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Ivy Carrow	In from the outer rim of Castle Carrow, past the strange mish-mash of digital screens with directions to various gateways, liminal storefronts, high gothic arches and pristine stonework, the elites found themselves not too far from the Arcade, in front of a heavy wooden door with 'Medium Security F' printed on it. A cardreader had been attached to the wall and hooked into the door's locking mechanism, chirping and clicking open when swiped with the card the Warprunners provided.     The Vice-Captain was sitting by a doorway, typing away at a laptop, noting whoever came through and sharing information with anyone interested in hearing it. "We don't have enough experience to make a guess on its Connectivity, but it doesn't seem to be Esoteric; its unification seems to be proceeding normally. But that shouldn't affect our expedition, so long as we continue to secure the primary gate--which our runners have been doing, without much difficulty." Clack clack clack. A shift of their mouse, a grimace. "It's Habitability shouldn't pose too many problems. It's a very earthlike world; plants are thriving there, so life appears to be florishing. We haven't seen any sign of hazardous chemicals, radiation or non-newtonian physics. But keep in mind that there WAS a human civilization that seems to have collapsed. Be on the lookout for signs of plagues, and leave collecting samples to a runner, unless you have the tools to survive it yourself."     At last, the Vice-Captain swung around their laptop, using it like a display screen, pointing between various pictures. Needly fir trees in in an expanse of forest, chain-link fences, cast down, bleachers left to rot. "The gate has opened in what looks like an old football field." He says, matter-of-fact. There's another photograph of the once-football field, from afar, and then another photograph of the same landscape. But this time, a squat fort in the same gothic style as the rest of Castle Carrow seems to have sprouted from the ground. A banner with the warprunners symbol--a red, five-armed spiral, just like the one on every runner's left shoulder--hung from the outer wall, while a white flag flew overhead. "We've established a forward base around the gate. It will be our point of contact with the outside. If you can't orienteer back to it, please stay with a runner, or take one of these..." A series of red-black stones. Arcane senses will note how they glow--something like an anchor, or perhaps a beacon? "...To make certain you're never out of reach."     "We haven't gotten a clear look at what things are out there, but it doesn't seem standard to earthlike worlds. Do not assume hosility unless proven--but don't assume passivity either. Approach with caution. Remember, you are in an unmapped world. We don't understand the Risk it presents."
Ivy Carrow	While the Vice-Captain is presenting his a doom-and-gloom professional rundown, Ivy is practically gidding. She's by the gate, bouncing lightly on her heels, like she was about to go out on a school trip. "A new world!" Her eyes gleamed. "Unmapped and strange! I always thought it was odd that elites didn't take part in these...Why wouldn't they, after all?" She rubbed her hands together, giddy. "If we find survivors, we'll make first contact--Introduce them into the multiverse!"     "If we do, remember, we are ambassadors on behalf of that multiverse. First contact can be tense, sometimes even close to hostile. Remain calm, collected, and remember; what we do here could impact the way they interact with the multiverse for the foreseeable future."     "He's right. It's important work; we only get to do this once." Ivy's tone briefly lost its note of mirth. "Defer to my runners and I, if you're ever unsure. We've trained for this."
Calvin Nash	Sundown, late summer.     A new world has unified. As is often the case, there are many warpgates which lead to and from here, but the Warprunners discovered this one first.     Your entry point blurs the lines between 'man-made' and 'naturally occuring,' because while it's clearly a man-made structure, it obviously wasn't constructed to serve the purpose of a warpgate. Looking solely at this 'gate' alone, it's hard to imagine what purpose it would have served. Yellow paint clings desperately to it in scraggly patches, stripped bare and rusted across most of its surface.     Its shape resembles a tuning fork, with two prongs stuck into the earth. In the red-orange of early evening, its shadow crawls long and warped across the ground. Following those 'tines' upwards, they conjoin horizontally, and from this crossbar, the 'handle' of this tuning fork extends to perhaps half the hight of its tines. If six of you stood stacked foot-to-shoulder, you might see where the 'handle' abruptly terminates, and look directly across at the telltale jagged little metal mountain range of something snapped violently from its support.     Of course, it isn't a tuning fork. There is little conceivable reason why someone would put one into the middle of a field, let alone two--its opposite number lies flat on the ground, perhaps a hundred yards away, all but hidden by tall, overgrown grass. Encircling this field is the flimsy, rusted corpse of a chain link fence, its wiry skin hanging loose from its bones, blown near-parallel to the ground, stabbed through diamond holes with blades of grass. Sharp, rusted metal ribs overlook the field from the midpoint between the two 'forks' on either side, empty for want of the dull metal slats which lie in forgotten disarray nearby, each one forming its own little archipelago amidst the knee-high grass.
Calvin Nash	Each one of those long metal islands surrounding the barren, sharp ribs is no doubt a haven for the more reclusive brethren of the insects singing a sundown chorus for you. The droning warble of cicadas, high and constant, is a canvas upon which the others paint--for now, the staccato splashes of katydids in bickering argument with one another, the buzzing stragglers amongst the red wasps and carpenter bees, but surely more, once it's properly night-time.     Surely, these are the sounds of summer--but the air is cool, even for sundown. By night-time, it might be cool enough to imagine the warmth of a light sweater.     The state of the fence, and of those giant, once-yellow posts, might seem nothing but the passage of time. Time, after all, gnaws at whatever its teeth can sink into. It may strip fence from post, it may buckle monuments (?) under their own weight, and split asphalt, but it doesn't do all of this at once. Time kills slowly, gradually, subtly. The fallen post, the fence, and the rusted carcass of a lonely car in what was once a parking lot--those are all fallen, yes, but not subtly. Looking at them with a critical eye, it's as if a strong wind came from the north and bowled them all over.     This place where the Warprunners have made their forward base was a gridiron football field, once, where budding dreams, adrenaline and exuberance swirled under the glaring many-eyed gaze of bright lights on summer weekends. Those lights stand still, but shattered, blinded by whatever force crashed through this place. The field is nestled in a pocket of nature once curated so as not to be too intimidating to suburban sensibilities, which now plainly bends and breaks the bars of its enclosure.     An asphalt path too eroded and split to be called a 'road' anymore winds from the parking lot past that resting place of overturned metal husks now home to the nests of red wasps, disappearing behind a curtain of trees grown past the allotment their absent caretakers provided for them. In places, the former road is split open from below, long, uniform furrows as if a great serpent was wrenched unwillingly from the earth. This, combined with the general state of decay, makes it only slightly better than walking through the weeds, fir needles, and magnolia leaves. If your aim is to find survivors, following that road is probably the best bet.
Khosa	Khosa was... sort of invited, in that many people were publically invited and she decided she was one of them. Even if she was a little suspicious about the way they'd bring her through. (When she asked for a photograph of the place she was, she actually left and went to an inn, off-world, so that they wouldn't know where she *normally* was. She had been moderately surprised when the card actually showed up without anyone she saw dropping it off.) Khosa, for those who have not met her, which is everyone, is a near-human woman of significant height and strong build. She's dark-skinned from both genetics and tanning, and totally bald except for a thick tail of hair, pulled together at the back of her head with an ivory ring and falling past her waist. (*Totally* bald. She doesn't even have eyebrows.) Her face is strong-featured, with prominent eye ridges, a slightly heavy brow, and short, backswept pointed ears - that's the near-human part. She wears blousy pants, a brightly coloured long sash for a belt that holds up a knife made out of a carved claw, and a short vest over a chest wrap. This is actually one of her first trips away from Athas for more than a brief time. She's not accustomed to the displays of wealth everyone seems to be making; so much metal, let alone the water. She's also found out that it's cool, even when the sun is up in most of these worlds. Not that the daytime cool (of, say, twenty degrees centigrade, what she thinks of as evening temperatures) *really* bothers her, but, well... she notices. "I'll pass," she says, when offered the stone. "I can find you." Or, at least, she can find friendly minds even if she isn't going to read them, which is close enough. Khosa's more interested in everything else the Warprunners have and do, and keeps trying to walk around to see things (she considers poking them but decides not to, except for running her fingers across the wall, once). She is in good humour despite the weirdness. It's even cooler in the strange world they've gone to, though still not enough to be a problem. And if she thought it was weird before - "It's a *metal* ruin!" Khosa has seen tons of ruins. Her home is littered with them. But most of the surviving ruins she's seen are stone, and far older than this; her head cranes every which way as she tries to look everywhere at once, committing what she sees to memory. She does poke the gate with one finger. For all that it's metal and some kind of artificial stone she doesn't know well, it does feel slightly familiar to her, in the way that weathered abandoned places always do. Khosa drags her foot across some of the asphalt, finding a place where it's cracked and jamming her heel down just so to make the other end of a broken fragment pop up slightly. She lets it go a moment later. "Twenty years?" she guesses. There's no sand rasping it away like she's used to when she investigates ruins, so her guess is probably on the low end. She rubs her hands together, excitedly. "Definitely not too long. C'mon."
Futaba Nuki	Among those joining the Warprunners today is an unfamiliar face partially obscured by an oversized leaf and a dark gray mask that might remind someone of a raccoon or something (as though the raccoon tail coming out her lower back doesn't already). For those more familiar with Futaba, she's looking eager as ever even as she listens to the Vice-Captain's assessment of the region, albeit a little disappointed when it doesn't sound like there's any sort of ambient field danger to expect. "Sounds pretty normal so far... Maybe there'll be something weirder once we get there, but it sure looks... Normal." She comments with a low grunt when the images are presented. "If there's anything real weird, though, we'll keep our eyes peeled for sure. We got plenty of 'em and then some." She boasts, grinning smugly while pretending not to the notice the pair of (fake) eyes coming up from behind her (out of her tail), turning from side to side slowly like they're actually looking around that briefing room. Once the group finally leaves the castle through the warpgate, Futaba's own gear seems to just change from one moment to the next. Earlier, she had been wearing her usual track jacket and shorts combo, but she's clearly wearing a more ninja-y getup by the time there's visible signs of a destroyed civilization. She paces around a bit to get her bearings and enjoy the coole weather, then takes a deep breath before... "HhheeeeeeEEEEYY! Is anyone out there?!" The ninja calls out with little in the way of subtlety, closing her eyes for a moment to listen to everything around her. The bugs, the wind, the... Anyone? She's not expecting much, but she's keeping her ears wide open to make sure she doesn't miss someone calling back. "Might have a better shot seein' someone from further up... Pull me down if you need more boots on the ground!" Raising her tail far over her head, Futaba slams it into the pavement behind herself to give herself a big boost while leaping into the air, doing a triple backflip before stopping in place to reveal that her arms have turned into wings! Giant feathery ones, too, as she starts flapping rapidly to start pushing herself upwards. It only takes a few moments before she starts flitting around like a person-shaped bird, looking all over the place on the way along that northern path to watch for movement that might signify other people in the area. A little after that, and she shrinks the rest of her body to a smaller, dumpier, more marketable version of herself. It's considerably easier to fly that way while she has to focus on looking for people.
Aidan Proudpick	Today is Aidan's day off. He is armored up, but he also has his saddle bag, medkit, and camera. This is the first time he's been in Castle Carrow, or really, a castle of this sort of gothic stature. He moves slowly, turning his head around, then the rest of his body, tail flowing with him like some sort of ribbon. Eyes trail up and down around every curve and arch and gate until he finally makes it to the Arcade, card in hand. He waits patiently, idly bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet as he listens to the mission briefing, taking a serious look at each of the pictures. But it's more like someone listening to the rules upon visiting a zoo. Respectfully. He places the stone in the saddle bag. I always thought it was odd that elites didn't take part in these. A beaming smile from Aidan at Ivy. "Oh! I didn't get a chance to last time. I would love to see each and every one! You must have seen so many things no one else has seen!" "What we do here could impact the way they interact with the multiverse for the foreseeable future." Given Aidan's track record, some of the smile on his face wanes. "I'm sure we'll do fine." A NEW WORLD Aidan, hoping to get a better view, immediately scurries up one of the strange forks in the field, scrabbling up it in that circling quick way that only a squirrel can manage. He gets about halfway up when it starts bending, creaking dangerously in that way that only metal can, a groaning crying noise of rust wishing to give up. He makes a noise roughly equivalent to a 'GACK' before he leaps off of the wide spread two pronged post as it tilts dangerously to one side, rolling to one side as it topples down near him. A sheepish pop up to his feet. "Stuff isn't very sturdy around here, got it!" "Twenty years?" "You can guess that just looking at it?" He follows Khosa's idea of the road, moving up. He rotates on the spot, watching Futaba lift up into the sky, a grin on his face. It always tickles him to see everyone else's powers, always more spectacular than his own, in his mind.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine steps through the warpgate into the cool summer air, does a few stretches - teleporting always leaves her a little stiff - shakes out her arms, and sets off around the perimeter of the field. She's looking for tracks, refuse, signs that anything larger than a fox has come by here in the past however-long since things all went to heck. Although someone scrambling over the wreckage and poking around might be expected to make an ungodly racket, Madeleine does so with barely a sound. She knows intuitively just where to place her weight to not disturb the sometimes-delicate arrangements of scrap metal and broken concrete.     The huntress is halfway up the bleachers and investigating a potentially nest-shaped pile of old plastic and shredded upholstery when the maybe-goalpost comes crashing down under Aidan's weight. She nearly jumps out of her skin at the noise, whirling around and landing in a crouch with her knife drawn. Upon seeing that it's just an Elite causing too much noise again, she exhales with a 'phew' of relief and sheathes the knife on her belt.     Instead of completing a full circuit of the field, Madeleine joins up with the northward-bound foot traffic, having herself taken the long way around to the access road. For her part, however, she stays off the main trail and keeps to the cover of the treeline - with her heavy boots and canny wilderness sense, it's unlikely for her to step in anything *too* dangerous.
