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| Owner | Pose |
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| Distortion Dets. | Last Time: When the door is open, and the (likely not metaphorical) smoke clears from breaching, the entryway down the stairs to a wood-paneled photo studio is made clear. Ezra rushes in alongside whoever joins her at the point, skipping steps and skidding to a stop where it opens up into a too-wide-for-the-building room, oppressively dark, and with heavy cloth curtains hanging to and fro from the ceiling. The Fixer looks around, then back over her shoulder, waving others in without a word. Each and every paneled wall is decorated with unique picture frames, encasing photos- hundreds of them, though many obviously older and taken on cheaper cameras. Their subjects, however, even in the pictures from years and years ago, according to their dates, are obfuscated and tricky to make out. The dark room is quiet, still, each footstep a painful creak, until-- -~<|Click|>~- Electric and heavy, a bulb-flash whites out the interior of the studio. When it fades, it takes the pitch darkness with it, leaving the wood-panel interior cast in a near medical sterility. Curtains, which still section off parts of the chamber, draw themselves back from the center, and suddenly stop- claw-like, a clockwork hand grasps the curtain's edge, keeping it taut and still as the twisted figure hunching behind it peers out. Lenses and flashbulbs make up the general shape of a 'head', on a long, monstrous neck, of whatever it is that leans out past the curtains. Gears and wires click-snapping whith every small movement, spindly, towering limbs and torso bound up in wrappings of film roll and cabling. The monster- the Distortion, stays half hidden, great lenses tracking the inflowing Elites like a rifle's barrel. "Did you take the chance to look at the gallery, on your rude way in? No, of course not, nobody ever does, nobody ever does..." The Distortion doesn't have a mouth, but its voice- his voice, echoes around the room regardless. The claws let go of the curtain, only to loosely gesture at the photographs hung up on every inch of the walls. With the lights on, and the Distortion's apparent permission, whatever layer of obfuscation there had been across the portrait's subjects is now gone. Each and every photograph, staring up with just-lifeless eyes, is of peaceful corpses in myriad settings. Hospital beds, hospice beds, and within old, quaint homes. The subjects are old, weak, ill, and the only figures visible within the shots- no shadows of others, even. Dates are scrawled on each, most years ago, all more than a few months back. Despite the horrible morbidity, there's no irreverent grisliness to the framing, as if the photographer was careful to preserve the moment with no interference from themselves at all. The Distortion stares out at the group, lenses clicking and clacking. "Leave. You aren't supposed to be here, and I don't want you here, not with weapons drawn, not with those looks in your eyes. Leave." "We can't," Moses says, breaking through her own silence. The smoke that billows out of her mouth when she pulls the pipe away expands in volume, roiling and sinking down to the ground. "We're looking into disappearances, people whisked away along with the memory of them. If you've a part in that, if this all is involved, we need to ask you some questions-" "Or what, you'll kill me? You'll report this Taboo, and get me hauled off? I don't care what you want, this is a place for them, it isn't for you! Get out, or I'll make you!" "I already said, we *can't*-" Ezra reacts before the Detective can, nearly leaping from her position near the front of the group off to the side, in front of Moses, as the Distortion's lenses click, focus, and-- |
| Distortion Dets. | -~<|Sn-ap!|>~- --A shockingly bright cone of light flashes, catching Ezra, and forcing her into a quick roll. Her heavy gear case drops at her side- intentionally, probably, but when the Fixer catches her stance again, her right arm hangs paralyzed at her side, unmoving and rigid beneath coat sleeves. "Nyehgh, Detective! Get to cover, the flash is gonna freeze us!!" Not doing as she cautioned, Ezra instead kicks the side of her case, popping it open, and- "Face-basher mode, activate!" Two heavy gauntlets eject from it, which she catches in her good hand to cinch on. Behind her, Moses moves, too, not wasting a second to hug the wall corner as more flashes sizzle through the inside air. "Everywhere is exposed, here- damn it! Ezra! Don't just rush in like a brute-" "Can't hear you, Detective! Busy rushing in like a brute! Don't worry, let him focus on me if he's gonna try and freeze us up like that!" Cursing, the Detective exhales again, and heavy, cloudy smoke that starts to fill up the room from the floor upwards, floods from her lips- she scowls as she does so, her action robbing herself of the chance to respond to her assistant *or* the Photographer. With the smoke still growing, save for the corners and heavy curtains, nowhere yet is quite free of the Photographer's gaze. "I won't have you sullying this place, and the memories it holds! Last chance! Get out, now!" From between floor boards and behind frames, coiling film strip strands extend, not yet acting on the Photographer's threat, but promising that it's a real one. |
| Redshift Operators | "Go now." That's all that the gunman needs to hear. Grip firm on his grenade launcher, he motions quickly for his technician to ready the door with a breaching charge. The team is silent, as he coordinates the breach... and fast as the door smashes in and all four rush quickly. "Breach, breach, breach!" For Moses, coiled snakes pounce, a swarm of timelapsed women with burning arms surge forward, a flood of deep green fluid is knee-high and rising, and a laser beam of focused attention fractally expands details on a kaleidoscope anywhere it fixates... Click. They stay in tight formation as the figure emerges. As the figure focuses. And even tighter as their tone goes hostile. Then things go active, and *urgently* require some attention. Snap. "Hostile action in three... two..." "Enemy firing, move!" "Gonna get distance." "Gonna do the opposite." They scatter in total coordination. Quickly noticing what Moses is doing, the gunman grenadier unleashes a smoke grenade of his own to accelerate things. "Smokes' out!!" He yells, and clicks the safety off his own weapon. "Don't be acting like *memory* is *sacred*, you've been stealing it!" Incendiaries arc to clusters of coiling film. If it's old-style nitrate, it should burn a treat, for better or for worse. If it's new-style cellulose, well, it'll actually still burn surprisingly well! The giant clomps forward over creaking ground, joining Ezra. "You're going to regret starting a fight near your own treasures." His voice of gravel menaces as he surges forward, less with intent to strike and more with intent to wrestle with those flashbulbs and make it harder for the monster to take any more pictures. A trail of white and green surges through the flame at unbelievably high speed as one of the operators moves to cut the strips, seeing a dangerous future in them! At least, especially around the sniper who is trying to get some distance, find a marksman position, and line up a steady shot. But as she does, she speaks with focus. "All art has has a purpose. *Who* is *this* for? Those who have vanished, purged from memory? Or are they materialstaken for others?" She calls out in her high-speed work. |
