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Tamamo     Tamamo should have no reason to tire. She's not sleepless by any means, but she hasn't been spending all her time waiting and watchful for an intruder in her little, misty village. That her voice still dulls means something.

    'Even if it's just to talk shit at me, stop calling her a dog.'

    "Among the two of us, only you have done so."

    'What do you know about 'the other side'? I'm tired of people trying to lead me on with little breadcrumbs of secrets.'

    "This one, I expected you to know, if any did. If you will slow a few moments more, you may hear a story." It might take more than a few.

    "There were some who invaded our privacy and, among these, one whom I forgave, as he came to me out of concern for her nightmare, for the enemy who would seek her out in her dreams, and take her away from the world. Of course, I rejected such a being with all my force. I arranged for that dream to cross to our side, and we fought that which appeared as Antegent, while Lilian slept. When I leapt to stab its heart with her sword, I found Exigent Serenity. She said to me, 'I am Lilian, too,' and bade me not reject her further."

    Flames flicker in the retelling, energy that hadn't been there minutes ago. "I recognized her, then. The blade that hates the Outsider passed through her and cut her bindings. Greedy as I am, I carried home all of Lilian. Now, her other self speaks to me, too, of love in different terms, of... orbits and enmeshment. A few words cannot suffice to describe our talks."

    As if it hardly matters, "A soul of multiple, seperable faces is nothing strange. Many of the gods you have forgotten were such an existence. The part is and is not the whole, dependent only upon the angle of view."


    '. . . you think she might tolerate the world not to lose you?'

    A silent moment, and then, "You were very, very close. Congratulations." She sounds neither surprised, nor insincere, but as if the pause was only to decide whether to make clear it was something they both knew. Something close enough to count.

    "Enjoy your cookies. It would be a shame to waste the effort I put into making them, after all this."
Angela ''I'd like it if less people had reason to learn that lesson. Which I suppose is part of my reason for being here.''

"Hadn't they both already learned that lesson?" Angela asks. "Surely they hadn't sprout out fully formed into the military industrial complex." While the first 'they' is ambiguous the second 'they' is surely referring specifically to Ash. "And at what point must we accept the lesson has been learned, accept that the world has made its statement--that people have made their statements--and act appropriately towards the world others have made?"

She hears...

''What the fuck does that mean? I'm serious. If she said it then it matters even if you don't.''

Angela normally communicates in Fall but the arena of the King of Greed does have an avenue for her to communicate, patched on through to the Eggpack. A secondary screen appears, since she feels answering this is important but the how she answers it gives her a moment's pause. But a moment's pause is plenty.

"...You have had to battle against a world that was your enemy. I respect that. It is coherent that you would seek control against a world that considers you anathemic--useful, but anathemic."

"Perhaps she is scared. She has said to me, before, that she is scared. That the fear is what makes me a 'Girl like her'." Angela continues, leaning back in her chair.In truth, I am still learning every day what that means, what it means to 'be born'. If the phrase came from her, wouldn't it be better to ask her? But I suppose I have an answer of my own, a current one. Namely, what I am now is someone who was forced to exist in a certain way because of circumstances beyond my control. While I could feel however I liked, my actions were limited. Many children are in a position like this, and maybe even more adults. They are not allowed to be the people they truly are, perhaps have always known themselves to be even as they were convinced that their true selves were alien and strange--derogatory."
Angela Angela leans back forward and adds, "Lilian has, clearly, 'been born'. Perhaps she still has growing up to do, but she is self-defined. She would not have phrased the statement as she did if she was truly entwined in strings beyond her own." She exhales once, closing her eyes. "But yes, though self-defined, she may be afraid to continue down a path that she feels will harm others. Perhaps they deserve to be harmed, perhaps not, but that is irrelevant because this is about Lilian."

"So," Angela adds. "Why are you pushing her into the pool rather than guiding her? Encouraging that fear through force? The Blooms of Humanity may be the most important beings of the multiverse, but what does that have to do with me? My world is far away. Will it make me able to taste meals, will it free me from all confines? I do not, selfishly, want Lilian to leave my side. I do not, selfishly, want to see her beyond my reach. If that harms her, prevents her from some sort of miraculous ascension--so be it. I am allowed to fight for my love as well. And I do not feel that she is anywhere near inclined to abandon her fiance at the very least."
Arthur Lowell > Arthur: Something wild is eating the shit out of you

    "..."

    Arthur's mind turns over a possibility. When Ash moves on, his voice carries. Somehow, for a time, it stays with them. When the Armillary is starting to come apart, his response to them is accessible, found in audio logs or interpreted data-chunks found in elaborate available systems, in the description of the Key of Last Resort. The kind of thing that he leaves only for one who's seeking more information, never imposed into Ash's view, a sort of deniable way to provide the knowledge.

    Still. At this stage, there's a real chance of Ash checking those sorts of things, isn't there? After days and days of this? So when that knowledge is dumped into Ash's lap, it's still Arthur's fault, and he knows that.

    "Yeah, you're right. There's stuff I don't tell her."

    "I'm ill. That's all. Sick, I guess, in a-- well, in a complicated way. If I become too much of what I am, I'm gonna die, or I'm gonna want to bad enough that it's not a real difference. And I don't talk to her about it, like you said. She's got a lot to worry about, and I've got a lot that nobody wants to hear, and maybe we can think about it after whatever's getting done is done."

    "But, hey, it's less work for you, if you stick around a while, huh? Or even if you don't. Hahahaha..."



> ==>

    Outside the Armillary, in fragments of real time, the planetoid finishes orienting and emerging. Its spires, and its waterfalls, and its vast energies, loom. They blot out the sun and replace its light with one altogether more bright.
James Bond >She did something to make everyone hate her before she got famous enough to make everyone pretend they always liked her. I'm right, aren't I? So what'd she do.

    Bond thinks about it. In thinking about it, he realizes that they're right--that she was hated, once upon a time. That seems like so long ago.

July 1987
MI6 'Estate' Location

The Estate is abuzz with activity, inside and out. While guards disguised as gentry patrol the grounds on horseback, and snipers watch entryways from blinds in the treelines, James Bond is on his way back to his office inside the regal old country manor. Today was the first briefing--

I was so angry back then I could hardly see five feet in front of me. But this is important. Maybe something I can remember will be helpful.

    --about this Earth's integration into the Multiverse. The media was a circus, as to be expected. General wonderment across the world lasted longer than he'd thought; it took a day or so before the talking heads TASU, Xinhua, CST, DFF and the like were proclaiming the benefits Unification would bring to the working class, or else warning about the unrestrained excesses of market manipulators in post-Union worlds. Their counterparts in the West wouldn't be outdone, and Bond wouldn't find any peace at work, either. As MI6's best man, he'd be leading the charge into the wilderness to protect and expand the country's interest and 'our way of life.'

    That was all anything ever was. Our values, our way of life. Not the aftershock of bombs, nor the human race making it into space, nor landing on the moon or even discovering a countless expanse of other goddamned worlds would change that. Not for him. So, sat in his office, that day, he rebelled, as he often did, in petty and pointless ways, wasting time by listening to the new radio they'd had brought in from Q Branch instead of heading off on the assignment he'd been given. Another little pointless gesture to convince himself he had any control over his life.

    Most of it was just noise. Noise from people who didn't think about their actions, much less whatever came out of their mouths. Were these the people he was meant to be working with? These people who were so sure they were some kind of heroes, but couldn't be bothered to learn anything about their surroundings? Who were so sure that there was some 'third option' that everyone before them was too stupid or too weak to consider? 'Elite.' The very idea was laughable to him.

     Bending girders like paper, building robots, cavorting with wizards, and they were all so painfully goddamn ordinary. So very much like the people he was meant to protect, who slept soundly at night as hundreds of their peers died overseas every day killing thousands more for 'our way of life.'

     Grim fascination turned minutes into a half hour, as he listened to someone confidently state that they'd turn their nose up at an embargo and deliver fissile material to Cuba, and damn whatever the Americans had to say about it.

    These conversations became like a drug to him--one he could easily justify to M as being research or analysis or legwork. These so-called Elites were his equal only in the blunt force they could apply to what they considered a problem, and they relished being blunt instruments. They relished being so hopelessly stupid that it was the only way they could think to solve their problems. The few who were literate tended to be drowned out by the overwhelmingly idiotic majority. But there was one of them among that few who always caught his attention.
James Bond <B-anter> Lilian Rook says, "Appearances overwhelmingly matter. Acknowledging that everyone will respond to you completely differently based on how you look is just growing up. Only children believe in 'judging people based on what's inside'."

    A bitter taste, not from the scotch, settles on Bond's tongue. "Give me a moment to put it into words," he sighs.

First Assignment

    For the most part, Bond's suspicions that he could walk circles around these people proved true. His first assignment went off without a hitch. Then his second. And his third. Time and again, he'd be in and out, with a specific goal in mind, accomplishing it more often than not, with minimal complications. A few months in, he was beginning to think that it might even be less dangerous than his more mundane, domestic work. But his overwhelming ability to do his work, his outstanding success, didn't please him so much as mystify him.

    The people he most expected to be threats to him were so much more often completely absorbed in shouting louder than whoever they imagined the villain to be. Frequently, that villain was Lilian Rook. What other reaction could he have, but being mystified? Every assigment cost millions of pounds of advance intelligence. In briefings, he'd learn about a locale in advance; its cultural movements, the tides of ideology, its material woes and blessings, the cloth from which its people are cut. When the mission called for it, and frequently when it didn't, he made an effort to fade seamlessly into these places, a man from nothing and nowhere.

    And who were these people, meant to be his peers, the best of the best? An allegedly educated scientist, accusing a warlord of having mind control powers because she can't fathom a world in which people listen to the things that they say to each other. A world-class martial artist and UN-backed crisis response unit dodging her duties to play superheroes. A rotating cast of 'adventurers' from a world depressingly similar to his own in its ability to sleep soundly through a genocide, as long as the right people were being displaced. At least, he thought, one night on the way home, as unfamiliar stars crawled across the Aston's windscreen, the cat-people more or less admitted they were just goddamn tourists.
James Bond     As the months went on, Bond's weariness with the world and his place in it only grew. He'd known for years at this point that he was a trigger-man with showman airs; a thug with expensive tastes, swung like a blunt instrument at who or whatever frightened the people holding his leash. The glimmer of hope he felt at hearing stories of heroes didn't even last a week. Blunt instruments were the *average* in the multiverse.

