Scene #9366: This is Tomorrow III

Owner	Pose
Timekeeper	Overhead, the clouds close together to blot out the sun and illusory moon alike. The grey rainy haze is illuminated by increasingly frequent flashes of technicolor lightning, catching and refracting in every raindrop to print the world in a sheet of Ben-Gay dots for an instant. The music playing all around the city blurs together into a deafening cacophany, each note and instrument indistinguishable from each other as anything but part of an endlessly crashing wave of sound and emotion. Glowing in harsh, steady red through the gloom, while its wearer weaves through the manic crowd, is the display of 0 0 : 2 5. "If you don't like what they're selling, you can always defect." Vertin presses their lips together in a thin smile, joining White and Bond in pincering Regulus, with several masked Manus Vindictae members standing opposite them. She shifts the stack of records out from under her arm, with the goofy t-shirt shielding them from the rain that slowly soaks the fabric. "It isn't a compromise to your beliefs to lay low and rebuild for another day, Regulus. Even without your ship, or many of your records, or your friends, it isn't all so lost that you have no option besides throwing the rest of it away. Choose to come with us, and survive. I--" They abruptly cut off, eyes widening, and throw an arm out to the side to push Bond backwards. A second later, James and the other Manus Vindictae double over, and he shudders, rippling under his skin as if he's been hollowed out, before a tide of thick black goop retches out of his mouth. Implausibly much, the puddle expands in moments, writhing and blooming with viscous waves and segments peeling off to surround Regulus and stop just short of where Vertin stumbled backwards to. A forest of oily arms drag upwards out of it, ran through with blue veins so vivid that they chromatically aberrate, piling onto Regulus and pulling her down into the pool where she vanishes. "They've teleported her away!" The lingering goo, with James collapsed in it, sucks and squirms as if it has a life of its own, but Vertin ignores it to trace the path of arcane energy with their eyes. "That way! On a building rooftop somewhere!"
Timekeeper	Vertin can point in the direction that the hands took Regulus, but it's still out of sight and a short distance away, too far for most people to reach quickly without being waylaid by another obstacle. The pool of black slime doesn't lay lifeless after consuming Regulus, and the fluid begins piling up into six widely-spaced legs, with peristaltic contractions pulling up more goop to form a body on top. Meanwhile on the dock, the mask gripped in Audrey's hands is shaped like two clasped hands with interlocked fingers, but trying to pocket it isn't as benign as just getting goo on her shirt and hands. The slime is warm against her fingers, practically silky, and it drools out of the severed wrists of the mask that held it to the man's face to stick and crawl across her skin. Odette is treated to the same while she tries to spare the life of the person Audrey tore the mask off of-- both of them hear a woman's soft, crooning murmuring at the edge of their hearing, with the words just out of conscious perception as if they're heard through a door while drifting off to sleep. Both of them, and Natsuki, are penned in by dockworkers wearing masks-- who quake like they might transform into another set of monsters soon, if not separated from their masks and then stabilized by Odette. On the way towards the building Vertin pointed out, the Storm Syndrome in the streets has reached a fever pitch. Even the Elites without mental resistance see the world pulsate in psychedelic colors each time they blink, letters on signs squirming as if alive, seeing the world through a throbbing haze of frantic, hedonistic high-energy and abandon. A street performer drags bloody knuckles tunelessly across guitar strings, until the crowd that until a moment ago had been joyously dancing around him suddenly turns, converging on him like a pack of wolves with their hands reaching to tear at his face. Vertin briefly stops in pursuit to issue a breathless command to Sonetto. "Sonetto, stop them." "Why bother with--?... yes, Timekeeper. Blunt thou the lion's paws, and make the earth devour her sweet brood." Cords of light encircle the maddened civilians' wrists and waists, holding them back from ripping each other apart, but the streets are still full of more and more of them. The building that Regulus was teleported onto is only several stories high, seemingly a jewelry store with apartments on top. A rickety metal fire escape, now spasmically shuddering through the colors of the rainbow, leads the way up, but any route of ascent will have to contend with another set of blue-black monsters, this time ones that aren't slimy. The manta-ray-like flying monsters circle the building like bats, divebombing with their sharp tails or sending bolts of frigid arcane energy down at the pursuing Elites. The roof is just high enough that Regulus is given a front row seat to all of it. From where she stands, rain pours down over a city in the midst of total collapse. Mobs of people attack each other in the street, rainwater collects like paint on the bricks, giants chase after her, and she can distantly see where her ship crashed against the shore and seems to have totally vanished. The black ooze coalesces in her hand, forming a mask with the wordless whisper of an invitation.
Riku Asakura	The world itself is becoming technicolored. It's maddening, but all Riku as Ultraman Geed can do is push through it the best that he can, trying to keep his sanity by little bits, and remembering his promise not to fall to the storm syndrome and become a burden to the rest of the people here. He was too far away from Regulus to stop her from being teleported, or even catch up to her. Instead, as the large goop monster rises, Ultraman Geed makes sure he's as large as the giant goop monster, and approaches it slowly. Still in Arcosmasher form, which is largely silver and blue, and his style form rather than a power form, he approaches it carefully. He summons forth a sword of light, and... Strikes down on the Goop creature, aiming to try and tear through it with the sword of light, trying to significantly damage it so that others wouldn't need to deal with it and can focus on both the dock workers and on Regulus. He strikes it across the center of mass a few times, before thrusting the blade into the goop itself and releasing a burst of yellow light to try and disperse it. With this, however, the gem on his chest starts to blink red. Signaling the waning of his strength. Between the storm and the several giant monsters he's had to face, he's starting to get tired.
Veronica	The Storm approaches. The sky roils and flashes, and below the entire city is caught up in sound and fury. Veronica feels its energy seeping in like rainwater through the cracks of Baker and Seventh's body, and for a moment, just a moment, she gets it. She understands the city around her, its people, their hearts beating in time to the frantic music. But an instant later she hears again the voices of other people, people back home, people who need her. They pull her back to full awareness, lines of interdependence pulling taut into an unbreakable psychic shell. Weren't you here for a reason? That's right. Regulus. The philosopher's stone. The Manus Vindictae. These priorities loom again in Veronica's mind just as the six-legged creature rising before her looms in her vision. Her jaw sets. Twenty-five minutes left. It's go time. Ultraman Geed is the first to engage the Manus behemoth, assaulting it with his sword despite waning reserves of energy. Then Veronica, delayed for a split second by her moment of attunement to the Storm-rapt city, shoulder-charges into the creature from the side. Immediately the speakers on Baker and Seventh's shoulders blare to life, unleashing a deafening, bassy foghorn blast muffled only slightly by the creature's shifting, liquid form. That fluid composition may be its undoing, here, as the earth-shaking vibrations rip through its body.
Einar	Divine General Einar stands on the ground, arms folded, eyes on Rita's back as she follows his tunnel-- and collapses it behind her, cleaning up the 'mess' that he made and restoring space to its regular volume. A vague, tinny rumbling emanates from within his armor as he receives reports from above. Moving from street-level to rooftops is not actually a particularly large leap since he simply has an airship in the sky right now-- he's receiving reports of where Regulus got off to, along with a dozen other things going on at all levels of the situation. It's not in-depth, but it doesn't have to be. This whole situation is a mess. He sifts through the parameters he described previously. 1. Assist Rita insofar as it is necessary to do so. If the situation snowballs or expands, adjust to that expansion. 2. Join Lilian Rook and James Bond in securing Regulus if the first parameter is sufficiently satisfied. The Giant of Light is handling the physically larger problem... the civilians are dissolving into a mess all around him, but he's already exercised more of his power than he's comfortable with attempting to course-correct that. Somebody else is going to have to take pains to deal with that. But there is a target that he is somewhat uniquely poised to actually address. < HMS Clover, > Einar contacts his own crew, < Target the airspace above the building I am painting for you and open fire. Pulse lasers, no ballistics. > The hovering HMS Clover does not move. It doesn't have to. The entire surface it has facing the building surrounded by Manta shifts its hull parting around weapons that were previously concealed. A persistent buzz of weapons fire pours out into the flying manta rays, beams of light lancing through the air in four-pulse volleys before pausing and rotating to a different emitter. The weapons fire is intermittent but quick -- these are weapons designed to be able to sustain fire, though their individual volleys are only of middling power. There are, admittedly, a lot of them. Down on the ground, the sound of a color timing beeping draws Einar's attention. He turns his head towards it, and starts to walk in that direction.
Audrey Basque	Yay mask! Well that's positively disgusting and unexpected. Audrey has the advantage of being able to spatially isolate the mask; but that does nothing for the goop already on her skin. Containing the creepy piece of facewear inside the expanded space of her pockets after wrapping a layer of compressed space around it should hold for now, but now she's trying to get the goop off her hands. And it's creeping up her arms. To make matters worse, so close to the Storm, Audrey's as vulnerable as most people to the Storm Syndrome. The world IS spinning, and painfully colorful-- and there's a woman talking at the edge of her mind? And more masked men. With Odette and Natsuki for company, she's at least a bit confident she's not in immediate danger-- or she would be, if she could get the damn goop off her arms and if her vision wasn't a bit vertigo-tainted. It's an important lesson to learn about TOUCHING EVIL MASKS, and not taking anything with her to protect against the Storm. It's sticky, and thick and crawling and-- she can't do precise magic like this. So she reaches into the other pocket, to produce one of Angela's pages and crunch it in her grip. The Sword Sharpened With Tears appears in her grip, and three of them spinning around her too. She's using it defensively, making the floating blades orbit her as fast as they'll go to keep the masked men away. It's a stopgap. It won't last long. "O-Odette, Natsuki, do you-- I got some of that black slime on me and it's crawling up my arms, do you have anything for that?" <J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "Yes! I will -- Mr. Parsons, I will isolate the most vulnerable for treatment. Please set a wide lens to your own work." "I--" Idiot idiot idiot idiot don't call yourself vulnerable. It's just a bit of goop and just a bit of technicolor. It's fine! You're fine. Odette and Natsuki are right there.
Lilian Rook	'It isn't a compromise to your beliefs to lay low and rebuild for another day, Regulus.' Those words are something similar to what Lilian has said recently. Better formed. Friendlier. More of an outreached hand by far, rather than a castigation. But even in the chaos of the encroaching 'Storm', she can't help but spare it a moment's thought. A moment's thought that nearly costs her a moment's action, though she blames it for her slow reactions anyways. Still carrying Tamamo, Lilian's first reaction to the arrival of the sickening unknown is to leap back, not charge forward, only processing Vertin's warning at a briefly stunned delay. "What in god's name is--?!" escapes her before she realizes, taking several more steps backwards as the puddle rapidly expands. Of . . . oil? Ferrofluid? No, it's surely some sort of magical medium. Even more reason to keep a healthy distance. "Is that his 'arcanum'?! What's happening?!" she calls out to Vertin, but one of those things is answered in short order anyways. Lilian, watching Vertin for an answer, follows their eyes before their directions. "Tamamo! Can you look after things here?" Lilian says, nearly shouting to be heard as she puts the bunrei back down again. Looking frenetically between the convulsing civilians, Odette's disastrous attempt at medical intervention, and the direction of Regulus' difficult extraction, Lilian feels little need to elaborate; it's less safe to try and drag Tamamo with her up a building under fire in an active disaster zone than it is to leave her with ten other Elites handling a single monster. "Stay safe. I'll be back for you." she adds, urgently, before disappearing. Splitting forces isn't what she'd prefer to do right now, but the reality is that there are very few people who can keep up with teleportation here, and she happens to be one of them, and she doesn't even know if any of the others can withstanding the 'Storm syndrome' she's seeing accelerate. How bad would it be by now if they'd gotten here an hour earlier? How long could even an Elite hold out with the world going mad? The old-fashioned iron scaffold-stairs on the sheer side of the apartment building all seem to ping and rattle at the same time. Lilian reaches the top already clad in her armour. With little room to maneuver against the hail of fire from the currently unknown flying monsters, she takes her chances dashing behind flimsy air vents and the more robust side of the roof access for temporary cover, kneeling behind brick to one side and sheet metal to the other and returning fire in brief bursts around one corner, than the other. After a few rounds of black lightning, she ejects, pulls the action out, twists the exposed cylinder from the Saturnine array to under Mars, thumbs fresh amalgam and flicks the whole assembly closed in one motion, then responds in force with a withering barrage of aerial fireballs, scything back and forth through the surrounding airspace with the minimum amount of aiming. The flames are also black at their core, but that's besides the point. "Regulus!" Lilian shouts over her own rapid gunfire, and the ringing in her ears. "Move towards me if you want to live you imbecile!" The roof isn't a big space, but it's crowded, and Lilian doesn't feel like getting shot. Even a single stray to her armoured shoulder stings and blisters her skin from cold.
