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Madeleine Cadrasteia     By the next morning, things are getting bad. The sky twists above the hotel, crackling and booming like ice over a frozen lake. The sunrise is a gloopy, lava-lamp flow past the horizon, orbs of light wobbling back and forth across the sky. After a hasty breakfast and discussion of plans, it's back on the road! The landscape only grows stranger on the ride down US Route 160, changing mile by mile from plains to mountain to desert and back again.

    Regulus makes some phone calls and, at the few stops to rest along the way, hacks into the "American Occultists (PATRIOTS ONLY)" Facebook page. A few things she's learned:

    1. The page owner (whose account credentials are completely in Regulus's hands) is a guy named Tim, who's working security at the America Forever rally.
    2. According to messages with his friend Paxton, Tim was recently transferred from "babysitting that rock-crushing fog machine they've got" to watching an emergency exit.
    3. Paxton complained about tickets to the rally being too expensive, and Tim offered to let Paxton (and, notably, "some buddies if you want") in through the back way. Their passphrase of choice is 'dude, where's my car'.
    4. Several months ago one Marvolo Mordecai reached out to him, inviting him to correspond via the America Forever website's email form. Shortly after, Tim began posting almost daily about America Forever on the American Occultists page, which has since gained a large number of followers.

    Tim's email password is the same as his Facebook. From there, a chain of correspondence with this Marvolo Mordecai figure reveals more. Marvolo is one of six "genuine, bona fide wizards" from a *different* world's America, who found the political climate there unwelcoming to their "groundbreaking" ideas. They narrowly evaded the FBI and fled to Tim's world, hoping to "escape the notice of the deep state bureaucracy". After rebranding as America Forever they found an ally in Senator Brendan Taylor (R-Utah), who funneled campaign money to Marvolo and company for months. This alliance only became public knowledge as of yesterday's rally.

    Marvolo also discussed his magical knowledge with Tim. "Arcane Symbolology" relies on power of belief - an image significant to one person can have a lot of power over that person, and an image significant to enough people has at least *some* power over *anyone*. In particular Marvolo and his apprentices (the 'Magnificent Six', all together) are obsessed with American state iconography, from flags and seals to states' official gemstones and animals.
Madeleine Cadrasteia     The van crosses from Ute Mountain Reservation onto Navajo Nation land around lunchtime, and the traffic picks up remarkably. Coach buses line the roadside, pop-up concessions stands offer corn dogs, hot fries, and other foodstuffs. There must be hundreds of people here, and nobody pays attention to just another vanful of presumedly-patriotic arrivals. As she turns onto the aptly named Four Corners Road, Madeleine asks for Mesmer to get her wallet out of the glove compartment to pay for park admission. This, however, proves to be unnecessary; the park office has been abandoned by the local staff, and "FREE" is spray-painted in blue over the sign detailing admission prices. "Guessing they didn't ask permission to use this land, neither," Maddie mutters, her lip curling in rising disgust.

    After finding a spot to park and pulling in, Madeleine shuts off the engine and half-turns in her seat. "So, if I have the right of it," she says to the rest of the van, "We can try to sneak in the back way while everybody's at lunch, so's we don't have to deal with the audience. The wizards are probably getting ready for the big show somewhere, so we just gotta find them, kick some ass, and then figure out what to do with the center before everybody comes back. Anybody who doesn't wanna fight wizards can try to find that 'fog machine'-whatever device and shut it down. If you get another idea, improvise and make it work. Ready? Let's go." Maddie pulls a pair of sunglasses out of the glove compartment and puts them on before stepping out of the van.

    The place is set up like a festival ground, with segmented steel crowd fences separating on- and off-limits-to-the-public areas. An array of stadium seating looms on the far end of the road, closer to the Four Corners monument itself. The way around to the emergency exit is clear of pedestrians, until a man at the back gate waves to get the Elites' attention as they approach. "Sorry folks, you can't come back this way, you'll have to go around to the-" "Dude," Madeleine cuts in, "Where's my car?" "Oh, uh, where's Paxton?" "He's uh, sick today. Told us to go without him." The guard shrugs and lets the group pass. "Just keep this on the D.L.," he says.

    The pomp and colors of the 'front of house' quickly vanish from sight, replaced by drab staff tents and trailers. "Okay so," Maddie says once the group is around a corner from (presumably) Tim's sightline. "Let's split up and get to work." Finding those wizards might take a minute - if you've got other ideas, now's the time!
Regulus Regulus has been on the phone for part of the ride on the phone, pretending to be something called a ''password inspector''. "Whaaat? Your password is teaparty1766? That's too obvious. Here, let me help you come up with a new password. How about... h 6 capital M # sign 1 9 9 c n capital M e a capital S d capital F g capital H. Yes I can repeat that. You got it? Gooood. You should now be safe from all acts of hacking and online piracy. Good day to you--yeah I AGREE good day." She shoots Matilda an apologetic look. "Yep yep..."

Then she hangs up the call and hops onto her phone's web browser, sticking her tongue out as she logs onto the American Occultists (PATRIOTS ONLY) facebook page and also the mod's email accounts. "It was actually 1766 by the way..." She mutters. "So we've got a way in the back, their password is 'dude, where's my car'--I don't get it either, but the wizard in charge is named Marvolo Mordecai and he's not even from this America. He's from ... some other America that wasn't America enough for him and there's five other wizards that came with him. Their magic seems to be based on symbols that receive belief, so they're using all these like 'america symbols' to power their ritual." Regulus pauses. "So diluting and disrupting the belief of 'Americas' should weaken the ritual enough that we can probably safely do whatever to the monument."

She lets Madeleine lead the group through the back but is, of course, very quiet until they actually get out of Tim's sight. She draws out a Beatles record with the Union Jack on it, the word COLLECTIBLES is in bright yellow colors on top and on the bottom is the words HALLELUJAH I LOVE HER SO (Ray Charles) THE BEATLES on the bottom in black.

"Alright, let's see... according to the picture on the facebooked page." She runs off in that direction, shouting, "BRITISH INVASION!" while waving the Beatles record like a flag in the air. "You're actually being taxed without proper representation RIGHT NOW! Only Rock can set you free!"

She rushes over to the fog machine and--

"Captain!" APPLe spots a nearby soundsystem and he floats over and grabs some AV cords, pulls them out and floats back over to Regulus who is setting up the portable record player there, sliding the Beatles record into position.

"Marvy, Mr. Apple! That's perfect!" Regulus plugs the record player in and hits play. As the record spins up, she hifives APPLe then does side-fives left to right, adds a fistbump in, and then hip-bumps APPLe back up in the air like a hackysack. "Yeah, baby, let's rock and roll for peace and love!"

BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5Vm7kLAI6A

Let me you about a girl I know
She's my baby and I love her so
Every morning the sun comes up
She brings me coffee in my favorite cup
That's why I know, yes I know

"Hallelujah I just love her so!" Regulus and APPLe sing together while holding each others hands and swinging them and their hips (well Regulus's hips and APPLe's everything) around as they dance backstage.
Petra Soroka     The more that Matilda, Madeleine, and Regulus elaborate on the plans of the America Forever freaks, the more Petra looks like she's silently holding back laughter, laced with derision. Her focus during the car ride, of course, is still on waiting on Lilian hand and foot, insisting on hourly stops and all, finding enrichment in the genuinely gorgeous national parks of the western States. It's sort of looking like she doesn't even care to stop these guys, based on how little she deems it necessary to contribute to the plans, but her seething contempt for them makes it hard to imagine she's planning on letting them go through with their ritual.

    "They fucking *imported* Americans. I guess that means this world probably doesn't have any kind of threat to pose to us besides guns, at least." Leaning up against Lilian, Petra looks at the venue pictures on Regulus's phone using her Silver instead of getting up from her comfy perch. "Six wizards plus the senator is seven. And you'd *think* that'd be a magically significant number, right? It usually is, isn't it? You guys are all the magic users, not me. But my hunch is, they've gotta have eight more people in on the ritual, to make thirteen."

    Petra raises up a finger. "America isn't old enough to have any real Traditions, but if they're working off of, like, dumbass patriotism shit, then I'm willing to bet that thirteen's an important number for them. Because the thirteen colonies is as old as it gets for this shithole country. Maybe they'll have 1776 attendants or something too."

    Talking with Matilda about crystals and divination earlier has sort of attuned Petra to thinking about magic. She's always been vaguely interested in it-- even before being an Elite, courtesy of Val, whose bracelets she's still wearing-- but having it be a topic she's familiar with and saw in action has gotten her brain working more in that direction. 'The power of belief' in particular, as it's described by Marvolo, is something she fixates on, for reasons that only Lilian can likely guess.

    When the van rolls up to the venue, Petra is wearing her flannel and jeans, the former buttoned up once over her midriff. She's chattering with Lilian instead of paying attention to anything about the venue, preparing by unloading some supplies from her mirror before they head inside, though those materials appear to be: a camping chair, a cooler, and one of her ratbots, with the kind of CRT TV you're meant to have in the car stuck to its underside.