| Tamiel Luxis | It's a mix of her joining mid-walk, after the party have already met and discussed with the client and her crippling shyness that makes Tamiel so easily overlooked, wings aside. She hangs near the back, as they walk ontward into the soup kitchen. -~<|Click|>~- Tamiel can't help but recoil, as the thing rears up to watch them. She feels like she's in the line of fire, a deer in the shot of a hunter, like the thing will take a snapshot and and steal her soul. The shards of her wings begin to rise from their default shape at her back, beginning to point black edges toward the thing, a silent threat. With the flash of light, comes a flurry of glass, curving through the air in ripsote. "Ezra!" She called out, then dodging to the side, feeling that light afflict somethign in her. Tamiel bit her lip--she could fix what the photographer had done to here, but if it finished...Would she get the chance. Nothing that preys on humanity can be suffered to live. Never presume to know their motives, just because they seem to harm. "I won't have you sullying this place, and the memories it holds! Last chance! Get out, now!" They, Tamiel reminded herself. This was a person. All distortions were. Whatever happened to them...Tamiel's eyes flit to the pictures, and she sees things from long ago...Too long. Before the Distortion, even... "If they're so important!" Tamiel shouted, daring, not yet calling her up her shadows. "Tell us who they are! We want to know!" |
| Hibiki Tachibana | Hibiki is, perhaps unsurprisingly, right behind Ezra when it's time to breach into the building. A photo studio that appears to everyone else as something else... and with Moses being the only one who could pierce the veil, there's zero doubt they've found their place. Once they're inside, she's at first on guard and wary for any obvious occupants-- but when none become apparent, her attention naturally goes to the sheer amount of photographs on the walls. "Huh." She murmurs into the quiet, focus darting between several of the images. Although it's barely a few in before she frowns. "...I can't tell who or what they're really supposed to be pictures /of/..." Only right as that realization intersects with her recollection of the disappearances does she raise her arm to protect her vision from the surprise of sudden flash illuminating the room... and their host for the day. Having been subject to a whole lot of things at Lobotomy Corporation, it'd be a lie to say that the Distortion's physical appearance shocks her. But she still stops for a moment, eyes wide as they go from him, and then back to the photos in question. Now in much better render. "What--" They're... ...not what she was expecting them to be. At all. Though she doesn't get to openly say such; not before Ezra moves on instinct to defend Moses and pays the price, and she's forced to do the same as even more 'snapshots' click through the air. Like the Detective said, there's nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. And even if there was, there's only really one path for her to take here. That naturally being... "Balwisyall nescell Gungnir tron!" Forward. She hits the deck at the same time she fishes her cracked pendant out from beneath her collar, light escaping through her fingers and then bursting around her body as she lunges back to her feet. It concentrates first around her foot, which comes up and then /stomps/ down onto the edge of one of the wooden floorboards-- causing the opposite end to spring upwards out of its moorings as a vertical barrier between herself and the Distortion's photo-taking. By the time she's dashing out from behind the makeshift shield, her sprint is stiff - part of her side was still 'in view' despite her her best efforts - but now fully armored up in her Symphogear, ostensibly no worse off for the damages to the pendant itself, that won't be enough to stop her from closing the distance. Mostly to be another nuisance to focus on alongside Ezra and Red Giant, although she also goes ahead of both of them to throw in a shoulder tackle to make it easier for the giant to get a grip on his mark. As she does, mind still piecing things together, she has just enough time to shout out, "Everyone you've photoed-- every single one of them were all people who were sick and dying all on their own, aren't they!?" |
| Odette Raskins | Odette starts poking her head in, and she winces as she's hit with the sudden flash right in the face. After flinching painfully and letting her eyes adjust, Odette needs another moment to process how she's hearing the Distortion without seeing movement from his mouth. "The gallery? Oh, all those..." She pauses, following the movement of the curtain to the photographs, and then she sucks the air in through her teeth when she sees the subjects of those photographs clearly. "Is that happened to all the.. The missing people?" Was she about to be one of those missing people? If she had seen a soup kitchen and Moses had not, then would she have ended up in one of those photographs? The Distortion doesn't take well to what Moses says, and Ezra goes in. Odette, being the sort to watch impressively tall people rush into danger, naturally ends up getting another eyeful of flashing light. Wincing again, she covers her eyes for a moment while a shiver runs through her spine. "Freeze? But I thought flashes were..." No time to think about that now. Running not quite away but definitely not towards the distortion, the medic scurries along Moses' growing smoke cloud while fumbling with her bag. Rather than trying to strike directly at the Distortion, she she focuses her efforts on supporting her allies, watching for the first sign of even glancing injuries to start busting out the medical supplies. "You wanted us to see this, but.. Why this? Why when they're dead instead of when they were alive? Wh-when they could've been happier? Did you hate all of them?" As she tries to prod at the Distortion's motives for this, Odette slides to get a little more distance and coverage within Moses' smoke, then whips a scalpel and already-broken jar at the Distortion, trying to embed the former in them and just smash the second onto center mass to start trying to hide where she's hurling things from. |