White	It seems like posturing to try and give James and the other Manus a chance to back off, even if for Regulus's sake, has backfired. It's kind of a shock that even with her right there, she hadn't had time to do anything about it, but... There's no time to fixate on that. She'd said 'Don't worry' and immediately dropped the ball, and that can't stand. Her scythe's head twists against the ground and rakes sideways through the sludge, gouging it with a burst of black flame-like consumptive dark magic before leaping to the air from a crouch and casting out piano wire-like webs like tightropes for her to perch on. The clamor in her head is starting to get loud, and each fragment of her mind has to be roughly reined in toward the correct course of action, but she's certainly not able to focus as much as she'd normally like. Seemingly just out of frustration, she swipes her scythe at any of the monsters that pass nearby her and fires paired sets of Black Bullets at others opportunistically, bursting when they pass near the creatures like anti-air artillery. She perches like that, attacking at a staggered rate as she has to double check the safe radius for her allies, and be triple-sure she's not going to fire at any of them reflexively. It's slowing her down... And the only solution is to get away from said allies. So with a mix of straight-line jumps between web-wires and short teleports mixed in throughout, she ascends higher into the air and moves to the rooftops. Along the way she keeps taking explosive shots at the flying monsters that cross open space near her, and any that move close enough for her scythe are struck in the course of her movement, more often smashed with the haft beneath the blade itself or 'leapt through' while dragging the blade alongside, rather than properly slashed. Any monsters trying to exploit the limited avenues of movement for a wingless creature in the air would be disappointed to find that she can create momentary platforms for herself to redirect from, and her omnidirectional vision renders it extremely difficult to catch her by surprise... At least so long as there's nobody close enough to make her hesitate to attack. Bolts of energy are intercepted with the scythe, or with a palm strung-over with extra-tough webbing, or taken as glancing blows where necessary to allow a counter-attack. Even still, she's liable to take a few hits along the way in her haste to gain altitude, just from the sheer number of them and the unavailability of manipulable earth to shield herself behind. She hates when her effort goes to waste, more than almost anything. She's not going to be the fool who let this all go wrong. She won't. No way, no way. Her reliable range of teleportation is hindered by the Syndrome and her urgency, but she can still reach Regulus, with just a few more moments! Even if everything else below her is going to hell in the meantime. But, maybe someone with similar agility can take advantage of the web-wires she's leaving behind?
Tamiel Luxis	The shining rainbow of color steals the breath from Tamiel's throat, in manic laughter. She looks across the parade of excess with eyes, both shadowed and her own, and feels her senses pulled apart. Her feet plucked. There is a dream of her that raises her hands in the air and sings-- Help Vertin. A decree cuts through her own thoughts, a mandate in her own voice. And so she quivered in the shadow. Save Regulus. Those dark eyes shadowy eyes scan from rooftops, watching the cacophony. She feels details slip through her focus--a mind on autopilot. Her wings quivered, plucking out strands of magic. One of her shadows caught a glimpse of Vertin pointing across the rooftops, and Tamiel's attention--past them--followed their direction. Retrieve the stone. Tamiel moved across the rooftops in three, shadowed, leaps, only to appear in a blur of darkness. Her foot creaking on the shingles of the roof, she spun her quarterstaff, a train of darkness coiling behind every spin, until it was a dark wheel...and SLAMMING it into the side of the building. A spread of dark licked down the side, opposite the fire escape...Explodes outward-- But it leaves the fire escape--and any running up it--untouched. Instead, lances of darkness pierce through every available space around it, carving a storm of black razors to share threat and give Lilian--and anyone else ascending--space.
Odette Raskins	Seeing the goop coming out of the masks and those affected by them firsthand is, understandably, kind of terrifying for Odette. Blood doesn't normally move on its own, after all, and she's only watched movies about the kinds of monsters that would crawl all over someone's skin in the way the goop from that fallen person is doing right now. What's worse, hearing that voice just barely audible without knowing where it's coming from gives the goop that much more time to start slipping up her arm. "Who...?" She asks in a hushed tone, trying to will herself into blocking out everything else she's hearing just to try and ID where and who that is. She's not trained nor mentally sturdy enough to do that, though, so it just ends up being a source of frustration, especially when she does realize that there's something odd-feeling moving up her arm. "What the heck's this stuff made of...? I-it's climbing!" Snapped back to reality by freaking out over that unknown substance crawling up her arm, the EMT lets out a terrified yelp while snatching a cautery and scalpel out of her case. Turning the heating element on for the former, she starts swiping at the ooze on her arm and jacket to try burning it right off, hissing painfully whenever she burns herself in the process. If that's not enough, she swaps to the scalpel for rapid swipes as well, wincing all the same at whatever cuts she might be inflicting on herself in the process. Doing it once means knowing how to do it a little better next time, at least, and she hurries over to join Audrey once she's called over. "M-maybe! Ah.. Oh, Miss Natsuki's storms! Maybe it can block out that voice, too!" She suggests, not letting go of that frustration at not being able to identify the source of it at all. She also repeats the slime-removal attempts far more carefully with Audrey than she was with herself, sacrificing only a bit of speed for almost no accidental injuries! She's just not making any promises about not having to cut through some sleeves to get there. "Get off get off...! Oh heck, that's... M-more of them are changing!" The EMT sucks in some air through her teeth upon seeing those dockworkers starting to turn, shaking her free arm off quickly to try dislodging more of that goop. In her haste to do a quick headcount on how many doses of tranquilizers and/or life-saving medicine she'll need to prepare, she gets stunned again at seeing the psychedelic colors of everything around her. Even though she's aware that it's the Storm Syndrome, she's still having a hell of a time trying to keep her mind straight while she's in the thick of it. Her brief dazes are getting worse by the minute.
Regulus	''It's a force of nature, and it'll be on all of us in less than an hour'' "What is ''it''!" Regulus says, now just honestly expasperated. She knows SOMETHING is wrong but that doesn't equate to her understanding just what is. ''You can always defect. It worked for me.'' This gets Regulus to smile unconciously but she quickly pushes the smile off her face. No! no no no. They just know her well enough to speak to her now right? ''I'll show you to her...'' Regulus wonders who the Miss Vertin is. Is she like the big boss of the Foundation or something? ''It's a kind of sea you can sail.'' Bureaucratic seas? Risky accountability? That settles it, Regulus thinks. How can she really trust people who are more concerned about the rules than doing what's right? On the other hand, does she really have a choice? She's too cornered to make a choice and she's not above wheeling and dealing to get the best out of a bunch of bad options. And they are right that everything's gone mad. ''She shifts the stack of records out from under her arm, with the goofy t-shirt shielding them from the rain.'' She imagines the rain soaking that little goofy face until it bleeds away into mush and shudders. But what this shows her is that this Timekeeper knows to protect precious things. More precious to Regulus than any stone. And maybe she would've accepted this and taken a leap of faith-- --but before she can, James and the Manus Vindictae bowl over and HORROR happens. "Bloody hell--" Regulus startles. Is this some kind of strange Goowakened?? Nevertheless, she is too exhausted from running that she is readily seized up and pulled down into the pool. She wonders if she just saw James (not Bond) die. ----.... Regulus finds herself on top of a building. She reaches to herself to pinch herself because now she's wondering if she's dreaming. But as she does so she sees there's still goop on her hand and she goes, "Eeyaaaggh!" She shakes her hand instinctively until it coalesces into the same mask that James was wearing. No way, she thinks at the mask, but she doesn't immediately throw it away. Instead her attention is drawn to the the view. Her ship's utterly gone. There's rainwater but it's the mobs attacking one another that strikes her. "They've all gone mad," She murmurs in disbelief. Rain drips down her face. "I must be infected too--" But at least she's on a rooftop. She hops up to the edge like she's about to jump off though even Regulus isn't that crazy. Instead she rears back with the mask in her arm and chucks it as hard as she can off the edge. "You must think I'm daft!!" She shouts at the mask as she yeets it before circling around the edge of the building, looking for a place she can maybe leap at and not finding any. She doesn't trust that fire escape at all. ''Move towards me if you want to live you imbecile!'' Regulus runs in the opposite direction. ''Tamiel'' "Gah!!" Regulus now thinks Tamiel is a member of Manus Vindictae becuase she's also doing dark goopy stuff and immediately throws colorful magical notes in her direction to try and convince whatever ''that'' is to go away. This does mean she is incidentally moving back towards Lilian but she soon moves towards the middle of the rooftop. "Any ideas, First Mate Apple?" "I'll follow wherever you go, Captain."
Natsuki Nuki	Natsuki 'the Lady Nue' Nuki, in a raindappled and goop-ink spattered set of gold swirl on black bellbottoms, a wet black silk shirt, and a vest - having lost her jacket in the brawl and now wearing a small collection of pepper red Pikmin as accessories - drags Odette away from her first triage-benefactor, dragging the smaller medic to her feet and nearly sweeping her off her feet to move through London. The pepper posse of googlyeyed little plants partially peer back at Odette, several of them giving her a few noncomprehending blinks and one losing its grip on Natsuki's ponytail and using the triage medic's face as a convenient backstop platform from which to remain in cohesion. With the little pepper splatted out on Odette's face for a second and attached to her head by a deathgrip upon her bangs (somehow, both sides), Natsuki moves, dodging through parts of the crowd and brawling at full tilt. The soft sounds and rustles of the Pikmin and their little 'oo!' noises are just a faint note with such chaos going through the whole city as the Storm gets worse and time dwindles. Swinging around with a long followthrough of her tail as the front half of a snake was used like the back half of a battering ram to sweep the street aside and slow down the whole press. Tamamo appears while Natsuki rounds about the cornenr and pushes ahead of Audrey while letting go of Odette, evacuating from the worst of the riot with under an hour to escape. Having smeared her cheek and under her nose with the goop-oil run of a leading knuckle and inside of thumb and index's span, Natsuki smells the goop, snorting away like a headcold had taken her and marked like a pitch- or paint-touched warrior before battle and not like an overly dressed counterculture chimera. Reaching dirty hand down into the cobbles with a dive, Natsuki gathers a scoop of paverstones and underhands them into the chest level of the Manus masked victims leading the crowd harassing Audrey before emitting a sharp tweet-whistle to command her Pikmin. With the Posse deployed in a little fierce defensive ring around Odette that orbit her in silent sympathy with the turning blades of Audrey, Natsuki is off pouncing with open hands to seize the masks upon faces and bomb them down to the ground in a smooth takedown double-tackle. "We're out of time! Do you need a towel, Audrey?" Natsuki asks, whipping about to breathe heavy and stare, two sets of red eyes, back at Basque before in some disgust, using a dirty hand to yank off her mostly-clean vest and toss it back at the diviner. There's a silky whispering handprint on the front where the buttons lost to a lot more stress than they were rated for. Mad, in several senses, as the final hour ticks down, Natsuki whips back around with a snarl as another Manus gets their hands on her while she waits for a response, needing to return an elbow with interest in short order and lacking the time for elucidation.