     They were so numerous and so loud that they'd effectively insulated themselves from ever having to stop and ask why they were doing what they were, or whether it was right or who it even benefited. The voices blended together, but for a rare few. And among those few, at the forefront, was Lilian Rook. Demanding of the idiot masses that they have reasons for literally any of what they did, or said, or any sort of internal consistency at all. Openly. Plainly. Without subtext.

<Q-Conversation> Lilian Rook says, "Practically all you do is kill 'evil' people, or threaten to kill evil people, or people who're vaguely bureaucratic or authoritarian or snobbish. You're so eager about it that it's creepy, and your criteria for when you deserve to kill someone are so thin and binary that it's absolutely no different than 'because they're the enemy'. Exactly what you do -- dividing people into heroes and evil-- is the oldest form of dehumanizing and othering people there is."

<Q-Conversation> Lilian Rook says, "'Vexation' might be more accurate, given my successful and fulfilling life outside of killing people and monologuing. The reason I take issue with you is that I can't abide by little boy heroes whose clearest conception of heroism is killing people. Period. Nobody should cop to that. Nobody should shamelessly announce it. People who do are deranged."

    She wouldn't abide the insanity that passed for business as usual. Wouldn't let them rest on their demented assertions of how the world or even other people worked. She took the work seriously, expected the same of everyone else, and let them know it.
James Bond Tallahassee, Florida
7:03 PM

Bond's hands gripped the wooden stock of the WA2000 with white-knuckled rage. Bile rose up in his chest. Those few that were worthy of the term 'hero' would never call themselves such. And the ones that did took it personally, that Lilian got to speak the way she did, to act the way she did, and still be so heartbreakingly kind when it mattered--that she could easily put the lie to everything they claimed to represent.

    You don't have to stop. You don't have to give up. But if you want for any of this to be better, I'm your only chance, do you understand? . . . just focus on me. Not the rest.

    You don't have to listen to them. Shut it out. What they think they know about you is wrong. What they want from you doesn't matter. What I'm going to tell you is all that does. I can help you. Anna. I can help you be Onyx Witch. But not here. These people won't let me.

    Bond felt himself wishing sincerely that he were weak enough, eroded enough, to pull the trigger even with that Arthur imbecile blocking the way. But because he wasn't, he knew how repugnant the thought was. Because he wasn't that weak, he knew how vile it was to hate Onyx Witch for having received that offer from Lilian, and hated her for it anyway. That was when he started to think about doing it. When he was alone, with no work and nowhere to hide from his thoughts. When those thoughts, which had already gone from wondering to hoping years ago, shifted again. From hoping he'd be killed on the job to wondering how many of those animals he could take with him if he went--

    Bond twists his mouth into a frown. Enough. Stop stewing in it. It's over. I don't feel that way any longer. Thank God. What else is there? What am I missing?

    The response to her. The most mystifying thing of all was the way she'd tell people exactly what they needed to do to be even a shred better than they were--but because she didn't talk to them like she was their mother, it drove them crazy. They'd go rabid.

<B-anter> Sarracenia says, "If you cannot be civil when advising, then your advice is suspect at best! Shouting 'I am right because I know I am right and you are stupid for not believing me' does not inspire confidence in one's message!"

<B-anter> Charlotte Newman | You really are a cop. You'll deny it over and over but you keep acting like one.

<B-anter> Petra Soroka says, "Literally no one in history has been as much of a jackass as you, you're not forced to be like this, you choose to."

And they would go after her about it. Try and 'put her in her place.' And they'd fail. Spectacularly--why?
James Bond     "I think I have it," says Bond, blue eyes flicking towards Ash. "Sorry for the wait. I had to put the pieces together in my head--because a lot of what I saw was that... hysteria, towards her, before I even knew her. And it continued well after the point I defected."

    He leans against the nearest tree. "It was only partly what she did. The rest is what she was."

    "Do you remember what you said, the first time we fought? 'Half-armed, half-ready, and half-assed is enough for you.'" He smiles--not in some kind of insufferable 'bet you don't think that now' way but rather in an almost commiseratory, 'finally, someone gets it' kind of way. "I think you also said we'd 'crash and burn in a way that finally mattered.'"

    "And if you said that, then you probably did your homework on what most Elites are like. Well... Lilian Rook is everything that most of those idiots think they want to be. Only that she's consistent. And she demands consistency of *them.*"

    "She doesn't let someone say that they're some sort of hero and the renege on it the moment it's most convenient," says Bond. "She holds people to the codes they claim to have. She follows her own vigorously. And they hated that about her. But what they hated more..."

    "What they hated more was how kind she could be, to people who really needed it. It drove them crazy that she had the nerve to decide which parts of herself she wanted to give to whom. That they weren't entitled to everything she was--to get their goddamn pat on the head from her."

    "She'd tell people exactly what they needed to do, to be the kind of 'heroes' they allegedly wanted to be. But because she didn't tell it to them as sweetly as they wanted, they hated her for that, too, and so everything she said had to be a lie. Unless the truth was more unflattering."

    He shakes his head, after a mirthless chuckle. "So what could they do, when she was pointing out all of these little... invisible boundaries that they all observed, violating all of them and never getting punished by the tidal forces of 'justice,' like so many of them swore she would?"

    "They tried to do what worked for them before. Form up the phalanx and make her leave. 'Half-armed, half-ready, and half-assed.' Only it didn't work. Not with words, and not with brute force. Not on her. Because everything that Lilian Rook is, she is on purpose. Deliberately."

    "They had no idea what they were up against--a truly, completely, self-made person. Someone who was probably defending herself from the thoughtless cruelty of pack animals for years before she ever met them. Human plankton that live life adrift on their own inertia can't compare to that. I think in the back of the mind, they knew that. And before they accepted it, they hated her for that, too."
Trudy Grimm Grimm Tundra
> "So what was your 'original' name then? You know mine; fair's fair."

    "That's something only Lilian truly knows about me," Trudy hums thoughtfully, "As a show of trust, I will be just as vulnerable with you as I was with her."

    "If you choose to investigate my home world, perhaps you may learn of Salagaz the Undying or Millicent, the Shadow Queen-- Rulers of the wretched Blightland. Ahaha, I know them as Karl and Arnora Gravewalker. In another time, I was also a Gravewalker; the thirteenth child of darkness."

    She pauses, then, "After I left and killed Suffran, there are only eleven 'children of darkness' remaining. That woman, 'Putrix', is no more; just a memory; a warning of what could have been. There is only Trudy Grimm now, a humble witch."

> "That's because I'm not a fucking WARRIOR!"

    "--Ahh?" For someone who's spent so much time around Vikings at Hamarrheim, anyone getting mad about that catches Trudy off-guard. She's stunned into silence and only listens.

> "Stop making shit UP! Every single fucking thing you say is an assumption! You and everyone else! It's not asking! It's not guessing! It's not 'getting to know'! You can't talk-- can't look at me without deciding some shit about me is true when you came up with it and you DON'T EVEN REALIZE YOU'RE DOING IT!"

    "Mmm..."

> "The fact that you act like it's impossible for anything about me to be because of me and not NAZCA is SHIT! You're going to tell me you ran away from some evil fucking family because you don't want to be defined by them, then talk to me like this?!"

> "I'm taking her, because I need her, and not you! Don't fucking lie to me! You don't want me! You just think that if I leave NAZCA, I'll finally just dissolve into being one of you!"

    "Perhaps it was a mistake for me to be here. I'm sorry," Trudy doesn't flinch when she's smashed the Regent. Her spellcraft tells her the condition has been met this time, "But I will still do everything in my power to help her achieve what /she/ wants. Even in cases where I'm not-- very good at what needs to be done. If I don't try at all, what kind of person would I be?"

    "So I'll ask, instead of... assuming. What would you /like/ to be called? How might I come to know you, without jumping to any conclusions? Without 'making stuff up'?"
Trudy Grimm BREAK ROOM
> "Like clockwork. Clockwork long broken that it never changes. Petra certainly has a way of bringing out the truth of people out."

    "The 'truth' of people?" Trudy glances towards Angela's face on the Eggpack, "You seem more concerned that people are mad at her than you do with why they're mad at her. I'm not terribly surprised."

> "We're not trying to *win* against them, you fucking *idiot*! It's a game! A *game*, you fucking *retard*! We *made* the rules!"

    "I'm aware it's a game, you monolithic moron!" Trudy raises her voice though doesn't move with the spear so close, "The purpose of it is to get to /know/ them and /talk/ to them! how exactly do you think we're going to accomplish that when you're just handing them a card that lets them skip past every stage! It doesn't matter how obsessed you are, they aren't--"

> "The headache they gave me this last time is only getting worse the longer you insist on these half cocked verbal jousts with Petra and Angela."

    Trudy cuts off when James voices his stance on it. After a bit, she dips her head. More quietly than she was clearly intending to speak, the witch mutters, "Sorry."

    She's starting to think she truly is the only person who's concerned about this.
Xion A week of loops takes its toll. Even when Ash would get all the way through her round of minigames and social challenges and dalliances, it was still fourteen doors of Activities - or, thirteen and a question of color. Xion liked DDR and footraces and Go Fish well enough that she could do them for longer than just a week on end, but they weren't games that Xion was allowed to win - not really.

She put up resistance, presented brakes. Sometimes, she simply got lucky, and other times, she was never convinced to allow a game's end to happen. Eventually, though...

Xion ran out of hands of poker. Flipping over her cards - Xion pitches them into the center and slumps in her chair with a scoot back, exhaling. The shirt-and-vest look she had taken for dealing the final hands of cards was found by her fingers at the neck to pop and button and work down her monochrome black bow tie and loosen the noose about her neck now that the hard work was over.

She didn't have to play any more cards. Relief of a sort, too, because she didn't have to *lose* any more hands of cards. One of her worst tells that she had a good hand, of course, was her excitement at actually getting to maybe win one, before her role as minigame mistress bade her throw away the best ones to keep playing the game, and see Ash fold to others that she was too excited for.