Powerpuff Girls	A FEW DAYS AGO, Buttercup had engaged in a Excellent Communication (ineffectively taking the wrong things seriously and casually) with the Warprunner crew. She had thought the Vice Captain was an 'agent' for a talent group, despite speaking on the Elite radios, and had paused her enjoyment of a shake shack burger and milkshake to shoot a photo in the parking lot outside. When the card had arrived in a flash of red, then the Puff had become interested. The upsell of exploring a whole new world was just a little bit take-or-leave for Buttercup - she wasn't driven by discovery and expression like Bubbles or the pride of first contact like Blossom. She was a bit different in her tastes, and if she was being honest with herself, not the person to put herself forward for representative socializing. TODAY, ANYWAY, Passing through the Warprunner's castle in a bright green short-sleeved t-shirt with a faded yellow soft-pointed star in the center, black shorts, the hint of white socks bunched to her ankles, and black sneakers, Buttercup accessorizes with golden hoop earrings, round sunglasses, and a guitar case. "Well, I didn't actually think this was legit until this morning, talking to Petra. Here, you can hold onto this, since I'll have to be *diplomatic* today." The emerald Puff had premised, before handing the Vice-Captain her guitar case and offering a two-finger wave and a smirk before heading through the mystery portal into a-- FOOTBALL FIELDS, FAR AWAY, Emerging into the ruins of suburban bloodsport, Buttercup taps down the side of her sunglasses in the unseasonably cool and pale surrounds, not able to hide a rolling of her eyes. "Unknown galaxies, cosmic events, unlimited possible mystery, and it's a busted-up sports field?" Buttercup pulls off her sunglasses and half-folds them to tuck them into the collar of her T-shirt. "And me without a ball to throw around." She sighs, and watches Futaba leap skyward. "Well, she's got the right idea, and..." Buttercup looks down at the ruindust getting all over her new *black* sneakers. "I'm feeling like sticking to the sky. Call if you see anything!" She lightly instructs the others while crouching, springing up in a muted light-beam of emerald off after the triple-jump-and-Tanuki-scoot-flier. IN THE EXTRA-MARKETABLE SKY, Buttercup takes a long look down the trail, using her extreme vision range and auditory acuity to search out the road and the paths flanking it for landmarks, life, and lingering clues.
Angela	AGENTS! A WHOLE CREW TODAY! JUSTIN ROOK: It has been a while since he's been out on the field! He is a man with long black hair and is wearing a wide brimmed duster hat! He is wearing a HOT PINK Suit of the Army in Black EGO Gear and has, of course, his tried and true EGO Weapon of Penitence strapped to his back! That is, a large cross shaped mace with <s>Jesus's</s> a giant skull as its centerpiece, its head adorned with a <s>crown</s> hat of thorns! CINDER: Wielder of the full ashen Fourth Match FLame EGO Gear whose powerful flames is second only to her powerful girlfriend abilities! (At least she's really determined to be a good one). She seems positively excited to go visit a new world! HASCHEN: Wearing the...Training Dummy... EGO Gear??? She has no combat ability whatsoever but she wears training dummy rabbit ears so she's cute. Her main characteristic is that she's very BULLYABLE. And finally CHEWIE who has sharp teeth and wields the MEAT LANTERN EGO Gear. He's a professional chef who professionally cooked humans but came to LobCorp looking for INSPIRATION. HE seems to have found it and happily goes into Abnormality Cells now to make Abnormality-Based Food! He's part of the Information Team usually because he is only good at finding how to best prepare monster meat for consumption but he is, at least, good at that one thing! "Gotcha. Seems like we have a pretty solid understanding of things here. Don't worry, Control Team and Information Team know how to handle these situations." He pauses as his gaze lingers over Haschen who is shakily writing down what the Vice-Captain is saying. "...You don't have to worry about us." He says, instead, placing a hand on Haschen's head in an attempt to calm her down but she just vibrates more intensely as a result. Grimacing, Rook removes his hand. This does not remove the vibrating. "Haschen, it'll be fine. We'll look after you, okay?" Cinder says. "Just stay close and no monster's gonna getcha!" "And if it does we'll eat it." Chewie nods once. NOW The new world isn't quite what the assembled LobCorp team would expect. There's a lot more signs of civilization than they were anticipating though, of course, it doesn't look like it's civilization that's quite what it used to be, even so... "Be careful of stuff falling from broken bits of construction." Rook suggests to the others but doesn't draw his weapon yet--nor does he intend to. Cinder squints. "It's...cool, but--is this ... spring?" She surmises. "It feels like maybe a hundred years past an apocalypse or something." Cinder completely guesses that part. Chewie, immediately, starts looking for edible or medicinal plantlife but stays close to the road with the other team members.
Ivy Carrow	The Warprunners make no attempt to bar Khosa's way as she studies her work--it doesn't take long for her to find magic. It's all over the place--even the gate they use to carry them from Castle Carrow into a the natural warpgate is enriched and fueled by magic. The way it's spun together is terribly complicated, beyond her ability to completely parse what it's doing, and how.     But the breadth of her study is enough to tell her that this isn't enough to keep these portals and powers running all by themselves. The magic appears to interlock with something beyond her ability to grasp. It's as though she can see the reins the Warprunners' hold, but not the kanks that drives their power forward.     "Is there something wrong...? I hope I did it right." A voice said. A bespectactled Warprunner had seen Khosa studying her work. "Could I have done anything better...Ah..." She shook her head. "...Um...Sorry. Hi, I'm Nina." Khosa found Nina swept up in her wake, shy, but eager to answer her questions, as everyone rallied, allieviating her anxiety by giving herself something to do. Even when they begin scouting, Nina stays near the mul, eyes darted nervously over the forest. "B-be careful, everyone!" She called, as everyone began to split up. "We saw something, in the forests. It wasn't..." She struggles to articulate it. "...It just wasn't RIGHT."
Rowdyruff Boys	Brick and Butch are here. The former is dressed in jeans, a t-shirt, and a black hoodie with red trim-- the latter is dressed in shiny green boxing shorts and a sleeveless black shirt depicting one of Townsville's numerous pop-up bands that only exists temporarily because one of the members is Buttercup and she isn't always there. This one features the Gangrene Gang, though, so it's pretty recognizable on the whole. Truth be told, Butch looks pretty checked out of the explanations of what was going on. It was Brick, who seemed to be tagging along with Buttercup, that was taking notes... but he didn't have much to say about any of it. He did, however, pass a chunk of rock to Butch and command him to wait one minute before following through the warp gate. "Make sure he listens, AND comes through in sixty seconds," Brick directs to nobody in particular among the Warprunners, before proceeding through. It's obvious he's used to being in charge, on some level. But he needn't have bothered. Butch rolls his eyes and tosses the rock given to him from hand to hand. "No need to remind me, I'll get going when I'm going to get going," he says. Which is pretty much sixty seconds on the dot, at which point Butch vanishes into a column of green light through the warpgate. On the other side, Brick is following Buttercup into the sky, holding a rather oversized and clunky-looking compass and a notepad, along with an actual regular compass. He makes some notes, puts the notepad and not-quite-twin-compasses away, and says, "Home is local southwest of here. If it happens to come up." "Why'd you--" Butch asks as he joins them in the skies, but he's cut across by Brick replying, "Identifying where our locality is in relation to this one." "Huh?" "I don't actually like relying on warp gates." "Oh."
Ivy Carrow	"Well, I didn't actually think this was legit until this morning, talking to Petra. Here, you can hold onto this, since I'll have to be *diplomatic* today."     The Vice-Captain smiles. "A healthy dose of skepticism is healthy." They take the case gingerly. "But I'm grateful to see you decided to give us a chance, anyway. I will keep this safe." The man is as reserved as the Captain is boistrous, consummate professional to the utmost. He made a cut in the air with his hand--like his captain does--and slipped case inside.     The rest of the runners stayed behind, guarding the fort, while Ivy and the Vice-Captain flickered forward in bursts of red, as the party advanced, following one after the other, watching each other's backs as they they slid from one vantage point to another to watch each other's blind spots.
Petra Soroka	PHONE: Phoning Powerpuff Girls, Petra Soroka switches topics abruptly, "-- Hey, what's, like, your opinion on being *paid* for stuff like this? It's literally their-- the Warprunners'-- job, right? And we're just, also doing it with them." PHONE: Phoning Powerpuff Girls, Petra Soroka says, "I mean, this stuff in particular is honestly, like, fun, but... I don't know, there's someone else-- Haru, if you've met him-- who's always talking about how important it is to get... compensation, even if it's 'saving the world'."     This is Petra's fourth or fifth time returning to Castle Carrow. Her second time going into the higher security areas, swiping access cards, getting briefed, and bringing equipment, in order to... volunteer at someone else's job? It's an incredibly cool job, there's no doubt about that, and Petra is ecstatic to be exploring new worlds from such a position of *adventuring*, so it's practically the stuff dreams are made of for her-- but it's still a *little* weird to just show up to do someone else's job whenever they ring a bell in the radio.     These thoughts don't *consume* Petra's mind, as she watches the laptop screen and bounces a red-black stone up and down in her hand, but they certainly do cross it. The topic of 'plagues' causes her to make a face, though. "Oh, god. We don't have to be put in quarantine after, right? Like they do when shipping an animal to a different country, or whatever?"     Petra's best approximation of 'adventuring' gear is effectively just 'outdoorsing' gear. Sturdy jeans and combat boots, bomber jacket making a return for once, with gloves tucked into her pockets and her morphmetal bottle on her opposite hip; she could plausibly just be going hiking, which in all likelihood is what the majority of trekking around a post-apocalyptic world will consist of anyways. There's *always* a lot of travel time, with things like this, because the transportation systems are down of course, and Petra can't *fly*, so proper precautions for trudging around in an overgrown football field and the wasteland of surburbia beyond need to be taken.
Petra Soroka	Petra's first instinct, upon entering a new world, is to clamber up to the highest height available-- theoretically to survey for danger or interesting spots of civilization to go towards, but there's fliers in the group here too, so she's not actually needed for that. Instead, she gets up onto the highest bleachers still standing, testing rusted spots with a boot tap before climbing, simply because that's the proper way to look at a football field for her. It helps her get a better image in her mind of what was 'before', so to better understand what could have led to 'now'.     Also, she just likes shouting down at people from way up here. "Twenty years?"     "I mean, *yeah*, right? It hasn't been *that* long, it looks like? There's no way every single person in the entire world just fucking dies in less than twenty years. Not if it's just... like, it's not like this was hit by a meteor and fucking flattened to glass and corpses or anything. It's just...." It *is* all knocked in one direction, though. Petra traces the line of movement south, lingering on each shattered piece, and then turns her eyes north with a little bit of anxiety. "We saw something, in the forests. It wasn't... ...It just wasn't RIGHT."     That's the scared one, Petra remembers. If she didn't, then her dialogue would remind her by reiterating the one character trait Petra's decided she possesses, which is convenient. "How do you manage to explore *anywhere* like that? Like, look at this place, I'd be surprised if I *didn't* see a deer running around every five seconds." Actually, are there deer? Is there any visible wildlife around at all? That's probably important. "Stuff isn't very sturdy around here, got it!"     Petra, triumphantly up top of an Object where Aidan fell and failed, smugly shouts down at him. "Yeah? Compared to what? The fucking stick and mud huts in Quicknest? Or have you already forgotten all about that?" "Unknown galaxies, cosmic events, unlimited possible mystery, and it's a busted-up sports field?"     Petra's a little embarrassed too, since she did hype up the Warprunners a lot to Buttercup. Up high, perch settled into a squat on the bleacher, she gives Buttercup a little wave as she zooms by. "Ahah, yeah.... Well, here's hoping?"     There's one upside, though, and it's that these sorts of environments are actually Petra's most natural terrain. The broken down wrecks of suburbia, oppressively alien and alone, on top of an abandoned structure, is normally something that takes a walk down to 'that' part of town to access-- but even here, it radiates the kind of scorched melancholy that Petra likes to absorb. With Buttercup up above, Petra smirks a little and flips open her compact mirror, grabbing and withdrawing the neck of her guitar to show it off before resheathing it. *She* didn't have to put hers away for convenience.
Khosa	Khosa's ability to study magic is pretty limited and she knows she's missing things. Most of what she knows are the basics of theory from a non-practitioner's standpoint, mostly in how to deal with the unfortunate remnants left over from arcane casters that you really don't want littering the place. Like energy-siphoning monoliths, or cursed items. She knows enough to tell there's a lot here. But she can't pick it apart, nor does she have arcane sight; almost all of the detail is lost on her. (Now, *psychic* power, that's different.) But Khosa also isn't exactly a fan of arcane powers, and so she doesn't ask any questions. The physical construction of the place is interesting enough to keep her busy. And that's *before* they go to a strange new world, even. "Sure," is her more current response to Aidan, slightly surprised by the question. "Things wear down if you leave them out. These are newer ruins than a lot of ours, but there's always places abandoned in the desert - people go somewhere else, or there's a battle - so I've seen plenty of stone buildings that're falling apart." When Nina introduces herself, Khosa gives her a look-over, then nods. "Khosa," she says, thumping her own shoulder. "If you're worried about something in the forest, stick with me. I'll keep you safe!" It's not really an idle boast; Khosa figures if there's something out there, unless it's a monstrosity, she can take it. Or at least distract it. Others go up high (and Khosa watches, shading her eyes as several people take to the air). But for her own part, Khosa reaches downward and inward instead. She listens, her pointed ears alert, and she plants her feet just so when she walks to feel vibrations brought to her by people and beings walking around.