    "We should probably split up. Uh, Lilian, you're, like, a Paladin and a public figure and stuff. Do you think you could keep any of those idiot fascists and the security guards from running towards the monument? If I know anything about American political rallies, there's probably a sniper somewhere too."
Petra Soroka "Dude, where's my car?"

    "I'm so good at being on the D.L.," Petra reassures the security guard, while twirling a candy cigarette between her fingers. The moment she's past the gate, she shucks off her flannel overlayer as if she's allergic to it, wearing a binder underneath as if it's sufficient as a shirt, with the Celtic knot-sunburst planted on her abdomen like a womb tattoo. She grips the mother-of-pearl-inset compact case hanging by a cord around her neck.

    Aside to Matilda, while flipping it open and tensing her thumb against the mirror until it creaks, "So it's not exactly a 'crystal' in the way you'd understand it, but I hope you see why I kinda like crystal quartz."

    When the mirror shatters under her pressure, a fountain of iridescent shattered glass flows out, even more unsubtle than Regulus's shouting. It spills forwards like a geyser, bouncing in an arc off the ground and then clacking together like an infinitely complex jigsaw puzzle, moving like fluid. Mid-motion, the loping form of the Beauty of Ash comes into existence on all fours, from its snout cascading backwards to its razor-sharp legs, like a wolf made out of crystal. Petra holds her hand out to the side, brushing against its head as it forms.

    "I could've gotten funnier with it, but after all that before, I'd kind of rather that your first time meeting her isn't scary."

    Right after forming, the Beauty of Ash creaks like a block of ice between teeth, and then shatters. Chunks of it, halfway between pearlescent stalactite and dismembered limb, lance towards each of the seven wizards (and senator) of interest, skewering through their clothes to pin them down where they stand. In its wake, and rapidly propagating through the arcane ritual they were performing, is a sense of tooth-numbing emptiness and a wave of itching below-skin.

    'Patriotism', in its absence, can be understood like a poisonous vapor that was dispersed in the air, so omnipresent that you could breathe it like water. The electric energy charged in the air by the rally goes dead, replaced with the emotional tinnitus of 'nothing', suddenly finding yourself teetering on the edge of a void that you were gleefully walking off. Personally unaffected, Petra strolls towards the stage with the monument, looking behind her towards the others.

    "Well, come on and get the monument out of here."
Ozhira     While they hadn't had much to say throughout much of the drive, things are rapidly approaching the point where Ozhira's talents should be extremely useful. Namely: The part where they kill a bunch of wizards and a senator and the news gets to blame a freak animal attack or space aliens or whatever they use to rationalize whatever the fuck the Devourer actually is.

    As has been their modus opperandi for most of this trip: Ozhira Listens. They hear out the plans as Regulus uncovers them, the names and places and methods involved. Belief. Faith. They understand this. Many of the voices within their song are familiar with Faith. But this is not faith in a God; they understand it to be faith in an Idea.

> "Finding those wizards might take a minute..."

    "We hunt," Ozhira states plainly from their disguise as a messenger bag in Maddie's left hand. The handstrap dissolves, the bag dropping to the ground and slithering under a booth when nobody's looking. From there, they rapidly traverse the fairground-like atmosphere by extruding bits disguised as those plastic cable guards from one hiding place to the other, shunting their biomass through, then retracting it quickly into the new location.

    Once they're as close to the monument and the ritual as they can get, the beast dives underground instead. A noticeable swell of earth approaches the circle of wizards; at about the same time the Beauty of Ash fires off its crystalline barbs, a different series of spikes erupts from the opposite quarter. In order to cut off Wizard Escape; a barrier of keratinous spines several feet long erupt in a long arc opposite of where the Beauty of Ash is standing. The tallest are in the center of the arc, with the spikes growing shorter towards either end. One could even conceivably walk between the shorter spikes if they paid attention.

    The Beast's main body cannot yet be seen, only these fingernail-colored spines.
Foundation Scions Earlier, in morning twilight,

    While the sun has not yet lit the horizon, the Moon not yet gone to sleep for the day, and the last-lingering stars still twinkle between wispy clouds, Matilda, early-riser and most diligent diviner, has, as a matter of routine, and additional precaution, given the unexpected hazards faced already, sets about on assembling a small ritual for preparedness in the upcoming day. The Wyoming Room of the motel may say it is 'non-smoking', but surely, that only applies to tobacco, and not scented candles! With curtains meticulously drawn to frame the crystal ball, huddled close, as to not disturb the awake-but-not-involved Mesmer she's roomed with, Matilda murmurs out, "Oh boule de cristal, montre-moi l'avenir, s'il te plaît..."

Earlier, before setting out,

    It's a strange thing to get omens of impending and unexpected strife, alongside a clear indication of the source, without, additionally, portents of woe- despite not being exactly sure what to make of it, and the intermediate details, it's nevertheless something Matilda takes into long consideration, in order to plan for, with no intention of bringing up to anyone present, and less intent to explain in detail, until it no doubt matters. They'll be going to a rock show soon, after all- and while it isn't at all an elegant concept, that coincidence can serve as the basis for a goofy little plan.

Earlier, on the road,

    It's not as if Matilda didn't want to make cute crystal-based wirework charms for her companions, but it's just a tiny bit dishonest and underhanded of her- it's also an innocuous reason to ask (or beg, or insist,) that Madeleine stop the van (very briefly! Matilda is, of course, the most expedient!) at a highwayside truck stop / parts shop, to retrieve more brass wire than she brought, a necessary thing for her jewelry handicraft! So that, and tiny pliers, ensure each and every passenger will wind up with a cute quartz, agate, jasper, or similar semiprecious gemstone charm as a memento! Likewise in her shopping bag when she hurries back out from the store, unmentioned, but completely innocuous, is a quite large aerosol cannister of DEET-based bug spray.
Foundation Scions Now,

'I'm willing to bet that thirteen's an important number for them.'

    "Hmph! Then that is a dreadful miscalculation on their part. It is, most certainly, an exceptionally un-lucky and ill-aligned number to form the basis of a ritual around! It's an ominous sign in of itself, but it has no proper organizational patterns to structure an array upon, splitting not into threes, fives, or even sevens! If that is such a decision they make-" Pointlessly certain, "C'est une bonne chance pour nous!"

    Of course she has opinions on the magical vibe of numbers. And of course they're biased. "Either way... that is an important precaution! To let additional malevolent actors go about under a false assumption of apparent numbers, that would be not good!" Speaking that has Matilda sounding a bit weirder in her tone- but it's just a quirk of her already bully-ably silly behavior to shift and scoot around in the back seat a lot, and give slightly nervous glances around, probably! Probably.

    When the van passes into the parking area un-contested by park officials, Mesmer's all the happier to not open up the glove compartment, making a pointed sigh at the prospect. At some roadstop along the journey, Matilda has changed from her bright and cheery gingham dress she'd shopped for crystals in, and back into the adventuresome overalls ensemble. She couldn't if she tried look less like a strange, lost European girl, at the actual venue of the patriot rally. But that's fine! It's better to run and jump in, and there's likely to be a large helping of that!

    After piling out of the car, both of the Foundation arcanists present undergo parallel routines of checking through their packed-along gear, Matilda with a silly shopping bag and a clunky bowling-ball carrier for her orbuculum, Mesmer with a field surgeon's kit and her sci-fi sidearm. She expects to be let in with that- it's an American event, they love guns, don't they?

Mesmer lingers closer to the gates, where there's more elbow room, and, theoretically, a vantage of sight. To look busy and not be pressured further with going into other tasks, she starts to check through the contents of her gear again, bandages, salves, pills, repeat.

'So it's not exactly a 'crystal' in the way you'd understand it, but I hope you see why I kinda like crystal quartz'

    Matilda, tagging alongside Petra through the gates through an unspoken decision to stick by her as part of the 'split up', gives very focused attention on the handheld mirror- "Ah, super-!" She gasps at the sight of the veritable waterfall of glass shardwork, and again as it takes the shape of a great crystalline beast. As Petra brings up meeting the Beauty of Ash- Matilda immediately blurts out a "Ah! Ravi de vous rencontrer! What is your-" A look between the mech, and Petra, unsure which to ask- "Name?"

    She even sticks out a hand to shake.

    When, immediately, the mech is shattered apart as part of Petra's efforts to take the ritual-workers out of the picture, Matilda lets out a frightened "Zut alors!", fading off in the obvious sudden change in the ambient arcane flux of the patriotism-less patriotism-based ritual. Even if she wasn't caught up in the fervor, the gap in that spectrum of sensation is, still, unsettling. Whatever she could glean from getting closer-up to the ritual in question, that's cut off the possibility, beyond the same musings already shared in car-trip considerations.

    At Petra's final urging to go get the artifact in question... Matilda, walking closer to the 'geographic center of the US', certainly isn't hurried, and is, in elbowing past crowdgoers, notably cautious not to trip, fall, or lose her focus.
Ivy Carrow     Ivy's mood turned sour, after the revelation of the plot that brought all this about. "You were right," she said, to Petra and to Lilian both. "The call was coming from inside the house. It's so..." She shook her head with a grimace, and whatever she was thinking was lost in the drive. She carved into a red stone--heliothrope--as they drove, and eventually, left it in a clear, grassy place when Matilda insisted they stop to pick up copper wire.