If anything, at the end, Xion shows the most of her bare and belligerent heart, more than for any footrace or scroll of eurobeat and stepmaps.

"I don't really 'do' alcohol." Xion admits. "Poisoning myself just... feels like a status effect, just feels like a queasy drag. I do..." Metal flask drawn from nowhere, a sort of dotted grey in monochrome, Xion spins the top and takes a drag that doesn't satisfy, a roll of chocolate down the outside of her lips. She gulps from it for a moment, and then places it open on the table. In offer, even if the half-drunk flask of warm chocolate syrup might not work with a helmet on, Xion lets it go and sits back to answer. "Chocolate! Sugar's a rush, and chocolate will light up all these happy feelings in you, for a while. Something sweet, something worth tasting. Maybe I've messed up from the start, and should have stayed away from candy, huh?" Xion wonders, asking Ash and not at the same time.

'If you need an excuse for being alive, it's 'I'm holding money'. That works long enough to buy painkillers and MREs if you're fast.'

"I made a deal with all of myself that would stay to try this living thing, even if it was hard. It's helped me, often, to have an answer. But... you're right. Knowing better makes it hurt more. The possibility of 'better' means the seconds you spend at worse are..." Torture. Like this, in microcosm. There was something better, there had to be, or else...

At least there was a week of games, wasn't there?
Xion "... ones that require strength. But you're right, Ash." Xion brings her arms in, hugged closer to chest, and in them, in the squeeze, like an overflowing of riches and coins - medallions, every one. "Holding something of value makes it easier. If you hold enough, then closing your hands around that-" Her arms release, and the sprawl of clattering and falling objects from their span sounds for a second across dark ground. She reaches forward to the colored-in and definite medallion of black metal - her ante, in the pot - with one hand, and the clear 'Ash' medallion and sets the quasi-medallion up against. Working like a puzzle, shifting until it locks, Xion places the completed-combined medallion besides the flask with one more lean forward. Standing in the same motion as placement, the noirette steps from the table and stretches, popping her back with a rather dramatic overextension that gets at least one good crunch out of a series of tense cracks. "Holding tension can be what keeps you 'alive', having worth in your hands, something to protect, spend wisely, enjoy."

'. . . I just don't think they had a side, or a stake, or anything.'

Xion's moments of leisure are spent palming a cartoonish twist of her neck that might simply snap the skeletal structure of someone with normal bones, and holding it in this alternate extension, eventually, rights something in her spine so loud it's like a gunshot in her collar. Then, her shoulders can fall and her arms can hang like jelly, slack. A faint smile of release and relief dances on the slightly-queasy Nobody's lips.

"I think I get why you and the Antegent have that 'understanding'. They're the stakeless too, aren't they? If they're closer to you than the people taking your money and passing you back something to dull the feelings and write them over for something else..."

'Or maybe it's just because of all of their shit in my organs and something something cellular memory something fucking whatever.'

"I don't know, it might be the organs." Xion admits, after a sober second, looking at Ash across their brief divide. "Did you want them?" She asks, after a moment, but,

The chair scrapes.
'It's been real, but I'm fucking done with this.'

Xion nods, drawn short for a moment, and pushes in her chair, collecting cards with a final bit of lingering slowness. "There might be one room left, or maybe you passed it on the way here - I'm sorry, I don't remember." The Nobody turns over her shoulder, to look at the door behind her, and frowns. "Either way," A sigh flows from Xion as she lifts coat off back of chair and places it over arms. "I guess I'm glad it was real. Next time we meet -- I'd like to know what color you see -- you saw?"

"If there is a next time." Xion shrugs, and steps perpendicular, heading 'away'. "This place doesn't have long left anyway. Did you have fun?"
Petra Soroka         THE FALL OF MIRRORS, DEFEATED
"Bowing and scraping and kissing ass and playing nice? Letting them talk shit and shove you around and scream at you?"

    The gore doesn't *feel* simulated, especially not after almost a week of *not* having to get beat up. That's the longest Petra's gone without being beaten in years, and Ash wasn't particularly gentle about it. Petra weightily drags her forehead up from where she's faceplanted into the glass, each smear of blood hovering on the glittering-clear surface above their blurry reflections, and slumps seated with her palms splayed in front of her to lean emphatically forwards.

    "I'm *not*, though. Letting them. When they talk shit I hit *back*. There's nothing I'm doing that's a fucking *compromise* with anything, because everything I'm working for I believe in. If someone shoves me and I stay in their fucking space and shove them back, that's *their* problem; I'm not going to back off just to get out of the fight."

"You should want to see a world that she made even more than anyone! What do you have to lose?!"

    "Well... nothing, really. I don't even disagree with you. I never really have." Petra leans her hands on her ankles, struggling to catch her breath, iridescent burn marks cascading light off her body. "I just disagree that it's your choice. And it's not mine, either. Lilian's a Bloom. The First one, even, the one who's meant to start it. I can help... clear away shit that's hurting her, and I can beat back the clawing fucking nobodies holding her down, I can... try and be a lens for her to see the world through, but all of that is always, always just to help *her* form her *own* choices. Lilian's special because she's still 'Lilian' in absence of everything; I knew that even before I ever heard of a Bloom of Humanity. So I'll clear the canvas, but I won't scribble all over her myself."

    "It's not like I've been, um... doing nothing, though. I'm not being *passive*; I'm just not forcing her. When I say I'm listening to Lilian, I mean *all* of her; Exigent Serenity too. She's come to talk to me sometimes, I mentioned before, especially after I did-- well, I can't say it, or Arthur might hear, but the best thing I've ever done for her. You know what it is."

    "But by doing that, by cutting away that burden, I helped her be *more* of herself instead of less. I brought her and Exigent Serenity closer together *and* made the world better for her, because leaving it isn't the *only* way to be true to herself. She will eventually, but maybe she can make it their *fucking* problem first! They should fucking *bleed*, and she'll *like* it!"

"How's that? See if you can get her to cut loose."

    "... It's not the first time, but I said to her a couple days ago. Or-- god, how many days has it been? Just before coming in here, at least. That it's *not* a victory to go from fucking infinite pressure and societal disgust into the fucking void of no expectations and no one talking shit to your face. It's like pressing your hands together as hard as you can until your muscles ache, and then pulling them apart and them still moving from the pent-up muscular energy. The follow-through is hitting them *back*. *Punishing* them."

    Petra tilts her face away, slightly embarrassed. "... She said I'm a bad influence. I think I'm a good one. But either way, I'm an influence."
Petra Soroka         RESPAWN HUB
BRANCHES

    Petra has gotten over her voyeuristic shame at overhearing all of these snippets by rationalizing that it's more voyeuristic for Ash to be unlocking them. She's wrong, but, she's still listening in while seated next to her snack pile for Ash to take from.

    "... I think, to answer 'why she still lets me live', that's probably the closest answer you'll find in here. That all is sort of my fault, but it's sort of an aftereffect of when I forced everyone to treat her as real as possible. I-- I think I did change the world for her, and for a while, it helped her become better, and the problem was that I let off the gas. They all try and copy the way I think now, but they do it *wrong*. I helped make that space, but, I think, it's stayed the same 'size' for too long, instead of expanding and swallowing up everything around it until *they* start getting scared about not having space. That's why the scales aren't balanced. That's why they're all still comfortable."

BLADES

    "Four million points..." Petra quietly remarks as Ash exchanges them for the sword, the most expensive one, the product of days of scrounging. An amount of effort that could *only* come from caring quite a lot about the information locked behind it. "... She's one of the only people in the universe who makes sense to me. I hope she makes more sense to you too. There's, you know, few enough people actually worth the effort."

        HEALING ZONE

    Petra attempts to gulp down scotch, fails, and coughs. She sips the rest normally, chagrinned.

    "Is it wrong that I hope this is the last one? If it's not, if this still hasn't been, like, enough, then I have no idea what would change between now and a month from now. God." Petra's gaze slides to the side, while sipping from her glass to hide the rest of her face. "I mean, I'm rooting for them."
James Bond HEALING ZONE

     Bond returns to the healing area much as he has the last few cycles. Increasingly exhausted, less sitting and more falling into the chair that's become his companion through this.

Is it wrong that I hope this is the last one?

    "No."

    Something inside him compels him to answer less overwhelmingly like a British man. After a sigh, "I don't think it's ever wrong to hope that sincere work put towards reaching someone has had a positive effect." His thoughts drift towards a certain Damian Kent.

    No liquor, this time. There's peace, when he returns, so there's not as fervent a need. Not even the need for a cigarette.

    "Angela," he says, glancing her way.

    "Last go-around, you asked me a question I didn't have an answer for. I suppose it's because of the particular space I exist in." Just transgressive enough to be subject to violence, just normal enough, just convincingly entitled enough to the authority of the world to still be listened to.

    "I still don't. I only have a dissatisfaction with 'the world that others have made,' and the hope that it's enough to help a better replacement along."
Angela HEALING ZONE

"I don't think so." Angela agrees. "Even if it has been hardly any time at all, an endless loop is quite tiring. And the idea to have 'failed' that many times... It can be quite draining. I suspect that if I had simply continued alongside a closed system, I might have never gotten out. So I feel your analysis on the matter is correct. To be honest, they remind me of you a bit though I suppose it is premature to call you alike. I understand wanting someone even a little similar as you to dodge the mistakes you've made and to have an easier time of things, though."

''I still don't. I only have a dissatisfaction with 'the world that others have made.'''

"It is comfortable, even if you hate it, to exist in the world that others have made. To make a new world is a risk, after all. You can lose friendship, love, and the hopeful version of you you used to be. I sometimes wonder if I even want to bother changing a world or just find a way to exist comfortably within its constraints. If I could just leave The City, why wouldn't I? But I still want revenge."

She looks to James and adds, "...It sounds like everyone agrees with Phony, really. If you are going to destroy a world why not go for a whole multiverse? SOmething beyond feeble imagining, that elevates imagination itself."
Lilian Rook     Naraka Bhavaagra:

    'Even if it's just to talk shit at me, stop calling her a dog.'