Calvin Nash	If Khosa is familiar with asphalt, she can find out with that probing strike of hers that twenty years is indeed a bit of a lowball. It crumbles even from her attempt to inspect more than crush it, her cross-section cracking like an egg to yield its strata. It's probably closer to forty, with the progress the weeds have made between the cracks. HhheeeeeeEEEEYY! Is anyone out there?!     No one calls back. The bugs continue their cries. The crunch of leaves--whether she wants to attribute that to an animal or something smarter is up to her.     Taking to the skies gives Futaba and Buttercup an immediately clearer view of the scale of whatever happened here. The suburban road joins up with a two lane highway before too long, a small-town stretch of mixed residential and commercial stop-bys. The first is... after a bit of guesswork, given the faded plastic shrapnel strewn out and shredded across overgrown weeds, a playground. Nothing going on there.     Every house along the way unfortunate enough to be made from wood is gone; a collapsed, overgrown and (Buttercup's sense of smell confirms) frequently moldy wreck. Some of them have become the dens of animals. The ones sturdy enough to survive whatever that shockwave was still have blown-out windows, or partially collapsed roofs, and some have soot indicative of fires starting from inside the building.     The major obstacle that Buttercup, the Ruffs and Futaba will see to anyone attempting to venture north on foot is the sheer amount of shit in the road--where it isn't shattered from below as the road near the field is, it's covered with rubble from houses, with downed power and telephone lines. In places, crossing the highway is like making a hike, over heaps of manmade ruin rather than natural inclines. The farther north they get, the more the rubble seems to pile up.     The stale, musty odor of many vermin in one place hits Buttercup and the two Ruffs first, and then Futaba, as they pass over a small hill consisting of a peeled roof laid overtop several rust-brown skeletal cars and a downed power pole. It's coming from the shattered windows of a former grocery store     The roof is partially collapsed, and the signboard letters which once announced the name of the store lie scattered haphazardly around the crumbling parking lot. 'OL EN' remain steadfast on the storefront, in yellowed vigil over shattered glass sliding doors. A rolling curtain of kudzu invades the back half of the lot, climbing steadily up the rear of the building. Buttercup, Brick and Butch in particular can hear the crunch of an insect's exoskeleton from inside. For a moment, two beady reflections gleam in the darkness.     The Lobotomy Corporation team, Petra, Khosa, Aidan and Madeleine, as aforementioned, have their work cut out for them on foot. It might be easier to circle around the remnants of houses and step over blown-down property fences in some places than it is to walk down the highway. The treeline encroaches closer to the houses than it did whenever this place was lived in--sure enough, as Petra supposed, there is plenty of signs that nature is reclaiming it. Indeed, as they get closer to the abandoned grocery store, a deer eyes them warily from the treeline before bolting further into the woods.     Of particular note, Khosa can feel a faint vibration in the ground, even and uniform, growing steadily closer. As the ground team navigates the rubble and closes in on the fliers, something (relatively) valuable crosses into sight--a mostly-intact sign along the road. While its supports are bent southward and the sign itself hangs precariously from a single rusted bolt, the peeling paint gives a hint, once the sign is either forced upright or ripped from its singular support. Faded reflective green clings stubbornly in little islands to a rusted rectangle, clear white font advising drivers long gone. At#anta - 4mi S#### Springs - 1# mi
Aidan Proudpick	A sheepish grin at Madeleine, "Sorry, sorry." He tries to respect her stealthiness and go about being a tad more light on his feet. "Yeah? Compared to what?" He glares up at Petra, a return to an old expression for him. Any attempt to just smile and wave her off seems to have been passed on, and a bite enters his voice. "Stone and thatch, no, I haven't. Thanks for checking." He picks a few stray bits of grass out of his tail as he walks. "Unknown galaxies, cosmic events, unlimited possible mystery, and it's a busted-up sports field?" "It could have been caused by anything. It's still an unlimited possible mystery. Everyone could have been," Aidan grasps at the air, before, "turned into ants, and now there's a thriving underworld civilization? Anything could have happened!" A forlorn watch of her rocketing off into the sky. Damn he wishes he could still fly. "Things wear down if you leave them out." "The wind claims anything you leave behind," Aidan says, as if reciting a phrase, nodding. "Oh, a desert? With sand? I'll have to see that sometime. I've never gotten to see one of those." At Nina, a bright nod, "I'm sure you've faced plenty of worse stuff, right? You are a runner." WALKING As they walk, Aidan's ears keep up a swivel, his eyes darting upwards towards trees and foliage, tail twitching erratically. He hasn't actually dealt with a lot of wild animals, but a baser instinct seems to guide Aidan to check those places. Once they've moved forward enough and HAVEN'T seen what Nina seems to be worried about, Aidan pulls up his camera, one of those cheap ones you can get just about anywhere nowadays, snapping a few crooked and somewhat out of focus pictures of overgrown houses, downed signs, strange structures of junk. But once Khosa puts out the warning, he pulls his shields off his sides and up to his wrists before scaling the junk pile with fuzzy critter ease once more.
Petra Soroka	"Be careful of stuff falling from broken bits of construction."     "Heyyyyyy, guys!" Petra falls from a broken bit of construction, leaping down from two stories of bleacher in the air to slam into the ground beside the Control (with a dash of Information) Team, fall blunted by the morphmetal sheen rippling around her boots but still burying her an inch into the dirt. She wobbles for a second, dazed from the impact, and then scoops the silver back up again and waves at her old teammates.     "Malkuth sent *all* you guys out? Are they expecting anything much, or just, like, because Ivy's Concord?" Even though she slides up beside Cinder and walks with the group of agents for a bit, she still visibly stands out from them, and not just because of her outfit. The green and orange hearts in the hairpin she wears is EGO gear, at least, but it's only a minor accessory. "Honestly... I could imagine a way this *wouldn't* be an apocalypse, because, shit just gets abandoned for lots of reasons. If this is our only point of view on the whole world, then, it could just be some rural shithole that no one cared enough about to keep up, but... somehow it doesn't feel that way, yeah."     Probably because everything beyond the football field is absolutely shredded too. Despite the presence of tons of wreckage across the road, Petra still feels compelled to walk along it, not out of some calculated assessment of the time loss of weaving around to find easier paths or the fear of getting lost, but because it's *just* recognizable enough as a 'neighborhood' that walking through people's lawns feels wrong. Even when the houses are splinters blasted... still south?     One single shockwave wiping out everything for such a long distance... probably rules out a hurricane doing it. Petra isn't an expert at assessing this kind of thing at all, but she strays off the path briefly to poke at one of the ruined houses out of morbid curiosity: it was knocked down all at once, sure, but has it been moved since? Is whatever knocked it down a *repeated* incident, or has all of it been sitting in place for twenty or forty or a hundred years? If it's just been laying around since whatever knocked the building down, then there's got to be broken dishware around, and furniture, or... photos, probably.     Petra probably won't feel good about seeing photos of people killed decades ago, but she still feels compelled to poke around for them. It's a little obsessive, even, but if anyone asks what she's doing, "Doesn't it make sense to get, like, an idea of what happened before whatever knocked everything down? What local year it was, and whatever people thought, at the time, was super important to keep around? Maybe they all have little fucking shrines to an evil god that fucking raptured them, or whatever; we don't know shit." She doesn't actually believe that's what happened.     Petra hasn't recognized Khosa from their meeting in the radio, but Petra immediately sticks out to her in return. Not because of anything she says or does, but because when looking at her with her psychic senses, Petra feels like staring directly into the sun, filtered down to pure radiative ultraviolet. Shifting, warping psychic energy radiates off of her, blinding in the obscurative sense rather than the exceptionally powerful sense; white-out filled with cutting fiberglass shards, prickling and impossible to discern details from besides its overbearing presence.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"Got a real strong scent of vermin out here, and it looks like there's some kind of large bug in this building."     "I'll go up ahead and check it out," Madeleine says into her radio. Then she's off, bounding over one obstacle on the side of the road, then another, all with catlike grace and uncanny quiet. Landing with a soft 'hup' on the opposite side of the highway, she slows her pace for the final approach to the store. Instead of taking the obvious way in, she circles around to the overgrown back end of the store, searching for a loading dock. When she finally locates the big garage-style door she gives the lock a swift kick, splitting it open, and heaves the door open with both hands...     Instead of entering there, however, she quickly scampers up to the rooftop and hustles back across to the front of the store, hoping that the noise of the loading-dock door sliding open the rest of the way attracts the attention of whatever's inside. Satisfied with her little ruse, she hops down at the front entrance of the store and slinks through a broken window as her supernaturally keen eyes adjust to the darkness.
Futaba Nuki	"A ball? Y'know , I could just pull these in later if that's what you're looking for." Futaba suggests to Buttercup, demonstrating by shrinking her legs even more until she's quite literally just a flying nugget. She pops them right back out a moment later, though, gliding alongside Buttercup at a leisurely pace and veering towards Brick when he brings out that funky clunky compass. "Whoa... Never thought I'd see something that big outside of home. Does it really work?" Craning her neck up and around to try and peek, Futaba eventually settles back into proper flying again, flapping every and now and then to maintain her altitude. Spotting the town up ahead, she narrows her eyes to try and see if there's anything but rubble there, but a lot of the town looks to be in terrible enough of a state that there's no sense landing just to disturb some local fauna. "Man... This place really got hit hard by somethin', huh? You think whoever did it is still hanging around here?" She asks of Buttercup, Brick, and Butch while trying to get herself amped up, but the destruction and the otherwise quiet surroundings have her mellowing out again soon enough. All the junk in the road makes it somewhat harder to make out what might actually be moving down there, too, but Ivy reassures her that she can create portals to move through them easily enough. Without having to worry about the ground crew as much on that front, Futaba can instead focus on getting her bearings straight. That happens just in time for familiar stench of vermin to hit her, and she lets out a guttural noise out of reflex. "Ugh... Smells like the bad parts of home. Maybe we can not go over that way." She suggests with both a visible and audible grimace,  wrinkling her nose as the stench gets stronger on the way over. Spotting the grocery store as the likely culprit, Futaba flaps her wings a little harder and more rapidly to get high enough that... Well, it doesn't stop the stench from hitting her, but it does make her think it smells less awful. That gives her a clearer view of the invading kudzu in that area, and she reforms a hand just long enough to point it out to the flying heroes. "Even those kind of plants are growing around here... Dang. This place is really falling apart hard." Another sigh, and she starts to consider the warnings Khosa gave about something moving nearby. Glancing eastwards more often as she continues gliding over the path, Futaba soon gets An Idea that's rather similar to the previous one: "Heeeeey! Come on out, we're friendlyyyyy! You okay out theeeere?" Once again, she's shouting. She's projecting her voice vaguely eastawrds, too, eyes darting around rapidly to try and catch a glimpse of whatever or whoever it is that's getting closer. It's a gamble, of course, but what better way to reveal her intent than to just say it? Whether her still being a dumpy flying meatball helps or not still remains to be seen.
Khosa	"And I've only seen forests in the mountains," Khosa says, stepping over some fallen - well, it *was* a streetlight, but now it's just a length of metal that doesn't mean a whole lot to her aside from the fact that, even rusty, it would be worth a whole lot if she just stole the thing and lugged it to Tyr. Is it even stealing if it's just abandoned? She doesn't, though. For one, it's a pain to carry, and for two - well, it just feels weird to her. Not that taking from ruins does; it's the whole 'bringing it interdimensionally' that's a little odd. So instead she keeps up the conversation. She's in a good mood, anyway: "Actually, this whole place reminds me a bit of the mountains. I've never been over them, but they say the other side has green growing all over the place... kind of like this," she adds, as she hops over a vine-covered piece of rubble. "You guys seen anything like this before? I mean, you're a Warprunner," she nods at Nina, "and the rest of you - well, you've been around more than me at least, ha ha!" Khosa doesn't feel any particular need to stick to the road. She will, when it's easier, but other times she goes around, or cuts across something that used to be a building and isn't anymore. She's slowed down a little by having to concentrate on vibrations, and blanking out what the other pedestrians are doing. She looks at Petra again - she's done it a few times, not quite aggressively but definitely slightly challenging. Khosa is very deliberately *not* looking at her with her third eye because once was enough, but she's not quite sure what causes that kind of feeling - she's never come across anything quite like it. It doesn't interfere with her feeling the vibrations; Khosa's control of her body is localized with her, and doesn't reach out in a way Petra can interfere with it, even by accident. It *does* interfere with her trying to pick out hostile minds, and so she sends a psionic signal to Petra, a little ping that, to her, means nothing more than 'I would like to communicate mentally'. It is quite possible Petra never notices it at all. Khosa scowls for no apparent reason, but then: "Hey," she says. "Something's coming, I think. Moving toward us, pretty steadily." She glances over toward Nina as if to make sure she's still there, then reaches out mentally again, the psionic equivalent of a flinch in Petra's direction as she tries to work around the knot and see if she can find someone else out there. Or if she can feel hostility, which she is particularly attuned to. If something's preparing to attack her... ...well, *that* at least she is likely to notice.