| Father Berislav | Berislav doesn't take point, but instead places himself in the middle, umbrella discarded. At first, he's empty-handed. Distortions can be very dangerous, yes--but to be bent out of shape implies a proper shape to begin with. Leave. You aren't supposed to be here, and I don't want you here, not with weapons drawn, not with those looks in your eyes. Leave. I won't have you sullying this place, and the memories it holds! Last chance! Get out, now! Berislav utters a sharp sigh. A pair of heavy revolvers with silver frames black grips are pulled in a cross draw from a pair of burning orange wounds in space. The gesture is casual, the barrels nearly as long as his forearm, yet guns of that size have no business being drawn that quickly with the chilling ease he manages. His posture, largely the same alert yet affected attempt to disarm, is belied not only by those monsters in his hands, but by the tensing of his body like a coiled spring. At the flash, the tension explodes outwards in a supherhuman vertical that puts him briefly above the action and the light cone alike, turning midair to lie for a heartbeat spread-agle, guns outwards, silver eyes scanning the engagement studiously as the Redshifts make their callouts. Odette isn't much of a fighter, much less a melee combatant. He figures she's likely to keep her distance, attack and support opportunistically. Tamiel is an unknown. Ezra and Red Giant are already up close. Hibiki will very likely join them. He's familiar enough with her style of fighting to know a crowded engagement won't hinder her much. Red Giant, Ezra and White Dwarf are a different story. As the hand of gravity begins to tug him back down, his eyes flick towards the Distortion and scan the shape of his head. The priest frowns in concentration lifts his right hand, thumbs the cylinder. Glass is more brittle than skin. Hollow point should be fine for the bulbs. If not... A triggerpull on the right, and two on the left, as he descends. Three bullets streak from on high. One strikes the wall behind the Distortion, ricochets, deforms and punches into one of the bulbs on his head. The other two form a straight line along the same point of impact, intending to shatter several bulbs on their passing. Berislav lands with both guns leveled towards the Distortion. "I'm sorry, sincerely, that our arrival wasn't with glad and vulnerable hearts. Thousands of people are dead thanks to the Pianist, and I presume, thanks to you, still more have disappeared. The weapons, and the looks in our eyes, will stay, for the time being." "What happens to *you* is for you to decide. If we wanted to kill you, several of us, myself included, could have collapsed the building on top of you. If we wanted to haul you off somewhere to be studied or buried, why would we give you the chance to say anything at all, let alone fight back? You know that isn't the way of the City's enforcers." "We want the disappearances to end. Can you, *will* you help us put an end to them?" |
| Distortion Dets. | 'Is that happened to all the.. The missing people?' "Presumably, or something like it," Moses answers. She's rushed, tense, as the Distortion emerges. "Sight and capturing, the imago pinned behind glass- that's what 'cameras' say to me. Mm. I don't like this." 'Don't be acting like *memory* is *sacred*, you've been stealing it!' ""No! Never! I'm *protecting* it! From being lost, and thrown away by everyone else out there! From you, if you're trying to take everything away!" 'Everyone you've photoed-- every single one of them were all people who were sick and dying all on their own, aren't they!?' "Yes! Do you think *I'm* a murderer?" That's tough to answer, considering that the Photographer is a relative unknown. His tone is frustrated, put-upon, and increasingly scared the more and more people don't back down from the actions he takes to defend this space. "No, no, I don't think he is. It's too carefully set up, there's no mess, nothing reeks of harm- this is no normal space, this is all part of the Distortion, so what's it telling us? *Reverence*? Showing-off? This is a collection more than a sales hall, somber and clean..." Moses takes a long moment to brush a finger against the frame of one photo, the film burnt away from it, and not even a layer of dust remains on her finger pad. She scowls. "Doesn't it feel more like a cemetary?" 'Tell us who they are! We want to know!' "Do you even care? I could list their names off- there's so many, you'll just ignore them, though! I don't want you to ease my feelings, I want you to leave me to what I have to do!" Still- the Distortion mumbles, mechanical-voiced, a stream of so many names, melding together with the sheer mass of portraits around- only really making good on the claim that he knows. 'You're going to regret starting a fight near your own treasures.' "'Treasures'? These are the only things left of them! Do you know how many people die scared and alone in this City? With nobody to remember them? No family, no friends? I do. I was a mortician, it was my *job* to clean up when they did! For years! For so many years! I'm the last person to remember those people up on the walls, so if you break those, then you're only *killing them again!*" At Red Giant's threat, a portion of the film strands- those that aren't being actively burned, or torn out, pull back, wrapping protectively around the frames. With the smoke obscuring most of the room now, the Photographer's flash just bursts aimless through the haze, the refraction making the light almost look solid and tangible. As Ezra and the Giant burst through the smoke cloud towards where the Photographer stands, Ezra tilts her head off to the opposite way she's moving- cueing her ally to flank. "He can only look one way," She hisses, about the flash-bursts. The Photographer is big- towering over Ezra, over the giant, the distortion is mechanical, spindly, and framed like the spider in a web to all these buzzing flies- grappling him means fighting with something with much more mass than you, and long-limbed leverage to boot. With a sudden twisting motion, Ezra plants her feet and puts the whole force of her charge into a low strike with her good arm, sweeping at the Distortion's leg, timing her attack so the giant's grab connects with an unsteady foe. In the thinner central smoke, Ezra's bright-red eyes don't quite glow, but still hold the same cheery sparkle they usually do- with utterly none of the matching expression. Hibiki as third impact simply knocks the Photographer onto his back, click-clacking and trying to flail. |