    Those with the senses to confirm could verify its arcane sense aura--Regulus in particular could recognize it as a beacon.

    She spares herself the trouble of speaking with 'Tim,' offering him only a parting glare as they fade from his line of sight. "Thirteen?" She fiddled with her phone, until she found 'thirteen colonies.' "They might not have enough real magic users to do that," Ivy considered aloud. "But that could be an auspicious number for them. But, Matilda could be right. You'd think that the broader belief in 'unlucky thirteen' might disrupt it."

    "If they're using symbols of America, then mixing in some other influences might slip things up, yeah..." She nods thoughtfully, as Regulus brought up the Beatles. "Diluting the magic with elements that aren't congruent could neutralize it or at LEAST make it weaker..."

    "I could give us a way out." Ivy pointed to herself. "If nothing else--once we've broken down whatever ritual they have going on, I can try to open a portal out of here. The spatial landscape here is...Unstable...But if I use a solid anchor point, I should be able to make one a short distance." She pulls her cloak--cloak?--out of her bag, and fastened a swordsword-sheathed--to her side, before unlocking a latch holding it in place, before giving it a loving little pat on the hilt.

    Once they're in place, Ivy is on the move, a little cloaked figure fliting from open space to open space, until she's at last--near the FRONT of the crowd, at least? Stupid, irregular space. Near the heart of the ritual, the distortion was at its greatest point. She pushed forcefully through the front to the consternation of the crowd, as Petra disrupted the ritual.

    She held out a hand, still running, and a jagged rift opened in the air, like a bleeding wound in the world. She reached out to that beacon she had left behind them.

    It wasn't cooperating well--a zipper stuck halfway open, a door jammed, a passage that had forgotten what lay behind it. "Might need a little time--or a little stability. If you can give it to me."
Lilian Rook     Honestly, the very visceral reminder that something is actually wrong, and quite severely at that, makes Lilian enjoy the road trip more and not less. It gives all the liminal time a sense of adventure and turns the pauses in the lacklustre action into something suspenseful and full of danger. This influences her behaviour, which is good for some people and strenuous for others.

    Regulus has obtained general permission to play her music and some vague positive burble about it while Lilian spends half the time listening to her own (weird, because she claims to not carry any with her) with headphones. Petra has obtained tacit approval of her sandwich construction skills ('as good as Cecilia' was never in the running) and more greyed out HP. Mesmer has obtained a single decent meal (Lilian's HP greyed out there instead). Lilian has obtained a few genuinely pleasant memories from the lovely scenery, Matilda's lovely little charm, and one decent hotdog. Now, everything is shaping up well enough; finally.

    'America isn't old enough to have any real Traditions'

    "Well, it was, until they killed them all." Lilian opines from a state of half-attention, relaxed enough into a general bath of pleasant nonsense stimuli. "Except the ones they didn't, I suppose?" It was this summer she found out, after all.

    'I'm willing to bet that thirteen's an important number for them. Because the thirteen colonies is as old as it gets for this shithole country.'

    Lilian Frowns. She looks at Petra like 'would you care to try that again?' but lets it slide anyways.

    Exiting the vehicle, Lilian is, in fact, already thinking about her excruciatingly British accent when speaking English. Presuming the average person here will mistake Esperanto for Spanish and Japanese for Chinese, she compares the whole set including Irish, and debates hotly over which they'll be the least racist about; for about ten seconds before giving up.

    'Uh, Lilian, you're, like, a Paladin and a public figure and stuff.'

    "O~h god I a~m." Lilian sighs, oozing reluctance already, as if she'd only just remembered. "You could try getting on your knees and begging sincerely." follows after, in sarcastic disinterest. She already knows it's a perfectly good idea, but can't help but think, "Otherwise it'll be like I'm taking directions from you."

    Secretly though, it's a very easy bet to make. A handful of evil wizards probably wouldn't keep her occupied as long as three hundred half-drunk dipshits rushing a picket line. And the sniper thing is, as far as she's aware, completely true, because that's just Normal(tm).

    She splits off from the group a short ways, making a buffer space between herself and the van. She removes her cardigan and gloves, exposing fresh-looking bandages on her wrists and fingers, obtained some time, somehow, in the last few hours at the latest, and focuses on manifesting her armour up to the elbow, relocating her sidearm from her thigh to her left hand. She's still scanning the crowd, considering making a public announcement of some stripe, while multitasking a broad sweep of the mob's surface thoughts and slow-paced thin-slice divination regarding snipers, when the implosive wave of 'Petra' happens.
Madeleine Cadrasteia     Lilian's psychic reconnaisance turns up a few interesting results. First, the crowd farther out is treating this like a big tailgate, more here for food and beer and socializing than for any sort of patriotic objective. Closer to the stage - although the stands are vacant for now, so "closer to the stage" is relative - things change, with people casually thinking things to themselves, or speaking things aloud to others, like "America sure is great, isn't it?". The surface thoughts are, in fact, so consistent farther into the park that it's clear something is influencing these people's minds. As for snipers, this is an event where plenty of people are open carrying firearms, but there doesn't seem to be anyone *hiding* with a gun anywhere. The closest is the senator's security detail, who do have concealed firearms but nothing in the long-range department.

    Regulus's 'British Invasion' makes its way toward the main stage, behind which is indeed that strange apparatus like a huge fog machine. As the rockin' pirate and her APPLe make their way over, they spy a man dumping a bucketful of stones into it - tourmaline, granite, gold, nephrite jade, Regulus isn't as much an expert on crystals as Matilda but as an alchemist she knows precious materials when she sees them. The official gemstones and minerals of all fifty states are being ground and crushed and - through some arcane process - converted into a vapor that hangs low in the air over the stage and, between that stage and the currently-vacant stadium seating, the center of the United States. The thin cloud hazes the mind, and instills an urge to sing or hum along to the instrumental of 'America the Beautiful' that's playing over the soundsystem.

    Playing, that is, until Regulus takes over. The sounds of classic British rock'n'roll rise above the ambient murmuring of a thousand people eating corn dogs (and hot fries, et cetera) in the distance. Many of the staff just continue about their mundane jobs without really noticing, but the wizards gathered at the monument, along with the senator and his entourage, certainly take notice. "Nocturna, what did you put on the playlist this time!?" "This one wasn't me!" "Well someone go shut that off, and see who's playing pranks on us!"

    Two of the wizards, a heavily-tanned man in a teal suit and a dark-haired woman in purple robes, break from the ritual circle while the rest of the wizards catch their breath (chanting spells all day is hard work, you know!). They're halfway to Regulus and have her in sight by the time Petra makes her move. The cacophony of shattering glass gets them (and the other wizards, for that matter) to turn and gawp at the Beauty of Ash as she assembles.
Madeleine Cadrasteia     The wizards at the circle break out into shouting and yelping as the spray of glass shards intended to pin them down fires in their direction. "My robes! These are *designer*!" bemoans their leader as chunks of jagged glass pin him to the dirt. The other three are faster to react. "Innnnn-vaders!" one of them yells as he leaps for cover. Another manifests a vertical disc bearing the Great Seal of the United States as a shield to deflect the attack, while the last catches the projectiles with a great many disembodied-ghostly telekinetic hands.

    "I'll handle the music, you help the others!" calls the man in teal, and his purple-robed companion grumbles and turns back, raising her hands to prepare some kind of magical attack. She traces a circle in the air which becomes a portal, and as she shouts, "Beasts of the land and the forest, to my aid!"}... nothing emerges. This close to the Beauty of Ash, what should have been a stampede of moose and bison is instead a disappointing fizzling noise from the portal, which flickers out after a few moments. "My magic! What is this devilry! she shouts in shock and anger. The void of patriotism created by Petra and the Beauty of Ash has not silenced the Magnificent Six's ambitions, but it *is* weakening their magic, apparently preventing their most powerful workings.

    The white-clad mage turns to flee toward the stands, and the senator's security detail begins to usher him in the same direction as he blubbers in panic. Ozhira fences them in with a row of jagged tooth-spines, and magician, senator, and aides alike hesitate, long enough for the creature to make a move...

    Meanwhile, around the corner of the stage, the wizard in pink catches his breath, readies his most powerful offensive magics in his mind... and yelps in fright and shock when someone taps him on the shoulder. It's Madeleine. "Hi," she says with a smirk as she steps around in front of him, before kicking him in the stomach.

    Regulus is turning up the volume on her British Invasion for the third time when the man in the teal suit appears before her and APPLe. "Blasphemer!" he spits. "This land is sacred, and belongs to us! You can never take back what has been freed!" From an inside jacket pocket he produces the hilt (and just the hilt) of a sword, holding it before him in both hands. "In the name of democracy and the Founding Fathers, you will be punished!" A blade of teal flame springs from the handle - and stops at about three or four inches in length. The assorted interferences with the literal atmosphere of patriotism are hampering his powers as well. It is, however, still a blade made of fire (albeit an unwieldy and poorly-balanced one), and he rushes at Regulus in anger.