Rowdyruff Boys	There are many things you can do when you come across a probable giant bug, but in the case of Brick there's a pretty simple one: He can just talk to them. Flying down into rough speaking range insofar as he understands the sensitivity of giant, mutant insects back home, he calls down into the dark building, << Yo. What's the deal with this place? Seems pretty fucked up. >> His ability to communicate with animals is pretty handy in situations like this. It probably sounds like nonsense from an external point-of-view, though. His gaze follows Madeleine distantly for a short while, x-ray vision piercing through the structure of the store to trace her path. It's a little risky to be talking to the ... thing ... in the dark, so he supposes that having her scouting it out a little more directly is for the best. He doesn't really like fighting giant bugs, and from the smell of things, he imagines there's plenty more where it comes from.
Ivy Carrow	As the road became more rough and impassable, Ivy and Alex changed their strategies. Instead of waiting at high vantage points where they could keep watch, they flickered to relatively flat areas on the way north, holding out hands to carve portals in the air, carrying the pedestrians across more and more piles of rubble. The portals themselves persisted for about ten minutes, before they at last began to close behind the elites. "Come on everyone, we've barely started!" She grinned, like they were all just taking a hike together, into unknown territory, where something might want to kill them.     The last portal carried them to the store that the Roughs and Puffs claimed had such an ominous stench. They stood before the ruined sign. "Did that thing you saw look like a bug, Nina?"     "I-I don't...Think so...?" But she seemed unsure.     "Atlanta and..." Ivy crouched down. "...Something Springs." Idly, Ivy pulled her sidearm from its holster and checked it, while the Vice-Captain does the same. If they had to be ready... "Let's move in. Find out what this is."
Angela	''Khosa can sense the presnece of psychic energies!'' Weirdly enough, to Khosa, all the Agents are reading as psychic. No, that's not quite right. It's not Justin Rook that's psychic it's that armor he's wearing, that hammer he's carrying. Indeed, all the EGO Gear they're carrying seems to have some psionic energy about them that is definitely having a various level of low level effect on all the LobCorp agents present--except Haschen (and Petra). ''Malkuth sent *all* you guys out?'' Rook answers first, "Yeah. Since this is apparently a 'monster world', it's supposed to be in our wheelhouse. They're probably hoping for Abnormalities to bring back or other methods of refining EGO Gear--or EGO Gear like equipment." Justin Rook is mostly guessing here, admittedly, and Cinder beams at Petra like just her showing up made her day (it did). She scootches up to be near her instinctively and immediately, like a loyal pet. "That's true. It kind of reminds me of the Ruins honestly..." And true to form she seems to have the easiest time of the team pushing through broken roads and the like, recalling old half-forgotten memories. Really, the team is kind of accustomed to moving through rough terrain even outside of Cinder, just a bit, due to Gebura breaking all the elevators and making it THAT MUCH MORE annoying to move between the levels. BUt now that that's gone, the Agents are starting to return to old base habits. "I love your little Fragmnets hairpin. It's so cute." Cinder asides to Petra, probably not for the first time. "It's wonderful." Cinder seems to be the only Agent that's really COMFORTABLE in the apocalypse. "Ahah, it's almost like I'm showing you my old hometown." She tells Petra. "Except obviously this isn't my hometown, but the buildings and the overgrowth and stuff--it's a lot like this so far. But of course if there's monsters, normally we'd try to avoid their notice due to them all being so hostile... Really if it wasn't for them, it'd be easy to live in peace out here." Cinder is hopefully not a Law Hero or anything like that, but despite Cinder being comfortable that doesn't mean she is being careless. She glances to Aidan but doesn't seem to pay him too much mind. The Team otherwise stays close together but-- ''A deer eyes them warily'' Chewie raises up his meat lantern moments before the deer bolts. Then frowns as it vanishes from sight and lowers his EGO Gear again. "There's normal beasts here too. If there's normal beasts, I'd be surprised if humans were wiped out. Unless only humans are the ones being hunted." "Or if they were wiped out and then the animals repopulated." Justin suggests. "If animals didn't know humans to be threats they wouldn't bolt would they?" The LobCorp team sticks with Petra and largely help her dig through the rubble. If there's a photograph or something they might be able to take an Enkephalin read and find out more about what happened here.
Powerpuff Girls	Buttercup doesn't have more than a roll of the eyes and 'it's football' for Aidan, but the guitar-in-compact move from Petra gets a shock of green jealousy from the emerald Puff. She didn't *have* to relinquish her guitar! It's just that neither the case nor the instrument take being swung at several hundred miles an hour 'well'. High above the investigative team, Buttercup splits her attention among watching the advance across the broken terrain and cracked-egg asphalt, her floating 'stance' more of a lean forward and a cocked leg and her thumbs jammed into the not-quite side poockets of her shorts. "Home is through a gate, Brick." Buttercup scoffs, turning her head to fake-a-smirk and mean a smile. "Thanks for checking, though. You never know when you want to be depressed about the ruin of your own place rather than the ruin of some other place. No, if I want 'galaxies, cosmic events, and mysteries' I think I'll stick with the camper crew. Heading towards home gets me 'depression', not material." > I'm Nugget Futaba! "I'm not going to throw you like a ball unless I have a *reallllly* good reason, Futaba." Buttercup suggests, a little offput by the Olsen Twins routine. The air of a high school field trip to a place nobody asked to go lingers when Buttercup focuses her attention from the encroached rewilding of the landscape and the constant state of blocking ruin from sight to scent. Tuning out the world around her some was her natural state, so that she could enjoy the scent of good bookstore coffee or the delicious meals out with family, and not taste and scent the garbage in the kitchen or the oil in the grease trap or the rot in the alley outside. As a matter of focus, it took an act of relaxation - a breath out, first, lung-emptying, and then an engaged breath in through the nose... And Buttercup stifles a phlegmy cough. "Rank! I think that whole grocery's gone, but... It's the only real landmark around here, too. Let's head that way." The green Puff gives her Rowdy counterpart a laugh. "Maybe we can find something to send to that canned food guy's channel. Or force your brother to eat." And since there's only one 'brother' who isn't here to bully: she's talking about Boomer. "If there's any information, it'll be at that grocery anyway. All we need is one flyer, linoleum sticker, anything. So... Are we going to head into the stinky garbage store?" Without waiting for an answer, Buttercup flies down at sublight speed to find the Warprunners on the ground on their approach. "The path ahead gets worse along the road as we head northward. You might want to hire some heavy machinery to clear the road from your fort when we find anything, because crossing all this every time will take a lot of work, or..." Buttercup, hovering just off the ground in a hanging-foot float, crosses her arms and shrugs, not quite getting to 'learn how to fly', a generally tall order.
Rowdyruff Boys	"Pretty sure he just said it's south-whatever," Butch replies to Buttercup, since Brick has decided to go mess with the bug in the grocery store. He scratches the back of his head-- then glances over towards Futaba. "The gadget, you mean? I'm sure it does. He's always tinkering with little things like that. It's probably a prototype. Might be one of Princess's, too... though hers tend to be more stylized. Our dad was kinda all about that stuff. Brick dabbles now and again, but he doesn't focus on it. Anyway, he doesn't say stuff if he's not confident of it--" Buttercup doubles back. To this, Butch waves at Futaba, and then retreats back over towards the Warprunners. He hovers there beside her, staring blankly into the middle distance. Then he points at himself, "Uh, you want me to move that stuff? It's kind of a pain, but, you know..." He could. Evidently he's not certain why they aren't just doing it presumptively, so he's not making a personal decision about it.
Petra Soroka	. . .and so she sends a psionic signal to Petra, a little ping that, to her, means nothing more than 'I would like to communicate mentally'.     For Khosa, it's like tossing a paper airplane with a message on it, and watching it sail directly into a massive, spinning propellor. Attuned as she is to the fluctuations of psionic energy, she gets the distinct feeling that not only does it not reach Petra-- she doesn't react at all, herself, while tugging on her work gloves to get them tight on her hands before digging through more of the shattered housing-- but it doesn't even reach multiple feet away from Petra. She's a walking blackbox, blurring out even the minds she's around into more painfully buzzing unreadability, and it doesn't even seem intentional on her part.     Not that Khosa can be certain about that. The sheer belligerent blankness that Petra's mind scans as to her makes sure she *can't* be certain about it. "...Something Springs."     To Ivy, Petra offers, "Silver Springs?" She doesn't know that for sure, because she isn't very familiar with cities in Georgia, and it's not helpful either way, but she says it anyways. Good work, Petra. "Ahah, it's almost like I'm showing you my old hometown."     Cheery chatter with Cinder in the wasteland of the Southern U.S. is a good day for Petra, too. She offers a second set of gloves to Cinder, so that her EGO suit doesn't get messed up and dirty (they're rubber cleaning gloves, oddly, but it's the only other pair she has), and sticks side by side with her regardless of the presence of the other agents giving her a hand.     "Honestly, we should do that sometime. Like, actually." Petra scrunches up her face and sticks her tongue out in disgust at another scurrying colony of bugs from underneath rotting wood she moves. She seems surprisingly unaffected by the smell that everyone else finds so repulsive. Months of working with the Carrion Bucket will do that to a girl.     "I mean really, who could stop us? Maybe it'll be a bit of trouble getting outside the walls, maybe it'll be hard getting permission from Malkuth and Angela for it... but, like, if anyone could manage, it'd be you and me. If you'd actually, like, want...." Petra trails off, suddenly struck by the implications of 'asking to visit Cinder's hometown'. Obviously, there's no parents out there for Petra to be introduced to, but.... "Um, yeah."
Calvin Nash	Petra's investigations into the rubble of an abandoned house take her around a standing support beam into the remnants of a kitchen. Walls spread out like the dormant pages of a pop-up book, while appliances a dishwasher and a knocked-over fridge have since become home to wasp's nests and shot through with weeds that split curling linoleum into chaotic fragments.     The rubble was moved, she finds--not by human hands (or whatever else might have been moved) but by a violent explosion which appears to have been centered on the stove. The bulky metal square is blown open from the top, and a clear line of soot can be traced from the stove across the fallen walls, in a way that wouldn't make sense if they were still intact. Maybe a gas leak?     The remnants of dishware lie scattered like the handiwork of some improvised exlosive. Forks and knives tarnish and rust, embedded into fallen countertops or else splayed across the ground to be claimed by the weeds. The food in the refrigerator has long since gone past 'rotten' and into 'dust,' for the most part. Yellowed, disintegrating paper peeks out from between the open door, lying flat on the cracked linoleum. If she closes the door, she can see what she's looking for, preserved crudely by the grace of the door being flush with the ground for so many years.     They're stained with water in places, with dirt in others, and they feel terribly fragile, but she can see them: crude drawings in crayon depict suburban life through a child's eyes; an oval-stick dog, two parents, a child and an older sibling. A cracked plastic magnet frame threatens to fall apart in her hands, displaying a girl with braces and long, vibrant red hair in a high school graduation gown, beaming, delighted, in front of a brand-new white hatchback. The angles of the hatchback, and the lines of a car just peeking into frame, suggest the early nineties. Something held with three circular magnets (a strawberry, a bunch of bananas and a smiley face) appears to be an acceptance letter for the University of Georgia, dated 1993.
Calvin Nash	At the grocery store, Madeleine's scamper up the roof is made easier by the plentiful kudzu. It's not hard to imagine the plant completely overtaking the store in a few years, given the way its enveloped the ravine and even the trees at the back of the property. Her ruse plays out as she hoped it would--there is a clatter of rusted cans and a rustling through forgotten shelves as something inside scuttles to investigate. Something else, too--the subtle 'click' of a mechanical slide.      As her eyes adjust to the darkness, she can see the filthy store in all its forgotten splendor. Four registers lie unattended, conveyor belts gathering dust. Mold grows unchecked in powerless refrigerators, a fuzzy grey-blue carpet enveloping rows of once-frozen products. Cheap plastic crap disintegrates undisturbed on rickety shelves--the kind of stuff you get a younger relative when you've forgotten a birthday.      Roaches scurry away, and a mouse darts through a hole chewed in the back wall. Wet slurping punctuates the stifling silence--Madeleine can see the short figure that scuttled over to investigate her diversion. Sunken, mummified skin clings pathetically to narrow limbs and emphasizes a distended belly even from behind. A large head atop a long, thin neck is tipped backwards, more interested in cleaning rotten food from the inside of an open, rusted can than wholly in Madeleine's ruse. Golden bangles hang loosely at their wrists, and long tags dangle from their ears. None of the rotten food actually reaches their mouth--it burns up, pitiably, before it touches their tongue.      Heeeeey! Come on out, we're friendlyyyyy! You okay out theeeere?      "Are you American?" The voice comes from inside the store, Madeleine can tell, called loudly enough that Futaba can hear it. A humanoid figure takes cover behind a shelf, watching warily between the rear entrance and the front. Madeleine can't see much of his figure--but he appears to be wearing a balaclava. When he turns one way, to look at the loading door, she can see the handle of a combat knife sticking through his skull, and when he peeks towards the front, she can see a cavity, exposing his shadowed grey matter. It doesn't seem to bother him.      Anyone with the ability to sense intent from that voice can sense the undercurrent of hostilty; that you *should* be American and even if you are, it's possible for you to be the wrong *kind.* Madeleine, being closest to him, can pick up an almost manic undercurrent.