| Distortion Dets. | The bulbs flash and sputter, as Berislav's bullets crack them, and camera lenses- a free arm pulls away, and covers up a bullet-shot camera lens like one would clutch a bleeding eye. The flashes stop, though- and with a mechanical wail, dozens and dozens more of half-flaming, half-torn, half-fine film strands shoot out from borders of the room, slashing and grabbing willy-nilly, to make it stop and make the intruders flee. Ezra ducks within her coat, twisting the leg she's holding and helping the collaborative pin. "Detective! The film stuff- it's really sharp when it's moving, be careful!" As emphasis, when Ezra looks back, through the smoke, one tears along her cheek, leaving a red line behind, but barely a flinch. Where the Detective stands, having done her best to put out the smoke screen, she leans against the wall to catch her breath for a moment. "Ezra- and you two, you're cornering him! This is his space, back off, and- Coiled film whips, and Moses' pipe slips into her hand, a bloody red streak pulling itself free from the mass of smoke around it, fashioning itself into a saber-like blade held in her hand. Film falls to pieces from the slash, and the Detective finishes her thought, "And you'll give him some ease! See what that does?" 'Did you hate all of them?' "No! Of course I didn't! How could I? I never even knew them alive! But I'm working on that, on saving people before they wind up like all of these! I can keep them safe here! I can remember them, so they never are forgotten and alone! That's all I can do for them, but I have to!" 'We want the disappearances to end. Can you, *will* you help us put an end to them?' "Not if it means letting all those I could save from facing their fates out there! Everyone who's come here, who I've saved, they came for a warm meal, a place to be around others, a bit of comfort that the world wouldn't give them! If I let go of them, *that's what they go back to*, the cold, the hunger, the loneliness, and death!" |
| Tamiel Luxis | "Do you even care?" "We do! We want to understand you!" Tamiel insisted. Oh, the lure to pull up her shadows around herself was so strong, but she didn't want to make herself battle-ready--she wanted to talk. "We want to know why--we want to make it better!" Heeding Moses' words, she steps back away from the distortion, hands raised in the air, trying to make herself look harmless. Her shards ripped themselves away from the ground where they'd embeded, floating to her side, where they began to glow. It was a gentle, warm light. A reminder of better times. Under it, wounds remembered a time when they were whole and unbroken. If they drew close, they floated near Hibiki, or Ezra, the Giant, or anyone taken by the flashes of light. They glowed with a memory of a time when they were unbound, and strove to make them real. "Everyone who's come here, who I've saved, they came for a warm meal, a place to be around others, a bit of comfort that the world wouldn't give them!" "Did you know that the people you take get forgotten? No one remembers who they are, anymore." Her voice was gentle. "They don't get to go home to do the things that they dreamed of doing. They don't get to say hello to the people who love them. They..." Her eyes drifted to the pictures. "...Don't get the chance to grow old. And everyone else in the world forgets they ever were." "Isn't that so sad?" The angel pleaded to the horrorshow. "Isn't that what you were so angry happened to all these people...?" She gestured to the wall of pictures. "That's almost like killing them, isn't it?" |
| Redshift Operators | "You can only look one way." The giant repeats Ezra's words, as if the heavy tone gave them meaning. "One way, once, at a time. No memory is perfect." But when called to back off, he does, letting it knock him away. He's endured a bit of beating here, but his armor isn't even scratched as film rushes to protect the photos. The cyborg skids to a halt, blade out and up, between the gunman and the sniper. The blade rises to her left hand, and her right hand unfurls into a rush of flames and curses-- no, into a storm of surgical tools, giving her two handfuls of slicing reach to keep both her allies protected from the film... But the sniper doesn't take shots. A few get lined up, but no details seem to form about what to do next, or rather-- they pull the gun away and approach one of the photos. They examine them, with incredible focus and dedication. They fix it in their minds, contain it completely and utterly... And then they turn to the Photographer. "You're doing it wrong. Scaling demands of a care facility or welfare organization make it impossible for only the lead caregiver to work. You need delegation, even if it's to people who aren't as good at it. You have to distribute tasks. They're going to decay before you can give them adequate care. You're gathering them up faster than you can take them entirely into your memory." Their tone is... neutral. Weirdly stilted. But impassioned -- their hands are *shaking*. "You're not following your objective. You're cutting out the people who could *help* follow your objective, by removing their memory of it to begin with. Even if someone's not good at following their objective, they should try. You say your objective is to help these people, but you're doing it by hurting the people you think aren't doing it. And you can only look one way." They resume their sniper position. The bolt racks and they line up a shot just past their squad leader's somewhat aghast face, baffled by that rush of words from the often-silent technician. If smoke allows, and the photographer's hostility continues, they plan to fire -- not through the lenses, but beyond the aperture into anything resembling a film-crank. That should be what manipulates the film, after all. |