Flamel Parsons	<J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "Yes! I will -- Mr. Parsons, I will isolate the most vulnerable for treatment. Please set a wide lens to your own work." "Crap, crap, crap-- Ah shit, wider lens at this scale is tough but... I'll try finding a mind I can tunnel through into the Collective side and do what I can there. Keep our best in good form while you can too -- I might need some help myself if you can spare it!" Flamel calls out, rushing urgently with telekinetic levitation. He breaks off from the battle, firing his blasts at the six-legged thing and retreating, circling around. He has to make his way to Regulus still... And heal, as he goes, as best he can. That's his main focus. He targets the musicians, aiming for their heightened connection to the Collective Unconscious, surging through melodic landscapes just as he surges over rooftops. He pounds back one, two, three -- his whole bag of Dream Fluffs, shoved down and chewed aggressively to endure the cacophonic psychic haze and the damage he'll accumulate in the mindscapes he zips through. For him, he's darting through a mix of London and Collective London, an alleyway one moment and a fandom the next, a street and then an art movement. He can barely tell the difference one moment to another, he just blasts wildly in both and trusts his instincts and suffers pain in both. He bounces between points of activity, the mobbed musician, the writhing crowds -- especially any suicide cases, saving what lives he can. But if they can get to Regulus, if they can get Regulus to him, he theorizes he can use her connection to this era's moment, leverage her as a door into the Collective Unconscious, in order to dampen the Storm on a citywide -- maybe global -- scale. And to see, for even just a moment, the face of the Storm Syndrome in the Astral Plane. He has to see it, know its nature as an opposite of the White Night's Light.
Rita Ma	Rita's only just arrived at White's side as Regulus vanishes under the grasping wash of black; one of those rain-distorting invisible somethings reaches out for Regulus with a gasp, but falls short. out of sight and a short distance away, too far for most people to reach quickly But Rita, as often bemoaned, isn't most people. She hitches for a moment looking between Einar, across the havoc, and what used to be Jacob in front of her; decides she probably can't fix 'discorporated into a six-legged miniboss' the way she can fix 'falling off a roof'; and, with a glance back at Veronica and Riku, bolts between its legs. Asphalt splinters under her hands and feet, uncanny skitter-galloping. It takes her half a heartbeat to be at the building's base; another half to be pounce-scrabbling up its side. While she reaches for the fire escape's railing at the end of a forty-foot hop, it blurs in chromatic aberration. She scrunches her eyes against it. Her hand meets empty air. Her gut drops as she starts to fall. Stupid. But I can keep it together a little longer. I can't trust colors or sounds, but... Brute-force solution. Rita stabs the side of the building with a half-dozen rain-distorting somethings and 'levitates' herself up with them just as Regulus runs past. Queasily, she gets up to her feet on the rooftop; with her eyes still shut, those ribbons of subtle distortion reach out blindly to try to grasp Regulus from the opposite direction as Lilian. "Please, come on!" A bit exasperated. "You can't stay here! You have to know that, right...?" One reaching cloaked-tentacle grasps a manta instead on accident. After a second to check she's not holding Regulus, it's pulped like an orange in a vise. Probably that doesn't reassure.
James Bond	Bond takes a step back, working on something higher in the mind than instinct but lower than active thought; Vertin's hand wouldn't be thrown out in such a way if they didn't have a good reason. The Walther is lifted, and the remaining supply of stun capsules emptied aggressively into James. It doesn't stop the transformation, and he grunts in disgust as the spreadingm metamorphosing ichor, taking another step back. That way! On a building rooftop somewhere! <J-IC-Scene> Riku Asakura as Ultraman Geed says through strained words, "I'll handle the giant monster!" Bond's timer is within a few seconds of Vertin's; he's acutely aware of racing against the clock, and has a feeling 'James' is, too. He stows the Walther in his shoulder holster. "If being closer will help with that, come on. We're running out of time," Bond advises Flamel, then sprints over to the car, vaults the hood, slides across it and is back in the drivers' seat with a grunt. The tires peel out with an aggressive screech with a tenor growl from the now-supercharged straight six. The takeoff is enough to feel the protest of inertia pushing into the fabric of the seat, as surely as Bond's left foot hammers the clutch with every shift. It protests, too, when Bond brakes around a corner and flicks the back end out, hurtling the car sideways around the bend. The impending storm makes for many distractions on the road; bouncing signs, crawling text, skies alight with technicolor shadows. Bond focuses on his heart, hammering his his throat. In the corner of his eye, squirming digits on his watch count down with merriment unfitting of the finality that approaches. His eyes narrow, his fists grip the hard steering wheel, and he comes out of the turn with desperate determination. <J-IC-Scene> Vertin says, "Yes, I agree. Even when their deaths are foregone, we can't allow ourselves to believe that these people aren't worth protecting." The Aston weaves between parked, moving and uncontrolled cars at breakneck speed. He slows down and stops for pedestrians, but that determination has his mind working frantically for workarounds. He drives around with his eyes frantically scanning the road, reverses and takes different ways, and at one point even uses a switch on the dash titled 'PILE' to knock a crowd down with a seismic shockwave before they can turn on each other. Sparks fly from the impact of the piledriver with the asphalt at speed, Bond having used it a second time as the fulcrum of an incredibly tight turn. With the building in sight, Bond pulls up to the curb just short of a falling ray from the Clover's laser battery, moments after Lilian's ascent. Bond whips the seatbelt off and practically flies from the driver's seat, sprinting towards the fire escape dancing its chaotic shift of hues. His fist crashes into the brick wall of the building, cracking a brick just enough to loosen it. Prying it free, he flings it at the fire escape, shattering the brick and setting the rickety ladder to extending downwards. Leaping upwards with a grimace of concentration, a grunt escapes him as his fingers barely greet the extended ladder in a white-knuckle grip. Snarling with defiant resolve, he pulls himself the rest of the way up, and then shoots up the escape. Clearing the ladder with a roll, he tries to blink the colors away, grits his teeth and sprints up the rest of the way, ducking swoops from the mantas as the Clover's bombardment thins them out. Vaulting the roof, Bond rolls, procuring a preloaded magazine (this one with bullets) and snapping it into the bottom of the Walther as he rises to a knee. "Listen to me!" He pulls the bolt on the pistol, and lifts it into a crouched firing stance in one smooth, snap movement to put a bullet through a swooping ray. "In less than 20 minutes, everything here will be gone. You won't outrun that and have some little adventure. You won't even leave behind a body. Do you understand me? That's what 'it' is. Nothingness."
Tamamo	Tamamo is set down by Lilian -- but it's fine! Lilian will be back for her, and is chasing after something that's probably more dangerous. There are a lot of people here, and a lot of people in need. Not Audrey, though. Audrey went to the same school as Lilian, so she's surely had the same training. Tamamo has forgotten, for the moment, that Immune training is part of a completely different line of work. <J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "Yes! I will -- Mr. Parsons, I will isolate the most vulnerable for treatment. Please set a wide lens to your own work." <J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "Ms. Sonetto -- and others. I am forming a theory on the enemy's motivations. If able, please operate with this assumption -- 'those that are killed will suffer a harm beyond the Storm.'" <J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "...that said, we cannot see to the whole world in less than half of an hour." It's a theory she'd only begun working out on the Paladins tactical band, more because it's a half-formed panic inducer than for any other reason of secrecy. In any case, there's no time to explain, and no time to think about it. There's hardly time for treatment, unless people can be shifted out of the storm entirely -- which they might be, if Einar and Audrey set up a path and location to get that done. Keeping them from killing themselves before then is her role, for now -- and in keeping people like Odette from going mad. Who else -- Flamel? Rita? Is that flashing light on Geed going to be a problem? "Ms. Raskins." That's Tamamo's first point to cover, for no other reason than because she's a medic -- she is a medic, right? Tamamo's not very good at recognizing uniforms. "Pay this no mind, but do not remove it." Tamamo slaps a sticky, curse-purging talisman onto her back. It'd feel pretty strange and unpleasant if it weren't accompanied by analgesic effects! As is, she should be fine for another few minutes, and uncommonly focused for the thirty seconds or so before the Storm Syndrome starts to affect her again. Tamamo's a bit concerned about the self-scalpel work, but maybe that's just how medicine was taught in her school...? There's no time to think about that too deeply. For that matter, there's no time to provide equal treatment to everyone else who needs it. Instead, she focuses on the space to which people will be moving -- a portal to the Clover, near Audrey -- and looks around for something to form a physical gateway near the spatial-only connection. Sadly, there's nothing that already, conveniently exists. The best she can do is toss some of her curse-bearing (as opposed to curse-breaking) talismans toward a few street signs and traffic lights. Each is, upon contact, struck by lightning, breaks in sparks and half-molten metal, bends and falls such that it just so happens to form a geometrically convenient archway of old metal and cables, with one dangling, green and yellow-blinking traffic light. Satisfied, Tamamo steps up and begins laying out a vertical circle of talismans, interspersed with a dusting of salt she pulls from somewhere, and tops it all with some fragrant, hanging herbs. "Through here, if you please." That's a request, for most. It's a brightly burning order, for those at-risk dock workers she first identifies. She needs them to pass through the purification circle before they do something irreversible, and she needs them to focus on something other than those masks.
Odette Raskins	EARLIER This isn't the first time Odette's gotten swept off her feet, and Natsuki certainly won't be the last. The confusion hits first, of course, as the EMT just goes right along with running along behind/besides Natsuki when she's drawn away from fixating too long on one of what will surely be many patients, bounding forward with each step with the way she's being pulled along. Next, the pain sets in when she's treated to a cute little peppery red thing not-so-cutely using her bangs as reins in the wrong direction. "Ow, ow, ow! J-just hold on normally, little...!" After that, the realization that she's been rescued by another cool and powerful person sets in, and her gaze locks onto Natsuki's back while suddenly becoming more conscious of the rain's non-psychedelic effects on her clothes. "Oh. Um. H-hi?" Even while running, the EMT gets dazed again, but it's not because of the Storm Syndrome. Tamamo's talisman helps quite a bit with keeping the effects of the Syndrome at bay, and even the pain from her self-inflicted wounds is... Well, those still kind of hurt, but having the strange feeling of the talisman stuck to her actually helps distract her from it all, too. "Ah...? Thank you, Lady Tamamo! Don't worry, I'll make sure it stays on the whole time!"
