America expert. "It's sort of nice." On disembarkation, the rover again appears to stop being covered just as anyone gets out, and then actually stops being covered, with another slithering-slurping noise. She's just stretching and starting to relax into the little ghost-town hike (that's familiar to her, even if the deserted cities are usually wetter) when-- "Come on out now." Rita, who knows better than to come out when anyone says so, makes a little "!" squeak, shoves Petra behind cover on protective instinct, and vanishes. The small backscatter of dirt she leaves behind hints at vanishing in more than one way. "probably on infrared" Rita, now crouching-and-cloaked behind the lip of a building's roof, has a thought. "Ms. Rook? Infrared is just heat, isn't it?" Even when tentacle-wrapped, her skin has never felt clammy and her clothes have never felt body-warm. So, when a new Lilian Rook weaves itself together ahead of the party, it reads a perfect ninety-eight-point-six, and the invisible slimy tentacle that connects it back to Rita doesn't read at all. The mannerisms are good. There's the little haughty tilt of its head as it looks up at the screeching pole-mounted speaker, the purse of its lips; it rests a thumb between Night Mist's scabbard and guard, ready to unsheathe. The gait is good too, if suited for a more confident and confrontational mood than Lilian might be feeling. It strides towards the landing pad, heedless (of course) of danger. Whatever happens to it should be instructive. For just a split-second before Rita smooths it over, the party behind might glimpse a stump of blue umbilical connected to the Lilian's back.
Tamamo	Tamamo accepts one of Trudy's illusion-piercing charms with a, "Thank you, as always, Ms. Grimm." There's only so much Tamamo can do while riding -- well, no, that's not true. There's really no end of things she could be doing, so long as she's fine with being distracted. Operational security cuts out most of them. At some point, she needs to find a game she and Nika can regularly play together. Maybe Arthur knows of some...? Escaping through a blind spot, the reasonable thought of asking Petra doesn't cross her mind.
Trudy Grimm	The drive is nice enough now; Trudy feels more at-ease surrounded by familiar forestland than the Nevada desert, corrupted or not. She makes a note to ask Tamamo about the little temple they passed, later. Now is simply not the time. When the rover finally stops, she glances up. People are already disembarking and so Trudy does so as well. She stays mostly silent on the hike that follows, drinking in the mercifully much cooler mountain air and forested surroundings. A witch of the wood such as her can scarcely resist the urge to inspect the mosses and lichens or look for mushrooms. She does collect a pinecone at one point, gesturing with it as she shares a story about a lonely mountain troll creating a friend out of pine logs and resin. A completely unremarkable voice crackles to life through loudspeakers, prompting the witch to glance up thoughtfully as she listens. The taunt's purpose is rather obvious, especially once she confirms with Lilian's thoughts on it: The enemy knows they're here somewhere, but not where they are. At the mention of Team Blue, Trudy reaches into one of her sleeves, rubbing her fingertips over a collection of crystals-- each one, sporting a tiny pinprick of light deep within its center. I could... No. No. These people are ruthless. Just like my brothers. Miss Tamamo is right. Provoking them like that would only be a mistake. What she does instead is sink into her shadow completely, relocating herself to a more covered location in the shadow of one of the buildings. How fake and empty they are is also something to think about later. Without realizing it, she's placed her hand on the spine of the Grimoire once again, peeking around the corner at the false Lilian that Rita has created.