| Odette Raskins | "I don't like this." "So they're not dead, but.. Captured?" ODette concludes from what Moses tells her, feeling a little spark of hope in her chest that the photographs aren't what actually happened yet. "Captured in film means... Th-then we still have a shot to save them!" "From being lost, and thrown away by everyone else out there!" Hearing that the Photographer, too, wants to save these people in his own way starts giving her more to think about. How can this Distortion be kept from going out of control and being a repeat of the Pianist? She can certainly hear the frustration in the Distortion's voice, and she's already starting to get the feeling that trying to rush him down with everyone else might be the wrong call. Berislav confirms as such over the radio for her, and Odette stays on the ground for a moment instead of continuing to slip and slide all over the place. Emerging from Moses' smoke, Odette briefly holds her hand up to try and signal a pause to the Photographer before squealing and sprinting away again as the film strands start flying all over the place. A few well-placed strands slice open the EMT's cheek and parts of her jacket deep enough to draw bloody streaks all over the floor and film alike. "I can remember them, so they never are forgotten and alone!" "Everyone who's come here, who I've saved, they came for a warm meal, a place to be around others, a bit of comfort that the world wouldn't give them!" Hearing that really confirms the gut feeling ODette's gotten from what Moses has said already, and that makes it harder for Odette to know how to even respond at first. She's got some time, at least, as she's busy scrambling to not get sliced apart by those film reels while also trying to get close enough to Berislav that she can half-slap half-slam medicated bandages right onto him. "Keep moving! G-gotta... Got to make sure we can get through to him...!" She tries to pep them up even as she's already sprinting away again to do the same for Tamiel. "It's. Mister Photographer! It's not wrong to want to remember people, but... But did they even have the choice to be remembered like this? Did they really want to be remembered as..." Sliding again under the cover of Moses' smokescreen, Odette scoops some broken bottles off the ground and more scalpels out of her bag to just start chucking them at the film reels in the hopes of cutting or tangling them up. "A-as missing people? As murder stats next to the Pianist's death count? You could've immortalized them in photos while they're alive... As welcome guests in the soup kitchen! It's not too late to change how you're doing this, so... How do you want them to be remembered?" |
| Father Berislav | Ezra- and you two, you're cornering him! This is his space, back off, and you'll give him some ease! Berislav doesn't retreat, but neither does he advance, holding his position in the smoke. That means that he's cut by the film as it whips through the smoke, but the stains on his cassock don't bother him nearly so much as the nature of what the Distortion is grasping for. He lowers his guns. "It's very difficult to be kind here, isn't it?" he asks. "What kindness exists in the City does so in quiet, secret corners, because that's the surest way for it to survive. Is there something I could call you? 'Photographer' feels too impersonal, and anything else I might say is... similarly, more suited to *what* you are than *who.*" "Some of the people in town think that you're a ghost, haunting the neighborhood," he says, sidestepping another strip of film with a fluttering of his cassock. Blood spatters on the floor below. His eyes don't so much as flick towards it. "But I don't see that. What I see is someone who's very angry at how cold and callous the City is, and who's doing what he can to preserve warmth between people. At the end of the day, we'd all like a kinder City, too. Some of us want to get there by removing the things that suck the warmth out of the air, others by kindling little spaces of warmth away from the shearing winds." A juke, a roll, a whip of his head keeps him from being lacerated further--the cuts he takes encounter some kind of resistance beneath the skin, woven in plates, hard and unyielding. "I'm afraid Neutron is right. Edita--the neighbor of that fellow you've put on the back wall--doesn't remember him at all. She lived next to him for years, didn't she? But she thinks his things just... appeared there one day." 'As if by a ghost' is unspoken. "Would you please reconsider answering Moses' questions?" |
| Hibiki Tachibana | Yes! Do you think *I'm* a murderer? "We didn't know anything 'til now!" She calls back, and she's not lying. Murdered or killed would've sure been the default assumption knowing the City however; it's far too normal to guess that people disappearing would have to do with them being offed one way or another. "We were trying to find out why so many things belonging to people were left around - people that nobody seemed to remember!" In that sense, the Photographer isn't entirely wrong about what he says before long. About the hunger, and loneliness, and death outside. On Moses' order - and because she's sort of acknowledging it herself - she steps several paces backwards away from the Photographer and favors her un-frozen side briefly, eyes darting left to right. Right. Just like Meltdowns at Lobotomy Corporation, Distortions can't be 'solved' with violence. You have to listen to them, understand where they're coming from, and... With the masses of sharp film-coils now an active threat, she focuses on protecting herself an the others. Her side gets a sharp cut through it before she steps out of the way of one, and then when another and another still comes in, her hand lashes out to intercept them - grasping them out of the air and bundling them up tightly in her grip, even as the edges dig bleeding gashes into her palm. "...Thank you," is what Hibiki gets out through clenched teeth, grit with the effort of holding onto the reels, and then grabbing a second batch and restraining them from cutting her or anyone else nearby. "...For caring about them when nobody else would or could. From the date on some of... ngh... these photos, you must have been doing this... a long time. By yourself..." She hisses with extertion, then gives a strained sigh. "...Despite what it looks like, us barging in here-- we're not... your enemies. We want the same thing you do - saving people... giving them somewhere warm, people to come back to, and long lives. We came here in the first place-- because of that," she murmurs in regards to Neutron and Berislav's mention of Edita. Closing her eyes, she purses her lips. "...You're a good person. But you'll break, trying to remember everybody who deserves to be remembered, all by yourself. Thank you," she repeats again, "for holding up all by yourself for this long. But you don't have to do all the remembering by yourself anymore. Please. We just want to talk to you." |