Calvin Nash	Yo. What's the deal with this place? Seems pretty fucked up.     Two-legs like you were here, answer the roaches. Then their biggest nests all burned, the story goes. Of course, it'd make sense that there's a 'story-' roaches aren't the longest-lived, individually. Others came, not long after. 'Others' is spoken in a way that probably means 'things other than humans.'     Brick's X-ray vision picks up the aforementioned creature Madeleine saw--with his knowledge of occultism and his super-vision, he can read the symbols on the ears as 'unclean.' That would make it a preta, not a giant bug; something to be pitied, but not feared in most cases. The *other* figure in there, though... ...Something Springs.     That did it. "DIE, MARXISTS!"     A hail of automatic gunfire erupts from inside the store, the figure sprinting out after a controlled burst aimed at Ivy. It's then that Brick and Madeleine see his complete figure--milsurp fatigues, a bulletproof tactical vest packed to the gills with instruments of harm, and all of it wrapped in a tied US flag for good measure. He dives and slides across filthy floor to blast towards Madeleine with semiautomatic pistol fire, an automatic carbine held in his other hand. With little regard for his own safety, he pulls the pin on a grenade and cooks it for a second, before hurling it outside!     To say nothing of the threat a live grenade poses to everyone outside, the gunshots have the effect of attracting whatever that vibration is. Khosa can feel the vibrations getting closer, and as a result, she begins to get a clearer picture of what it is. The uniformity of the vibrations are likely due to being mechanical in nature--whatever is coming is doing so in a means of conveyance. There are occasional shocks--to be expected, given the state of the roads, no doubt. The gunfire seems to have coaxed an increase in speed.     Above the quickly erupting chaos of battle, those of you with the ears to hear it begin to pick up a familiar internal combustion growl, tinged with a high-pitched, uncharacteristic whine. The preta drops its can in a panic, scrambling out the front door. Upon seeing so many unfamiliar faces, their pitifully elongated features contort into an alarmed grimace, and they let out a high-pitched shriek. A friend, just like them, clambers out of an overgrown storm drain, and the two of them begin hurling small fireballs haphazardly, making everything worse for everyone.
Rowdyruff Boys	<< Got it. >> Brick glances around. He doesn't feel the telltale tickle of high radiation exposure, though he wouldn't be surprised if a geiger counter would tell him that humans shouldn't be hanging around here. Not really a problem for him, though. He raises a hand to his earpiece, just about to speak-- When a zombie screaming about marxists shows up and hucks a grenade. "Could you--" Fireballs get hurled around. Brick knows the mythology behind the Preta enough that even though his clothes get messed up and his body is a little sooty, he just... pulls a pack of mini-oreos and some cool ranch doritos out of his hoodie's interior pockets and chucks them in opposite directions. "-- fucking NOT?" He figures they'll probably be too driven by the 'hungry' element of things not to go scrambling after the scraps, even if they also plan to go away... and the grenade is being handled by other people entirely.     NEARBY... "Sounds like somebody's got a killer set of wheels headed our way," Butch speculates towards Buttercup, doing absolutely nothing with this information.
Ivy Carrow	"DIE, MARXISTS!"     It's just enough time for Ivy to tense up, bullets come at her in a wild spray as she turns her cloak toward him. Bullets kick up dirt where it strikes earth, richochett off of masonry--but, in spite of all possibilities, it seems like the bullets just...Never seemed to strike her. At last he reached back to throw his grenade--     --Ivy unlatched her cloak from her shoulders, clutched it in her hands--     --Each threw it toward the other in time. But Ivy's cloak fluttered in the wind, spreading out the grenade soared through, hitting the fabric...Or at least, it SHOULD have hit the fabric. Instead, it seemed to pass through it, into a vast emptiness, as it floated to the ground, the grenade vanished downward, exploding with a faded, distant sound. And Ivy was...     ...No longer where she had been. With a flash she was behind the zombie, precious seconds used to draw her blade from its sheathe. She pushed into his space from behind, slicing not at his head, not at his heart, but his wrists, where the tendons a hand needed to flex lay. "I wonder if you have any real mind left in you."     "Oh well~" She kicked off him from behind, hard, vanishing mid-vault--     --And Alex and Nina were was on one knee, sidearm pulled from his holster, unloading every bullet in their guns into the zombie.     When a fireball crashed onto the ground next to her, Nina practically fell over, frantically batting at her leg at flame threatened to climb up her uniform.
Aidan Proudpick	After scowling at Petra, Aidan gives another slightly sheepish smile at Cinder. He was trying to keep his bite back at 'acceptable' levels, and seems to have succeeded. "You guys seen anything like this before?" "I try to only do safe exploring. You know, a little bit of mountain climbing, walking trails." He shrugs, then considers, "I really should see if I can get some kinda explorer buddy thing going." Then a mutter to himself, "I wonder if he would like... probably not." He watches Madeleine move, and prepares. In, 4 seconds. Hold, 4 seconds. Out, 4 seconds. Hold, 4 seconds. Regulate your breathing. Prepare your lungs. 'Click' Ears shoot forward at the grocery store, standing up tall. His tail climbs up close to his back and suddenly frizzs out. All of Aidan's hackles rise. He can hear an angry voice. Aidan starts moving forward, stops, then starts again. Madeleine can handle it, right? Gunfire immediately opens up. Aidan starts into a steady jog, pumping his arms. It feels weird RUNNING. He should be charging. Flying behind his shield. Moving like an unstoppable cannon shot. He draws in a sharp breath, ready to leap into action. Grenade! He watches it tumble through the air, hand reaching out, white wisps suddenly flowing outward towards his fingers. Ivy's cloak suddenly flares up, and the grenade disappears into it. Aidan's eyes twitch towards the next thing on the battlefield. The hungry ghost suddenly pushing out the front door. A twist of the fingers, grabbing the Lifebreath back, hauling it into his wrist and then down, forming a circular defensive wall of wind.
Powerpuff Girls	> 'Uh, you want me to move that stuff? It's kind of a pain, but, you know...' "Not yet. It's the Warprunner's whole business to do this," And she hadn't signed up to do a whole bunch of free hard labor cleaning up an empty world to be logistically useful, but explaining the nuance of her feelings to Butch required time and place, and Buttercup had neither. "And that's only if there's anything to open up *to*. This place could be full of giant, irradiated roaches-" The emerald Puff's bare arms uncross, doing a 'rawr' claw hands. "Crawling on the booones of a dead empire," The creepy-claw-y hands close to fists, and Buttercup gets really morose for a moment. "Oh please don't let me manifest cockroaches, I really don't want to beat up giant bugs today." Buttercup both gets and does not get her wish, but, being down near Captain Ivy Buttercup starts reacting at the shout and turns to the first sound of gunfire, starting to track the figure from her foot-off-the-ground stationary hover. X-Ray vision cuts through the cover, and the Puff raises her voice. "Hey! We're American!" Comes out like a low grade megaphone, but the knife-headed zombie is gung ho rock and roll already and doing frankly impressive acrobatics while attacking Madeleine. So that leaves her and Butch. "A killer set of wheels? Well, go get it then, if it'll be useful for clearing the road then everyone will have to do less work. Right?" Having caught the Preta exiting the building spooked, the Powerpuff sees something she can do. "So - first contact, right?" Buttercup confirms to the disappeared space that had once contained Captain Ivy, and disappears in a burst burst of green light and a muted emerald line up and through several of the hurled fireballs. Zipping at one, Buttercup flips through an aerial axe kick, before zagging into light-speed towards a second, soccer flip kicking it back towards the Preta that threw it and lurching forward with one last push of speed to race the volleyed-back fireball to grab the wretched creature with an outstretched arm at the shoulder or about the lapel-appropriate Holding Place with a faint smile. "Hi." Buttercup begins slowly. "I'm Buttercup. I'm a Powerpuff Girl, from a different Earth. Can you... cut it out and calm down?" She didn't claim to be the diplomat. "Please?"
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"DIE, MARXISTS!"     Madeleine springs into action at the sound of gunfire, leaping to take cover behind the shelves of cheap plastic toys near the checkouts. Thankfully all that once-brightly-painted plastic has faded with age. When the display's flimsy construction proves insufficient defense against indiscriminate gunfire, the huntress raises a hand and a thick wall of ice springs up between her and the armed zombie. The ice is just clear enough to see silhouettes through, and Madeleine's counting on that. She drops to one knee and rolls backward below the level of a checkout conveyor, leaving a decoy crouched behind the ice. It's a flimsy plastic replica, but with its details obscured by the thick ice it should be enough to convince the gunman that he has one of his quarries pinned down.     The real Madeleine, meanwhile, circles around the checkout counter on all fours. As the gunman contends with Ivy's swordplay the huntress pounces like a beast, leaping forward to cover the last dozen feet or so as she draws her knife. That head wound suggests the shooter has no further need of his blood, so Madeleine forgoes what would normally be a strike at the femoral artery, instead keeping low and slashing repeatedly at the zombie's ankles. After a few severed tendons she springs straight up into the air and combos into a rising knee strike to the undead gunman's neck. It probably doesn't need to breathe, but the force behind the blow may be enough to take its head clean off.
Angela	Cinder collects a pair of gloves and puts them on without thinking too much about it. She is trained enough to just take things Petra gives automatically and do what seems obvious with them. She seems surprised by Petra's agreement to visit her 'hometown'. Cinder's mouth parts open slightly, then she pushes her shoulder up, dipping her head low as she smiles awkwardly at her, though not in an unhappy way. "Really? ... I want to show them I'm doing well. They ... I couldn't get back home when I was just a kid trying to escape the people who 'adopted me'. They said I couldn't survive in the Outskirts anymore, 'cause I lived in that fancy house too long." She grins. "Yet here I am, yeah?? I don't know if I'd say LobCorp is more dangerous than the outskirts, but I'm going to other and weirder worlds--way more 'Outskirts' than even the Outskirts...! I guess I wouldn't go back home now for good anyway, eben if they asked... But that's just because I get the joy of traveling the multiverse now." She smiles at Petra. "Thanks to you." She laughs into her hand a little bit. ''Maybe it'll be hard getting permission from Malkuth and Angela'' "Yeah... But it's not like I'd tell anybody what we're doing at the facility." Cinder agrees. "Maybe they'd be worried about safety but--you'd be there..!" She doesn't, at least, ask to visit Petra's hometown. Maybe she has at least got the vibe, if not the knowledge, that Petra is really disinclined to go back. "...I'd be surprised if this was an accident, but I'm not sure what else could've caused it. Maybe the monsters?" Justin Rook interupts to guess at wht they're finding. "It doesn't feel like a huge bomb, but it also doesn't seem like it's someone trying to professionally wreck the place either. Probably a side effect from some kind of war? Haven't seen any ''bodies'' yet though." Cinder looks at the photograph that Petra finds. Like Petra, she doesn't know THE LORE yet, but she's still affected. Her breath pushes out evenly for a moment before she thinks--maybe she should burn it? So they can be together in Heaven... Cinder pushes out that thought, feeling like it's an encoaching 4th Match Flame thought more than a Cinder thought. She remembers to give the photo a scan but doesn't seem to get what she's hoping for. Normal photograph. It can be tough to know what qualifies as an Anomoly at first glance sometimes. But even without it the photo certainly means a post 1993 world. But she doubts that kid is still smiling now. ... Actually she might not even be a kid anymore, assuming she survived whatever happned here. "Oh it's so terrible..." Chewie investigates the fridge and comes away disappointed. "I don't like this. But if there's deer theyp robably ate a lot of the same stuff we do in our world." ''DIE MARXISTS'' "Shit! Gunfire! Petra, let's--" He remembers he's talking to a fellow Captain. "We should go. We'll learn more after beating up whomever's stirring up a fuss..."
Angela	He rushes off, followed by Chewie. Cinder will at the very least, wait for Petra before moving on. Haschen takes the rear because she really doesn't want to get shot. None of them heard the line about dying Marxists however which means that Justin Rook doesn't shout that ''Mark'' is a pretty nice guy but he's not sure if he'd call himself a Marksist. But he does arrive first and ready his weapon threateningly. "Hey bud! We're just travelers here, how 'bout you calm down and--You a soldier right? How 'bout you calm down and tell us what's going on, we can kill each other later if we gotta." Chewie arrives next and crouches down, helping to pat out the flames even if he smells the delicious smell of burnt meat!