    In total, the wizards are:
    Pinned to the ground
    Fleeing, near Ozhira
    Occupied with fending off the Beauty of Ash's projectiles
    Getting beat up by Maddie behind the corner of the stage
    Struggling to summon animals to fight for her
    Trying to knife-fight Regulus
Petra Soroka EARLIER:

"Well, it was, until they killed them all."

    "Oh, yeah, I just mean-- that wasn't really America's doing, was it?" Petra is steadily progressing along with her Decolonialization thought in her cabinet, conceptualizing the difference between the state and the people in it. "The Traditions, I mean. The genociding definitely was. The fucking, seething fascists in there don't have any connections to any of that, and they're not thinking of Native Americans when they're trying to ritualistically spread the United States to the whole world."

"You could try getting on your knees and begging sincerely."

    Worked up in anticipatory energy about something, Petra gives Lilian a silly little salute instead, understanding her tone well enough. "Um, I'll make sure to do that later. Thanks, Lilian."

"Ravi de vous rencontrer! What is your-"

    Even though Petra has to respond in the mech's place, the fact that Matilda asked like that obviously delights her. She gasps, hand coming up to her mouth to partially cover up a smile. A comet trail of broken glass streams through her hand when she holds it out, passing between her fingers without leaving a cut on her, sort of like she's petting it.

    "The Beauty of Ash. It's a machine, but, uh, in most ways, you can consider it my oldest friend. So I hope that, whenever you see it, you can be kind to it, however you feel about me, s'il vous plaît."

    There's actually, really, not much point to any of the rest of this. Petra's numbing psychic nothingness deadens the ritual like a fire blanket, smotheringly so, despite the dying gasps of the wizards' attempts to stop them. Whatever else happens, America Forever was over the moment Petra walked through the door. All that's left, theoretically, is to diffuse the conflict here, lift up the monument, and take it back to its rightful location, and then everything will be right back to normal. That the wizards traveled between worlds escalates the legal severity to something handled by interglobal authorities, but there are authorities, and it's not *really* anyone here's job to prosecute these people, just to stop them from causing any more trouble.

    Still walking unhurriedly, Petra hops up onto the stage, show-offly tucking her knees to her chest to jump that height and then stand up and walk smoothly rather than stumbling. She strolls past the pinned senator, to grab the microphone out from in front of him, elbow against the podium. Looking out over the monument across the red-faced audience, Petra holds it up to her lips, drawlingly casual.
Petra Soroka     "Helllooooo, people of-- wait, where are we, again? Utah? No, right, Four Corners. Helloo, people of the Southwest! Lotta energy in the crowd today, huh? You all hyped to add, like, four more North Dakotas to your great union? Got all worked up by your politician waving a red cape at you for a couple hours? Yeah?"

    With the crowd getting rowdy and, obviously, booing her, Petra's voice finally drops. "Well, tough shit. It's not happening. Now, personally, I think you should all be put down for this depraved little shitshow like the pigs you are, but I'm a merciful master, so I'll let you flee in terror instead."

    Her eyes drop down to the monument below the stage in front of her, where most of the van's occupants are gathering. "'Cause, uh, sorry to my allies here, but I've got my own plans for this psychotic little ritual. So, get ready, and cover your heads. Um, I mean that."

    A muted whistling sound comes from high up above, before several somethings smash through the ceiling, slamming onto each of the wizards and the senator-- not to explode or crush them, though, but mechanical-looking red and yellow birdcage type things, imprisoning them all. In sequence, they all start roaring like jet engines, and then with a combination of antigravity tech and rocket fuel, a slab of the ground surrounding the ritually-tied Center of the U.S. monument rips out of the earth, slowly carrying the monument, and all of the Elites besides Petra, Lilian, and Mesmer, up into the air.

    Rocketing upwards at the speed of a brisk elevator, there's just another second before a much larger metal capsule streaks down and smashes into the stage. A metal clack-clack-clack of successfully unfurling plates sounds below them, and then more antigravity whirring, as a giant robot somewhere between an Eggman-style egg and a flying saucer rises up besides the monument's platform. Sitting in a cockpit in the center of it is Petra, who's covered by the shwink of a glass bubble shield when the boss fight starts. Beside her is still her ever present little succulent, and Norton's pot also beeps before deploying his own little flying saucer shape and having a miniature cockpit windshield slide over the plant.

    A rotating laser flares to life on the side of the saucer, sweeping across the platform in regular intervals and forcing you to jump. "So, go ahead and try to stop me!"
Petra Soroka     Down on the ground, Lilian can watch the stage simply leave up into the air without her. Just outside of the crater of earth that was lifted out of the desert is the cooler, chair, and ratbot, whose TV flickers on with a rotating sportscast-esque display of what's going on above. Inside the cooler is various sweet drinks and snacks, chosen to her specifications.

    Mesmer is also there, but has no such care package.
Madeleine Cadrasteia     Suddenly, everything changes. The wizards, scattered and dazed, are left on the ground level as Petra takes the monument and its immediate surroundings into the air. Chaos, explosions, flying metal cages holding a US senator and his aides...

    Madeleine wobbles to her feet after having been thrown off-balance by the shaking (and now flying!) earth. "Hey!" she shouts. "What's with all this all of a sudden! I thought you were along for, you know, putting all this stuff back where it belongs? What's putting it in *space* gonna do, anyway?" She jumps backward over the oncoming laser, barely in time, before pulling her bow off her back and weighing her options. After a few seconds, and another, steadier jump over the next rotation of the laser, she takes aim with the bow and fires a few arrows. Although they may not be able to do much to the thick glass dome of the saucer, a well-placed shot will damage or jam the laser's rotation mechanism!
Ozhira     Hemmed in by spikes and given pause, the white-robed wizard and his security detail have several tense seconds to register what it is they're even looking at; a forest of horns, or spikes, or claws, or-- something. They shiver and shudder periodically, clearly affixed to something enormous and alive underground.

> "...but I'm a merciful master, so I'll let you flee in terror instead."

    The Beast's prey is captured by someone else?!

    Ozhira's confusion is palpable, even with the psychic dampening projected from Petra. The numerous voices within their song chatter amidst themselves about what is happening and how they're supposed to react. Petra is, after all, a fellow member of the Concord. Aren't they on the same side?

    The Concord would never betray them, they reason. So this must be some kind of Test. Yes, that must be it. As a capital letters Science Beast, they are accustomed to unexpected tests and trials. Being already underground, the hesitation caused by this thought process is mitigated somewhat, sweeps of the laser cannon chopping through keratinous spines and throwing up sprays of crimson where they punch deeply enough into the sandy substrate to hit the creature's main biomass.

    Ozhira reacts by burrowing deeper. From below, a heinous crimson mass can be seen erupting out the bottom of the rocky chunk Petra is stealing. The writhing crimson flesh swirls into one huge mouth and several smaller ones, with multiple mismatched eyes blinking into existence one at a time. The Beast rumbles, extending pseudopods outward and clambering across he rock's underside. It has no defined shape; constantly changing, writhing, twisting and shifting as it slithers to a new position.

    On the stone's surface, where the broken spines and splatters of red remain, the beast also rises upward in response to being shot. An unintelligible mass of bloody red flesh that rapidly coalesces into-- a dinosaur skeleton. They imitate the bones they saw at the museum, though animate. As the Beast moves, the bones turn from gray to bloody red with viscera, then muscle and organs and tissues wrap around it. Skin and feathers of an adult Tyrannosaur resolve just as it lunges forward to chomp on the rotary laser cannon with enormous teeth.

    As continuous laser bolts shred the facsimile of America's most ancient and terrifying predator's face, the second manifestation of Ozhira takes a position near the edge of the floating platform's underside. A single crimson tendril shoots out for the Petrasaucer's underside. Sticking there, the Devourer uses its anchoring points on the boulder's underside to try and yank the whole machine violently into the ground against its own antigravity.
Ivy Carrow     Focused on trying to force open her portal, Ivy only turns her head when she hears Petra talking about 'her own plans' for the center, confusion plain on her face. "Wait, what--" This is, however, fairly standard Concord politick, at the end of the day. Ivy just didn't really expect it to come up HERE.

    The rift slid shut with a soft hiss and Ivy threw her cloak over her head--bits of masonry fell on--and through--it, while the seven jingoistic magicians were caged and dealt with She looked up, at that strange elevator-feeling tugging at her gut, and saw the rest of the world shrinking away around her.

    "Ha! You have your own plans! But either way, they won't be getting it, is that what you mean?!" She ducked underneath one of the lasers in a roll. By the time she'd reached the other side, she'd pulled out her sidearm--an ordinary pistol. "We both get to deny them either way?"

    "Alright then! Let's see what you've got!"
Regulus ''This land is sacred, and belongs to us! You can never take back what has been freed!''

"Bwa ha ha ha! You can't even protect your facebook from me!" Regulus cackles. Regulus is an alchemist, for sure, but her specialty is in alchemic devices more than chemistry. The mechanical element. But yeah, she knows when rocks are pretty. She collects a few stray gemstones for her 'For Matilda Later' collection that didn't quite make its way into the machine.

But otherwise she sticks to the plan.

''Blasphemer!''