| Distortion Dets. | 'Th-then we still have a shot to save them!' "Mm. Let's hope we're so lucky." 'Did you know that the people you take get forgotten? No one remembers who they are, anymore.' "I do! I do I do I do! I remember them, when they've *already* been forgotten! Their dreams were already taken! Their love already gone! I keep them here, because if I can't get that back for them, then this is the least I can do!" Frantic- and pained. A freed, clawed hand tears at the wood panel flooring, gouging out long streaks under clockwork fingertips. 'That's almost like killing them, isn't it?' "It isn't! Fuck you, fuck you! Get *out* of here!!" Film flits around to strike again, rising in movement with the emotional height of contending with that type of accusation. Further away, Moses steps in to chop film out of the air before it can converge on Tamiel, faster in her motions than she'd look, the red smoke sword silent as it cuts through the air. "Shut your mouth if you just plan to enrage him! Counteracting the sentiment is one thing- but get *him* to come around to it, don't force it!" Still, as people back away, the ferocity of the environment subsides- but not fully. The lull makes for a good break, a chance to catch breath and exchange words. Ezra wipes at the blood on her face, examining how it stains the white palms of her work gloves, 'Hmm''s, and rolls her shoulders. Tamiel's light helps the paralyzed arm, which she barely notices, as her motions go back to natural. 'Is there something I could call you? 'Photographer' feels too impersonal, and anything else I might say is... similarly, more suited to *what* you are than *who.*' "Lumir. My name. It's on the sign outside, for this kitchen.")] Not that it's a kitchen anymore, given how it's Distorted along with him. "Go ahead with your 'what's', no name calling stings me anymore. I just *can't* care about it compared to everything else." 'Some of the people in town think that you're a ghost, haunting the neighborhood,' "I don't do this for the renown! If I get forgotten along the way, I can make that sacrifice! So long as it's for something! I didn't have people before, I don't now, but I have *this*! I have all of them to memorialize, to immortalize! I can live with being a ghost." 'you must have been doing this... a long time. By yourself...' Immediately counteracting his previous point, Lumir takes on something close to the body language of tearing up, if a figure made of clockwork and cameras could do so. ""It feels like it's been forever, it's all I even know... death, loss, bodies left forgotten, souls withering away, with nobody to watch them go... I carried on! It's thankless, but I had to! They're all *I* have left too, and it's so hard!!" Lumir's hand comes down again, towards the floor to clutch at it, and Ezra has to dip out of the way even back where she's retreated, just to make sure she's not caught in the blind swing. "Poor guy," she mumbles, wiping her face. "Your heart's really in it, even if you're being a real idiot about-" "Ezra." "Ope. Uhhh. A real *swell* guy about... ehnnn.. Sorry, Detective! He's kind of being an idiot!" |
| Distortion Dets. | 'Would you please reconsider answering Moses' questions?' "Hah. You've covered over some I wanted to touch on- whether this was a killer, what the motive and cause was- I think both are quite clear. So, Lumir," A deep inhale, exhale. "You can reverse this? Those you've captured? And this domain of yours..?" "Yes, I think. I haven't tried, but...- I bet I could find a way." "Will you stop this, and work on another way-" 'We want the same thing you do - saving people...' 'You say your objective is to help these people, but you're doing it by hurting the people you think aren't doing it. And you can only look one way.' Lumir *wails*. The flare-up of slashing film, the sparking flickers of broken flashbulbs, both provide quick opportunity for the sniper to disable, popping reels and remnant filaments. It's not his most violent, but it's a desperate, last-movement crescendo, trying to navigate this new section of the confrontation. The entire room rumbles. "If I'm doing it so wrong, how come I'm the only one doing it for these people? If there's a better way, *why aren't you doing it?*" |
| Tamiel Luxis | "It isn't! Fuck you, fuck you! Get *out* of here!!" Moses manages to block most of it, but the last of its manages to cut through. Without the darkness shrouded her, it hits her clean and hard, scoring a clean, ugly hit across her body. She clutches to her wounds, but while she's bathed in her own divine light, it doesn't seem to be healing her. "I'm sorry..." She grimaces, only a little in pain, partly under Moses' scolding. "I just meant...But there's a way to do both, you know...? To protect them, without taking them from the rest of the world." "We work with people to get supplies to the people who need them, and to protect the people who need protecting." Tamiel steps forward, hands still without weapons. "You don't need to fight alone, you know? We can help you." "We can make sure you have the supplies to make sure they have something to eat. Somewhere warm to go. I know it's not perfect...But you know? They'd get to live. You'd get to take pictures of them ass as they grow up. More and more moments...Not just one." "I know it's been lonely...But...It doesn't have to be." |
| Odette Raskins | As Odette flits about trying to get her allies patched up and to stem the worst bleeding wounds, she gets yet more opportunities to hear what the Photographer's all about. Hearing his frustration over the City certainly strikes a chord in her, too, as it reminds her of what she's seen in both the City and back home. "I keep them here, because if I can't get that back for them, then this is the least I can do!" "Lumir. My name. It's on the sign outside, for this kitchen." "The least...? No, this is.. You could do a lot more than this, Mister Lumir. If just did that soup kitchen thing for real instead of all this..." Odette's breath hitches briefly as she considers the logistics of running an actual soup kitchen, trying not to let what she's already seen of the City bog down her thoughts. She realizes this, too, and she tries to pivot a little more, to move away from what to do and focus on Lumir himself: "What did you do before all this?" "He's kind of being an idiot!" "He... he doesn't want to just stand by and do nothing." Odette guesses, coming out briefly from behind Ezra and reaching up to smush a small medicated patch onto that face wound while trying not to get too self-conscious about having to reach so high up. "Even if doing nothing might have been better, it... It must still feel wrong. Doing something.. Anything feels better than not even trying at all, especially when you've got the power to act." "If there's a better way, *why aren't you doing it?*" Thankfully, Lumir's last-ditch flailing keeps Odette from having to think too hard about underlying reasons why she might be here. Although she can see and even predict where those film reels and slicing ribbons will go, actually moving out of the way of them still proves to be too much for her to do reliably. The EMT still gets cut up here and there, and she has to fall back several steps further just to make sure she's bleeding at an acceptable level even while sealing her wounds up with more of those heavily medicated bandages. "W-we are doing it! That's why we're here, because.. Nobody can do this kind of thing alone. That's why we're all working on what we can!" Odette calls out in between bouts of shielding herself with her arms or scampering behind someone far larger than her for cover, although she's shrinking down further and further as the beatings continue. "Sure, we don't have the resources of the big corps or the Fingers or anyone like that, but... W-we're forming connections through the City every day! If you come to Father Berislav's next sermon... I'm sure you'll understand once you see it for yourself." |