    "Don't be cunty. That's not the same thing." The pivot in tone between week-weary curiosity-- cautiously bubbling up through the carefully explored thought that talking doesn't make it go any faster or slower-- and autonomic nerve-driven spite, is immediate, smooth, and ongoing even after saying it. "Wow I have to be way more tired than I thought, 'cause for a second there I hallucinated you being a little different from the rest and maybe wanting something other than 'sick fucking owns'. So it's all just fucking smoke and mirrors around--"

    he effort it takes Ash to throttle back is self-evidently Herculean. It's as if the architecture faintly quakes for the inertia of something so intangible as a swerving train of thought. Something that can only be accomplished for its own sake. "I'm the only one who should be saying it. I don't give a shit what it means to antone else, because it means something to me. I've been saying 'I wonder what Garmr is like' and 'I bet Fenrir would get it' and 'I hope Hel can'-- shit like that since before there was ever such thing as a Warpgate, so I really can't give less of a fuck if it's 'problematic' to you or whatever."

    "'Fenrir' is someone special. 'Lilian Rook' is public microcelebrity I heard about on the fucking internet."

    'This one, I expected you to know, if any did. If you will slow a few moments more, you may hear a story.'

    "Better be fast because I don't really care." says Ash, slowing down on purpose.

    'as he came to me out of concern for her nightmare'

    They take refuge, as they have a thousand times before, in how their military aesthetic doesn't betray little expressions. The Secret has to stay that way until the end.

    'A few words cannot suffice to describe our talks.'

    ". . ."

    "And it's Norse because of the fucking tree anyway." says Ash. "Some lazy fucker just called it Yggdrasil and it stuck. It pissed me off at the time, but it doesn't mean anything in the end."

    ". . ."

    "The thing that looked like me. It didn't talk to me. Didn't say a word. I just stopped existing for a while, and then I thought about how I was going to get back to the border like that, and that pissed me off enough to exist again."

    'You were very, very close. Congratulations.'

    "I guess you got closer than I thought too. Whatever."

    Kingdom of Desire:

    '...You have had to battle against a world that was your enemy. I respect that.'

    "And your 'respect' gets me . . . ?" Ash rudely doesn't even let Angela reply. "Yeah I thought so." Whatever Lilian has seen in Angela, Ash isn't in the mood to try. Or perhaps simply doesn't have the power to. Or isn't the sort of person who can.

    'Lilian has, clearly, 'been born'.'

    "What the fuck are you even talking about anymore." The little creak in Ash's voice injects static hiss into the way it escapes the helmet. "Are you just trying to sound all mystical and wise or something?" It's bullshit, because they have an idea. Too many cheat items put together a vague facsimile of a feeling that they don't like.
Lilian Rook     'Why are you pushing her into the pool rather than guiding her? Encouraging that fear through force?'

    "Why do you fucking think?!" Ash shouts, but they take what is obviously too long from Angela's perception to answer. "She's never going to go unless I do. She can't quit on her own. She's too addicted to this." Unless a secret is to be believed.

    'I am allowed to fight for my love as well.'

    "What does allowed mean? Who are you talking to? Is it even me? I told you, over and fucking over again, that I don't care whatever you think and whatever you do doesn't matter."

    "Who are you trying to pander to? We're literally in a different universe, and you-- all of you, are still so wrapped up in whether you're justified. Like, I'm here to kill you and it's like you all can't fucking stop shitting yourselves about getting cancelled."

    Nimue:

    'Give me a moment to put it into words,'

    "We've been doing this like twenty four hours straight." It's been a week. "At least it feels like it. So you know what? Take a minute. What's one more."

    And an entire montage of memory, bordering on life-flashing-before-eyes, passes. Ash doesn't see it. Just holds on the trigger.

    'Sorry for the wait.'

    "Here I was, kind of looking forward to seeing what you'd pull out your ass after stalling for time. All that time, and you spend it actually thinking? Dumbass." says the one who called for a 'serious time out' in the first place.

    'Do you remember what you said, the first time we fought? 'Half-armed, half-ready, and half-assed is enough for you.'

    "Yeah. And I was right at the time, too." Ash says. "I've seen that shitty little tired grin somewhere else, so I'm gonna guess that you secretly agreed too." they say, waving their hand as if to cancel out it meaning anything. "I don't do fucking homework. I paid attention when it was kind of interesting and then stopped when I didn't care anymore. Like . . ."

    Pausing a moment longer than they actually have to, Ash dredges up something else, beats bloody the urge to dramatically clamp down on it (and thus potentially appear misunderstood), and says something with a similar casual insanity to before; a thing that nobody should say out loud; not so easily, not so loudly, and not as if it'd be understood.

    "I only listened as much as I did because-- like out of all the super goons I killed before NAZCA, the one Immune was the kinda tough case. The rest of your guys-- out there and everywhere-- they're just more fucking stay-behinds with delusions of getting their big break and going Rambo. I turned that radio on once then threw it the fuck away."

    
    'So what could they do, when she was pointing out all of these little... invisible boundaries that they all observed, violating all of them and never getting punished by the tidal forces of 'justice,' like so many of them swore she would?'
    'Only it didn't work. Not with words, and not with brute force. Not on her. Because everything that Lilian Rook is, she is on purpose. Deliberately.'

    "Everyone hates when the class traitor can back it up." says Ash, bitterly by half again. "Even if the class is 'three fucking people'." Their meaning isn't explicit, but it is perfectly clear.

    'Human plankton that live life adrift on their own inertia can't compare to that.'

    "So. 'What didn't she do'. Cool."
Lilian Rook     Grimm Tundra:

    'As a show of trust, I will be just as vulnerable with you as I was with her.'

    "If you wanna be 'as vulnerable' than get your ass down here and firmly bite the curb." says Ash, just for a brief instant as Lilioid as they've ever been. "You don't know how vulnerable you are!" Perhaps it'd hit harder if they hadn't been the one to prompt this line of argument in the first place.

    'So I'll ask, instead of... assuming. What would you /like/ to be called? How might I come to know you, without jumping to any conclusions? Without 'making stuff up'?'

    "See now you're at the whole fucking problem, 'Trudy Grimm'. That's the crux of anything and everything and the whole reason you're here and shouldn't be."

    "There isn't a word in any language that's ever existed for another human being that doesn't mean ten thousand other things about them. Nobody who ever existed can think about things as they are instead of what else they're like. To comprehend a rock in your hand without making it all up, you'd have to stop being human."

    Fall of Mirrors:

    'I'm *not*, though. Letting them. When they talk shit I hit *back*. There's nothing I'm doing that's a fucking *compromise* with anything, because everything I'm working for I believe in.'

    "'Hitting back' is treading water at best. That's the one big thing you don't seem to fucking get, Petra." Though Ash has spoken to her plenty-- mostly in the form of threatening and malicious text messages for weeks-- it might be the first time they've actually used her name to her face. "You hit them back and nothing changes. You want them to stop but you don't care enough to really make them. You believe they're not gonna change, and you're right, but you're too much of a fucking pussy to carry that through to the end and do the obvious thing that changes them; and we both know why."

    "So you should say that the only compromises you're making are everything that she wants."

    But that's what Petra says anyways. Maddeningly. Aggravating in a way that can only be soothed by doing what Ash is already doing; raking her face through the broken glass.

    "So you know it's wrong but you're enabling her anyway." Petra hears an irritated sound between smashes. "Her girlfriend said the same shit just a second ago." It was hours. It's still bothering them.

    'They should fucking *bleed*, and she'll *like* it!'

    "So you're only wasting my time because you think it doesn't count unless she draws the blood and not me?"

    'It's like pressing your hands together as hard as you can until your muscles ache, and then pulling them apart and them still moving from the pent-up muscular energy. The follow-through is hitting them *back*. *Punishing* them.'

    ". . ."
Lilian Rook     Monochrome Zone:

    'Something sweet, something worth tasting. Maybe I've messed up from the start, and should have stayed away from candy, huh?'

    "I hear they have a story like that in the Bible." Ash says, wry enough to be a sarcastic blast of nothing, but sounding too considered for it not to mean something specific. "We're born knowing jack about shit, and most of the time we learn anything, we regret it after. In every country at once, we write yearning stories about when we finally get to go back to not knowing 'not'."

    'The possibility of 'better' means the seconds you spend at worse are...'

    "I think they call that one the 'veil of tears' or something." Ash says, half-assedly. "I liked Buddha's take more."

    'Holding tension can be what keeps you 'alive', having worth in your hands, something to protect, spend wisely, enjoy.'

    "You ever hear that humans are twice as afraid of losing something as they like the idea of gaining something? They studied it. It's got a name I don't remember. The thing is that it works even if you're 'human plankton'. If you're nothing inside, you've got nothing, you have nothing to look forward to, then you can still force yourself to live by going apeshit over the idea of someone taking away your worthless garbage. That last ember that's supposed to keep you alive no matter what; we even hacked that, to keep everything exactly the way it is."

    'I think I get why you and the Antegent have that 'understanding'. They're the stakeless too, aren't they?'

    ". . . I don't think that needing to kill each other makes two things an opposite, is all I'm saying." Ash mutters, saying a lot more. "The human race is a disgrace. For a lot of reasons. But one of the big ones is that everyone can't tell the difference between something hurting them and something being bad."

    'Did you want them?'

    "What? No." The response is too confused and automatic to gather up piercing momentum. "Shit happens. I'm lucky I lived. And by lucky I mean skilled and built different, because everything sucked shit after that too. Was a long time before NAZCA."

    'I guess I'm glad it was real. Next time we meet -- I'd like to know what color you see -- you saw?'

    ". . . Fuck." Ash scowls. "Now it's gonna bug me if I don't know what it was. Put your hand on the stupid fucking crystal before I change my mind."

    Alpha Caeli:

    'She's got a lot to worry about, and I've got a lot that nobody wants to hear, and maybe we can think about it after whatever's getting done is done.'

    "Men are all fucking like this." Ash grunts in frustration. "Stupid fuck. Idiot shitter. Worthless gamer trash. If everyone with a problem like you all shuts the fuck up because they figure you don't wanna hear it then they're going to think they're the only one in the world with the fucking problem. God I hate you."
Tamamo     Tamamo has nothing more to say to Ash, and too little desire to clarify that she meant 'your imaginary friend you've built up through apathy toward real people' when she said 'a dog,' so she leaves the misunderstanding where it is and disappears to avoid giving them a chance to punch her, as always.