Timekeeper	"Is that his 'arcanum'?! What's happening?!" Vertin tensely shakes their head, holding down their hat while turning heel to run from the monster, with Sonetto lingering only a moment longer to summon arcs of light to pepper its surface. "Not his. The Manus Vindictae. It may be the arcane medium of their leader, or a substance they've discovered or created. It's highly unsafe to work with, with madness-inducing properties of its own, and animates both their summoned monsters and many of their spells." The maximum scale of the Manus Vindictae goop monster is... actually quite a bit lower than Ultraman Geed and Baker and Seventh. It's tall for the scale of people, but nothing on the level of city-destroying kaiju or mechs. While it's frightening, it's comparable to an elephant with a mind for cruelty that got loose in the streets-- compared to the all-encompassing Storm, and the technicolor madness of the apocalypse rapidly approaching, it almost seems tame. It's still plenty threatening on its own, though. White's slash of her scythe rips through it and scatters oily gore around, but that only slows the completion of the monster's body by several seconds while slime floods in to fill the wound. Each of its six legs ends in a mess of constantly flowing rivulets, dripping through grout between the bricks in the road. Manticore-shaped, with a leonid body and thrashing tail oozing goop, at the end of its neck is a split blossom of toothed petals instead of a head. The petals clamp around Geed's arm as he swings the sword down towards it to 'bite' him, but in their back and forth wrestling, it's held still enough for Baker and Seventh to slam into it from the side. The tail scrapes against its concrete body, gouging through it despite just being made of that slime, but a point-blank sonic blast obliterates the monster into gleaming droplets splattered on the facades of harbor buildings. Who knows whether they'll continue to try to reform after that, though. Odette finds that it isn't impossibly difficult to remove the slime from her arms. Applying heat to it makes it boil and pop, but unnervingly, not dry out, so it still burns against her arm. Leveraging a scalpel into it means practically prying it off, hacking like melted tar with a determination to keep gripping to her skin. Once she has the technique down, she can repeat it on Audrey, cutting off her sleeves for more working room makes it easier. It's easy, though, because it hasn't seeped into them like it has for the dockworkers. Each time Natsuki pulls a mask off of a civilian, it comes off with the tearing resistance that ripping off a limb would, and black oozes out of slackening jaws before they collapse. To someone like Audrey or Odette, the physical might of a normal adult without any inhibition or self-preservation would be threatening, but the harbor is just full of repeated waves of three-goons-punching for Natsuki to mow through, and they can be fended off effectively by Audrey's EGO and the circle of little red beans. With the first-wave time objective completed, Tamamo's mental compulsion grips hold of the masked civilians to guide them towards her circle. There's visible hesitation and struggling back and forth against her order-- the Storm Syndrome itself seems to be completely a nonfactor in mental control, amplifying their vulnerability to it if anything, but Tamamo finds the same thing that Rita did, and Audrey experienced: there's another source of psychic pressure bearing down on these people. Still, they come stumbling towards Tamamo's talismans eventually, and once they pass through, the purification is shockingly effective. Not only do they stop senselessly trying to fight, but even the Storm Syndrome clears up in seconds, causing them to blink in stable confusion once stabilized after the removal of the mask.
Timekeeper	Vertin and Sonetto aren't anywhere near the fastest people racing after Regulus, but their dexterity moving through the crowd at least means they're close enough to see the flying monsters along with everyone else before scaling the building. Vertin's speech is rushed, without any irregularities from emotion, but with the words squashed together and breathless while she provides information as efficiently as possible. "Oliteaus, Ariel Carriers. This breed is fast, manoeuvreable, with powerful arcane attacks, but they're high in energy consumption. If we can eliminate this flock of them, I'm sure they won't have prepared any backups." Lasers from the HMS Clover and Tamiel and White's magic rip through the flock of oliteaus like tissue paper, but the arcane beasts keep firing off magical retaliation until they're all picked out of the sky. Regulus is treated to having lasers flying through the sky to every direction around her, its source only intermittently visible from its own flashes of light, while monsters drop out of the sky until there's only a scattered few left. White has an easier time than the airship cutting through the remainder in her arc to leap onto the roof, and doing so with her scythe means being exposed to a burst of water with each one like a balloon, followed by a brief rush of cold at their deaths. Clambering up to the rooftop isn't hindered by anything more after that. Like Vertin predicted, there isn't another wave of oliteaus, and while the masked and Storm-afflicted humans keep rioting in the street below, they're not about to climb up to the rooftop to start bothering anyone. One woman, stopped on the brink before stepping off a neighboring roof by Flamel, sits down and watches almost innocently curious, only able to interpret psychic soothing as being 'dazed'. Flamel's trip over weaves between realms of social unconscious and reality, with the boundaries between them thinning by the moment. The colors, the positive and negative urges, and the collective symbols intuitive to the era are nearly indistinguishable on either side, as feelings, art, and life blur together haphazardly. Regulus is there, but she's still resistant, surrounded on all sides by Elites but still obstinately digging in her heels against any kind of convincing in any direction but her own. Sonetto follows Bond up the staircase a few seconds behind, leaning down to give Vertin a hand in the final rung up. Both have been scraped-up by the dash over, and technicolor rust smears on Vertin's gloves and coat. According to Rita's instructions in the radio, Sonetto uses her glass fountain pen's sharp tip to cut a line across her hand, cupping it away from the rain so that the blood isn't immediately washed away. "Miss Regulus, you no longer have anywhere else to go. Since you have refused to cease your pointless refusal to comply with an official St. Pavlov Foundation investigation, we have no choice but to use force. My apologies. I will be gentle, but firm." "Regna sereno intenso ed infinito!" After Sonetto scrawls the incantation in the air, the curling letters each split apart into rays of light that arc around and slam into Regulus.
Audrey Basque	Natsuki and Odette The cost of getting goop off Audrey is her sleeves, a little bit of time, and some patience, while Natsuki goes to town on those dockworkers! And a bit of her dignity, what's left of it at any given moment. She even reassures Odette. "Don't worry about getting ALL of it off, just enough that it stops spreading. I can-- I can handle this much pain." She can! Don't ask why. Unfortunately, those sleeves were kind of important. Fortunately she still has the whole rest of the shirt. Catching Natsuki's jacket as the woman helps take the heat off Audrey, she looks at her and Odette, sounding a bit concerned even as she tries to get the last specks of the black slime off her. "Did you hear that too, by the way? There was a voice. I couldn't make her out, just-- it wasn't any one of us." Not that it matters. Natsuki is quite right. They're on the clock. Audrey takes a second to breathe; close her eyes, deep breath, don't think about the colors or the Storm. Tamamo coming over helps a ton. She just needs to focus for another five minutes. After that she can curl up. Einar She glances up at the sky, staring at the Clover. Einar providing exact coordinates and the math around it is probably the best thing he could have done to make it easier on her. "Sorry-- I'm going to need to focus entirely on this, so-- when you're done here, follow after me into the tear!" She dismisses the EGO blades, so both of her hands are free to reach for the unseen currents and lines around her. Space cracks; it's less subtle, and less refined, than it usually is. Not thundering, but not the fine crackling sound of mirrored shards either. Another tear opens, at the precise location Einar instructed on the Clover, and Audrey disappears into her own, which remains behind. ... with an extremely embarrassing tumble out of it, which she's quite glad no one can see. Long range is still new! Be niceys to her. "Okay, okay. So now, just... keep it moving." That, she needs windows for. Audrey scrambles for a Spot With A View, whatever that means. If it means going up onto the deck of the ship and leaning over the edge, that's what it'll be! From there, she can direct the other end of the tear to be wherever it needs to be. For now, this means near TAMAMO and her purification efforts, but she can shift it with a heads up. Now if only the Storm Syndrome situation would calm down. The height must certainly not help, but the last thing she wants is to prove herself a liability in front of Lilian and Tamamo.
Einar	HMS CLOVER For those who establish portals to, or begin ferrying people to the HMS Clover, the room that Einar has designated for this purpose is very obviously a large medbay. The size of the thing is a little mind-boggling, though it does still have the vibe of 'being constructed in a ship with limited space', so the tubes that were described are located some very precise distance apart that allows them to be serviced but definitely not by anyone who is too tall or broad. In this case though, the entire vessel is designed to accommodate people who might be larger even than Einar, so there's a lot of wiggle room even in the worst-case. A couple of active, fluid-filled capsules glow faintly green at the end of the rows. The fixed point given for Audrey's rift has several gurneys lined up and several open tubes. Personnel are on hand and ready to receive but, notably, are not COMING OUTSIDE. They look like they're handling the storm very close to the way that Einar is-- not quite evenly, but close enough to know that whatever prevents contamination spread in here is also letting them maintain their functionality. The signage appears to be made for the illiterate and involves nothing more complicated than very clear pictographs. Simply being on the Clover confers a certain amount of protection-- it isn't perfect, but it is better than just being out in the increasingly rotting reality around it. Actually getting in one of the tanks, apart from beginning a very thorough healing process, also shuts out the interference close-to-totally. Exterior ports are reasonably common, and line the starboard side of the ship-- though it's on the far side of the medbay from where Audrey arrives. If she voices her needs, someone will actually start tinkering and causing new windows to morph into strategic locations. The ship's metal seems so adaptive as to be alive. ON THE GROUND... Divine General Einar reaches Ultraman Geed and punches him in the ankle. Green light pours in from the point of impact-- energy highly compatible with Riku's physiology. Practically identical, in fact. What's more, the General himself seems to know how to transfer it over with practically one hundred percent efficiency. That color timer isn't going to be going off for long-- and Geed will probably find some of his more superficial injuries fading along the way. "I haven't the time left to re-assume the battlefield. Use it well," Einar rumbles, turning back around and making for the connection that Audrey made. There is a faint hiss from his armor as he walks, an aperture on the left leg opening up-- just a storage compartment. He draws a red dagger, which has a very distinct smell, to those for whom such a thing is of particular use.
Riku Asakura	The creature made of goop eats his arm, with the sword of light embedded on it. That certainly isn't healthy for it, but neither is being turned into droplets thanks to Veronica's sonic blasts. It's torn up beyond measure, which allows Geed to break free before more of that goop can coat his arm. Geed stumbles back, staggering out of the goop and shrinking his body down to normal person size so he can get into Tamamo's purification circle. He avoids falling into it backwards, as prescribed, and instead stumbles into it forward. The strain from the approaching storm was getting to be a bit much for him, as well as the goop covering his arm. This is cut short by Veronica being nearby and helping transport him to where he needs to go. He'll hit the ground in a four-point stance after being transported, but won't get back up easily. He's hurt and still subject to the storm's effects. He'll need help from both the purification field and the stickiness of the goop that won't come off of his arm.
Lilian Rook	Einar's reminder that she has operational command elicits a barrage of radio directions from Lilian-- the two exfiltration options besides Vertin, splitting disks with Sonetto, the Clover's access to medical isolation facilities, and the division of labour between civilians and regulus-- but the unspoken reality is harder to discern. The fact of the matter is that Lilian knows where the Foundation Headquarters is, now, after Vertin gave her the coordinates and she passed them along to White. She also knows it's two hundred kilometers away. Though moving in a straight line without disturbing or affecting anything else is very 'cheap', it'll test her limits to try. If it comes down to the wire, and everything goes exactly wrong, Lilian has already decided she'll take nobody but Tamamo with her and rush there at top speed in the last few minutes left. And the resources she has to keep in reserve to ensure that possibility of that Plan E are so considerable that she simply cannot afford to be helping fourteen other people. And Regulus isn't making it any fucking easier. 'Gah!!' "You little--" Lilian's exclamation of 'shit!' is cut off by the sound of the Clover's weapons barrage. It's easy enough to intuit by her tone of voice, though, seeing Regulus sprinting in the opposite direction like a brat. She frantically checks both corners whilst Einar has the flying monsters more or less suppressed, mutters something in appreciation for using lasers instead of something that'll stop-start for her personally, and gathers herself up to move all in one burst. <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "Mr. Einar, those are your lasers, aren't they? If you or Ms. Rook can safely hurt Regulus just a little bit... it'll only take a graze. That'd help me a lot." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Consider it done." 'Any ideas, First Mate Apple?' 'I'll follow wherever you go, Captain.' "Get back here--" Lilian calls out, finally hitting the adrenaline-fueled point of anger where she always seems to slip into shouting in her native tongue. 'Miss Regulus, you no longer have anywhere else to go.' "--Láithreach!!!" Lilian carries out Rita's request just as Vertin and Sonetto climb over the edge with Bond. The moment she says the word, Regulus' dress splits from the hip along with her skin down to the knee. Vectored blood splatter strikes the rooftop along a single narrow line. Pain registers all at once, without a clear direction. Shock follows later. The cut-- if it can even be called that-- isn't as deep as it looks, but bloody enough to guarantee that Rita can smell it. Bloody enough for ice cold pins and needles at the sight. One might not even notice the quarter-circle arc near Lilian's feet, if they're in a hurry, but she's already across the rooftop, in the motion of tearing away her bag while there's still time to search it.