| Redshift Operators | "If I'm doing it so wrong, how come I'm the only one doing it for these people? If there's a better way, *why aren't you doing it?*" "Because other people know that you don't do this to solve the problem." The sniper insists, with focus and probably a scowl under the goggles. But their tone is so even... even the stiltedness has a kind of rhythm to it. "Because even when someone doesn't make sense, they're still trying to pursue their objective. You just can't see it. It looks wrong and useless, but they're trying. And your perspective only has the one angle. And maybe they don't know how to say their objective. You're not doing *yours* right." "Focus. Focus. Focus. Focus!!!" The first words are calm, but the last just... lash out in a sudden rush. The flailing nearly gets to them, but the ninja is quick to deflect. "Neutron! Move!" "Let me *finish!*" They call out. "FOCUS! Focus on what you want, not on how drastic and big the first step is for you'd get there!" Their voice, suddenly, flows like an unceasing babbling river. Not one single pause gets into their extended run-on sentence. "Stop *taking* pictures and start *making* a picture in your mind of the life you want for these people who you know deserve a better one and it involves more people than just you providing more care than you can because you can only look in one direction and you can only do one thing at a time and if you make step one in achieving that world be reaching beyond your grasp to a perfect solution you can't execute without a scary disaster then you will never get to step two where their isolation is resolved or their loneliness is helped or you preserve their memory outside of you so FOCUS--!!" Exhale. One more shot. And then they inhale. "And stop and think and even *write* or *photograph* the specific and particular details you want to become real because it *involves other people* and it involves not just some but even all of them all working together in all the ways you even specifically said you recognized the absence of so you need *that* and it has to be included in the next plans and the next step and the next *breath* you take or otherwise you just wander around halfway-achieving something nearly perfect and not getting it right and YOU DON'T," They jab a finger out accusingly, in the first momentary break in their rambling rant. "NEED TO GET IT PERFECT *NOW* BUT YOU NEED TO RECOGNIZE THAT GOOD OBJECTIVES ARE ACHIEVED WITH *STEPS* and that the good world you're after is something that can only be achieved by embodying it consistently in the boring ways and not twisting the world up in ways that disconnect people, and," They exhale a long, long breath. And pause for about ten second. "Forgot... no, right. You also have to kill the people hurting these guys. I think. I'm sorry, I had it for a minute but I lost..." They shake their head. During that whole thing, Moses could probably see something like a kaleidoscope of unthinkably detailed galactic, geopolitical, biological, cellular, and subatomic diagrams rotating around the technician's head. |
| Father Berislav | "Lumir," repeats Berislav. He nods. "That's a nice name. A good name, for someone trying to bring a measure of light to this dark place." The room rumbles, and Berislav is moved--if not physically, then without a doubt emotionally. How could he not be? When someone wails for the reason Lumir does--whether it makes the room shake or not, it's true that person feels like their world is shaking. "The City is practically a world unto itself, and you and I are so very small compared to that. It's not your fault that you haven't seen us. You know more than most how hard the City works to isolate people from one another." "In the end, we slipped through the cracks and met anyway, didn't we? And the people you're helping have been so let down, so mistreated by the City, that you were very ready to believe we were here to do harm." He smiles sadly. "I'm so sorry that we didn't reach you earlier, Lumir." "The truth is that we *have* been helping, where we can, and we've made progress--but sowing seeds in rocky soil is hard work. Even though your methods were in error, your motivations weren't. If you want to try our way, we'd love to have someone with your perspective, your passion, and your experience helping us. A mustard seed is a very small thing--but it's a persistent little thing. Enough of them in one place can turn the most barren, desolate place into a beauitful field of gold." "You'd still be saving people from isolation, you'd still help them find connection with others--and you'd do that. And..." Berislav doesn't beat around the bush. "If any of them die of old age, or of sickness, they'd do so remembered not just by you, not just by the people they'd spent their lives with, but by new friends they might never have otherwise met. Your work with them has touched me, deeply, Lumir--but this kind of remembrance only preserves an image of them. People are creatures of motion, aren't they? Even when we're sick and frail, we want to be thought of as the best version of ourselves--the version that loves and is loved back, that laughs and smiles and even cries." |