HEALING HUB:

    Looking between Petra and Trudy, "To be sure, there is one circumstance that involves any form of, effectively, 'killing Ash.'"

    A moment's pause, to gather words that aren't really hers. "If we lacked the strength and cleverness to do otherwise, better that than the success of their presently stated aim." She doesn't say whether it's the world-destruction thing that's unacceptable, but it would be a reasonable guess for a sane mind.

    "I would need make some apologies, if so." To Sakura, firstly. Lilian would be on the list, not first, but more painfully.
Petra Soroka "I don't think it's ever wrong to hope that sincere work put towards reaching someone has had a positive effect."

PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "I wanted to believe that you were wrong and I'm almost ashamed that I nearly did."
PHONE: Lilian Rook says, "Is it that fucking outrageous to get your hopes up just a little when something really big changes?"

    Petra sits on that for a minute, knee pulled up to her chest on the chair. Her eyes slide to Trudy, then past her, defocused on the person to look at the cultural mass beyond.

    "... Not in this case. Not with Ash. But that's sort of why they're special, isn't it."

"To be honest, they remind me of you a bit though I suppose it is premature to call you alike."

    Petra coughs self-consciously. Weeks of talking on the phone didn't come out of nowhere, and didn't lead nowhere. "Um, how's that? Not just for the shouting, right?"

    After another gap of silence, she eventually adds, "I basically don't think they're wrong about anything they say about the world or whatever. I just keep telling them to, uh-- listen to Lilian more. That the surface level image of her they think they've got is wrong. Lilian's smart enough to make her own choices, and... at least *some* of the people around her agree with that, and aren't dragging her down."

"If we lacked the strength and cleverness to do otherwise, better that than the success of their presently stated aim."

    "I don't want to get murdered by them," Petra agrees. Vocally, she doesn't have an issue with the world being destroyed, but if she isn't there to *watch* Lilian destroy the world then what's the *point*. "But, killing them...."

    "I don't think it would actually come to that." She finishes, uncomfortably.
Trudy Grimm Grimm Tundra:
> "There isn't a word in any language that's ever existed for another human being that doesn't mean ten thousand other things about them. Nobody who ever existed can think about things as they are instead of what else they're like. To comprehend a rock in your hand without making it all up, you'd have to stop being human."

    Trudy hums thoughtfully, her eyes closed as he thinks through what Ash has said. After a moment, she nods once, "You're right, but I also disagree that is the only way." The horizon-spanning giant fades away. In her place, the regular witch materializes a foot or so above the snow and drops into place. With her back to Ash, she descends into the crater that the First Regent had been smashed within.

    "I would offer that the alternative is time. With time, I may learn about that stone. Where it came from, what properties it possesses, whether it contains any ores or crystals or the like. What sorts of beads I might carve from it and what runes it synergizes best with. People are...mm... not so easily studied, but I would like to build an understanding all the same."

    "It doesn't excuse my assumptions, of course. I would also not wish to abandon you or 'dissolve' you. Only to know you. If I must become something other than human to do that-- well, perhaps I should."

    Crouching in the pit, she collects the First Regent's empowered brooch, looking at it in the palm of her hand for a moment. Satisfied it is undamaged, the witch climbs back out and holds the item out towards Ash, "You have more than earned this. Thank you for your time and your sincerity."
Angela ''And your 'respect' gets me . . .?''

Angela answers even though she isn't allowed to. "What respect gets you is more on you than on me." Angela says. "Is it not?"

''Who are you talking to? Is it even me?''

"Yes, yes, I'm aware you don't care. Everything about you is about screaming how you don't care. Very impressive." Angela's expression is rarely far from bored.

"If you think words such as that are pandering bullshit, tell that to Lilian when you get out of here and kindly shove her into the pool. Like I said, if that is what is best for her--who am I to complain?"

Angela cuts the feed, after.

HEALING HUB

"I am not feeling confident," Angela admits. "But I suppose we won't know the full effect of our efforts until after they've escaped. I am considering this a debt repaid, Xion, which is fortunate. I do not like owing debts. I hope it gives you what you wanted."

She glances to Petra. "No. Not just the shouting. But in the sense of wanting to 'drag' Lilian into a certain position irrespective of her will--my apologies if I misunderstood a version of yourself I did not meet, of course--though I suppose their hyperfocus on the Dame Commander is similar in of itself. I would agree that they should listen to Lilian more. I agree Lilian deserves to make her own choices. And ''can'' make her own choices. But I do not feel I was successful in convincing them of such. Perhaps you were."

''I don't think it would actually come to that.''

"If we did all this just to kill them anyway, it would be rather annoying." Angela admits. "If they do kill all of you, that would also be upsetting."
Tamamo     '...it would be rather annoying.'

    "I do not disagree," Tamamo says. She only communicates her lack of faith in Petra's judgment by not mentioning it.

    She wants to ask about the debt with Xion, but restrains herself. There's natural curiosity, but it's been a tiring week.

    "In any case, let us prepare for the next. I will have no one claim I put such confidence in a plan that I was remiss in its contingencies." It's the most fortunate thing, for this whole operation, that her abilities don't stop at 'healing.'
Xion 'I hear they have a story like that in the Bible.'

Lingering - stories of lingering and longing were right the little rooms and checkered racetracks of the Monochrome Zone. "I haven't had the time to read it closely. For some reason, there was this feeling they weren't for me, even if they felt important to even understand how people talked. The Bible, especially, but the Buddha too." Pulling on her coat is seconds standing and fiddling with arms, some of the slowness weary ache, some of the slowness a strange kind of heartache. "I think, in every country... There are people who feel similar aches, and would rather not know them. Forwards is the same as back, because 'returning to the me who didn't hurt' becomes..."

Xion, arms in sleeves, smiles faintly and signs with her hands. "Circular, isn't it?"

'You ever hear that humans are twice as afraid of losing something...'

"Losing means you feel the soreness, and then you 'know defeat'. Do you think it's part of the Human Template forced on people, or... would you see that in the Antegent, do you think?" Xion asks, expression falling. "I don't think the cycles break if you stop being human. I think you just get different cycles." Xion turns away completely and continues on her way, stopping at a seamed door without handle on the side of the grander ring. Pushing it aside to open a side-path through other rooms, a path leads to a river with nighttime inked surrounds.

'Now it's gonna bug me if I don't know what it was. Put your hand on the stupid fucking crystal before I change my mind.'

Grinning without facing, Xion nods slowly. "Okay then. I'll make it quick, since you were going to give me a head start and I gabbed on."

At the river, another pine boat -- the same one? -- rests with oars, and Xion sits down for Ash to board, rowing for just a short time to head back to the already-unlocked fourteenth 'challenge' just one room away.

"There was a time, a while ago, Lilian had this... feeling, a need to help us some way. That she was going to... carve off all of her buds and branches - to become something a kind of perfect, for us. Tamamo and I, we chased her down to Scathach's island, because I think... Neither of us wanted her to maim herself to please us. Have you ever thought about how human they look? I am, now, just remembering."

The boat's bank bumps against the bottom of the next stop in the outer-round of courses, the river falling away into an empty void where Arthur's grand gaming experiment crumbled, the forest only there on one side, the 'far bank' a vague nothing that fizzed. There was no 'back' to go, the courses and rooms of the Monochrome Zone disappearing in sequence, leaving only the fourteenth.

Xion hops gets out of the boat, and reaches a hand out automatically to help Ash, smiling whether or not they take the hand,

though 'Oh - right! Crystal.' is the optional denial dialogue.

A room of examination without a roof this time, without walls, stadium or seats. Just a round diorama of the Seven Worthies' examination table over nothing, surrounded by nothing but a hallway 'out' of this zone completely.

Approaching dias, Xion takes a deep breath. They're alone and the games are over. Just a curiousity left. "Okay, Ash." Xion states, takes her position accross, lays hand on device, and extends out her palm. "Thanks for helping me past the mirror." She adds, fainter.
Xion ---

BREAK ROOM,

Maintained by Tamamo's power, Xion finds the break 'room' after in a daze, the atmosphere between Ash and the gang 'running the event' having become difficult of another sort. A week of this, a week of production, and she slouches in to the final curtaincall with her own part done a lightly-matted wreck of droopy eyes and chin and cheeks.

Searching about for a snack, then her chocolate flask, then giving up and summoning a glass bottle tamarind soda to her hand to twistcap and start guzzling, not relenting until the off-orange liquid was drained down her throat.

After, she meets Angela's eyes by finding the back of Petra's head, and with a tired nod and pull of lips across cheek, considers the price and nods.

"That's probably fair, yeah. Square, then. Unless after this and Everhood I'm in the red." Xion shrugs. "I'm sure I'll be able to help out, but... Hate for this to be two in a row, Angela. I'd say it's all for Lilian, but..."

"For everything else, that's fine. Especially if you hate owing."

'In any case, let us prepare for the next.'

If it was many other people Xion would emit a suffering 'ughhhhhh' like someone on their last wit to spend and brattily gassed, at this point -- but it's Tamamo, and the situation, and...

"I... appreciate it, Tamamo. I don't know if I'll be ready to beat a dozen mechs but maybe I'll get a second wind and find all my anger, who knows?" She does. After a week of losing at Struggle she had saved up a lot.
Lilian Rook     Nevada?:

    The game ends on a mid hand versus a junk pair. If Xion lets it, the Armillary Sphere doesn't collapse before Ash takes her through the door to the station stone, and in the eye of what must be the crown, the colours shift through white, silver, gold, red, and black, until the starlights in the night sky that should presage the next cycle all over again blueshift at their edges.

    Though the points grow, the core of white potential never does, until the night is flooded in the hue of the edge of the universe approaching, faster than the speed of light, and the stars within it are droplets of suspended monoChrome, reflecting nothing outside the glass of the orb, but something black-white and too far away to be seen just yet.

    The empty medallion, layers of laser etched glass showing nothing within nothing, rattles on the poker table amongst the chips, quarter-filled with liquid mercury; chrome like the outside of flying saucers; worldly toxins that Earth has no names for.