Petra Soroka	The bizarrely intact pre-Onslaught wilderness is actually reassuring to Petra, in a way that's entirely unrelated to the discomfort it causes Bryce. Besides its surface-level similarities to the slices of nature that Nika would carve out of the world to move elsewhere, and her non-local vague understanding of just how weird it is for this ski resort to be untouched-- surely NAZCA didn't protectit for this site, but chose this site because of it already being in this state-- there's something far simpler that improves Petra's hopes for this mission. Fucked up psychic children love to be surrounded by incongruously thriving wilderness. So the chances that Ash is here feel like they've gone up significantly! "Nika said she's not watching us, so she definitely doesn't know right where we are, but... I still can't imagine that she'd have messed with a little random patch of land out in fuck-off nowhere America without ever mentioning it. So it's gotta be something else." Petra looks perfectly at home trekking through the woods, all forest-commando-chic and shrugging on her EGO trenchcoat overtop in preparation for a fight, then replacing the Eggpack on top. Tromping around on moss and rocks over the ghostly-hollow suburban diorama suits her. "But... it's not magic? It's not defended? It's not... I don't know, maybe it is defended, but more like, um, in a way like the Archer was." Fighting Ash is a little discomforting on the face of it, considering their in-law importance by proxy, but especially remembering how Nika flattened the NAZCA agents before, and how terrifying Lilian is to be against, makes the prospect even more worrying. "Is this what America is 'supposed' to be like?" Petra has never actually been to Nevada in her life. In the past few years, it's entirely possible that Lilian has spent more time in America (in the multiversal sense) than Petra has, in totality. But Petra is asked a question by a pretty girl, and she has Opinions about nature and forests, so she sagely assumes the role of America Expert today. "Yeah, it is. Well, I guess, it depends on what you mean by 'supposed' to. Before the Onslaught, or before, like, humans. In most worlds' Americas, I guess there's just a lot of western America that looks a lot like this? But it'll usually have something going on, like the road, or those little buildings or whatever. --You know, have you ever gone camping?" "It's nice to be out in the woods like this, I think. It's pretty. But it just always makes me think, you know, how big of an effect even the tiny bits of human infrastructure have on nature, and then I get imagining whatever I'm looking at like humans ever existed at all on the world. Like, it's sort of, immediately recontextualizing, in a way that kind of makes me dizzy, to think about how much orientation just having 'a road at all' gives, and how without it, it suddenly starts looking like forest in every direction instead of forest on either side of a road. Does that many any sense--? Oh, wait, we're getting trash talked." Petra dutifully turns away to avoid seeing the second Lilian even after the illusion is properly settled. God knows what she'd start thinking if she knew her friend could make Lilian clones purely made of tentacles.
Arthur Lowell	>==> On the way there, Arthur remains fairly oblivious to the similarity this place has to Nika's and, in some way, to where Sakura wound up. Is a bloom here? The thought doesn't even get close to wandering across his mind. He holds close to the gang during the walk, keeping his handheld off for now. And once they get to their treeline cover near the old ski valley... He listens, and something about the quality of the voice on the PA just provokes him. You can see him rattling with an unserious fury. A mix of moderate frustration with the NAZCA Blue Team (the 'alphabet soup pals') and the voice on the line (the 'clapistani burgerfuckers') shouldn't be making this reaction. Those sweeps keep pinging his radiation sense... but right now, he's feeling a tense compulsion to walk out there and tell the lady with the low-audio-quality voice some interesting facts about her mother, her gender, or her generically pan-american ethnicity. >Arthur: Figure out the nature of the situation But he's being told they're probably not readied up. The folks from that plane probably aren't there yet. Or... could they have been? He pulls back a little while he watches Lilian Rook, and the rest here. Are there emplacements? Defenses? What the hell is going on here?
James Bond	A suburb that had escaped hellfire for no reason at all. Is this what America is 'supposed' to be like? "When I was a boy," Bond remarks, "The Americans of my world were testing nuclear weapons for the first time, in this exact state. There were two mock towns built," he says. "Or, at least, two that I can recall hearing about, years and years later. I imagine they would have looked something like this." After a pause, "Give or take a few eerie mannequins, I suppose." Come on out now. We're not going to wait here all day y'know. There are some people here who can't wait to meet you. Bond's watch lights up with a warning, overlaid atop the convincing digital facade of an ordinary analog face. Get over yourself, Rook. Your caddy boy squealed about you already. Remember? Blue team misses you. Hahaha! "This is why we never moved analysts to field work," Bond laments. "It never works out." "Once we're out, we should head for one of the buildings. Keep as many trees between yourselves and that helipad as possible." "If these are the people we think they are--if this is your first time dealing with these people, let me reiterate the point Lilian and Tamamo have already made: take them seriously. If you're spotted along the way and you're not absolutely certain you can handle it quietly, it's better to get someplace defensible quickly than it is to drag things out in the open. These people are trained killers with top-of-the-line equipment, and they won't be put away with a well-placed shot and a wish." After a pause, "I should know." OUTSIDE OF THE ROVER Bond does exactly what he'd said; in his case, his countermeasures against detection are his stealth skills, though he hardly has an ideal path to one of those buildings. His eyes are almost always in motion, his movements graceful but urgently deliberate. Occasionally, they flick down to his watch--between checking for motion from the direction of the helipad, he also checks a top-down computer-generated readout of his surroundings to form an idea of the tree cover from the vantage point up there; it's not just about occluding himself with the trunks, but with the boughs of the trees from below.