Regulus can't hear him the music is too loud. "What?!"

''In the name of the democracy, I'll punish you!''

"You have to speak up!" Regulus shouts back, gesturing to her ear.

''He rushes at Regulus at anger''

Well Regulus knows what that means. She waits until the last possible moment, vanishes from sight, and trips the guy so he crashes into the fog machine.

When she reappears, she's on the boss platform, totally oblivious to Petra's EVIL SCHEMES.

"Looks like the day is saved, the power of rock and roll and friendship--"

''Petra starts talking like a supervillain''

Regulus immediately tries to play it off. "Ahaha! You're really putting the scares into them for the spooky season, Petra love!"

''I've got my own plans for this psychotic little ritual.''

"Petra...! Oh no! We're supposed to keep Lilian in a good mood today remember...! Also I can't fly so how am I going to get down? I can't breathe in space, mate!"

''The Eggmachine''

"...Oh that's fab as hell though. How does it work and--"

''So, go ahead and try to stop me!''

"W-wait! Aren't you going to say what your actual plot is? You have to say what your actual plot is, it's in all the serials...!"

She hops over the rotating laser, but she looks winded afterwards. Regulus can only successfully jump over that laser 3 more times!

"How do you expect me to stop a giant egg shaped robot?? I didn't exactly pack a giant skillet!" Regulus complains. Sure, she might have enough mechanical skill to know where to hit the bibs and bobs to do some damage but she has to be able to hit the bibs and bobs in the first place. She has a wrench. She takes it out. It isn't a comically oversized anime wrench, it's a wrench-sized wrench. She hops up to try and hit the underside of the machine but it's just up too high for her to reach. "Ahhhh bugger it all, I'm going to learn how to make one of those things and steal something you were trying to nick sometime!" Regulus vows. Eventually she just CHUCKS the wrench at it so it clangs against the undersize before running off to catch it s it falls back down on the rebound.

"Mine'd be apple shaped though!"
Lilian Rook     'Oh, yeah, I just mean-- that wasn't really America's doing, was it?'

    "If you want to define it like that." Lilian, who does, says like it's a compromise. "I sort of regret not having the opportunity to ask Ash, actually. I barely saw them use magic at all, but it made me curious enough; where they learned it from in this day and age, and how they ended up with the agency instead." Lilian says. "It's not too surprising, I suppose; we've all been exposed to it, regardless of how much we've learned. But it makes me think about how it's just a little bit sad that there's no real Enlightened community-- nothing but a bureau at least-- to work up towards in America."

    "That lack of history; not just Tradition, but cultural continuity with magic, broken so severely and at such a late, modern age. Isn't it at least a little bit sobering? That it's impossible to find what was there before, and impossible to get back what your ancestors once had; all youcan do is try to be deserving enough to absorbed into the mass."

    Frighteningly genuine as she's being, it's still a tiny bit embarrassing that Lilian has never stopped to think about this before. The degree to which she entertains the concept of America with so little mental real estate, combined with how little she dedicates to little thinking about anyone else's options for aspirational self-improvement, combine into something that feels potently 'wait only just now?'

    'Um, I'll make sure to do that later. Thanks, Lilian.'

    "Oh I expect as much."

    . . . . . . . .

    'Well, tough shit. It's not happening. Now, personally, I think you should all be put down for this depraved little shitshow like the pigs you are, but I'm a merciful master, so I'll let you flee in terror instead.'

    "Oh for god's sake." Lilian says, in the tone more like 'atta girl' than 'fuck this'.

    Lilian doesn't need to be told to look out for herself, nor does she respond in any specific way to Petra telling anyone to cover their heads. She moves to the nearest piece of solid cover when the rockets start, slapping her noise-cancelling earphones over her head and drawing a three-point rune of silence in the same impulse.

    When she sees fit to peer around the corner, holding her hair straighed by her hand clamped down on her headphones, the platform is already quite far up, and the monument is nowhere to be seen, and honestly it'd just be ridiculous for anyone to expect her to fight a boss in this condition, with three grievous bullet wounds straight through her delicate body, recently ravaged by a cocktail of drugs that left her completely debilitated. Everyone will just have to do their best on her behalf.

    Explaining precisely jack and shit, Lilian struts over to the cooler, seats herself in the chair, stretches with her fingers laced over her head, and with a great sound of relief, she cracks open a can and says "How very careless of her. What an oversight."

    'So, go ahead and try to stop me!'

    "Oh my gosh Norton has a little flying saucer too!"
Foundation Scions     "A machine..? And not some manner of tamed critter? Hm! Well, the craftsmanship to fashion such a thing, and the quantity of material..." Matilda is, frankly, entranced by the glass mech. "La beauté des cendres... there is a pleasant ambiguity to that name, is there not? Er- but, it is most excellent to make your acquaintance!" She's repetitive with that, now. "I, of course, have no plans to be unkind to a friend of a mission team-member, and I do not imagine I would without a very good and justified reason, which would then be something slightly different than not kind, I think? Erm-"

    Matilda reaches out to poke one of the trailing-in-the-air crystals, and giggles at the strange material. "She sure does sparkle!"

    Chiding, right at the last moment before Petra's attack on the ritual-magicians occurs, Matilda murmurs out a half snort-laughed, half fond-embarrassed, "Your French accent needs much work..." It's quite likely Matilda is lying, but it's important for her to chide!

. . .

'So, get ready, and cover your heads. Um, I mean that.'

    Matilda very much does so! She gets down into a squat, hands on top of her silly little straw-hat, right there at the edge of the stage- rubble remnants from the launched cages plinks to the ground, but frankly, the posture is more fortuitous for the immediate gut-twisting lurch of the hidden rockets! "Tch, aie, aie- a levitation array? But where, I did not sense anything of the likes-" Matilda hasn't actually seen the rockets! Whoops! And the tell-tale noise of them is, not exactly something the bookish little goober would actually recognize, or look over the side to see the exhaust plumes. She hops up to her feet, immediately pulling out her unweildly orbuculum from its carry-case, and-

    With the ka-thunk of Petra's (other, less pretty) egg-mech-saucer (that's kind of breakfasty all together) colliding, Matilda wobbles, trying to find some compromise between the weird center of balance problems holding a giant rock bowling ball creates!

'So, go ahead and try to stop me!'

"Oh-kay! I- I will do just that!" Matilda takes a big breath to enunciate an incantation clearly- Foundation standard, Latin-and-English, "Ventus Gale!" 'Wind windwindstorm', pretty much? The air around Petra's antigravity mech gets proportionately more battersome than the rising-altitude air is prone! That's literally all she has time for before the spinning laser sweeps around- panicked, holding her orb in her arms, she hops, once- and with the wind as a little bit of a distraction, starts to stuff the orbuculum enough into its bag to carry under an arm- jumps again, "Merde!", and, light on her feet, starts to nervously rush closer to the position the saucer-mech hovers by!

    "Ms. Petra! It is," Hop, "Most un-professional to keep such plans as this," Jump, stumble, breath-catch and jump again, "Un-said, during the familiarity and cameraderie of, an, 'American Western Road-Trip! I find it a bit rude! Surely, discussion of plans could have prior occurred! But-" Bunny-hop, "Thank you very much for ensuring the previous ritual was dis-continued! That is most-" Jump! It's getting faster! "Helpful!" Hop! "Indeed!"

    Sure, actual discussion wouldn't result in this motive being allowed to move forward, Matilda knows that- but it's a little bit sad to only find out thanks to the Prophecy!
Foundation Scions . . .

    On the ground, Mesmer Jr. looks incredibly cross, staring up at the escaping monument. Not because it's the mission, she couldn't care less- but because it's absurd, and something she hadn't predicted, and something that shouldn't be happening, and-

    "Oh. I'm not the only survivor." Mesmer stares kind of through Lilian, as she watches the stage rocketing upwards, similarly not part of the whole deal. It's fucking unhinged of her to imply everyone up there is a lost-cause disaster victim. What the hell. She's had hours in the car-ride to spend mostly asleep, so it's not that causing her to ramble incoherently, she's out of excuses, frankly.

    "Are you having yourself a vacation?" She's so jealous of the lawn chair.
Petra Soroka     The boss platform you've been placed on is as follows: A roughly circular chunk of ground, surrounding the monument that until recently lay in Belle Fourche, is rocketing up into the air, quickly passing the stadium seating's height, and then watching the rest of the surrounding landscape slowly fold away underneath. Seven birdcages with wizards or United States senators inside mark the edges of it, each one spewing a trail of shimmery propulsion heat and sustaining the antigravity of the arena. Off the side of it is Petra's silly little Eggman-style saucer, which is attacking you with lasers and stuff! Probably the fight is over when this thing exits the atmosphere, because you'll have to leave!

"I thought you were along for, you know, putting all this stuff back where it belongs?"

    "I mean, who *cares* though! You know? What's the *point*? Undoing it all and then proudly walking away secure in the knowledge that literally nothing's different?" Out of the top of Petra's Egg-Saucer, a panel slides open to reveal a laser cannon on a swiveling turret. It charges up with a glow and then fires, releasing a... very slow-moving beam of energy that pretty clearly broadcasts where it'll end up. You still have to dodge it, though! And jump!