    Nevada:

    It feels wrong, on some level, to come back to things being exactly the same, after a long and harrowing time away. Never has it been more justified than now: After a week of gruelling, 'round clock shifts, only moving between realms of sweat and vitriol and more violence than not, with a single break room to take short and irregular rests and meals, you come back at the exact same instant the Armillary Sphere began. The world never noticed that you were gone.

    And a moment later, it's still the same moment. And the one after that, and after that . . .

    The exact line of the Armillary Sphere's original transdimensional circumference stands out like a fairy ring, shimmering shades of liquid-crackling black-gold like ribbons of aurora borealis. Beyond that exact boundary in the dust and coral and metal and ash, everything else stands still.

    It'd be fascinating, in that voyeuristic way that some had perceived Lampport, if you had the luxury of staring. It's like coming up from the water; too deep, too fast. You feel sluggish and weightless at the same time; as if not even the air resists your movements, but moving itself lights up everything in shades of pain. At first it seems impossible to breathe, and the primal reflex towards suffocation overshoots its mark, as it also feels like you somehow shouldn't. Your heartbeat sounds like the loudest, sludgiest, most foul and obscene thing you can think of. The wide-open sky feels like it's burning your skin by staring at you.

    Even now, whatever had happened is rapidly decaying. The sight of geospatial-jammer-chaff missiles flying, exploding, and burning away, all in partial states of perversely detailed freeze-frame, feels less and less like stabbbing your brain through your eyes to try and look at the more you see them start to stir. Something more like subtle, glitchy quivering becomes near-imperceptible blurring becomes a glacial trickle of motion. Spirographic lines decay linearly while the ring of light fades in logarithm.

    The power of LOSAF used to energize the Armillary Ring is adjusting your personal timeline forward into the same spatial frame of refrence, and it still feels like decompression sickness. The idea of stopping NAZCA while accelerating your progress at the same time had been Lilian's.

    But 'the Armillary Sphere' is a discrete point of interaction, and 'the space where all of you are' isn't; so the amount of strain she appears to be under, which must be nearly as much as you if she's doing her best not to show it, is understandable. She is the one who had to stand here, in the middle of the desert, and maintain both effects for however many hours this all didn't take.
Lilian Rook     Of course Ash is here with you. The 'mech' they'd taken is nowhere to be seen, but they don't seem to remember that anymore. Gritting their teeth and bearing the same as anyone else, they seem taken aback by the fact that they even have to. Lilian looks up from her makeshift seat on the back of a supply case, and locks eyes to visor with a plain-held expression of quietly resentful patience. Perhaps expectation.

"What is it?"
"Well obviously you failed, so fuck you; I kicked your little--"
"So help me god I will take us right back to where we started before I listen to you say one more meaningless waste of time Ash. I'm taking this seriously, so stop pretending you aren't. What. Is it. Really?"

    Ash, who has spent seven days locked in combat more constant than anyone else, tenses up enough to make the suit's gloves creak around the grip of their sidearm, only releasing it as if it aches. Though they'd promised only Xion specifically, they've had seven entire days to do nothing but stew on the thought and slowly form the words.

"It's not a fucking curse to be one of us. There's no abyss, or double edged sword or whatever; it's just better. In a perfect world, everyone would be like us, and everything else would match."
"I thought you liked playing the monster."
"'Monster' doesn't even fucking mean anything. It's just 'scary'. Why do you even accept that? We're only 'different' and 'scary' because of all the other shit that was here first. It's all just buildings."
"Beg pardon?"
"The words, the people, the way things are; it's just-- it's like . . . streets. Roads and buildings and shit. Like, it's not even natural; everyone just built it and put it there because they needed it for a second, and now it's too much work for anyone to wanna tear it up-- so now everyone drives a car on a road, and it's this size and goes that fast, because the road was there first."
". . ."
"This is fucking stupid--"
"I'm listening though."
"--okay but-- why don't you get it? If you build something that's totally better than a car in every single way, but it's too big to go in a parking lot, you can't just fucking . . . You're saying 'well that's a flaw in the design'-- no it's fucking not! It's not a fucking drawback or a failure point or some shit! It's better! Why does the fucking parking lot get right of way?! Just because it's a pain in the ass to tear up?!"
"I can't just compare people to asphalt, Ash. I'm sorry. Maybe I would have a few years ago, but I just don't feel that way. It's not because they're too much trouble to change; it's because some of it has value the way it is. I don't want to be someone who tears up everything every time they--"
"There it is! 'I don't want to be someone who'-- like there's something wrong with it!"
"Ash . . ."
"I know you're scared. Of leaving-- being something else. Even though the other thing is still you anyways. But-- fuck! What I'm trying-- . . . ! If you turn into something nobody gets, that doesn't mean you're impossible to understand!"
". . ."
"It means they don't fucking get it! They can't run on the same track as you and that's their fault for having shitty roads and they'll catch up when they finally fucking tear up the bullshit asphalt like they're supposed to!"
Lilian Rook ". . . That's something you're saying as 'someone who already went ahead', isn't it? You hate being here because . . . You didn't 'stay behind'; you went and you saw and now all of this is . . ."
"None of it is some universal constant that makes it impossible to be together! It's just people, humanity, clinging to it all and whining about how they already built it and how hard it's gonna be to replace it!"
"If I go--"
"They can catch up any time and they know it! If they want to keep you then they can change too! You already believe that shit being too complicated for them to understand doesn't make it bad, only except when it's about yourself! I hate it!"
"Fine. So if I choose to believe you? If I imagine all of this is . . . ?"
"Then is there really, seriously, one good reason for this? You don't even like it. The only times you care are when you're acting out beeing a 'Bloom' in mini or when you're around people who aren't human anyways! Why does being more like yourself have to be a fucking amputation? You're supposed to be the queen of telling other people to deal with it and adapt! Why not this time? Why is becoming what you really are goodbye forever and not one more 'figure it out catch up'?"

    ". . . I don't think I have a good answer."
    "Yeah. I figured. I had way too much time and too many annoying fuckers around not to notice."
    "And now?"
    "Answer the question."
    "Then shorten it down."
    "Are you less important than a parking lot?"
    "~?!"
    "Don't laugh at me! Fuck! It's a metaphor and I'm serious!"
    "Sorry. Sorry, I know."
    "Are--"
    "Am I the reason for the world or is the world the reason for me?"
    "Yeah. Something like that."
    "Look around you."
    "Yeah. I saw. It's a pretty good answer. I just wanted to hear you say it."
    "And what does saying it get me?"
    "I don't know. I kinda thought you'd just make up a bullshit reason that pissed me off and then I'd spend like, months, trying to get you to say it. Now it's kinda . . ."
    "It's sort of an anticlimax."
    "Little."
    "Just so you know, this field is about to collapse."
    "Oh right. Fucking Red Team. You're seriously going to let them interrupt us now?"
    "Nothing I can do about it."
    "Fuck that; I'll do it."

    It's not really their call, though. It's everyone's. All of yours. The agonizing disjoint between your perception and the world smooths out to nearly-nothing, and then nothing at all. Air flows into your lungs just after sounds finally starts reaching your ears. Warped colours and bent brightness fade as mere artifacts of having no motion to track by. The ground rumbles beneath you, and the circle goes out.
Arthur Lowell >[S] Arthur: You still have the last resort

    The weapon hangs overhead. The spacetime constraint is terminated. The progress was made. The effort, successful. Yet... There's a shudder. A massive surge of force, enough to unsteady the ground beneath your feet. Ash has halted the last dregs of the failing cycle -- which is to say, everyone else's. Right back to the moment Ash arrived, and what was set in motion then, still occurs.

    The sound is overwhelming. A scream, a crash of metal, a sonic boom, it's every conceivable noise and every conceivable light. Earth cracks and shatters. Seismometers go off in California. Radiotelescopes throughout Sector Zero record an event that they will call 'the shimmer'. It's so loud. It's so hot and bright, you can see it through your eyelids and hear it in your jaw and
#-1 EXCESS ASPECT UNRENDERABLE (SPACE) #-1 EXCESS ASPECT UNRENDERABLE (SPACE)  
               _____    ____  ____________ _ _____  ______   ___                
    ________               _____       ___________     ____ _       _______    
      _____     ___          _____  __   ___________     ____ _       ___      
           ___________     _______     _ _ ____ ___     _____ _                
                                                                                
                             you don't deserve this                            
                          you will have it anyway, ash                          
                          the world never makes sense                          
                            nothing but you is real                            
                            wait. she did something                            
                         i hear fire. a warm crackle...                        
                                       ]                                        
           ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯     ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯     ¯ ¯ ¯¯¯¯ ¯¯¯     ¯¯¯¯¯ ¯                
    ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯               ¯¯¯¯¯       ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯     ¯¯¯¯ ¯       ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯    
¯  ¯¯¯¯¯  ¯¯¯¯¯  ¯  ¯¯¯    ¯¯¯¯¯  ¯¯¯¯¯   ¯¯¯  ¯¯¯¯¯     ¯¯¯¯ ¯       ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  
         ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯         ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯    ¯¯   ¯¯¯¯ ¯¯¯¯   ¯¯¯¯¯   ¯¯¯¯¯        
#-1 EXCESS ASPECT UNRENDERABLE (SPACE) #-1 EXCESS ASPECT UNRENDERABLE (SPACE)  
collected energy of nearly a whole month of power, multiple gods pushing their hardest, dozens and hundreds and thousands of years of magical expertise -- it all enters Ash. And rests within them. It annihilates nothing about them. It empowers everthing they are. The Key of Last Resort is tuned to.
Arthur Lowell     "Fine, I'm giving up." Arthur explains. "I can't beat you, and you've figured something out with Lilian. So for me, here's surrender. Game over, you're a winner, apparently. I was gonna blast you, but she tuned it to *boost* you instead." He laughs, still a little overstressed. That... might be a lie? It's hard to say. "Whatever. I guess every piece of the world that's real, every bit that matters, it's either here or you know where to find it. And you've got the power to change any of it. And it'll stick. This time, if it catches flame, it'll burn down completely. Nothing without consequence."

    He dares them to kill him.
    He dares them to kill anyone.
    He dares them to kill everyone.
    He dares them to take Lilian.
    He dares them to run forever.
    He dares them to evert.



    He dares them to find the people, the people who had everything and deprived them of it, the people whose machinations keep a world in stasis, whose names and faces Ash knows. He dares them to choose a world where something matters. And he gives them the means to make it.