Xion	ON THE WAY, Xion is nearly out the door when she's pulled back by Katrina. She had thought, with the disembarking, that more would be happening. However, instead, what happens is merely the short moments of James at the engine, of the sizzle of nothing on the radiator, and Tamamo at the back extending up the oculus of her magic. They're not stopping, yet, so... Xion climbs back into the rumbling rover, past the wrapping, and nervously rubs her thumb across the medallion still held in her hand when she settles back in for the last leg. THE LAST LEG, Is spent in somber silence, a flat-faced tense ready that involves Xion changing her seat to be over one of the wheel wells, and thinking cold, flat thoughts. It doesn't help her, but she feels a little useful, holding the brown medallion in her hand. Useful, and also, disappointed in herself. She had borrowed such a mantle for the work of wind? She had wicked such a candleflame from a great fire, and-- Leaning her head against the inside of the window, Xion's seatbeltless meditation lingers with eyes directed only for a short while longer. James, considerate as he is, reaches out a v of two fingers with the sort of dishrag worn casualness of something from 1987 being offered a pocket-warm cigarette from a crinkled pack. It's gum, instead of the cigarette, but the Nobody can pinch the foil-wrapped stick between her fingers and disappear the whole of it into her palm with a quietly vocalized thanks. GETTING OUT, Xion is asked quietly to 'work her magic' on the Rover and she almost brings up the Hiromi medallion again before taking another look at Katrina's eyes, the forest about, and the rover. 'Ohhh!' Xion nods with bang-bobbing emphasis while quietly whispering, and then stands besides the door to peer inside to make sure everyone's out. When they are, the noirette places her hand back against the unwrapped-from rover and closes her eyes for a moment of focus. No moss might reach Katrina's precious expeditioner, for it begins to disappear like a defeated enemy in a JRPG up from the undercarriage. Dispersing in a wave, blown away in the breeze, the trillions of shifting-dark voxels and motes that the rover dissociate into dark sublimate. Then Xion drops her hands and turns to follow the group, a step behind James as she falls into his wake. Agile and sure-footed to a fault, she moves between trees at an easy pace for her, not pushing the magic while she can follow the lead of a literal storybook stealth expert, checking the forest, the helipad, the sky - and not feeling any Hearts, still, but the ones she expects to be there. It was eerie, in the quite direct way of silent forests. Spotting the 'Lilian Rook (Decoy)' gives Xion a similar shock to Petra, though she notices the new blue tail for a moment and understands without probing what's going on. "James." She whispers. "They'll definitely acquire the fake Lilian. I'm going to make for the closest building," She points across the empty no-man's-land without aesthetic trees. "And unlock that facing door. See you there, James." The Nobody, from behind a treetrunk, has a hole bloom as a black gash in the trunk that coolly swallows Xion's lower body as she steps backwards into it. "But if this makes you think 'Nuclear Bomb', I still don't feel any Hearts around here, so if your watch can look up: Ask it if there's any long-range missiles coming." Then, Xion disappears into her Corridor and bridges the empty distance towards the nearest building, shifting through the insides rather than the rooftops. As promised, as soon as she emerges (and if she does not immediately get Funny Alphabet Bombed) past the interior door, she turns and unlocks the door so James doesn't have to stand outside Like An Asshole picking a doorlock.