Khosa	Khosa has felt psychic materials before, but they tend to be a specific subset of materials. Crystals are pretty common; she uses those. Some prefer other stones, or - rarely - bone. She's never encountered metal; never leather; certainly never cloth. It's a little drowned out by Petra, who is frankly making it a lot harder than it should be to make basic readings, but she can still feel it. Especially when they aren't standing near Petra. She's still a little sore that her message got 'ignored' (not received) but isn't going to call out Petra, because it's her right; Khosa has some particular beliefs about how to be polite when making psychic calls, and being dismissed like that is a little rude (or would be if Petra was doing it on purpose) but not any more than ignoring someone saying hi would be. And she's feeling enough distortion she's not sure it made it there at all. She'll have to ask later. She has other things to think about now. Khosa has sharp ears, too - not, perhaps, as sharp as some of the others, at least when she's focusing on other senses, like tremorsense. That's the disadvantage; she can focus anything, but not everything, all at once. Sharp enough to hear gunfire, though, but she lacks the immediate response because Khosa has never been shot at it with anything higher tech than a bow. It may surprise people that, despite not having the reactions for gunfire, she *does* have them for grenades. Sure, Athasian grenades are ceramic, and grooved to shatter on impact, splattering your choice of chemicals, alchemical compounds, or (rarely) bound primal magic everywhere. But it's still a *grenade*. And, of course, it takes no effort at all to identify the danger in a fireball. "Get behind me!" she booms, suddenly. Khosa squats down, digs her fingers into the asphalt - literally jabbing holes in it - and *yanks*, pulling up a veritable sheet of it, enough to cover her from the shoulders down and with jagged edges along the sides. It's a stone shield to her, and she interposes it between Nina and the aggressors, letting any additional fire hit the shield. Khosa is strong enough to support the five by five chunk of asphalt with one hand. She leans well to one side so she can get her right hand free of it and punches - punches in such a way that it makes a rippling line of telekinesis, driving the force of her punch a good fifty feet as she tries to strike the thing that threw the fireball at Nina. "What is *that*?" She doesn't know what a preta is. She tilts her head a moment later. "Hey, incoming! It's - I don't think it's alive!" Khosa can't differentiate between cars and trucks all that well, but it has that kind of mechanical, rumbling sound to it, and feel on the road. She angles the shield to try to cover Nina from the new threat, too. She has much less care for her own safety... or maybe she just thinks she can take it.
Futaba Nuki	"I'm not going to throw you like a ball unless I have a *reallllly* good reason, Futaba." "Dang.  Was hopin' to see how far I could go." Futaba admits with a quiet laugh, although it's not clear how much of that is a joke (none of it) and much of that is real (all of it). "Probably would need to ditch the wings, though... And the face. That'd just be creepy to play with if I'm always looking at..." Wait. Looking at people and being thrown around in ball-form means spinning, doesn't it? After another grimace at thinking about how badly the motion sickness could hit her that way, Futaba just she shakes her head. "... Never mind." "Brick dabbles now and again . . ." Thankfully, her attention proves to be as easy to catch and release as it always is, and she hooks onto Butch's explanation immediately afterwards. "No kidding? Huh. Really does take after his dad, then. Are all the gadgets useful stuff like these, or...?" Oh, wait. Buttercup's going TOWARDS the foul smell. Futaba nods in wordless understanding as Butch falls back to join her, holding a hand up in a quick two-fingers-to-the-head salute before continuing onwards to continue her own search for whoever it is that's following everyone. She's about ready to veer off course, too, when... "Are you American?" The worst scenario has come to pass: The rescuee is inside the store. Holding her breath as she dives towards the store, Futaba readjusts her limbs and body so she's back at her usual proporitons by the time she lands outside in the constantly-revisited three point pose. Her scarf continues billowing behind her as she heads on towards the store, holding a hand up in lazy greeting while trying not to let the smell get to her. "Yo! I'm not American, but I like your food well enough. You alright in there, bud?" Futaba asks without the slightest hint of suspicion in her voice and movements, ready to just waltz right in despite that hostility in the speaker's voice. "We're here to check out this place and find survivors. You need a ha-" "DIE, MARXISTS!" "Who?" is all Futaba can blurt out in confusion before she hears, then sees the gunfire inside the store (and catches a glimpse of the exposed-brain figure). She only recognizes the grenade for a moment before IVy throws her cloak at it, leaving her dumbfounded just long enough to realize that more of those elongated creatures have shown up to start hurling fireballs at everyone as though the gunfire alone wasn't bad enough. "whoa, whoa, easy! We're not... Enemies!" Futaba shouts as she throws her hands up and her hips back to narrowly avoid getting scorched by one fireball, leaps forward into a handstand to keep the next from hitting her center mass, and then springs off her hands to get her tail out of the way of a third. Locking her eyes onto the preta pair, Futaba slides back onto her feet before sprinting right at them and launching herself narrowly over another set of fireballs. The tip of her tail catches on fire, but she pretends not to mind. It just makes her look even flashier as she twirls through the air towards them, lashing out towards them with her flaming tail in an exaggerated show of vision-obscuring fuzz. It's less of an actual attack maneuver and more of an attention grabber, though, like she's trying to hold their attention just long enough for Buttercup to pin them down unhindered before they can really blow something up. "You got that outta your system, guys? Haah.. I'm Futaba, ninja and local hero from also another Earth. Can we start over with all this?" She asks with a pleasant-enough smile, only looking briefly panicked as she realizes her tail is still on fire and quickly shuffles it against the pavement to try putting it out like an oversized cigar.
Petra Soroka	"Yet here I am, yeah??"     Petra automatically reflects Cinder's smile back at her, and then lets out a short burst of high pitched laughter, trailing off and becoming more normal sounding after a few stacatto beats. "Ahaha... yeah, right? Here you are. Here we are. Despite whatever else, we *do* survive out here, so no one can say we can't. It's kind of silly that it's that simple, but it is. And the stuff we do is *cool*." If she closes the door, she can see what she's looking for, preserved crudely by the grace of the door being flush with the ground for so many years.     Petra treats the shattered kitchen with more care than she treats most people. The moment that her perspective shifts from 'outdoors, seeing another broken house in a row of identical others' to 'being in what used to be a home', she eases off of adventurously bouncing around through rubble and destruction, tiptoeing around shards of ceramic and slipping through hanging doorframes as if the residents upstairs might hear her creeping around and come down to scold her. There's a level of reverence, when moving stuff around to search for records-- every touch of hers corrodes away records of the way the house ended up this way, after all, and her comment about playing forensics earlier to Buttercup wasn't made out of a disinterest in the idea.     Finally holding the photo she was searching for, dust-smudged gloved fingers pinch the frame delicately together, and Petra stares at it for an entire minute before lifting her face up to Cinder. She's not actively crying, but there's a vacant dazedness to her expression and voice, plodding along in the current moment while emotionally unmoored. The child's drawing, she didn't even put her fingers on.     "Um... 1993. That's... good information, for, when this all... happened. And if that's... common Earth's local year is... minus eight, plus two thousand, so if this Earth's timeline is... that's thirty one years after? That kind of lines up with, um... observation. But we can still... look around more, for, um, confirmation. A newspaper would be really good."     Before moving on, Petra takes out her phone and snaps a picture of both the photograph and the drawing-- if there's a name attributable to them anywhere near, she'll look around for that too. It's important to have records. "Probably a side effect from some kind of war?"     "Ah, mmm..." Petra side-eyes Justin before sweeping her gaze across the shattered dishware again. "What war would've even happened in America in 1993... that's before 9/11.... I guess China, maybe?" Professional foreign policy analyst, Petra Soroka, weighs in on the alternate history of the world in a timeline before she was born.
Petra Soroka	"It does seem like a war, though. It seems like a *bomb*. I'm kind of... hey, do we have any, like... sensors for radiation?" "Shit! Gunfire! Petra, let's--"     Petra also briefly forgets she's a fellow Captain. She jolts into action at Justin's call, and hearing the sound of gunfire herself too, and the weapon that she defaults to in response is her own revolver, pulled out of her compact mirror and gripped defensively. She doesn't register why he shifted tones mid-sentence until later, once she and Cinder are already out of the house and approaching the grocery store from around a sheltered corner to see what's going on. "DIE, MARXISTS!"     "Hey, what the fuck! I'm American!" Petra didn't actually hear the part where the preta asked about that-- it's just the natural dichotomy, where you have to be either one or the other. She was far enough away at the time to not be immediately shot or grenaded-at, so she doesn't shoot back in return, just holding her gun at the ready. That decision's validated, at least to her, when Buttercup flies down and reminds her of something. "So - first contact, right?"     "Oh, damn, yeah; he's not human, but he can talk, so... maybe this is what happened to all the humans living here? That..." Petra isn't talking loudly enough to be addressing the preta, just conversationally to Cinder beside her, and her eyes slide down to the preta's distended belly with a grimace of disgust. "Sucks. I don't like that it talks."     And yet, she must talk back. "We're not a threat, dude! We're explorers. From-- your world is--... damn it, I never know how to explain Unification to newbies. Why didn't we bring any of those pamphlets along?" Her voice lowers to grumble after a very pathetic attempt at diplomat-ing, before she raises it again. "If there's something you need right now, we can get it for you, uh, probably, and then would you mind talking for a bit? Or something?"
Calvin Nash	I wonder if you have any real mind left in you.     At least half of it is gone, in a physical sense, that she can see--maybe a little more, given the combat knife sticking out of his balaclava on the intact side of his head. Her precision cut strikes true, his fingers unable to pull the triggers of his guns. He's wide open for Alex's barrage. As might be expected of a zombie, there's no visible pain response to either his tendons being cut or the hail of bullets from Alex.     In response, he coughs--a thick purple miasma flung from his mouth, sweeping across the interior of the store. Being caught in it risks affliction with that same cough; which saps the strength from its victims and makes the wild knife-swings of the zombie hurt all the more. Aidan's windwall turns it away as it threatens to exit the store, the noxious cloud fading as it settles to the ground. We're just travelers here, how 'bout you calm down and-- whoa, whoa, easy! We're not... Enemies! We're not a threat, dude! We're explorers. From-- your world is--     "This here's OUR country, you damn pinko looters! I AIN'T calming down! OUR *VALUES* ARE UNDER ATTACK!" Yeah--Ivy's right in her assessment. There's nothing but rotten garbage to 'loot' here and whatever may have happened, that flag wrapped around him means about as much as the moldy cardboard in the freezers at this point.     The fake Madeleine draws its attention, a throwing knife flung uselessly at the shadows seen through the ice. She closes in to find him reeling from Alex's attack and unprepared--his defense is nonexistent, and his offense, while made with no regard for his own safety, is too sluggish to get through Madeleine's own offense.     As such... his head comes off, and his body goes slack. The abandoned store goes quiet. The head does say something--a racist slogan--before it, and the body disappear in streaks of slowly rising purple miasma. Khosa, oddly enough, picks that up; like the psychic equivalent of water pooling at the bottom of a spout and heading down a storm drain, off to somewhere else.     Outside, the thrown snack foods have exactly the desired effects, the preta overcome by their desires and running in opposite directions to claim the preservative-laden treasures. Can you... cut it out and calm down?     "S-sure," says one of the preta, after the initial shock of being picked up. "Sorry, that guy with the guns scared the crap out of us. Glad you're not with him!" They try to eat an Oreo, but it disappears in a puff of smoke before it touches their tongue. "Aw."     The other one encounters much the same fate with a dorito. Can we start over with all this?     "I guess," says the one unsuccessfully eating doritos. "But we're not exactly... cut out to be tour guides. We don't remember much at all about our lives before. Not even our names." And their lives now are connected with... this. Trying, and failing, to satisfy their hunger. They're not hostile like the zombie is--was, but they're not terribly helpful either. "You're probably not gonna find any humans around here. That I can tell you--anyone that didn't die to the blast wave would've died from radiation."     "Or starving," says the other preta.     "Or starving," agrees the would-be dorito eater.
Calvin Nash	Fortunately for Petra and for Buttercup, there are more reliable sources of information nearby. A rusted metal box outside at the front of the dollar store lies ripped from its posts out front, face down in the parking lot. Propped up by a struggling, decaying handle, it appears to be a newspaper vending machine. Tearing it from its hinges and disregarding the lock is trivial even for those without superhuman strength; for those with, it's less-than. What's inside is a moldy, decaying, mushy mess. Near to ninety percent of it is useless, pulped up and dried-over slop, but the very back of the container has a single fragile, crinkling paper, yellowed and threatening to disintegrate. It requires care to extricate from the rest of the stack, stuck to the others in places. The front page has a date: July 6, 1994. The headline of the Atlanta Journal reads, in bold lowercase letters: "Sanctions threatened over U.S. occupation in Japan"     Khosa finds, as does Butch, looking for that impressive set of wheels, that it's just a few blocks away now. Getting closer, and closer, and closer, until...     A light truck goes flying through the air, over a pile of rubble built up over decades. Trucks don't normally fly. The fliers among you can see that the driver (only his face is visible due to the vehicle's angle) doesn't seem bothered by this. His passenger, a man whose tawny beige skin is framed by tightly bound raven hair, looks very much bothered by it--he's pale as a sheet. Four-wheel drive sees all four thick tires spinning in the air for one suspensful moment before the truck lands. Shocks dutifully absorb the impact; admirably, in fact, the chassis bouncing wildly enough that the driver reaches calmly up to keep his black cowboy hat on his head.     The truck is painted matte white--lacking the protective sheen given by auto shops and assembly lines. A dull metal roll bar behind the cab sports two spotlights, yet to be necessary in the fading light but perhaps soon to see their use. The door sports a logo in black--an inverted pentagram. Above it and below, text:
Calvin Nash	SOUTHEAST ASSEMBLY DEMON MARSHAL     The truck is put into park, the ignition cut off. The driver unbuckles his seatbelt and steps out.     "God fucking damn it, Calvin, couldn't you have gone around?" his partner calls from the passenger seat.     'Calvin' doesn't immediately answer. He just keeps chewing... something, looking between all of you quietly from behind aviator sunglasses which he only now realizes it's kind of stupid to wear this late. "It'll be alright," he says, sparing his partner a look over the shoulder.     "Yeah?!"     "Yep," he says dully, as his jaw works on whatever he's chewing.     Calvin bends the brim of his hat, generally, slipping his sunglasses into the pocket of his uniform. A uniform which, to Petra, Buttercup and the Ruffs, looks a lot like a state trooper's. "How y'all doin'? Anybody need fixing up?" Attached to his wrist is a bulky sleeve of metal. He lifts it, at which point a panel clicks open and reveals it to be a computer of some kind. Tapping away with one hand, his blue eyes scan the screen with businesslike boredom.     "Patriot, huh," he says. "Yeah, they're nasty." Closing the computer, more conversationally, "Where y'all coming in from?"