Regulus	Okay, think Regulus. There's weird government spooks, weird golems, uh... Oh that girl again. ''You can't stay here! You have to know that, right...?'' "I don't know that...! This is my home and ... Something's wrong but I can't just--" ''A manta is pulped like an orange.'' "Um." Regulus looks a little woozy. ''In less than 20 minutes, everything here will be gone. ... That's what 'it' is. Nothingness.'' "What?? That's crazy-- That's not something that happens. This is just some sort of... sickness. Or maybe--some weird drug testing. I heard the government sometimes does tests on civilians-- And it's mighty suspicious you know exactly when something like that's coming--" She does take a moment to glance at her watch though. "Mr. APPLe, it's going to get a little dangerous and there's space in my bag now so--" Regulus says, taking a moment to just kind of... shove the floating APPLe in there. ''Sonetto uses her glass fountain pen--'' "W..why did you do that??" ''Regna sereno intenso ed infinito!'' "Oh ff--" Light slams into Regulus's side and she sprawls out on the rooftop, hugging her backpack. She starts fading away to go invisible again along with all her junk! And then suddenly she feels pain along her leg. Regulus's invisibility is briefly halted as she takes a look and sees the blood spilling down her leg. "Ack...!!" She immediately turns invisible and starts rolling across the rooftop, leaving a thin trail of blood wherever she goes. "I'm hit! I'm bleeding out! I'll never walk again! I'm dying! That's so much blood! Oh gosh oh gosh bandages I need bandages disinfectant but is it enough, is this the end for the incredibly talented Regulus???? Slain before her prime, the music world will weep!!!" It's probably not really hard to pinpoint Regulus's position anymore. "Why...Why did Regulus have to die so young...! We'll never know what incredible music she'd produce...! We can only imagine!"
Flamel Parsons	An invisible man shatters a line of windows into chromatically-aberrated comic panes as he ascends so fast that they break in his wake, forcing levitation to move at unsafe rates using fire escapes, windowsills, and dangling cultral reference points. He rips the edge off the rooftop when he swings around ninety degrees, flickering in view for a moment, and surges at Regulus. Among the rays of light, he darts and maneuvers, briefly digging into Sonetto's mind as much as she'll let him to make sure he charts a path through her incantation that will avoid harm. But he'll take whatever damage he needs to, in order to get through. Even with perfect coordination, he'll chart a path that obligates him to take one smashing strike that knocks him out of invisibility and dislodges his sunglasses. Visible, now. A rock, set into his skull, gleams so bright it can be seen through the skin. A tri-color flame is running along his body, from brain to a clenched hand that holds something small and rectangular. He's suffered a good amount of damage on the way here, and he's willing to suffer more if he needs to. "Get her still!" He shouts. "I'm deploying the procedure as fast as I can!" He's still building up speed, levitating in his approach... Hopefully, when Rita gets here, summoned by Lilian's work to enhance targeting, she'll be able to help stun, immobilize, or otherwise make sure Regulus won't get away. Flamel's rush reaches its peak and he rushes her down, reaching out... to plant that door on her forehead and astrally smash straight through, hopefully. He can't actually target her mindscape -- not in all this chaos. He's trying to use her as a doorway, trying to burrow into her mind and then past it into the Collective Unconscious. Regulus is a DJ, a beloved, loathed, or at least well-known quantity, who knows the names of so many musicians and artists, who's so tightly tied with this era's mania. She's the perfect one -- the only one -- Flamel can use to try this, and this is the only moment where he can. Assuming all of that works, he'll emerge on the other side, in the Collective Unconscious of the world itself. Is the Storm here, too? Can he see it? He has to. He has to get this chance, has to make this move, to see the Storm from the astral side, to record and scan it and know what it looks like from the eyes of a psychic. So massive it is, that it brings astral phenomena straight into perception en-masse... he has to stand in the rain, for just a moment, and look up at the psychic sky. This technically means open-palm slamming Regulus in the face and hitting her with a pretty significant dazing stun, in more practical terms.
White	After a point, enough people are scaling the building or otherwise approaching that White resorts to her scythe much more. The Storm Syndrome has chewed through her Parallel Minds' ability to self-regulate enough that her bodily coordination actually improves when she suppresses the minds completely in favor of self-piloting completely. As control becomes harder, plumes of smoky black magic streak behind and in front of the blade as she leaps between the enemies that remain in her way, coming close enough once or twice to Rita or Lilian that they can scent the matter decaying off her blade, but not quite close enough to actually touch them with any of the energy offput. Finally, she clears the way enough to crest the rooftop a few moments after Rita had managed with Tamiel's support, coated in the strange freezing fluids of the monsters and steaming as her body's regeneration and life-heat work to counteract the consequences of such a thing. She's off her game. On top of being unresponsive to radio transmissions on her way up, she'd been mid-trot in Regulus's direction after getting her footing on the rooftop when Sonetto's spell triggered; White ends up jolting backward and ducking when she sees the light rays streaking out across her intended path from one side, clenching her jaw and only finally trying to re-adjust to the situation. Her eyes hurt from picking apart distortions from reality. Her head kind of hurts too, but that's just the nine or so Parallel Minds, and they'll get better eventually if she keeps them asleep. Regulus is... Running from Lilian, and maybe from the others too. But she'd just been speaking to White... The time crunch is really pressing in, and Sonetto's using force. She remembers hearing something along the way about biting her thumb... Something related to drawing blood maybe? Well, her body won't let a cut remain for long, but she can nick her arm by pulling some reinforced web across it, and just... Smear it around a little. She's a mess anyway. Her pause after avoiding walking into Sonetto's firing line took just a few moments, and it doesn't mean she's all better, but she's able to focus for a little longer. Her scythe vanishes from where she was dragging it back-handed along the ground the previous moment, and she awkwardly tries to wipe her face against her dress-sleeve, clearing her eyes before focusing the Evil Eye of Analysis- Crap! She's invisible again, but- But! The blood. It's not just Rita who will benefit from that; it's enough to closely monitor Regulus's position. With her scythe gone, White touches the rooftop and anchors her webs there at her feet, guiding them to spread towards Regulus along the ground. From there, she leaps one more time overhead, all but pouncing onto the poor frightened woman with even more of those web-strands trailing from her fingertips, arms spread out like she's going to bear-hug her on impact, cocooning her in webs either from below or above and hefting her up like a rolled up rug over her dainty shoulder. There really is no more time to be gentle, but all the same... She tries not to make it hurt more, at least. If someone gets a good look at her face, they might see her mouthing 'Just stop just stop just stop'.
Veronica	The beast's last measures against Veronica do strike home, the mighty blow crunching into Baker and Seventh's midsection. Veronica doesn't flinch, pressing forward to finish the job even as her EGO reassembles its shattered abdomen. Geed: "My arm is covered in this goop and it's not coming off. Oddette can you help?" "I'll get you to her if you need a lift, Geed?" "I'd appreciate it." Scooping up the now-human-sized Riku Asakura (who is still conscious thanks to Einar's infusion of spiral energy) in Baker and Seventh's palm, Veronica hustles as carefully as she can to carry the Ultraman host to Odette and Tamamo for anti-goo support. She even sets him down without dropping him! Then, Veronica sets to work reinforcing their position. Clenching its fists, Baker and Seventh rumbles with power as Veronica channels the EGO's telekinetic might. Nearby automobiles lift into the air and stack themselves up like building blocks, arranged in two slanted lines to make a funnel-like pair of walls leading directly toward Tamamo's magic circle and, beyond that, Audrey's portal to the Clover. "Vertin, what's our time?" "Thirteen minutes." "Done what I can for evacuation. I'll be with you shortly." Her impromptu construction work finished, Veronica hustles Baker and Seventh down the increasingly-empty street toward the rooftop confrontation with Regulus and the Timekeeper. Reaching upward, its enormous brickwork hands clamp onto the edge of the roof and the EGO construct begins to un-build itself. At the same time, it pulls its rapidly shrinking mass up onto the roof. Thankfully for the building and everyone standing on it, Baker and Seventh mid-disassembly is supported more by telekinetic force than by the ground (or rooftop) beneath it, and the edge of the roof only crumbles a little as the arms and upper torso of the humanoid EGO haul themselves up. A moment later those, too, have unbuilt themselves, and Veronica is stepping free of the 'pod' of encircling arms which then retreat to the back of her vest. In one hand she's carrying a sizeable first-aid kit which she must normally keep tucked away in Baker and Seventh. "Regulus, right? I've got bandages, antiseptic, whatever. Just come with us and I'll patch you up right, okay?"
Rita Ma	"--Láithreach!!!" "Why...Why did Regulus have to die so young...!" "Thank you, Ms. Rook," says a hollow outline in the rain, with an almost unwholesome degree of breathy relief. Here, on the roof with her, Regulus (sugary, bright, middle-aged); there, coming up the stairs, Sonetto (young, stouter, sort of puppylike?); there, further away, Einar (a complex blend). Three points of brilliant crimson she can 'see' through the Storm, even in the broader haze of mayhem. Rita's cloaked outline sways on her feet for half a second; then staggers; then gallops; then pounces, and Regulus is borne down by a hundred-forty-pound homing missile with slick tentacles to bind her limbs. Rita shimmers back into visibility on top of her, breathes out a rich eyes-shut sigh with a "You'll be fine, I'm really sorry", and then the tightening now-visible tendrils lift her up and-- "Here!! Hurry!!" Gently lob her in a softball arc, still bound by unwholesome dehisced blue-white coils, right towards the closest point of light. Catch, Sonetto!! ---- A moment or two later, Rita lands next to Einar in an asphalt cracking crouch, straightens up, and tries to catch her breath. Eyes shut, her face still tracks the dagger perfectly. "Here," she reports, panting. "Did you want me to lead you back to Ms. Sonetto...? Safest there, I think."
Einar	"No, I wanted you to have a beacon towards the portal to the Clover, because you described your perceptions as starting to fray," Einar says to Rita, holding the red dagger by the blade and gesturing towards the rift in space Audrey provided with the hilt. "If you still have things you need to do, do them. Otherwise step aboard so your head can clear some. I do not need the standard provided exits, nor will anyone who is aboard."
Natsuki Nuki	Despite being, physically, far more than a match for any individual idiot with hands about their eyes, Natsuki is pressured for the sheer asymmetry of the way she fights - the logic of it begs at a disadvantage while Natsuki smears through the smearing color and dissociation of the era's figments from its firmaments. The Pikmin had created just enough chaos at her command that Natsuki fought earlier with a screen at her flanks, funneling the creation of a coherent Battle Circle with which the rather restrained Lady Nue could dispatch a steady tempo of disabling blows. Without them -- with them covering Odette's small triage zone with their waving leafy barriers and determination to Defend The Objective at any and all cost -- Natsuki is in a mad brawl in the streets where she's trying to stop people going full out at her without actually killing them back. Natsuki's fists drip black goop, inked and whipping oversticy gobules through smearing rain with their motions as her nails dig down onto the scalp and brow of one masked individual, levering in with both sets of fingers as she reaches in behind the closed mask, peeling the hands apart with force. The popping, the faint meat and stone crunch as she must dislodge a buried or bonded object from the face is grisly, yet she does with a kind of mad-eyed and dilated in focus. Nevertheless, she is beset even ripping the mask free from one individual, charged down by more in fits of pure resistant determination. Dragging at her arms despite the dark-shadow swing of her tail battering, knees and kicks and two-fisted slams at shoulder and into sides despite working, and it's delicate to pull this thorn from uncooperative flesh. Tearing half a mask free in hand while her serpentine tail rises up, seethes down with a flick of the tongue and a preparatory tense, and snaps out wide-jawed to close around the neck and face of one behind. Whip-slinging that one away from where Natsuki fights and towards the 'aid station' Odette sets up, the individual slides and rolls near enough for the Pikmin to pick up the second leg of that assbeating journey and start leaf-bashing the downed Manus there before they recover. Despite working through the crowd of Manus at a violent snarl, Natsuki slows not from running out of targets but having her vision swim in acquiring a new one. She drips the Manus' medium-substance from fists, arms, back, and cheek, and a quantity leaks from the sides of her second head's jaw from manipulating the afflicted or transformed individuals. Like a tinnitus, Natuski hears a new voice in the muck of all the rest of them, sussurating in the periphery, and finds some of the wrong black stuff at the back of her throat, spitting at her feet and lifting her head. The rain - her rain - is there, about her, rinsing down what had once avoided the water with a torrentially local downpour, soaking her through and breaking her ponytail into an unbound platinum blonde fall as the tie washes away. As she walks from the mist, drenched but only partially de-gooped, she weaves back towards Odette and Audrey.