    "There's a whole ritual going on! It's ninety percent of the way done! Can't you think of anything better to do with it? 'Cause I sure can!" Oh no! Petra is going to spread America into *space*!

"W-wait! Aren't you going to say what your actual plot is?"

    "Iiiiiiiiii'm gonna blow it up!" Oh, phew. No she isn't. "If completing the ritual inside the center of the U.S. would use everyone's collective braindead fucking jingoism to fuel expanding its borders, I figure that taking it out of the U.S. and then completely annihilating it will do the opposite!"

    It does seem to be straining the environment around them, though. Like fabric being pinched towards a point, pulling the center of the United States *upwards* makes faint ripples appear in the expanding landscape below them, and uncomfortable creaking noises in the sky. "And, you know, fuck 'em, right?"

    The senator who instigated this whole thing is *right* here on the platform in his silly little cage. Petra gestures at him derisively. While she talks, Madeleine's arrow flies into the track that the laser is spinning on, causing it to lock up in place and sparing Regulus a jump. Instead, a cannon chute opens up in the front, and begins to fire bom-omb-esque toddling ratbots onto the arena. About the size of a dog and cartoonishly-shaped, the rat robots waddle around while making a sizzling noise trying to get close to you and then explode! If you hit them they flip upside down, though.

    "Like, seriously, no joke. Everyone in the state would be better off if this guy was torn limb from limb by an angry mob. But I don't want to argue that I'm right! I want you to try and *stop* me!"
Petra Soroka "We're supposed to keep Lilian in a good mood today remember...!"

    Petra hammers her big red laser-firing-button inside the cockpit several times, sending a cluster of slightly staggered laser-cannon shots at Regulus to make her run around like a headless chicken while rat-bombs chase after her. "Don't worry! Making sure Lilian's in a good mood is always my highest priority!"

    Out of the side of the ship, another panel opens up, revealing a giant cartoonish robot arm. It reaches underneath the arena, attempting to grab Ozhira with its big round fingers, and then balls up into a fist to smash down in the center of the platform, cracking the monument. Correspondingly, there's a shudder in the atmosphere around them, but the ominous peels of thunder aren't any louder than usual.

"I find it a bit rude! Surely, discussion of plans could have prior occurred!"

    Petra hesitates inside of her cockpit, repositioning Norton-saucer to put him in her lap. "... Well I'm not gonna apologize, because I'm doing supervillainy right now. I studied under the greatest supervillain in the sector, you know! But, like, there's a specific reason for all this, including not telling."

    "You know supervillainy, right? From fucking, cartoons and comics and stuff. It's a *narrative construct*, that's there to provide conflict that doesn't really have any stakes. As long as no one's life is on the line, I think it's practically *relaxing*, and I've gotten kind of sick of people's lives being on the line lately. So, fight me, and if you're upset at me, work it out by hitting me, and then-- okay, for real, and then once we get too high, grab onto one of those cages, or else you'll suffocate."
Lilian Rook     'Oh. I'm not the only survivor.'

    "Wild. That's the literal opposite of how it should go." Lilian murmurs without really thinking about it. Her attention is glued to the television, dispelling one gauntlet into fluid black particulate again so as to be able to unwrap a snack bar and set her drink into a cupholder. "Oh goodness, look at Bouanich go. Her rapport and attitude woulds core an A plus in my sim--"

    She double takes back at Mesmer right about then.

    'Are you having yourself a vacation?'

    "You said it yourself. If I herniate or eviscerate . . ."

    Lilian turns back to the television, trying to not acknowledge how pathetic it is that she still remembers the exact mutterings from two days ago, uttered about thirty minutes before she was blitzed out of her mind. "What do you expect me to do? Climb a ladder?"
Ozhira > "Like, seriously, no joke. Everyone in the state would be better off if this guy was torn limb from limb by an angry mob."

    The mass of toothy flesh on the platform underside chomps on the robot hand when grabbed. They are mostly torn free, leaving only a heinous crimson residue at the anchor points. Similarly, when the biomass is used to smash into their other self and crumple the dinosaur shape, the robot hand doesn't come away entirely clean. Tendrils, anchored with pseudopods, cling to the fist as it retracts.

> "But I don't want to argue that I'm right! I want you to try and *stop* me!"

    Ozhira does two things.

    Firstly, they separate again. The tendrils clinging to the fist all cut off at their roots, wrapping around the robot arm. Secondly, the main biomass sinks down into the monument again through the cracks created from their own impact. They clearly have no intention of arguing Right or Wrong here. Fortunately this means that the hideous mass of writhing crimson nightmare flesh is rapidly Gone, save the pulsating tumors clinging to the Petrasaucer's manipulators.

    Those tendrils climb up the arm past the elbow, coming together into a singular, secondary Ozhira blob-entity about the size of a football with just one mouth and just enough eyes to count on one hand. Letting out a tinny version of the full-sized Beast's characteristic rumbling growl, this smaller version of the creature slips into the machine through the same panel the arm extruded from.

    Well, that probably isn't good.
Madeleine Cadrasteia     "If completing the ritual inside the center of the U.S. would use everyone's collective braindead fucking jingoism to fuel expanding its borders, I figure that taking it out of the U.S. and then completely annihilating it will do the opposite!"

    "You're- what!? You have to be joking! You know this continent is more than just a bunch of stupid humans, right?" Madeleine gestures expansively at the rapidly dwindling landscape below. "There's animals, and rivers, and mountains, and trees, and-"

    As long as no one's life is on the line, I think it's practically *relaxing*, and I've gotten kind of sick of people's lives being on the line lately. So, fight me, and if you're upset at me, work it out by hitting me

    "That-" Maddie's reflexive objection falters. "...Souuuuunds alright actually. If that's what we're doing, then I'll fight you!" Her voice builds to a fiery declaration. " For the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky, I'll fight you!"

    Bomb-ratbots are deployed! Madeleine doesn't really catch on that they're going to explode until one of them *does*, bowling her over briefly. When she recovers her footing she beelines for another, more freshly-deployed ratbot. Her bow transforms into a spear as she kicks the contraption twice, once to flip it over and again to bounce it into the air like a soccer ball. With a two-handed swing of her spear, she bats it at the cockpit of Petra's egg-saucer, just in time for it to explode against the protective glass!
Ivy Carrow     Ivy spends some time trying to shoot at the interior of a laser canon as it swept over her, to see if she could break it--whether she did any damage, it certainly didn't break RIGHT AWAY, burning across her body before she couldpull her cloak over herself. The burn hadn't done half of what it COULD to her, but, after all, she was only human.

    "Haha!" Her laugh was pained, but not dishonest. "No stakes! No lives! Like it's a game!"

    Her sword would just chip on the metal of the the saucer's hull. Her blood wouldn't be able to properly curse it. Her bullets might be able to do something--if she hit somethign sensitive--but there was no real glowing red spot--except the lasers, and those had proven themselves dangerous--

    It was Maddie's move that sparked an idea. "That's IT!" She half shouted, falling down on one knee, raising her sidearm--and taking shot at the ratbots, the blow sending them scrambling backward over themselves, wiggling on their back.

    Ivy waved her hand, and suddenly, underneath their little bodies, red tears opened up--and the robots fell right through them--only to reappear above Petra's saucer, plummeting down.
Regulus ''Iiiiiiiiiiiii'm gonna blow it up!''

Regulus hops again. 2 jumps left. She listens to Petra's careful explanation. Is he goal to make the US small? The United Smalls Of America?? "Oh that's... Is that even bad?" Regulus stops for a second and would almost need to jump again in a hurry but Madeleine spares her from having to go down to one jumps! That's a close one...

''But I don't want to argue that I'm right! I want you to try and *stop* me!''

"Okay I will!" Regulus shouts back. "But I want you to know I'm not doing it for America, I'm doing it because you're shooting lasers at me and forcing me to jump!"

She yelps and starts running from the lasers as rat bombs come chasing after her as well. Fortunately this all necessitates the same dodge pattern of running around like a headless chicken, which Regulus does. She doesn't even think to go invisible to dodge them because--

''I've gotten sick of people's lives being on the line''

"Yeah I agree, people are dying too much! Or turning into goo too much!"

But it's hard for her to counterattack in this scenario because she has to keep running and she's running out of breath.

BUT THEN APPLE TO THE RESCUE! The little apple with the tiny arms floats up, a parachute on his back! He floats over to one of the rat bombs and tosses it into Regulus's waiting hands.

"Captain! Throw the bomb!"

"R-right!" Regulus shouts back before rearing back and throwing the bomb with all her might.

The wind catches the rat bomb and sends the bomb flying behind her where it detonates harmlessly in the air.

"...Better idea!" Regulus runs and picks up a ratbomb and chucks it to APPLe. "You drop the ratbomb!"

"Aye aye, Captain!" And then the First Mate floats over to the Petramachine and drops the ratbomb at it!
Foundation Scions 'Undoing it all and then proudly walking away secure in the knowledge that literally nothing's different?'