> Ash: _
Angela Angela is mollified by Xion agreeing. "Lilian, I cannot bother to keep track because I owe her more than I can repay. Maybe one day I will feel like I do not owe her anymore, but I doubt it. But no, you are not in the red. I owed you twice. Now we are simply friends. I am very much not like you, but that's alright. It is refreshing in its own way."

This is his last resort

Cinder is gripping at her head and shaking as the noise and awful sensations pound into her. But...

Angela quickly turns down the volume on the Eggpack until it is muted. She keeps it muted until she can see Arthur's lips moving again and she tentatively, very slowly, raises the volume back up.

''--giving up.''

Angela frowns.

''And you've figured something out with Lilian.''

Angela stops frowning. "Ah, have they? I suppose that is what we were hoping for, mm? So I have no complaints." She claps her hands together. "Congratulations."

Cinder wheezes for air.

"Cinder, it is customary to applaud the victor." Angela says.

"Hhoooofhh... okay... Okay, I'm gonna applaud. Sure. Why not? On top of everything else, sure" Cinder manages and claps her hands, hesitantly.

Angela is annoyed. "More exuberance, Cinder, you can do better than that."

Cinder puts on a big smile and claps in an overthetop manner.

"Mm... No, my mistake. Tone it down a bit."
Tamamo     Actually going through the process of coming out of the pressure chamber isn't something Tamamo's healing abilities help with too much. Toughing it out is different from appropriately responding to trauma after it's occurred.

    'I was gonna blast you, but she tuned it to *boost* you instead.'

    Tamamo's expression doesn't betray anything of her thoughts. She doesn't even glance in a different direction from that of someone speaking. Someone would have to have made reasonable guesses while listening to her a few subjective minutes ago, and have a not-too-unrealistic assessment of her scheming ability, to know that she wasn't expecting this, and might be upset about it.

    She'd already said everything she had to say to Ash, and now only has more reasons to refrain. But Lilian -- Lilian, she hasn't seen this whole, tiring, stressful week. As soon as their conversation appears to be tied up, Tamamo crosses the last of the distance to her, throws her arms around her, and kneels by the supply crate to lay her head against Lilian's shoulder.

    Just for a moment. A lingering moment. Looking as she did in the healing hub, not in her prepared stage show, and her usual size, her proximity is just as warm. She draws away, but slides her hand from embracing to holding Lilian's. Tamamo lightly lifts it as she stands again.

    "I am," she says, to no one in particular, "not giving up, of course."
James Bond Nevada?

    Bond's enhanced constitution doesn't prevent him from coughing, doubled over in sheer sensory-overload revulsion at the feeling of, as Ash would put it, all the 'meat' reasserting itself. Coughing turns to dry heaving, before he can wrestle it back into obeying him, or at least not making a spectacle of its revolt.

    Though they scream their displeasure, he forces his eyes to look, his knees to hold his weight, his skin to endure the sensation of air upon it. Ringing buzzes dim and thin out and refine into comprehensible speech.

    Or, perhaps...

Nevada

It's all just buildings. The words, the people, the way things are; it's just-- it's like . . . streets. Roads and buildings and shit.

    Yes. And every day, the buildings are a little less suited to the people that live in them. Some of the roads do more harm than good. But not all of them. Can't we just get rid of--

They can't run on the same track as you and that's their fault for having shitty roads and they'll catch up when they finally fucking tear up the bullshit asphalt like they're supposed to!

    "..."

They can catch up any time and they know it!

    A double-take, at Ash. As if he isn't certain his mind has yet acclimated to this space. But he *had* heard. How can you say that, when I'm still catching up to where most people agree is 'human' at all?

    Bond grimaces. Half because of what he feels, and half to keep those feelings behind his eyes. I'm already so far behind and so much older than any of you. Than you, or her, or Sakura or Nika. I've been running for so long, and now that I finally feel like the end is in sight you're moving the goalpost and telling me it's the starting line.

    Why is becoming what you really are goodbye forever and not one more 'figure it out catch up'?

    A sharp sigh, and a release of tensed fists. I wish I could say that you're wrong. I wish I were stupid enough not to know, stupid enough to bleat some idiotic nonsense at you instead of being this aware of what that means for the rest of us. I suppose I'll have to take Bryce and Katrina up on that offer after all. If I want to 'catch up' before I'm...

Fuck that; I'll do it.

    Good luck.

    Bond reaches for something cold and metal. No, not that.

    The wristwatch is so very small, compared to what a Bloom can do. Compared to what Ash has just been given, it's infinitessimal. But small and cold and metal though it might be, it's dependable. Its noble line has saved his life countless times; more than a few, its intervention has saved the lives of others. In so doing, it's been a small but vital balm against his worst thoughts.

    Now, his smallest and most dependable ally will have its final hour, as Bond twists the stop and pulls it out.

    A shrill electronic beep sounds as a small, ruinously expensive disc of exotic material launches into the air. Electromagnetic, thermal, and spatial guidance systems alike are confused by its rapidly fluctuating signatures across numerous spectrums, proving a small, fast and irresistible lure to any kind of smart munition.

    His adversaries have more than just that, it's true--but if anyone knows the value of even a tiny distraction, it's James Bond.
Trudy Grimm     Trudy clutches the Grimoire with both hands, hugging it to her chest as she weathers the queasy, painful nausea of this sudden new and frozen reality rapidly unwinding itself back towards normalcy. She keeps her eyes shut, not wanting to take in that awful, voyeuristic freeze any more than she has to. It's Lilian speaking that prompts her to open those eyes and push through the struggle of straightening her posture against air that would rather she hold still.

    She takes a revolting breath, feels her hideous heart beating in her ears. Despite everything-- she is alive, and she listens, and she thinks back to the conversation she had one-on-one with Ash what felt like days ago, now.

    > "To comprehend a rock in your hand without making it all up, you'd have to stop being human."

    And I would stop being human if that's what it took... Or maybe I'm wrong and changing in that way would me more human than ever. Like her, and you, and those two...

    So long as I can see you, I will follow. What do I have to lose but the parts of me I hate?

    Every step I take towards you is a step in the right direction. Lead on with your shining brilliance.

    While Trudy herself may not have been directly brutalized like many of the others, her time in the Grimm Tundra has been a mind-boggling exercise in exhaustion. Every muscle aches, hunger claws in her guts, and sleep hangs like weights from her eyelids. She closes them for a brief mercy, taking a deep breath.

    Gently with both hands, she holds the grimoire out; presenting it. The buckle unfastens, the covers flipping open and running through seemingly blank pages. When they stop, a rune carves itself into the air above the parchment in shining blue-white flame.

    Teiwaz, the rune of Victory.

    Even if it erases me, I'll have finally done something worthwhile.
Xion 'Now we are simply friends.'

Xion doesn't know how she feels about that. Tired as she is, to release it does not fill her with energy, but then again - Angela felt better, and that was worth something to. "I didn't even remember I was plus two." She admits, hesitating.

"I heard, once, that you never mark square up and done with a friend, because settling all debts means you're intending to part. I hope, Angela,"

Quietly dreading the rumble in her feet, Xion closes her eyes and crosses her arms tight around her open coat. "We go on being good friends for a while yet. I have a..." The noirette smirks. "Feeling we might."

Then, words. A conversation that Xion had promised by her gabbing alone to give to Ash without interruption at all, the 'prize for winning the games', the prize for playing along with discussion.

She stands there, one fist closed around a filled in medallion of mono-Chrome, and sinks her chin while she listens along, already having had too long in a pressure cooker with her thoughts and the emptying quantity of her good sodas and syrups to stay afloat like James had his 'sipping' whiskey.

She was not sipping on that flask of hers by the end. Like James, time works Xion in waves, though unlike the heaving agent when she locks her legs and dips her chin she weathers the burn in with the dwindling clench of tired will. Thin-feeling, Xion draws in a breath of air and remembers where they were, wheezing for a second and bouncing the top of her fist off the high point of her collarbone in displeasure and trying to work the feeling down.

'They can catch up any time and they know it!'

Xion, winking open an eye, looks to Lilian, and then Ash, and keeps her peace. What's there to say? Highways were a thing she came to later in life, to understand and communicate. Having seen enough worlds striped with ruined highways, and broken representations of empty roads as place-metaphor for 'emptiness' and 'desolation' more surely than bombed buildings or open land, Xion couldn't say she had an affinity for asphalt and pavement and concret stitches pinning the corpse-flesh of the old world on the fresh spring of the new. She just...

...liked car metaphors.

The 'Last Resort' of Arthur's is a grand and thunderous and wonderful thing, affirmation in a moment. Something that wasn't fighting at all. If Angela made Xion feel poorly at having spent credit to get her way, having Arthur do what he does makes even the week of cycles something 'worth it'.

With a faint sniff, and a swallow that wills away worse, the Nobody nods, and murmurs. "You really did make it not the biggest bomb, huh. Thank you, Arthur." The feeling escapes in her breath, and she leans back to look over at the fight while Cinder claps with Too Little and then Too Much enthusiasm. She turns to fight the battle, and... Pauses, as she hears a heart. She doesn't try to rip it from people so callously, these days, but when someone ''cannot stifle a cry'' she hears it and hitch-pauses.

Her boots stop on the platform and turn, black-gloved hand reaching up to the taller man's shoulder.

"You're farther than you think." Xion reassures James, fingers curling down to squeeze some feeling in his shoulder. Giving away anything -- giving away she heard -- was a compromise with the pain she felt, hot off the radiator of the coldly quiet man who had reached 'barely human' before learning the race was several buildings over, and also that he might have to change his concept of buildings -- and footraces.
Xion Then, James is off the side, and Xion sighs, slicking back her hair and shaking off her down-tilted bangs and drooping look. Lifting hands to mouth after, she calls at the leaping man: "Want another tank?!", before he's too far away, and she salutes Cinder with two fingers. "You figure out that enthusiasm level -- I'm going to help James and see if that was a 'yes' or 'no' on the tank!"

With a leap that disappears the Nobody, coat and 'shwink' of Keyblade and all, into a dark portal hole and reappears mid-choreography with James Bond. In the end, finally, she swings at NAZCA to win.
Angela ''I heard, once, that you never mark square up and done with a friend, because settling all debts mans you're inending to part.''