| Hibiki Tachibana | It feels like it's been forever, it's all I even know... death, loss, bodies left forgotten, souls withering away, with nobody to watch them go... I carried on! It's thankless, but I had to! They're all *I* have left too, and it's so hard!! "...I know. I'm sorry you had to hold all that weight up all on your own. If I was one of them-- I'd be glad knowing someone cared so much and pushed themselves so hard, just for me." Her eyes are still shut, maybe in sympathy, maybe in pain, maybe in the effort of having to weather Lumir's emotional lashing out here at the last - or all of the above. Whirling film reels rend through skin and leave behind bloody cuts, an errant flash locks her left arm in frozen stillness at her side not dissimilar to Ezra, and moving about to respond gets harder by the moment. But in a sense, she's not really trying her best to avoid all of it, either. Her body is moving to stay out of danger, but most of her thoughts are on what the photographer is saying back to them. If I'm doing it so wrong, how come I'm the only one doing it for these people? If there's a better way, *why aren't you doing it?* "...Just like you, the only thing we can do for people is 'the best we can'. We can't get to everybody, even when we try to-- and we're still trying to figure out better and better ways to help them. It's-- I-- ...it's hard. And it doesn't always go the way we think it will," she murmurs, face tensing at the far-reaching consequences of L Corp's project. "But-- we /are/ trying. And the only way we're ever gonna do better at it is working together at it. Lumir, somebody like you, who cares so much, who can remember all of these people nobody else would-- I want to believe we can help each other, help everybody else." "If you're willing to... give it a shot. My name is Hibiki, by the way... since you already told us yours." |
| Distortion Dets. | 'If just did that soup kitchen thing for real instead of all this...' "I do, I- I *did*, before! I put the money I made into it, tried what I could... but it only.." "It's expensive on your own! Ingredients, if you aren't getting donations, all the time you aren't working for a job that pays, rent for the building, that- that adds up! I bet you struggled with it trying it all alone!" There's... not quite sympathy in Ezra's voice, but something close, despite being through a too-narrow lens on the economics of it. 'If I was one of them-- I'd be glad knowing someone cared so much and pushed themselves so hard, just for me.' Aggression fades out of the final struggles, the film that still whips around losing speed and aim. "You don't- you don't know how much... I *can't* hear it from any of them, they're gone, but if you mean that, that it really matters like that..." Affirmation and thank don't come often in dealing with the dead. Hibiki's struck a weak spot, sapping some of the fight out of him. 'You're not doing *yours* right.' Wood-panel walls crack, pictureframes falling one after another onto the smoke-covered floor. The film strands aren't on the attack anymore- instead, they're frantically catching the falling portraits so they don't shatter against the floor. Lumir doesn't miss even one. As Neutron goes on, the cracks continue, Lumir listening whether he wants to or not. Where pieces fall away from the walls- there isn't anything behind it. The interior space itself seems to shrink and chip away, slowly, as everything goes on. Given enough time, one could guess that the photo studio will simply be a soup kitchen again. "Mmmm, that's progress. This is something.." Moses mumbles, the closest to praise she's readily able to hand out. 'The good world you're after is something that can only be achieved by embodying it consistently in the boring ways and not twisting the world up in ways that disconnect people' Mechanical hands over cracked-lens eyes, Lumir 'looks' towards Neutron as much as one can look while hiding their face. He mumbles things that aren't words, but tries to nod- that what Neutron is saying *has* substance matters in the moment more than that substance, but another day down the line they'll matter for that. Clockwork, too, starts to fall away- in small pieces at first, around Lumir's face-hiding hands. Slowly, he's shrinking closer to the size he must have been before, no longer the monster hiding in a lair, dramatic and strong to fend off the challenging of his actions. 'I'm sorry, I had it for a minute but I lost...' "Mm. Soldier? Are you alright? That's more words than I've heard out from you before." An exhale. The smoke-made sword Moses had a few moments before is gone, her pipe the only thing clutched in her hand now- and she brings it up to her lips. Idly, "Think he'll listen..?" |
| Distortion Dets. | 'If you want to try our way,' "I have to do something," whispers Lumir's voice- hoarse now, tired, a mechanical tone still present but shifted to the background. When his hands finally come away from his face-- the four camera lenses that made up his head still do so. But with clothes instead of film wrappings, flesh in parts, instead of wholly clockwork, there's a sense to him now of some form of reconciliation. "Okay. Okay okay okay. How? How do I help, where... oh, ah, where *can* I even go..?" Ezra, standing awkwardly by for a while, hesitantly leans in, and bonks Lumir's shoulder with a gloved hand. "Bap." The meaning to this action is unclear- maybe just to pierce some form of tension she got sick of? Lumir looks over for a second, baffled, and finally back. "You have... somewhere? Please say you do. I don't think I can stay here, I don't think I *want* to, I want to work and help and do something, something- - ---" He hunches over, mechanical sobbing taking over his voice. "I'll get them back to you all. The people, even- even that woman's father, they're all still here, still fine. That's... first. But- *look after them*. Promise you will..?" Moses looks to the Father, and her assistant, and finally the other Watch helpers- Neutron, Hibiki- "You can promise that much, can't you?" Ezra stares back- an eyebrow raises, but the assistant just hums, instead of say what might be on her mind. "Ah, well. It'll be a task to get everyone back where they belong, and you aren't the ones being paid. Run along whenever you've got to, and ... We'll figure out a way to get Lumir sent on his way to you, if you'll have him? I believe I remember a 'hostel' of some sort ..." |
| Father Berislav | "Of course," says the thoroughly lacerated man in bloodstained, tattered cassock, to Lumir and Moses, "I promise. I'm still a priest, after all." At some point during the smoke's clearing, he'd stowed those large pistols of his, and he now regards the other man with a serene smile. Despite his state, he manages a ministerial kind of grace as he moves towards him, not so much as wincing from what must surely be a litany of bodily complaints. "I have some people I'd like you to meet," he says, placing a reassuring hand "At the hostel Detective Moses mentioned. You'll love them." "They can teach you a lot about how to get food, medicine, clothes, and very likely generators to those in need--and I have a feeling you can teach them a few things, too. You'll have a warm bed and a roof over your head, and you'll be helping us guarantee the same for as many people as we're able." He squeezes Lumir's shoulder, smiling down at him. "People are beginning to put their faith in us. More than that, they're beginning to see the light inside each other. As long as we keep up our work, we'll kindle a little spot of warmth, from there into sparks and embers... I'll look forward to seeing you there." |