Natsuki Nuki	"Odette!" Shouts Natsuki, though her voice is trying to carry over the noise she hears that's only partially really there (what's real, right now? So close to the Storm?). "The huge guy said to leave and," Wincing, eyes defocusing and focusing, Natsuki tries to reassert her focus without a solid foundation to do so with. "I'm agreeing! No tents, let's go!" She tries to reach Odette -- or who she thinks is Odette, and finds herself swiping at colorful-to-her air. Giving up, silently, Natsuki relies on a much more sensible solution, and just whistle-chirps really loud instead. After firmly beating the Manus that Natsuki had slid over unconscious, the Pepper Posse pivots, and, with all their considerable lift strength team carry the Key Item of Odette Raskins into the giant spaceship construction hole as they were first realized to do. By dragging her into any convenient portals or conveyances to the other side of the hospital zone on board the Clover.
Tamamo	There's a lot for Tamamo to do here, but not a lot she can do in the time that's left. Lilian Rook says, "Only attempt it if it doesn't risk yourself." Vertin says evenly, "Thirteen minutes." There's something resisting the pull of her personal gravity, but it's nothing she can't push through, at least for the very simple command of 'come here.' It's something a malevolent, monstrous intelligence would likely direct its minions to do, anyway -- and the fact that she's being resisted is, therefore, notable. Whether it's intelligent enough to oppose her directions, or obstinate enough to oppose everything, she'll have to figure out later. <J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "Timekeeper Vertin... did say that, a few minutes before the Storm arrives, teleportation through the disks would be enough to transport a great number of people, yes? However... the Foundation cannot support them. Shall we attempt to move them all to Sir Einar's ship, after all? Lilian?" <J-IC-Scene> Einar says, "I am able to handle refugees. The Clover is a bit cramped, but my flagship is specifically for that purpose. If that is the only consideration, and you are not in place to do anything else, you may assume the burden is acceptable." <J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "I have some other concerns... but none that can be substantially supported, at the moment. Leaving them to the Storm remains the greater risk for them, personally, if not for... ah, for their families, who will wake up at 'some other point in history' to find them missing, and then aged." <J-IC-Scene> Tamamo says, "I shall be shepherding them along, then." It's hard to bear the thought of separating them, knowing that the cycle would, at least, spare them from that separation. Tamamo hesitates once more, but she can't think of a better alternative. The cycle is possible to break, she knows, or the Foundation wouldn't be able to shelter anyone at all. If it's able to do so because of some quirk of its location that the Clover can't replicate, they'll soon find out, and it might be worse for those involved -- but that's pessimistic speculation. She needs to act, and so, she does, directing all capable of heeding her on through the portal. They don't need to even think about anything, not with the gentle warmth of her Charm compelling them to obediently sleepwalk or, failing that, to run as directed. With that accomplished with haste, and with time running ever shorter, Tamamo picks up and heads in the direction Lilian and Regulus and several others have since disappeared. She's not nearly so fast, so she calls, "Lilian, I have done all that can be, here. We should be together for the final escape, yes?" There's several other things pulling at her attention, and she focuses on just one of them. Any given person around her will do, for this. Perhaps that woman she'd last noticed on a rooftop. Tamamo only needs to reach out and feel the threads of her Fate, and trace over the expected point, a few minutes from now, when they will... terminate? Double back? She's not sure what she'll find, in asking the question, 'what will become of her connections to all?'
Riku Asakura	Before he's caught by Veronica, spiral energy is injected into his body VIA percussive maintenance thanks to Einar. The gem on his chest stops flashing red and instead turns blue again. He turns and nods once towards the Spiral General. "Thank you," he says, and turns small so that Veronica can help get him to Odette. Landing next to Odette, he looks at his blackened arm and what Odette has done to get it off of others. He tears into the black goop again, now filled with energy thanks to Einar, to tear it off, and manages to get it to come off with a terrible noise. He offers the now clean hand to Odette, just to make sure nothing is left on his arm, before turning to help guide civilians to where they need to go.
Tamiel Luxis	The mantas turn on her, once they've registered a threat--and while being accosted keeps her from providing Bond or Lilian cover, it at LEAST pulls some of the things away from them. THe strikes hit her, and she feels herself flung backward, ripping up bits of a roof never meant to be walked on, in her wake, with Tamiel's scarf wrapping protectively over her face. But she raised her staff again, and with a gesture, shadow carved inward from odd angles. Two, she stabbed. A third, caught in the winding of her darkness, was closed around in a violent CRUNCH. Bing-ping-BING! None of the directives Tamiel has left for herself suggest that Regulus would be a threat at all--a bit of an oversight, she might come to think, afterward. The notes explode right in her face, in a short, musical chord, leaving Tamiel tumbling backward from the force of the blows, and nearly rolling off the rooftop. Then, as she tumbles over the side, her hand gropes hold of the edge, shards of her wings fanned outward. She massaged her jaw, where the notes had hit her, muttering, half-complaint, half-observation. "That hurt." She feels like she's thinking through water, but its path is clear. With the intensity of the storm, the more her binds have to go into overtime, the more she feels it press on her. Like a submarine daring to delve too deep, she can feel the fibers of her defenses start to...snap, one by one-- The Storm neared its apex, as the conflict reached its nadir cut, crushed, tossed to Sonetto...Tamiel approaches Regulus. She let all her shadows fall away. Panic buoyed through, at the still-defiant expression on Regulus' face. "...Regulus, please. There's no time to explain...But, we have a chance to save you." Those glowing shards of her wings pulled down, a moment. "If you don't take shelter from the Storm...No one will ever get to hear your music again..." She stepped forward, extending her hand. "...Staying in safe harbor for a night doesn't mean you sell your soul to the dockmaster, does it?" "Please...Take it..." Her voice was pleading.
Odette Raskins	With the Pikmin protection force around her, Odette can make sure to get the terrible slime off herself and Audrey! Painful as it is, doing it on herself first gives her an idea of how much it'll hurt and how much it sucks, and she's grateful to have both Tamamo's analgesics and her own meds to help dull the pain and stem the bleeding from prying the sticky substance off. With some careful adjustments, she's able to get the bulk of that stuff off Audrey before long, too. "If you're sure... Just don't be afraid to pick it off like a scab if it starts feeling any worse or moving again." Odette warns Audrey, sliding a dose of fast-acting painkillers (chewable, super artificial 'cola-flavored') and tweezers into the first open pocket she can find. "A-and sorry about the shirt. I'll pay you back later." Luckily for Odette, getting practice from both herself and Audrey gives Odette even more practice for getting that heaping pile of sludge off Riku's arm once Veronica carries him over. "Thanks, Miss Veronica! Really need to see about finding one of these myself sometime..." She jokes weakly as she helps Riku down off Baker and Seventh, juggling the cautery and scalpel between her teeth briefly so she doesn't have to spend that much more time pulling them back out. Even better, doing all that gives her a little more mental preparation for when it's time to work on the masked civilians after Natsuki pulls their masks off. To the EMT, even those nearly fatal injuries are preferable to the outright transformations all that shaking is signaling, and she's even starting to follow the path of Natsuki's rampage as she commences the emergency treatment. "The voice? Yeah, like someone was... Far away or something? I got a pretty bad feeling from it, but we can worry about that later, yeah!" Nodding in agreement with Natsuki about the time crunch, the EMT flicks through her medical case deftly to sort out more of those doses of medication for the second of what's sure to be many more patients. "Come on... Ah geez, how much of their insides does this stuff replace?" Forced to make some guesses based on the first patient, Odette pops the injector gun against the second's neck near the jaw to keep them breathing, numb some of their pain, and stabilize their vitals. It won't fux everything that's missing and leaking, but it'll have to do, and it helps reduce the amount of overall time she needs to spend with each one of them as she helps them to their feet and points them towards Tamamo's purification zone and Audrey's extraction point. "Don't rush, just take slow steps that way, okay? One foot in front of the other, and you'll be fine." She reassures the second patient, even helping them along a bit until she's fairly confident they can get their without her assistance. Only then can she radio in to the group: <J-IC-Scene> Odette Raskins says, "This one's moving.. Okay. M-Miss Tamamo, I'll send them your way, and then they can head up through Miss Audrey's.. Uh. Thing!" Then it's time to repeat that process all over again for the next three to numbers patients. Odette has to stop and breathe every now and then to burn and pry off any slime that gets onto her, too, but she's got a system down already. Unfortunately...
Odette Raskins	<J-IC-Scene> Einar says, "Raskins, we're past aid stations. This is also an evacuation. Move your triage to the Clover immediately." "If I was faster.. Dang it." She mutters under her breath while helping another patient along, glancing around anxiously at noticing just how many there still are and how much is involved in just getting one of them to the purification and evacuation zone near Tamamo. Unable to just keep waiting, Odette resorts to just hauling patients over her shoulder to bring them over herself, visibly panicking a bit at seeing just how many more of those people still need treatment, never mind reaching the evacuation point. Left to her own devices, Odette is likely to cut it real close on time if she isn't dragged away again. Luckily... "I'm agreeing! No tents, let's go!" Natsuki's there to keep Odette from accidentally working herself to reverse-death. "J-just another minute! I can.. I can make it back, don't worry!" She calls out, audibly esperate to get another patient over. That's going to be the last one she can help over, though, before the combined powers of Pikmin-lifting and general exhaustion take her towards rather than away from safety.
Rita Ma	Rita opens an eye at last, glances over at the portal, sheepishly does a hand-opening-and-shut wave at it as if Audrey were 'inside', and shakes her head briskly. "Oh, ah-- sorry, Mr. Einar. I can still pinpoint Ms. Sonetto too. Even if the Clover's ninety-nine percent... the Foundation's the only place we know for sure is safe, so I'll go with her disk. Thank you. If there's nothing you want me to relay..." She gives him a hurried nod-bow after a tense moment, pivots, clears her lungs to re-pinpoint, and is back off towards the rooftop in a blink.
Einar	"It is not ninety-nine percent. I do not gamble with such things. We will not exist in this universe at the time that this place collapses," Einar says, matter-of-factly. "But if you can still accomplish things, go and accomplish them."
White	White finds herself without a target as Rita's own maneuver plays out, correcting her angle midair using her webbing to avoid falling clumsily onto hands and knees on impact and instead onto her feet, with a deep bend of her knees to keep her balance. She pushes herself upright again and- just to see if it helps- pinches her own cheek and pulls at it like taffy for a moment to try and wake up a little more. It isn't all that helpful, but the bright red spot goes away shortly after. She lets out an exhale with the implicit meaning of an 'okay' that isn't said aloud, taking Lilian's instruction as a somewhat belated reminder of their exit strategy. Einar is extracting some people on his ship, and he didn't say she'd need to teleport it back out... She hopes she didn't miss something about that in the last few minutes. She moves around the other Elites more like stationary objects than people, stepping to the edge of the rooftop. She lays down a web-line like a climbing rope from that edge and only then seems to acknowledge anyone else again, sitting down with her legs dangling over, one hand on the web-rope while the other reaches out to whoever else is lingering. It seems she's offering a ride down with her..?