Rowdyruff Boys	//It's the Warprunner's whole business to do this// "Oh," Butch says. He frowns, considering that. It doesn't leave a lot of room for him to do much... but he's also not that interested in doing 'construction work' to begin with. His eyes flick up and down the street, surveying the damage. "Well... maybe you're right that it isn't a good idea to get it back in shape for anything to be moving too openly on, anyway. But..." "If that's the case, why the internal combustion engine rumble?" He wonders, turning his gaze in the direction the noise is coming from. "Wait... you think it'd be useful for clearing the roads? I guess to be moving towards us it must at least be able to navigate them itself..." Around the time that he says that, the rumble arrives. Butch watches as the matte white truck flies over and lands, with a... state trooper? Getting out. He blinks slowly. "Cool truck," he settles on, simply. "Uh, we're from--" Brick zips over from the pretas, landing adjacent to Butch and folding his arms over his chest. "Quite a few astronomical units to the southwest. Your world got stitched into Sector Zero of the Multiverse. Are you superhuman, or has the radiation died down to acceptable levels? It's not a problem for me, but some of our people aren't insulated."
Ivy Carrow	When the Patriot's head comes off, then and only then does Alex stop shooting. "Captain!" A ragged gulp of air. "...Ivy?"     There was a flash, over where Ivy's cloak lay discarded, and she was there, leaning down, picking it up off the ground. "Take five, Alex." She said, with an easy smile, relatching it into place. She brushed a strand of hair from her face with a clawed hand. "Attend to Nina. I'll get it from here."     She took care to secure her sword in its sheathe, a slow, deliberate show of putting her weaponry away. "Patriot's one hell of a thing to call that thing. Guess it fits."     She paused, frowning, as Brick mentioned radiation. "If the radiation hasn't faded, we'll need to get anyone who can't handle it somewhere where they can be treated." She didn't seem too worried about herself, Nina or Alex, though. "He's right. If there's fallout here, it's a damn urgent question."     "Calvin, right? Name's Ivy, head of a bunch of multiverse explorers called the Warprunners. I'd love to stay and chat, but if there's a hazard to my people, it takes priority." Her head tilted to the side, waiting for the answer to Brick's question.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	The zombie proves it's run out of tricks by promptly losing its head - and rather than be rewarded with a portable talking skull, Madeleine is just the least bit disappointed to see it go poof. But there's little time for lamenting what could have been (alas, poor Skully, she did not know him well) before the truck comes flying over the road's assorted obstructions and screeching to a halt outside. Madeleine hustles out of the dollar store, and on seeing that the vehicle is crewed by humans and not by undead political zealots, she straps her knife back on her belt.     "Patriot, huh."     "If you've got a name for them, that means there's more than one of those eyesores, right? You get lots of trigger-happy undead here in Georgia?" Madeleine's apparently unconcerned by the whole 'radiation threat' deal. The huntress leans around Calvin to peer at his vehicle. "'Demon Marshal', huh? That your deputy in the truck? My name's Madeleine, by the way." She belated offers a hand to shake.
Khosa	The psychic essence flowing away elsewhere reminds Khosa of something, and her lips purse, but at least it's not going to attack anyone now - she can worry about that later. It's not like she can trace it from here. And if she's not going to have to fight the preta, so much the better. She still has no idea what they are, though they *also* remind her of something else - something not quite so weak. She lowers the enormous chunk of asphalt she's propping up as an impromptu shield slightly when they don't seem likely to attack Nina (or her)... though she doesn't quite put it down, and in fact she's ready to drag it into a different direction entirely if that truck that she hears proves aggressive. Now, every truck Khosa has ever seen has not flown, but she's not going to up and say that trucks don't fly. Maybe a whole bunch of them fly and she just hasn't seen them, and she does not want to look like an idiot. So she bites back her first about-to-be-shouted comment and simply braces, holding the shield just so as the truck comes in for a thumping landing. She sees the logo, and there's actually a moment of familiarity. That is a badge. Khosa understands badges, a single shining instant of recognition amongst the sheer weirdness of this new world. She lets out a sigh of relief. "Finally!" Khosa lowers the shield just slightly and reaches into her vest, where there's a small inside pocket. Out of it she pulls a badge of her own, apparently made out of some silver alloy. It is a regular ten-sided shape and has a seven-stepped ziggurat embossed on it, along with some writing, though it might be hard to make out at much of a distance. "I'm Khosa. I'm an agent of the Free City of Tyr, and a Paladin - never mind about that part for now," she says, professional for a change. "It's as they said, we're from another world. ...If it makes you feel better, it's weird to me too. This is only the second time I've ever taken a long trip to a foreign plane." She smiles, encouragingly. She's also hoping that the fact that she is nonhuman, and standing near another even more obviously nonhuman (thank you, Aidan) proves the 'another world' thing and she doesn't have to actually explain it. Because if she does, she's leaving it to the Warprunners. "We're here to see if there was anyone actually alive in this part of the world. Guess the answer's yes." Khosa looks around again for a moment, thoughtfully, then nods. "Since I figure if you've a vehicle that probably takes a team to repair, and a badge painted on it, you're not going to be the only ones." She drops the chunk of asphalt. It falls down with a *thump*. "Sorry 'bout the mess." She doesn't sound that sorry, if only because they didn't cause much of one.
Powerpuff Girls	Buttercup is appeased as she releases the grip on her fingers and lets the Preta go with an "Okay then, uh, good." Hers goes off to attempt to eat more Oreos, and the Powerpuff floats to the ground in mildly baffled relaxation. "It was just a few fireballs, nothing too bad." Buttercup ameliorates with an open-palmed wave and quarter-lidded awkward detachment, but gets a weird vibe off of the demons. First contact with skrunkly greed demons was a little double anticlimactic, but she still winces when they can't taste their treats all the same. The occult punishment was lost on her, seeing someone suffering. Instead, she cracks her sooted knuckles and joins Petra in looting the newspaper vendor, using a mix of physicality and careful extraction to find: "Nineteen ninety-four? Occupied *Japan*? What happened, Japan is a US ally, isn't it? Is that zombie really freaking out about Marxists legitimately?" Buttercup tries to put it together, right thumb stroking index knuckles, but it's difficult. "How alternate is this history?" Annd then the Truck is revealed. Buttercup stands up from her newspaper-scrap inspecting stoop, taps off her shoes from the ruin dust and paper-bits, and looks back at the officer standing there chewing. Green eyes to aviators, and then over to Butch. "Yeah I thought the engine would be bigger." She just admits straight out in front of the state trooper, "Like a plow or dump truck, because we heard it from far off." Stepping forward, Buttercup pauses while Ivy accepts the prompt from Brick and introduces her group, and then adds for herself: "A bunch of us are tagging along. Like I said to the, uh," Buttercup gives the Oreo-Preta a look. "Person over there, I'm Buttercup." A thumb to Butch. "That's Butch. And the one who zipped in asking questions immediately is Brick. We're superheroes who followed the Warprunners through a gate they found to this place. You're connected a ways south to a whole lot of other places."
Angela	Cinder smiles at Petra a little overlong and keeps smiling at her even well after her attention is off of her. Chewie, naturally, has mild approval of appropriate information gathering even if it's not really his own specialty. Justin decides to not remind Petra that she's a captain because it'd be pretty silly to get into it right now. Justin is the wrong guy to ask about American Politics circa any year but he does consider the idea. "I dunno... I mean, usually if you do a grand big ol' war you want something out of it right? If the land doesn't seem entirely unuseable but nobody's...Maybe it was war against the 'Beasts'...?" That makes sense to him but... "It'll be easier once we meet the locals." He decides. Haschen continues to be a mess. But. ''Sanctions threatened over U.S. occupation in Japan'' Justin glances to Petra. "I guess...America was some kind of aggressor? Dang." Violence does seem to be uh. Over. But since someone else is coming by, LobCorp doesn't quite detense just yet. The team knows what a reverse pentagram is and-- Some guy named Calvin., and a partner of some kind. Justin only met normal cops but the uniform is close enough so Justin-- Lowers his weapon and says, "Don't shoot or arrest us, sir." remembering his experience in Townsville. "I promise we didn't bring any firearms today, just melee weapons." The skull on Penitence stares at Calvin. Cinder jumps in with a, "Uh we're fine, we're doing alirght. Thanks for offering. We're ... explorers from out of town! Could you tell us more about ...this place? And what happened here? The destruction here is terrible."
Petra Soroka	"This here's OUR country, you damn pinko looters! I AIN'T calming down! OUR *VALUES* ARE UNDER ATTACK!" The head does say something--a racist slogan--before it, and the body disappear in streaks of slowly rising purple miasma.     Petra's tense grimace at the zombie's continued nationist tirade dissolves with a sigh when its head falls off and it disintegrates. If only it could always be that easy. "Okay, glad that's not the kind of life we've got to make first contact with. Otherwise we might as well just nuke the whole place a second time."     With Racism now defeated, and the pretas unhelpful and kind of scary, Petra moves on to the most important worldbuilding artifact available: the public newspaper stand. Smearing away mush with a reluctant expression and thoroughly covered skin until the intact paper is extracted, Petra looks it over and nods, affirmed in her earlier belief, almost. "So I was pretty much right. It was Japan instead of China. That's kind of weirder, though... why *would* the U.S. go to war with Japan? I mean, it's got to be some local world politics thing, but... I actually can't imagine what at all."     Petra doesn't have much more time to meditate on geopolitics and either invent some insane new sort of internalized racism or spout more extremely mundane sorts of it before a truck comes sailing overhead and slams into the ground. Now, Petra's a Southern gal, by an extremely loose and mostly-incorrect definition, so she should have some sort of opinion about trucks, likely a defensively positive one. But try as she might, delving as deep into her heart as she can, to consider her own biases and history with trucks, she somehow comes up with nothing. Despite living in Texas the majority of her life, and despite doing mechanical work on mechs and other vehicles for most of the rest of it, Petra has no strong feelings about trucks. "How y'all doin'? Anybody need fixing up?"     Taken by surprise by her own apathy, and met with the blunt ineloquence of the stranger-ranger, Petra's own tone lapses into mirroring his, becoming lackadaisically casual. Briefly offput in a way that manifests as being practically sedated, mental processing numbed by the numbness she's presented with from Calvin, Petra absentmindedly pulls out a cigarette and lights it, offering him one too. "Hey, dude. Nah, I don't think anyone got shot. We've got healing facilities on the other side of the warpgate, anyways. Are you patrolling around here?"     Oh wait. This is also the first human they've talked to on a planet that they weren't sure had any, during an expedition of first contact. Petra pulls off one of her gloves and swipes her fingers through her sweaty hair, pushing it aside to better reset her mental posture. "We're coming in from a different world-- well, from a hub intersecting lots of different worlds. Your world just hooked up--" A lot of people are explaining that better than Petra is, so she just decides that's enough. "And we came by to check out if there were any humans here. It's cool there are. I hated that guy. I'm Petra. There's... pamphlets?" That's still the best she's got.
Futaba Nuki	With the zombie slain and pair of preta subdued, Futaba's finally able to get a closer look at them and even listen to them speak. She lets out a light sigh of relief, too, when they prove to be far less hostile than initially expected from that array of fireballs. "HEh, no harm done. I mean, we did kinda just show up from all over the place and riled... Uh." Noticing that they're not doing particularly well with Brick's snacks, the more inquisitive side of Futaba prompts her to squat nearby the preta, holding her hand out for one of the little dorts or tiny oreos so she can try and feed them directly. If that also disappears in a puff of smoke, she'll let out a quiet "Aw" before moving on. ".. Riled that guy up. He sounded pretty long gone, too, or just real mindless, but... Anyway. This blast." Radiation? That's not something Futaba's particularly familiar with. "How long ago did it happen? Must've been a while if it's long enough for folks to start starving, or plants to start overtaking the place like those weeds out back. We just got here, so we're looking for survivors that might need a little hand, maybe an introduction to the outside where we're all from." With that long, but well-intentioned offer put out, Futaba has just enough time to get those wings back out of her back before she hears... A truck? One that goes flying, at that, but it's still recognizably enough of a truck that she's almost ready to get into a defensive stance! Almost is the keyword, thankfully, as the driver' exchange withi his partner in another seat gives Futaba enough time to give the preta each a quick pat on the head before getting back up to check Calvin and his vehicle out. "Hey there! We're doing fine, thanks for asking. Name's Futaba! Futaba Nuki." She introduces herself with a quick smack of a closed fit against her chest, her bushy and still mildly tail flicking once to the other side. "Think I'm okay, but you think you could give these two a look over?" Futaba jerks a thumb back at the preta, glancing back over at them to make sure they aren't cowering or something before turning back to Calvin. "We're coming from out of town. Some of us way further than others." She nods at Brick briefly, then turns back to Calvin with an easygoing grin while crossing her arms over her head. "Japan here, but yeah. Way this place is stitched together, we're just a few hops, skips, and a jump over before you might even find my stompin' grounds." It's only at that moment that recalls hearing something mentioned about Japan.  Whatever it is, though, probably can't be too important. "Say. Uhh.. That blast. Is that why everything here's so jacked up? How long ago was that?" Yes, she's going to ask him the same thing she asked the preta. "From the looks of things, it was a while back. I'm just wondering how long, in case we should still be looking for survivors or... Uh. Descendants?"