Despite one hundred times the time to think about it, by the time Angela opens her mouth--Xion speaks again.

''I hope we go on being good friends for a while yet. I have a feeling we might.''

That smirk makes Angela think of Binah. Angela, of course, doesn't have any issuese with Binah. She was a prisoner as much as she was after all. At the same time, she doesn't quite feel as strong as a connection either which is why she needed to ask for Xion's help in the first place.

"I do not feel that way. About debts, I mean. Once all the debts are settled, you can be friends without any baggage weighing your companionship down. And then there are no more debts to be had. Helping a friend is also helping yourself, after all. Each gesture of goodwill pays for itself."

''You figure out that enthusiasm level.''

Cinder salutes back and claps. "I'm going for exhausted but celebratory with just a hint of enthusiasm." Cinder says in a tone so deadpan that it almost gives her boss a run for her money.
Petra Soroka "But in the sense of wanting to 'drag' Lilian into a certain position irrespective of her will--my apologies if I misunderstood a version of yourself I did not meet, of course--though I suppose their hyperfocus on the Dame Commander is similar in of itself."

    *That* actually isn't an angle Petra had expected at all, or even considered before. The idea that Ash's pursuit to make Lilian 'worse' is comparable to how Petra's was, out of a sense of 'kinship at any cost'-- that, with Lilian being chained down by her relationships into some tortured form of civility, violent escalation is the only way to force her into some kind of apotheosis where she'd become recognizable-- hits a little bit too closely to home, and Petra winces.

    It's not exactly the same. Ash is, obviously, more important, more coherent, and more justified than Petra. Ash isn't dependent on changing or being changed, and is in fact intensely resistant to it. In their perspective, they're dragging Lilian *up*, not down.

    "Er... well... hopefully we'll get some progress if we stick them in a room together to talk for once. Eheh."

>Lilian and Ash get stuck in a room and talk for once

    In the real world with the gutchurning cacophony of heartbeat, where the sun stares after a week of spending a significant portion of her time controllably alone in the void, and the strained, ragged breaths of everyone else feel like they're leaking out poison, Petra is torn between the urge to shift closer to Cinder and repulsed disgust at her physical existence. But, Petra has the cure for heartbeats. Twinned pairs of morphmetal droplets hover up out of her vial, darting into both her and Cinder's ears as plugs, muffling not just the charging sound of Arthur's magic, but the internal echo of their heartbeat, replacing it with just a soft, warm buzz. This little bit of alignment purifies Cinder to the point that Petra can comfortably get close, in preparation for their immediate mutual annihilation by mecha fire.

"It's not a fucking curse to be one of us."

    When Ash finally, finally takes a dialogue option that isn't just escalating pressure, Petra lets out a breath like all that tension had been built up physically inside her.

"If you turn into something nobody gets, that doesn't mean you're impossible to understand!"

    Petra will remember that. 'Tearing up infrastructure' is a metaphor that she's understood down to her very core, the language of violence into purification into new growth. If what she's done to follow Lilian so far is only a half-measure in the grand scheme of things, then whatever's left can be rooted out and destroyed too, when it comes to it.

"I'm going for exhausted but celebratory with just a hint of enthusiasm."

    Tiredly, Petra droops her head on Cinder's shoulder. "God. Mood. I'm hoping the enthusiasm will hit me later."

"Fuck that; I'll do it."

    After the impact of Arthur's beam, the roaring aftershock drowns out the faint STING SILVER of her transteam gun, and Petra offers to Ash, slightly distorted by her mask, "Well, we're all alive. Mind if we help make your life a little easier for a moment?" Fighting together is, a little bit, a kind of love language.
Lilian Rook     Nevada:

    'I am not giving up, of course.'

    "Tamamo--?!"

    Lilian, for whom nothing but stressful waiting has happened, catches Tamamo's hold by reflex more than intent. Her arms latch her in place as if Tamamo might fall over, too. "Thank you for toughing it out. I don't know how it was, so you'll have to tell me later, but . . ."

    Ash looks away. Lilian sighs.

    "Back when it was me . . . being completely and utterly impossible, not listening to anyone, forcing everyone to dive out of the way or be crushed, nobody was doing anything like this."

    Sensing the last moment before it all happens, Lilian climbs to her feet and picks up her sword, just as it all resumes.

> Ash: Continue Chapter_

    The full power of not just LOSAF, but the months of blood, sweat, tears, testing the bonds and determination of the most powerful friends Arthur knows, isn't meant to exist here. Even in the middle of nowhere, across hundreds of miles of collateral emptiness, there is nothing in its way that possesses a remotely comparable scale of interaction.

> Do not skip scene?
    Skip
    »Resume«

    It's meant for only his original target, as someone who had invented one; defined and made manifest to contend with these powers that are meant to trascend human volition. Used differently, it would have been a contest of might that even Ash might only dubiously overcome. Used the way it is, another interaction arises, from the one person who can be touched by the whole of that power.

> Continuing Chapter: Before the End

    Enough power to override the world having any say at all courses through the one person at ground zero and punches ¬someone else¬ straight out of them-- no, it punches ¬them¬ straight through the barrier of non-existence. ¬Someone¬ fuzzy and insubstantial, colourless and without three-dimensional form, but kind of exactly like them anyways. Just as §she§ had been cut by void under the eye, as Lilian ¬they¬ are scoured ragged from rib to navel to hip to groin; stone worn through by a million years of water.

    'You really did make it not the biggest bomb, huh. Thank you, Arthur.'
    'Well, we're all alive. Mind if we help make your life a little easier for a moment?'

    ¬<<. . . <Marginal/Precarious>, but . . . potentially, <this/you> <is/are> . . . <Good enough for government work> . . .>>¬

    "You're--?!"

    Nevada:

    James Bond fires off his watch, and just for a second, the encrypted crackle of "Eyeball, report." "Negative. Package is clear." "Visual on Jormungandr. Alpha check?" "Jormungandr gone maddog. Divert?" "Negative. No new picture, continue as fragged." "Buzzer! Buzzer! Swap chattermark!" scatters from laser transmission and bleeds into the EM cloud; then cuts out completely.

    Fresh missiles divert and explode above. New geospatial jamming chaff falls before it can be burnt, renewing the sickening fog of warped magic. The lead craft brake and peel away. The mechs they're carrying drop at high speed, firing thrusters to decelerate from supersonic impact, then sliding wildly as they strike the earth, two joined by three joined by waves of others, splitting up to bracket the area in wait for the moment where what must be their AWACS craft reestablishes airspace control. Most of their weaponry is pointed at Ash. Three of fifteen can be seen loading specialized munitions.
Lilian Rook     On the Ground:

    Bond is completely right, and under the sigh of Victory, restored from a week of fighting, Ash finally absorbs that he is-- they all were, about NAZCA-- just fast enough to do something about it.

    It's not unlike the one particular night that Tamamo spoke of. Except instead of ¬Ash, too¬ at the wheel, the distinction is meaningless. Without access to a catalyzing Divine Tree and a lengthy ritual, it's the power of LOSAF that's converted inwards to do it. And instead of dark metal and glittering jagged edges, born with a sword in its hand, it's the same as the Medallion.

    Maddog:

    Ash is something that has no skin; only surfaces. Has no mass; only space inside them. Has no features; only substance. Has no center; only a locus. Ambient light catches, pools, slides, and snaps off in the sharp lines that suggest silhouette; glass with impossible transparency and impossible refraction. None of it evokes a particular form, but perfectly follows the frenzy of motion. Within it, core being like alien chrome reflects the entire world back, changing rom shape to shape in constant succession, and the designs in each face and fluid edge.

    The force that strikes the ground, that cuts through the air, that flows from here to there, is rendered purely in pareidolia, imagining the design of each limb and shape by the cracking of earth and bending of air. Without anything solid, the play of solid chrome and suggestive refraction reads straight to the part of the brain that imagines and enormous beast, coiled in pouncing posture. Then as it flies, something winged and sharp, engaging kinesthetic sense. Tactile senses in your fingers taste the sense of bending steel and compressed springs near NAZCA, and then a dangerous glint and rapid shift alert the eye and adrenal gland to the deadly motion of a blade, turned again to ripping claws. Before each motion, like a single eye, a streak of searing ultraviolet declares intent.

    Fight:

    The countermeasures don't come into play. Arthur's work has made Ash unspeakably powerful for however long this lasts. Lilian, weapon in hands, strides forward and appears in the midst of the fray. Every craft in the area-- all eyes are on Ash, and what slashes envisioned two-dimensional and heat envisioned cold don't tear apart immediately, sting silver, can tear apart with morphmetal and seven days of observation and practice. What wards and barriers survive, Xion's keyblade can undo. What climbs too far above, the corridors can reach. Without means to communicate, without weapons that work, the betrayal becomes a massacre.

    Airborne:

    Aircraft that have already made their attack pass begin to divert. Those that have yet to arive climb and carve away. The all-important directive to return; to feed critical information to the organization; rebuild, strategize, innovate, act again, sleeker and deadlier than before, no matter how long it takes; it is for nothing. The air defenses of LOSAF extend beyond their reach now. The aspect of space is at its strongest ehre. A change of gravity, or Arthur himself in the air, alongside his teleporting and flying friends, can tear them apart the moment they break attack profile.
Lilian Rook     Slaughter:

    There is nothing left of NAZCA. Not it's vital field crew, at least. Whatever they knew how to find, now no one does. The files on them will be archived, burnt, or quietly deleted. The personnel that comprise its back end, likely to be invisibly absorbed back into the Letter Agency, or disappear under mysterious circumstances. As much as they'd prepared, this time, you worked harder, you prepared better, and you wanted it more.

    It's hard to know what to make it it while it's still happening. While fuel is ignited, smoke pollutes the air, chaff thins and drifts to earth; while the metal is molten, the capacitors gush arterial crawls of electricity, the earth shudders with residual impact, and the air reeks of oil and blood and ozone, there isn't time to process. The next thing you know, ¬Ash¬ looks back once-- you're sure they're looking-- and lingering for a moment, they charge off into the Nevada desert, going somewhere in particular, while the brief window lasts.