James Bond	Bond holsters the Walther, snapping the lapels of his jacket. "I'm sorry," he says to Regulus. It's all he can think of to say. What else could he say, after having told her what's coming? After having said that everything she knows, the foundation of the music she loves so much, is about to be wiped away forever by something that can't be fought or even reasoned with? That the people who have the best understanding of it are god knows how long away from being able to do either? At least she and some of the rest of those people down there will get to keep on living. He steps up to the ledge and peers over it, immediately regretting the combination of heights and visual hallucinations. Rita passes her off to Sonetto. Bond offers her a hand getting up if need be; people tend to be heavy. "Our way out," he says. "How does it work? Do you need help getting somewhere it's more easily used?"
Regulus	"NOT THE FACE--" Regulus yells as Flamel goes for a palm thrust which results in her wiggling and getting knocked in the throat instead. "HURK.." She is definitely dazed though so Flamel's plan still worked. Regulus is (more than) briefly dazed. She has no idea what kind of cosmic nonsense he is up to but it's fine. Regulus yelps as White leaps at her, scootching away but White is able to wrap her legs up at least in webbing. ''Just stop just stop just stop'' Regulus squints at White's mouth. "Just ... hop?... I don't get it but I'll do it...! For the fans...!" She rolls up to her feet and starts awkwardly hopping in place--trying to avoid putting pressure on the wounded leg because it still hurts a lot (for Reguluses). Hop ow hop ow hop ow. Regulus hopping. Her legs are tieed together by webbing though so it's actually pretty tough for her to aadjust her pressure at all ''I've got bandages, antiseptic, whatever.'' "Great! Get this webbing off me so I can use it!" Regulus manages. As White goes for the grab, Rita ALSO goes for the grab and gets there just a moment before White does thanks to the power of tentacle. ''slick tentacles'' "Wah--it's cold!" This seems to be Regulus's immediate complaint. She doesn't know what kind of mythological sea creature arcanist Rita is and is worried it'll be bad for her musical legacy to try and guess. ''Please... Take it...'' "Who are you?? There's no way I'm staying for ''just a night''! Don't play dumb with me! Ow ow ow, don't grip my leg too tightly ahhhh!!" Rita tosses Regulus towards Sonetto. "Heeelp! I'm being unlawfully detained!" Yeah she's trying anything and James Bond's apology is something she can barely hear over her own wailing, to say nothing of the storm and the pounding of her heart and the pain in her leg. Maybe if she does survive this and calms down she'll see this day with clearer eyes. Now thoroughly unable to do much of anything besides complain, Regulus lets her invisibility drop and she says, over and over, "I don't want to work for the Foundation, I don't want to work for the Foundation, I don't want to work for the Foundation!" But there's nothing she can do but plead.
Timekeeper	In the minutes remaining, it's possible to funnel a couple dozen humans through the multi-stage process of evacuation onto the HMS Clover. The stage that takes the longest, Natsuki's arduous removal of the masks, is only necessary for some-- many others, only affected by the Storm Syndrome rather than the Manus Vindictae's transformations, only need to be shepherded through Tamamo's purification circle, and that process is easy with Tamamo's summons and the walls of Baker and Seventh. Rollercoastering between wounds and healing, madness and sudden clarity, while the world falls apart around them and complete strangers issue authoritative commands, there's little resistance to getting people from Tamamo's circle to Audrey's portal. They shuffle through in a queue, dazed, scared, and confused, but without anyone causing a panic. But there's only so much time-- how many people live in London? Millions? A percent of a percent of a percent will have to be enough, for this era, at least. With Regulus cut, webbed, and entangled by tentacles, Flamel has a perfect chance to slam a psycho-portal onto her forehead. And using her-- rock n' roll pirate, DJ, anti-authoritarian optimist brat, who could only be produced in this exact moment in time-- he pierces into the Collective Unconscious to see-- Is the Storm here, too? Can he see it? Of course it is. The Storm is here, just as much as it is in the physical realm, just as much as it is everywhere, at every time, in every corner of the universe now and in the past and the future. It carves through the Collective Unconscious like a timelapse of a river through rock, exposing layers of sediment and stuttering back and forth-- every scrap of culture, every thought every person has ever had, every psychohazard and emotional mark left on the world, is swept up in the dizzying torrent, ripped apart and drained away, exalted so high that the sun melts their wings. It's impossible to get a grip on anything in specific, this close to the Storm, but even that's valuable to scan and study later. This is an Unconscious where a man's choice to leave a penny on the ground two hundred years ago spirals out into billions of pounds in riches and poverty, where a cruel word is the cause for the fall of a nation, where every war is inevitable, meaningless, and impossible. The face of the Storm is a clock, melting continuously into senseless lines, minute-hand convulsing back and forth in immobilized death throes.
Timekeeper	"I don't want to work for the Foundation!" With Regulus downed and still obstinate, Vertin's jaw sets. They've been grimly silent ever since coming up to the rooftop, with an unreadable expression on their face while watching Regulus be subdued by the squad of Elites that the Timekeeper herself summoned as reinforcements. Sonetto casts one final incantation, bowling Regulus over, and then spins her arcane implement around in her hand to sheathe it in her hip. "Timekeeper, how long do we have left until the Storm arrives?" "Seven minutes." "Then... we will complete our mission by retrieving the Philosopher's Stone and return to Headquarters. There is no need to keep attempting to convince Miss Regulus." "... You're right, of course. Allow me." Sonetto steps back from the web-bound and neatly detained Regulus, and Vertin places down her suitcase to kneel beside her. They reach into a side pouch on Regulus's backpack, but-- after a couple of seconds of searching, Vertin is abruptly shoved away with a grunt. A explosion of pink glittering smoke erupts around Regulus, briefly obscuring her like a smoke bomb accompanied by a dizzyingly strong scent. "Timekeeper...!!" "Cover your eyes!" After the coughing-inducing and stinging alchemical smoke clears, Regulus is gone. Sonetto sharply inhales, and looks around in either direction frantically, pulling her fountain pen back out. "Sh-she escaped! Um, we should still be able to track her-- she is wounded, and can't have much reserves of arcane energy remaining! Timekeeper--!" "... No." Sonetto's expression slowly falls into confusion, and she looks back at Vertin. Vertin tilts the brim of her hat down, hiding her eyes, with a white-knuckled grip on the handle of her suitcase. "Timekeeper?" "... The Misty Bubble Ball is an alchemical creation. She must have had one in reserve for escapes. Rita can track her by her bleeding, but the Misty Bubble Ball's strong aroma will mask her blood." "Then Dame Rook, or Mister Geed--" "No." "But--" "No! Sonetto, look!" That causes Sonetto to finally fall silent, wide-eyed at Vertin. Vertin raises up their head, single visible eye piercing through all the assembled Elites. "It's here." It's as if the entire city falls silent for one collective held breath. A drop of rain, innocuous and tiny, lifts off the ground and rises upwards into the sky. Left behind where there used to be pavement is a singular dot of cyan like print on a comic page. More and more begin to follow, pink, yellow, blue raindrops falling in reverse, while the edges of buildings blur away and letters melt off of signs. Buildings begin to peel away into the sky, without any of the humans down in the streets below giving any sign that they see anything going wrong. "I'm not going to risk losing anyone I swore to protect to the Storm. Go, Sonetto, now. Take the others with you. I will meet you back at the Foundation after the end of this era, with or without Regulus." Sonetto tenses, on the verge of saying something, but the image of the Storm happening around her cuts off any protest she might make. Instead, she pulled out a gold-embossed floppy disk and shouts with a shaky voice. "Come here! To me, quickly!" As Sonetto activates the incantation ritual disk, Vertin shoots a look aside at White. They point to a corner of the building, angled slightly down to mime towards 'the street, on that side of the building', as a silent request for teleportation. What little fragment of speech they have remaining is simply "Please."
Riku Asakura	The people on the dock go to where they need to. Einar can get them out of there, and even though it's a fraction of a fraction of a percent... it was somebody. It was people who otherwise wouldn't have been saved. That would have to comfort him because the weather changes. The Storm arrives. It doesn't just rain upside down; it seems to strip everything of its... well, everything. It's awe-inspiring, but also terrifying. A natural disaster where nothing can be done about it. Not even he, Ultraman Geed, can do anything about it despite having the power to stop natural disasters he's used to. This is something on a whole other level. He asks if everyone has a ride or way to get to Sonetto, but everyone seems to have their way out or way to get to Sonetto. He turns back, taking one more look at the storm washing away the city, and he takes off, flying as fast as he can to Sonetto and landing next to her. Not as the giant of light but just as a normal guy of light. He dares not transform back until they are all safe.
White	The strange glittery blast of smoke has White leaping to her feet from where she'd sat waiting. She's far enough not to get it directly in her eyes, but in her hindered state she couldn't figure out where Regulus vanished to either, not in that instant while unprepared. Without her Parallel Minds she tries to hop awarenesses one at a time between her spread-out spiderlings, flicking through them like security camera feeds looking for a... Invisible woman. Right... Her jaw is clenched, teeth gritted behind her lips. White doesn't have to move much, not even her neck, to take in the scene as the Storm properly, finally arrives in full. She's paused there at the rooftop's edge, her spine prickling. She wonders if this is what it would be like, if her own world reached the end of its time. Her eyes waver, struggling to fix on any one part of what she's seeing, a keen sense for danger responding to almost every bit of movement. She's not willing to die for Regulus. There are more important things to be doing. People need her for a little longer, still. But... She'd said not to worry. She'd done something she normally doesn't indulge in, there. She kind of regrets it now. She regrets it as she stands there, and she regrets it as she takes three accelerating steps in Vertin's direction, hefting her off the rooftop ground just long enough to reach the other edge with her. In the process, another 'fresher' spider falls clumsily out of her sleeve and hurries over to Sonetto, Bond and them, jumping onto the special agent's leg and climbing to his shoulder for a ride-along. If White's going to cut things closer, she'll want the best possible guidance for the return trip, after all, and nothing is better than a fresh pair of eyes that aren't wobbling with a sort of frantic energy she'd long-since thought subdued. She takes a look down from the rooftop, and both she and Vertin vanish from sight abruptly. She can't risk mis-aligning the destination and dropping Vertin off too high in the air with nobody to catch them, after all. She's not going to embarrass herself like that, not now.
Audrey Basque	From the relative safety of the Clover, Audrey looks down, hands still extended towards her tear on the ground. It's not that she needs to sustain it; space, broken, stays broken. It's that she needs to be ready to move it, if anyone asks her to. But seeing the long line of people Tamamo has going through it... she's got a second to breathe. The sight of the Storm. She doesn't finish her thought on it. She could call it horrifying, and reveal she's not ready to stare her first apocalypse down. Or she could call it enthralling or beautiful, and send the wrong message. It's both, isn't it? But it's... also... too unique to simply stare at. Audrey removes her shirt, splitting it down the middle and then putting Natsuki's jacket on to cover herself, rather than stay in a sports bra. She spreads her shirt down on the airship's floor, inner layer up, a damaged star chart because of the missing sleeves. The stars on it reflecting the sky, Storm and all, changing in real-time. One hand returns to track her tear, just in case; the other reaches down, from her half-sit, to pass across the star map and feel it out. "Let's see what this looks like, from this angle..."