    "I," Hop, "Remind you that that, is the stated, described mission-statement, of returning-" Jump, "Stolen things to where they first came from! It is, er, perhaps silly," Jump again, "And I cannot see how the circumstances would not come to pass again-" She tries to go low- realizes she can't, and frantically jumps, unsteadied, abandoning her cute straw hat to get a little laser-burn through it, "Aie- but, but that is what metric determines a job well-done!"

    Matilda's here because it's her job! If her job isn't done right, she looks bad on the end-report! That's her whole motivation right now! Really!

'Iiiiiiiiii'm gonna blow it up!'

    With the new, broadcasted but somewhat scarier laser, Matilda's routine motions take a lot more switching up! It has her talking faster, to boot- "Erm- I suppose that is, actually, a very likely permanent solution to the matter of thieving opportunists-! And, ah, would as cleanly stop such reoccurrences of unsanctioned geographic ritualwork, amongst other things, and, it is quite a dull monument... But! Please cease!"

'I want you to try and *stop* me!'

    "Ahem! I will do more than try-!" Matilda, as she's chased by a (it's charmingly cartoonish, really!) bomb-laden ratbot, frantically swings the still-bagged orbuculum she's carrying, as a not-very-good and quite-fragile little bludgeon, to bonk the funny bot on the head! The fact that they flip over like that when bonked is a surprise, it's an action she picked as she keeps trying to navigate towards- well, what, actually, is it that she keeps moving in the direction of?

    She lets out a big cheer when Madeleine's arrow freezes up the jump-rope laser- only after she hops to the expected rhythm, and the beam doesn't pass underneath her, resulting in a little stumble and an out-of-place flare-up of disappointment. It's fine, she still has to dodge the other laser, and-

    Quickly turns around, as the big robot arm swings, before it's even hit the arena with the platform-shaking impact. Orbuculum secured, and shopping bag now the inventory-slot of her focus, the eager arcanist runs (no more jump rope!) over to it, and grabs onto the framework siding of the robo-arm, right near its wrist, clutching for dear life.

'... Well I'm not gonna apologize, because I'm doing supervillainy right now.'

    "Yes, I gathered such! I- I knew such would come to pass, Ms. Petra! Even so! I am upset, a little, and you should know that I too will not be apologizing, most probably!"

    "So! Watch, and learn!"

    As the arm moves, it's a little hard to tell what Matilda is actually going for- it's a bad place to be, really, liable to get tossed off in a too-jerky motion, but it's also the furthest reach anything on the platform has to getting over to Petra's saucer. At what would otherwise look to be a suicidal time to let go of the arm, as it swings, Matilda lets go, (and screams as she moves in the hoped-for trajectory, because it's scary!) and lands with a shaky handhold onto the saucer itself. Bug-spray fished out from her bag, frantically, and the big laser cannon on the top of the thing, Matilda spares a tiny moment to tauntingly stick her tongue out at Petra, and unleash a Long spray of lens-corroding DEET right at Petra's main weapon.

. . .

    In the early hours of the morning, visions, abstracted, of these events played out before her- a held card, albeit not itself enough to end an engagement, most certainly looked to be a way to count coup.

. . .

    None of her omens had foretold a way for her to get down safely, afterwards. Sorry! She doesn't have that kind of divinatory resolution! Good luck, Matilda!
Foundation Scions 'You said it yourself. If I herniate or eviscerate,'

    "No, you're correct. That's ideal to avoid." Mesmer wrinkles up her nose, like she's so often doing. "But that didn't stop you from undergoing combat-training overnight, or anything else, so it's hardly as if you've been following rational precautions. Are the wounds still as ragged as before? It's concerning, and, as you've finally taken to upholding that sentiment, don't let me see you stand from that ridiculous beach chair."

    Mesmer sighs, and taps her foot- annoyed, immediately after, that dirt and dust are getting on her shoes. "Is it entertaining to watch the stragglers squabble up there? I can't imagine so." She's looking over at the TV too.

'What do you expect me to do? Climb a ladder?'

    "No, of course not. Risk of evisceration, obviously." Now Mesmer's worried she's getting dust and dirt on her gloves. "Do you need fresh bandages? I have plenty, and I'd rather not be held responsible for if you ever decide to develop gangrene. Oh. But, no pain medications, of course."
Petra Soroka "You know this continent is more than just a bunch of stupid humans, right?"

    "It's borders! Borders!!!! The United States doesn't own those fucking birds!"

    Petra's huffiness is mostly because she's in a fight! And fighting makes her adrenaline rush! Smugly, she lean her elbow on her robot console inside the cockpit, while the arena continues to rocket upwards. "Anyways, you know, I might not know anything about magic, but I *am* a *really* good psychic. I'm pretty sure my psychic potential was the highest they'd ever seen, or at least, like, impressive. This might be a magic ritual, but the medium for it is still the collective psychological belief in a specific vision of society and in-group schemae."

    Petra's saucer gratifyingly rocks back and forth with scorch marks on it when Madeleine and Ivy's ratbomb return fire hits, but the glass cockpit holds firm! "So what I mean is, I can blow it up *really* well!"

    As APPLe's dropped ratbomb hits her too, the damage begins to really rack up on the mech. Little puffs of steam come out of seams in the saucer paneling, there's a crack down the cockpit glass, though it's still secure, and scorch marks cover its surface. Knowing what Ozhira is, Petra tries to flex the fingers of the big robot hand and scrape it against the monument, but it's like trying to shake glue off of your fingers, while also controlling those fingers via a joystick.

"Stolen things to where they first came from!"

    Petra is just so delighted to see Matilda jumping up and down with her giant crystal ball in hand. Here inside her cockpit, she doesn't feel the cold air rushing by like everyone else does, and all she has to deal with is the occasional shaking and veil of smoke that comes from having her own bombs launched at her, so she feels a lot like this is some kind of arcade game with the blorbos of her friends. She hasn't done this particular method of robot-boss-fighting before, though it's Eggman's favorite, and she thinks she prefers being more exposed to the elements, but it's a lot of fun to watch Matilda scramble around.

    "Well, see, that's the thing about mission statements! Heroism in general! It's taken for granted a lot, you know, that people are owed praise and moral superiority for doing the right thing, when it's really just the first thing that came to mind! Heroes are heroes by fucking *default* out here among Elites, you might not know all that yet. So if this is really the best course of action, then it'll be *me* that breaks and gives up, because you all fought for it and wanted to fight for it."
Petra Soroka "But I want you to know I'm not doing it for America, I'm doing it because you're shooting lasers at me and forcing me to jump!"

    "Yeah! That's *why* I'm shooting lasers at you!!! And what would you even know, anyways! You weren't even there for all the times that it's been the entire world on the line!"

    Petra moves to smash her laser-shooting button several more times, because she expects Lilian to find it funny when Regulus has to run around in circles while lasers shoot her in the butt and she bounces up and down with smoke coming out of her going 'yahahahooo!', but then the scene briefly backtracks to concurrently occuring events! Petra lost sight of Matilda when she clambered onto the big hand, until, CLANG, she lands right behind Petra's own cockpit. The surface of it is sloped, as appropriate for an egg or perhaps a saucer, but when she balances enough to stand up despite the gusts of wind and sprays into the muzzle of the mounted laser cannon, the lens melts and quickly becomes opaque.

    So when Petra smashes the laser-shooting button, the opaque lens gets superheated by several consecutive energy beams being absorbed, and the entire laser cannon begins to shake. "Ah--!!! You!!! Clever!! What the fuck! Ahahahahaha!"

    In slight panic mode, Petra quickly wheels the big hand all the way back around, nabbing Matilda and lightly throwing her back onto the platform. This is, partially, to get her away from the ensuing explosion that envelops the upper half of the saucer, but also it's her mechanic to prevent people from staying on top of the mech for multiple chained attacks. If she doesn't hop upright quickly, she might have one of those ratbombs trundle on top of her!

    Ozhira's mechanic for not being allowed to stay on the mech for multiple attacks is shockingly similar. Inside the chamber where the arm attaches to the internal machinery of the robot, there's a normal-sized ratbot floating and waiting. A proportionally-smaller panel opens up in the top of the ratbot, and a proportionally-smaller giant robot hand reaches out of it to try and grapple Ozhira and throw them back out.

    Up top, with now two of her four weapons disabled, Petra unveils the final tool at the Egg-saucer's disposal. A bomb turret pops up, aimed upwards, rather than towards any of them, and starts firing patterns of explosives up above the arena. As they fall, and as the arena gains more and more height to be miles off the ground, they make patterns to dodge on the arena, in combination with still having to dodge ratbombs and the giant grabbing hand.
Ivy Carrow     Another jump, another roll, and series of shots--Ivy can feel herself flagging. Matilda finally breaks through and takes out more of her weapons. "Excellent work!" She said, breathing hard. "A little further, and we'll have this." It's a optimistic estimate, but still! One did not simply GIVE UP!

    Once it was finally taken down, Ivy allowed herself a moment to relax, panting. Catch her breath. Surely she had--

    The bomb turret raised from the back.

    "...Haha!"