Calvin Nash	Cool truck.     "It is, ain't it," Calvin grins. His Southern baritenor intones enthusiasm particularly well. "That's the pride and joy of the Southeast Assembly's motorworks." Don't shoot or arrest us, sir. I promise we didn't bring any firearms today, just melee weapons.     Calvin looks at Justin blankly. Then at his fellow marshal in the truck. The other marshal shrugs--it's not like he can hear that well with the windows rolled up anyway. He chews for a few stiffly passed seconds.     "Sir," begins Calvin, businesslike in a condescending way that someone would be towards a confused drunk, one palm held outwards with the other hand still hooked into his beltloop, "Nobody's shooting nobody, and nobody's arresting nobody." It sounds like he's had to explain this a thousand times, actually, before there ever was a Multiverse to think of. "Well, the Patriot was shooting, but y'all handled it." Are you patrolling around here? Quite a few astronomical units to the southwest. Your world got stitched into Sector Zero of the Multiverse.     "Stitched into the--" Calvin's neutrally pleasant expression turns a shade confused. He chews on the thought as evidently as he chews on--ginger. He's chewing on ginger root. Compared to the smell from the dollar store, his breath is probably like heaven. "Well, that'd explain all the readings the eggheads are getting. We got dispatched up here to see what that was about--if it was anything we needed to worry over." There's... pamphlets? "Director Moore--uh, my boss, she's gonna want one of them," Calvin says. "You got one handy?"     There's a bit of a similarity in posture, between Brick and himself--not literally, but in terms of energy and vibe. Where Brick stands with his arms crossed, Calvin stands with his thumbs hooked into his beltloops, elbows back, legs spaced evenly apart. I'd love to stay and chat, but if there's a hazard to my people, it takes priority. Are you superhuman, or has the radiation died down to acceptable levels? It's not a problem for me, but some of our people aren't insulated.     "No, uh-uh," he answers to 'are you superhuman.' He doesn't properly even know what it means, but he's never heard it before, so the answer is probably no--which he gives, confidently, with a shake of his head. "Near as our brightest can figure, the radiation's gone, or at least back to what it was before the bombs." Think I'm okay, but you think you could give these two a look over?     Calvin nods. He lifts his right hand, snaps his fingers, and flicks them outwards, thrusting his palm towards the preta. "Media." Ribbons of pale blue light coalesce around the preta, before straightening and flying into them.     "Um, thanks..." says one, looking up from a puddle of stagnant water they're trying unsuccessfully to drink from. The bruises from the scuffle fade away. Calvin gives them a thumbs-up.
Calvin Nash	If you've got a name for them, that means there's more than one of those eyesores, right?     He nods. "Patriots? 'Fraid so. Back when I was little, a whole slew of 'em washed up on Ossabaw. Not everybody that died after the bombs died to radiation, or even to that," Calvin says, a touch glum, his head tipping backwards to indicate a collapsed house. "Some people didn't trust nobody back when they were alive, and were waiting for something like the bombs to happen. Why, I can't say--that's a question for somebody older."     "When everybody else came together, they were the ones with bunkers and yards full of booby traps and pantries full of canned food, drooling over the thought of somebody stepping on one." He grimaces, then swallows his ginger. "Mnh. You can't eat bullets, and bear traps and toe-tappers don't keep the cold out." He shrugs. "Some of 'em went hungry, some of 'em got themselves kilt picking fights with people that stuck together. Then they got back up, different. It turns out lots of things can make the dead walk." That your deputy in the truck? My name's Madeleine, by the way.     He lets that stew, a moment, and then extends a hand for a round of handshakes. "Marshal Calvin Nash." A thumb is jerked towards his coworker in the truck's cab. "And that's Marshal Denny Garcia, Jr. We just call him Junior."     Junior waves from the cab, recovering from the terror of flight. Since I figure if you've a vehicle that probably takes a team to repair, and a badge painted on it, you're not going to be the only ones.     "Nope," says Calvin proudly. He unhooks a thumb from his beltloops and angles his right shoulder towards Khosa, tapping the patch on his sleeve. It's the emblem of that 'Southeast Assembly,' a sapling growing in a bed of ash, surrounded by fallen buildings in the morning light. It's... inspiring, without losing its grounding in reality.     "There's plenty of settlements in this part of the country," explains Junior, as he gets out of the truck. "The Assembly reaches from east Georgia all the way to Oklahoma, and that's just us. There's people that keep to themselves, there's Libertalia, there's Canaan..."     "You're not gonna find nobody in the big cities, though." They, presumably, took direct hits.     "Nobody but demons, anyway," Calvin agrees. "Atlanta's crawling with 'em. Can't imagine any other big city'd be different." Yeah I thought the engine would be bigger. Like a plow or dump truck, because we heard it from far off.     "Oh, that's probably because it don't run on gas," says Junior. "None of the Assembly's trucks do. I don't really get it," he admits.     "Magnetite," Calvin answers, and this answer is both matter-of-fact and unhelpful enough to draw an annoyed eyeroll from Junior.     "I know *that,*" Junior asserts.     Calvin's pleasant neutrality persists. This seems to annoy Junior more. Say. Uhh.. That blast. Is that why everything here's so jacked up? How long ago was that?     "Bombs fell in '94," answers Calvin. "It's 2043 right now." So it's definitely 'descendants,' primarily. Though... Nodding towards the newspaper Petra's got, "If you wanna know more than that'll tell you, my mama or any of the other older folks back at Ossabaw could tell you more. 'Sbout four days on foot, but one of those 'gates' opened up over in Savannah, so you don't gotta make the trip unless you really wanna."
Calvin Nash	"It's getting dark," says Calvin warily, "And right here's about as close as you wanna be to a demesne after sundown," he cautions. "Y'all feel free to look around, head on home, or even follow us back to Ossabaw Island. My COMP can print you out a map, if you wanna see any of the places people still live. But I wouldn't stick around here, and I damn sure wouldn't head up Atlanta way, if I was you. Not safe even during the day."      "If y'all don't mind, I'm gonna call this in, give 'em the low-down, and head on back myself."      He heads over to the truck, reaching for a CB radio. Khosa can feel a little tingle at the back of the neck when he radios in. Brick can see the linework of a crude but effective correspondence spell etched on the back of the receiver as Calvin talks. "Yyyello. Yep. Well, you're not gonna believe it, so I'll just tell you..." Anyone who cares can listen in without much difficulty.      The dispatcher quickly gives the radio over to who is presumably Director Moore. To her credit, she seems just as willing, if not more willing, to believe what Calvin is saying as he was willing to hear it in the first place.
Angela	Justin doesn't seem to be bothered by condescension--he's accustomed to that noise, particularly since he started being Multiversal. He does mouh the word 'Libertalia' in horror, though, when he thinks nobody's paying him too much mind. ''Magnetite'' Haschen pokes her head out from behing him. She seems to be taking furious notes on what Calvin is saying but is struggling to keep up. "Um. Umm... Do you have any pamphlets of your own? Or uh... 'New Arrival' Information Documents? STuff any citizen of yours might need to know? We're primarily interested in not causing any diplomatic problems but maybe a glossary and a uh... maybe what a ''COMP'' is? Anything you're able to tell us or ... anybody should know... I'm taking notes I promise...!" Justin DOES care to listen in, quirking ihs ead and not really hiding it. But CHewie focuses on Junior. "You got...food? I'm hungry. What sort of stuff do you eat around here?" He asks. Cinder is struggling a little to keep up with all f this and look stowards Petra to kind of use her as a translation device--or at the very least tell her what she needs to know. She's already shared a lot about how this place works as far as she can tell.
Ivy Carrow	"Near as our brightest can figure, the radiation's gone, or at least back to what it was before the bombs."     "Glad to hear it, Calvin." She grinned. "One of the things Warprunners do, is we try to study new worlds, get people introduced. Connect them to the broader multiverse, or even just give them control over HOW they connect with it."     "I'm sure you and your folks have a lot of questions, and we've got answers. And I know I've got all sorts of questions of my own. I'd love to come with."     Alex was already retreating, taking hold of Nina and slipping through a red wound in the world.     She held out a clawed hand. "What do you say, Marshal Calvin?"
Rowdyruff Boys	"Southeast Assembly? Is that a band?" Butch wonders. Brick shrugs at Buttercup and ponders aloud, "You could probably get a scenario like that if Japan was never involved in World War two, resulting in an absence of modernization and a continued expansionist Imperialist policy undermined by slower technological advancement that caught up properly in the 90s. But the median United States is significantly more evil than ours, so it could also just be that the United States was acting out." He glances towards Futaba, "... Also, they're 'starving' because they're hungry ghosts. You can't make them not-starving without spiritually cleansing them in some way, more than likely. I'd have to figure out the particulars." //We got dispatched up here to see what that was about--if it was anything we needed to worry over.// "Nah," Butch starts, "it's all--" "There's more world to go around," Brick cuts across Butch. "About the same balance of things to worry about. I'm sure you get it."//No, uh-uh// Brick nods. "Good. Means we don't have a bunch of dumb decontamination to do, then." "One time we fought a dinosaur with nuclear breath and Professor Utonium had to invent a whole new way of getting rid of radiation so we could hang out near people again," Butch provides, by way of explanation. //there's Libertalia...// Brick doesn't roll his eyes, but the psychic pressure of him wanting to do so is palpable. Butch elbows Buttercup and mutters, "Hey, we touring, or are we going home tonight?" "I'm going home. If she stays, stay with her. If she comes home, don't you fucking dare stick around solo," Brick warns his brother. His attention swings back to Calvin, "Solid enough first contact. Nice meeting you." "Oh, uh, yeah. It's been cool," Butch adds, towards Calvin.
Khosa	Khosa 'gets' Calvin. They don't have the same background, at all, nor the same attitude, but they're apparently in much the same sort of job. She gets sent on that kind of trip, too - when she's not handling other minor matters for the Free City. Also, he's being polite and helpful, which is an added bonus. She grins again, slightly crooked, when he shows off his patch. "Makes sense to me," she says - and coming from a region that's mostly small city-states and their holdings, with some of the bigger older cities lost to time and the desert, it does. Whether there are fewer tyrants here, she can't say, but a 'Director' sounds better than a 'Tyrant' to her. Even the world being in a state is familiar, though hers is much older. If a disaster happened, an end of an Age, within living memory - but then again she supposes they're in a new Age too. "I'd like to see," she decides, impulsively. "You mind if I tag along with you? I don't have anything urgent keeping me elsewhere." Not if Nina's heading back; Khosa's promise to keep her safe was seriously meant, but if she's retreating to safety Khosa can do what she wants. "If the answer's no, I'll take the map and see if I can make sense of it, but this place is so - " Khosa gestures, not at anything in particular, just the whole everything around them. "And I'd like to meet some of the other officials, if they're interested. Tyr's looking for friends, too. Maybe we can set something up. But even if we can't, it's good to meet people, I figure. Just don't ask me to fly after the truck." Khosa has limits. She pauses a moment at someone else's question. "Hey! Catch," she calls to Chewie, before tossing him a bundle wrapped in leather scraps. It proves to have jerky in it, and a jerky he is probably not familiar with; it has some familiarity to pork in taste, but not exactly.
Calvin Nash	Stuff any citizen of yours might need to know?     While Calvin radios the apparent head office of the Marshals, Junior fields questions.     "Uh... well, we don't really have..." A formalized curriculum? A pamphlet? Junior is realizing he's a little out of his depth. Maybe what a ''COMP'' is? Anything you're able to tell us or ... anybody should know... I'm taking notes I promise...!     "Oh, well, I mean... this," says Junior, lifting up a comparitively much more slender arm than Calvin's, and tapping the bulky metal sleeve mounted on his wrist. "This is a COMP. It's a computer, and a compendium. So it's a COMP. Look--maybe you better pay us a visit?" You got...food? I'm hungry. What sort of stuff do you eat around here?     "Oh, yeah. We carry some with us in case we find people in a bad way." Chewie is tossed a tied sachet to accompany the one Khosa offers. Where did it come from? Apparently, from his COMP, given that a few keystrokes conjured it into his empty hand. Inside, there are nuts, roasted berries, and toasted breadcrumbs. I'd love to come with. You mind if I tag along with you?     Calvin shakes Ivy's claw with his free hand. "Sure thing, Ms. Ivy, Ms. Khosa. There's only room in the cab for one of y'all," he says, nodding towards it. "But if you both wanna ride along, the bed's safer than it looks."     "Calvin, you are *not* gonna take one of them in the truck bed," says Junior, sweeping his free hand angrily in a 'no way' gesture. "I felt my nuts go up my ass, and that was with a seatbelt and a damn roof over my head! God only knows where they'd end up without neither."     "It's fine," Calvin says, multitasking between three separate conversations now.     Junior scoffs irritably and shakes his head. Oh, uh, yeah. It's been cool. Solid enough first contact. Nice meeting you.     "Take care now," says Calvin.     "Have a good one," offers Junior, before they both pile into the cab. Despite first impressions, if someone *does* ride in the bed, they are not catapulted into the wilderness or surrounding ditches.