Lilian Rook	'Lilian, I have done all that can be, here. We should be together for the final escape, yes?' Lilian radios back the words "Of course." without even thinking. The words come from a place of easing tension, unconsciously held, that Tamamo is still alright, and from a sense of an almost formal acceptance of the inevitability. However much Lilian cheats, there is nothing more absolute than the clock; if that weren't the case, she wouldn't have become herself in the first place. "We have Regulus secured. The Timekeeper is searching her for the Philosopher's Stone as we speak. Parsons is doing his usual. We have three minutes before the maximal effectiveness of the disk arrives. Get your things together and I'll retrieve you in forty seconds." says Lilian, all in a different voice than how she says "Okay? I promise." 'Cover your eyes!' Lilian, focused on her radio conversation, begins to look back to what's happening, arrests the reflex halfway, and barely closes her eyes in time. They water as she throws her arm over her face, but her sight is fine. It's the sharp breath she takes that betrays her; her ragged coughing comes from the glittering smoke until it completely obscures her-- then goes silent. When the mist clears, her eyes are red, and her expression is numb. The way she turns and stares at the backwards raindrops all around her . . . It's like she's been staring at them for a while, now. 'I will meet you back at the Foundation after the end of this era, with or without Regulus.' There are a lot of reasons for which Lilian could frown at Vertin like that. It's not the kind of expression that's common to her face. On that deepens as they ask White, personally. The last trickle of those forty seconds she promised are spent saying, "I said that there are risks I won't take on someone else's behalf." Lilian flickers in place, and holds Tamamo's hand, pointing her towards Regulus. A raindrop-sized speck of the armour on her palm is corroded down to dull gold. She says "Here. Let's hope for the best, shall we?" but the look she wears that matches it is, really, just for Sonetto.
Veronica	When the smoke clears, Regulus and the stone are gone. Veronica frowns, but Vertin makes clear that the rest of this mission is theirs to handle alone. Veronica steps closer to Sonetto, within easy reach of the teleport disc's effect. She takes a deep breath in. Cities are bodies. Concrete and clay their flesh. People their life-blood, carrying matter and information along streets and avenues. They have pulse, breath, and thought all their own. Veronica knows this, bound so tightly she is to her home. And so, as Flamel looks up, into the Storm itself, dares to gaze upon its face, Veronia stares out, over the city stretching around her. She dared not do this until now, lest she be overtaken by the Storm Syndrome, but now she reaches out, places her fingers on the city's pulse: What is the London of 1966 feeling, in this moment that may be its last? Terror at a looming oblivion? Hope, that something waits on the other side of the Storm? Peace, its fate already made up? Or something stranger still?
Odette Raskins	Odette, weary as she is from scrambling to triage and ferry patients around, does get a moment to catch her breath now that she's being carried along by the Pikmin. She doesn't sound her usual noisy protests, either, although she still looks mildly upset and frustrated about the situation despite her current state. Seeing only that percent of a percent of a percent going through the portal isn't enough, and the Emt rubs her face blearily as she tries not to get too down on herself, knowing that the Storm Syndrome could still strike in these final minutes preceding the Storm. Anyone nearby can see she's failing pretty hard at that last part, but at least she's not throwing herself off the Pikmin just to flail about ineffectually. "It's here." Having heard about the Storm, Odette doesn't want to see what happens to those caught outside during it as the rain rises. She forces herself to do so anyway, knowing that seeing how it all works might help with treating other victims of Storm in the future. 'It's... Beautiful." She finds herself admitting, watching those coloful dots washing away those buildings and the people below. She hates what she's seeing, she hates that she can see some of those people she failed to bring along, and she hates that the first thing that came to mind was how pretty it all is. "D... Does anyone need any more of that stuff pulled off?" Odette finally utters once she has enough strength to move again, hands already searching through her carrying case. Her eyes are still fixed on the storm, though, almost like she's waiting for someone to give her an excuse to stop watching.
Tamiel Luxis	"No!" When the bubble exploded, Tamiel leapt, her wings spreading, listening for any trickle of magic, any whisper of her invsibility...but the Misty Bubble was too thick in the air. It was like trying to see through thick fog...and she was gone. Gone. "No, no...No! Why!!" Frustration finally tinted her voice. "We're trying to save your life!" Nevertheless...Regulus refused to materialize. Tamiel wiped her eyes, looking to the others, shoulders slumping in helpless realization. She stared into the sky, for a long moment, watching as it washed...no. It didn't wash it away, did it? That would take it downstream, where someone could look at the pieces, at figure out what went where. This was drawn upward. Outward. Unwound. Stone or tree or person. Dream or nightmare. All of it... "So..." Tamiel swallows, hard. "This is the Storm..." <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons stabilizes himself. "Someone get my body out of there. I need to stay just a moment longer. I'll try to give as many people as much of their senses and their freedom of thought in the last few minutes. Before they're washed away by the..." "...I'll....Take your body" She needed something she could do. Something she could help. Something that made her presence MATTER. To reassure her that it wasn't all for nothing. "...I'll...Take your body. Don't get washed away." Leaning down, she picked up Agent Parsons, the difficulty more a question of volume than weight...In spite of how small she was. Even without her shadows. She walked toward Sonetto with Flamel in her arms.
Einar	The timer ticks down. Divine General Einar stands out next to the portal until around the forty second mark. By that time, Natsuki has long since hauled Odette onto the Clover. << Ten seconds, >> He warns over local radio, and aloud into the world around him, and then strides on through Audrey's portal back onto the HMS Clover. He doesn't stay near the exit point, walking steadily the opposite direction that the tubes run, getting himself out of the way of the triage. He does not count the people that actually made it aboard, not least because the time to do so before they need to leave doesn't exist. The moment he sets foot on the deck the Clover reconfigures itself. The weapons that opened up close themselves and a multitude of windows open up to give a look at the strangeness going on outside. As coherent as he remains through it all, and as much as he is deliberately making the decision to look -- and let others look -- Einar feels more than a little unsettled by the phenomena. It is simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar, like a famous painting inspired by another famous painting that he had once heard of but not actually seen directly, himself. His thoughts linger firmly on a bronze, horned giant. A taloned gauntlet reaches towards the ceiling. This is not the same sort of gesture he used to open a way, or the knob-turning of creating a shield. Something is watching. No further motion occurs outwardly. Someone listening closely however would be able to hear the black-armored man inhale deeply and slowly over the course of the declining seconds. To reach was necessary for anything, and where to reach to mattered less. A pinpoint of pink appears centered above the HMS Clover. Cracks run through the dissolving world around it, and then the Clover is nowhere at all. It cannot be called a landscape, where it goes. It is the same space to which Einar sent Arthur, and Ivy, and in which he stored a desk. It is utterly empty. There are no features. There is no sky. It clearly has a surface, but that surface has no characteristics beyond being vaguely solid and having a desk and some chairs on it. Looking closer, one might be able to observe that in fact that pink four-leaf clover coloration and pattern defines the specific area on which objects sit, but it is so huge that it is hard to actually distinguish from blank-space all around it. It is not strictly correct to call this a non-space. It is definitively a space-that-exists, but it is utterly unmoored. A few moments are spent getting the beast-folk Arthur and Ivy on-board. The desk and chairs and card game they were playing is left where it is, and then the Clover begins moving again. The space that is 'behind' it begins to dissolve as it goes-- it is making a road. The road does not exist, and leads nowhere, for now. But it will lead somewhere, eventually. There is nowhere that this road cannot go. But it cannot be abridged. It cannot make it faster. It cannot do anything but be more. The vast array of portholes that shifted into being in order to watch the storm slimmed down and mostly disappeared back to the original configuration, from before the Clover shifted to that 'observation mode.' Something is watching.
Rita Ma	"It's certain." "We won't be in this universe." Definitely Rita trusts Einar more than Sonetto, for their short acquaintance. Does she trust him more than Vertin? Does she trust that 'not being in this universe' will be enough? There's that tiny, tiny chance it isn't local, and the foundation is the only safe place anywhere. But if it's not, Apple Tree Island would be swept away. Living without Bota and Kana and Liza and-- All that rattles in her head as she pulls herself back up onto the roof, one eye half-open but scrunched against the queasy colors. Blood from everywhere, more or less, is marinating her brain by now. She shouldn't be too physically taxed, but the cognitive fatigue is a burden of its own. "Ms. Rook," she breathes, seeing Vertin hunched over Regulus. "Thank you for--" "Ghh--!" A breath at just the wrong time, in her panting. Rita covers her eyes for a second; then pounces at the smoke when she recovers, coming up empty; then turns to search Vertin's eyes... I'm pretty sure she didn't have that when I grabbed her. Did I miss it? I can't believe I was careless enough to... Oh. Rita looks at Sonetto, with genuine nausea, and just shakes her head with arms crossed over her stomach. If I didn't think I could trust Ms. Timekeeper, it'd be stupid to have come here, right? << Ten seconds. >> "Please," Rita says, a water droplet rolling up over her unblinking eye smoothly on its way back to the sky. "Let's go. I'm sorry, but I'm scared."
Flamel Parsons	Flamel's astral form approaches, walking along a path of dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions of neurons, across a landscape of pure thought being elevated and annihilated, towards that great and melting clock. This world where possibility is both overwhelming and absent. He moves past the door he burrowed through the arcanist Regulus. He whispers, softly, sensors harnessed to his body all pinging and recording desperately. "I made it through. I see-- I see it. I see it. It's eroding the Collective Unconscious. Or elevating it. Or nullifying it. Or multiplying it. Or-- It's everywhere." He swallows. "You're right, it's here, it's everywhere." He reaches out to that great, terrible, dying, violently destructive clock, whose massive hand convulses. "Meaningless and impossibly important. All possibilities and impossible. Everything and nothing. I can't stop you because you are the totality of all time. A fish can't stop a river." He whispers under his breath, clambering over impossibly-high digits upon the dial. Vast telekinetic hands spread behind him as he struggles to stand upon a melting peak. Space is the medium through which Light moves -- energy, information, and warmth, the healing force from the sun that brings energy to everything. In that sense, time is the medium of the Storm, the endless roll of infinite dice bringing natural disasters that are both meaningless and impossibly important, convergences of infinite fate and simultaneously unpredictable nonsense. Flamel reaches out. He tries to dip his mind into this flow. To align with it. To hold his palm against its face. And calm the movement of that stuttering hand. He, too, is one thousand people and none at all. A possibility of something far beyond humanity, and also something subhuman, a thing, an object. One thousand hands reach alongside his hand, which is also only a meaningless construct assigned to a non-person rock. He tries to align, to orient, to polarize to the magnetic field: To be infinitely meaningful and yet fundamentally nothing at all. He brings his astral scan to bear at maximum power, to gather all the data he needs, and to emit a vast psychic wave that can dampen the Storm Syndrome. Just a little, just a while, just enough to give people presence of mind. Enough to know they're about to be undone. Let them turn to the people they love and say "Goodbye." Or hold them in their hearts with care and love. Or feel the fear they deserve the right to feel. Or even, for a moment, just rest and dream something comforting. His body is limp on the roof. Tamiel can easily bear him to the evacuation point. He'll revive soon, one hopes.
Tamamo	Rain flows upward, revealing a substrate of what could be reality. Tamamo's own eyes turn to follow it. Then, she closes them, reaches out, and feels a tangled thread. Lilian flickers in place, and holds Tamamo's hand. 'Here. Let's hope for the best, shall we?' If it were truly the end of the world, she couldn't hope for anything more than to squeeze the hand holding hers, to lean against her side, and wait for it. "It is not their end." Out of nowhere, that. "They have 'a future,' tangled though it is, distorted, and reflected. I could not find where it was it ended. I only know that it does not end here. The reversal is not... 'travel.'" Perhaps that's all she has the time to say. It's time to go.