    Ivy raised her hands over her head, and with a CLAP, another rift opened up above her head! Bombs streaked through in a stream, only to reappear above the saucer again! Some of them slipped through--

    BOOM! Explosions rocked all around Ivy. Conciousness slipped away from her, and she found herself pressed back. With a ragged cough, without the energy for words, and the stars fading into view, she offered Petra a rough salute, and grabbed hold of a cage.
Madeleine Cadrasteia     Madeleine never was very good suited for 'bullet hell'. That's what she'll tell herself, sorely, after this is through. When the heavy artillery comes out, she tries to use her decoy technique - but 'actually, I was over here!' doesn't mean much when 'over here' is *also* in a blast zone. Sent sprawling in the dirt, Madeleine collapses in a cloud of dust.

    Oh, right. Grab hold of a cage, Petra said. No sense in getting exploded *again*. Shakily picking up her spear, Maddie grumbles something about the environment and does her best remaining running-jump to clear the gap to one of the cages. Nothing left but to watch the fireworks.
Lilian Rook     'But that didn't stop you from undergoing combat-training overnight, or anything else, so it's hardly as if you've been following rational precautions.'

    "I'd really rather prefer you didn't try to speak to me about 'irrationality' simply because you don't understand what's going on." Lilian says. 'Snaps', perhaps, but on such a gentle end for her usual that Petra's vastly upgraded quality of hero television (better heroes included) must be doing a lot. That, or the drug-like euphoria of shirking what would otherwise be a hefty obligation, pre-committed; something everyone else gets to do but her. "As far as pertains to combat training and readiness, I am the expert in the field and you are the amateur. Though you'll have to forgive me for leaving off my sources, I assure you that the present situation is one far more demanding than routine exercise."

    'as you've finally taken to upholding that sentiment, don't let me see you stand from that ridiculous beach chair.'

    "Oh? And what'll happen if I do?" She doesn't turn her head. It's a flash of something inscrutable. One that she holds down until it passes, quickly.

    'Is it entertaining to watch the stragglers squabble up there? I can't imagine so'

    "It's certainly more entertaining than watch these people crush beer cans and chant the national anthem, isn't it?" Lilian says. "Do you believe that everything everyone chooses to do is exactly what they want? Do you never imagine that the people around you are simply attempting to make the most of a situation?"

    'Do you need fresh bandages?'

    "What?"

    Now her attention is torn away from the dramatic boss clash. Lilian completes the entire tip-back and swallow of her drink without tearing her eyes off Mesmer, nor blinking. The way she's looking at her could charitably be construed as someone wondering why a cat they've never seen before is bringing her a dead bird at her doorstep. Uncharitably, one could construe her as the cat, confused about why she's allowed inside. "I'm not going to develop gangrene." she says, but only as a holding pattern. "This sort of thing just happens. It's not worth harassing a medic over."

    As soon as she's said the words, though, Lilian has already made the situation as obvious to any bystander as it'd only just become in her mind: Mesmer has no role here; nothing to do except stand anxiously in front of teeming crowd of psycho patriots 'not far enough' away and without any guarantee that Lilian would do anything if they got closer. Leaving her to stand there and seethe apart is as good as exiling her from the city gates, in terms of how any ordinary person would see it. And here she is opportunistically sampling from a cooler.

    "Fine. If you're that anal about it." she says, narrowly instead of 'if you need something to do'. Changing handedness on her drink, Lilian closes the cooler and throws her folded cardigan over it, hypothetically making a seat much cleaner than the ground, her open bag propped against side. Removing the tape from one end of the bandage, she reluctantly unravels two alternating layers of mostly clean material, revealing the recently bloodied skin underneath.

    God knows what she did to it. The wounds are highly irregular and yet all very shallow. They're densest around her fingertips and most sparse above her wrist, but form so little pattern they may as well just be crimson static. It's hard to say whether they would have bled a lot or a little. Surely they must hurt quite a bit, but she doesn't seem to show it; especially not compared to the bullet wounds. They've been treated once already, it appears, with antibiotic film still plastered over her hand to midway up her forearm, but her nails haven't been repainted; the polish is still bizarrely half-stripped, as if flayed away by heat, saved only by a layer of something chemical-smelling between two coats.

    "Help yourself to a drink for all I care. It's all canned."
Regulus ''That's *why* I'm shooting lasers at you!!!''

"Well I don't care for it!" Regulus shouts back. "And what do you mean the entire world on the line??"

She isn't quite cartoonish enough to go 'yahahahooo!' but she does jump one more time over a laser while also trying to avoid explosions.

Regulus can jump over 0 more lasers

"Hahh...h-hold on a second, my leg...cramping... just hold off on the lasers for a second...! so I can catch my breath!"

BUT SUCH PLEAS ARE IN VAIN. Regulus tries to leap over the laser the next time around but she can't quite clear the hurdle due to YEARS OF NEGLECTING HER BODY in favor of THE LURE OF DELICIOUS MEATS AND SODA POP She is blasted clear off of the platform.

She screams like a maniac but fortunately APPLe abandons the fight and swoops down, catching Regulus by one of her flailing arms and pulling the cord on the parachute. It POOFS open and they gradually float back down to earth.

"You haven't seen the last of me, Petra! I mean actually are you driving back with us or are you going on your own? Don't forget to e-mail me I want to talk shooooopppp..."

Somehow she does the Team Rocket Blasting Off Again star flash thing while falling DOWN to earth rather than back up to the sky.
Ozhira     The smaller Beast squeezing inside the Petrasaucer is confronted with a smaller Ratsaucer with a similar mechanical hand fully intent on throwing them out of the machine. After some wrestling and thrashing and a good amount of biting, the football-sized creature is hurled out-- at which point it harpoons into the rock and swings back to solid (floating) ground.

    The bulk of Ozhira's biomass erupts as tentacles from the cracks in the stone, thrashing against the Petrasaucer's giant robot arm or pounding on the hull when the opportunity presents itself. These are somewhat contained by the rain of bombs, though, blasting chunks of crimson nightmare-flesh away from the root mass. They always slither back in, though.

    It takes an uncomfortably long time for Ozhira's will to fight to wear out, but they do eventually run out of steam. The tendrils slow and stop coming back as quickly-- eventually they stop coming back at all. Once the creature has fully given in, it sluices out of the cracks in the stone and envelops one of the cages like a nightmare umbrella.

    It's just red on the outside. Unfortunately for Senator Brendan Taylor (R-Utah), the *inside* is completely lined with eyes and teeth and more than a little nasty red slime.
Foundation Scions 'So if this is really the best course of action, then it'll be *me* that breaks and gives up, because you all fought for it and wanted to fight for it.'

    "Well- erm, the readings were, more than a little unclear on what the 'best' outcome was to be, but-! But, Ms. Petra, I'm under indefinite review for a position as a field investigator! A successful by-the-books mission, that is the most important thing at stake right now!" She's saying that so determinedly, it's as adorable as it is kind of inherently stupid to double-down on the conviction of 'I want a job really bad'.

    "S-so, clearly, at the end of this, you will see how right I am, of-course! En garde, Ms. Petra!" She doesn't have a sword, but it feels right to say.

. . .

'Ah--!!! You!!! Clever!! What the fuck! Ahahahahaha!'

    Adrenaline-shaky, Matilda follows that up with a "The great Matilda Bouanich is nothing but exemplary in clevernAHH PUT ME DOWN! DÉPÊCHE-TOI! Un-hand meeee-!"

    She's scooped up like a small animal, fearful and wiggly in the mechanical arm's grasp, and the moment it let goes, her thoughts swing wildly from the fact that Petra did let her down, and then to the fact that she got thrown. Aah!!!

    Matilda doesn't stick the landing, weird instinct to actually shield the giant bowling ball she's holding, but she's at least decently-quick, albeit wobbly, stands up to stumble out of the way of a charging rat-bomb, and unceremoniously fall on her butt in the ensuing little shockwave of particle effects. Dazed, sore, it's really unfair to make her have to dodge bullet-hell patterns after all of that! She's trying, but it's getting more and more intense! Steps are slow, lugging that silly orb is hard-

    And they're so, so high up- air growing thin makes it harder for her (despite being tied for highest-scoring at athletics in her old class) to catch her winded breaths, from the climb and the landing. It's more action than she can take, truly!

    It's not as Petra's advice to, once it gets high enough up, hop onto the rocket-cages, is lost on her- but with slow movements, and a lack of focus, it feels like, to Matilda Bouanich, that each time she tries to make it to one, the launched-out bomb patterns get in the way, or there's a ratbot to meekly bop on the head, or someone else just grabbed it, and started their descent. It's frustrating, and she's trying-

    But it leaves her somewhat stranded up there on the stage, worn out and overextended.

    "Allez, Mathilde, allez..."
Petra Soroka "Hahh...h-hold on a second, my leg...cramping... just hold off on the lasers for a second...!"

    "Oh my god, you're kidding!" Petra snickers with just enough of a mean edge to it that it comes across as friendly joking rather than real frustration. "Oh, Regulus, I'm so sorry! I didn't take into account your *advanced age*! Bill me for the wheelchair if I forced you to splinter one of your brittle old bones."

"A successful by-the-books mission, that is the most important thing at stake right now!"

    "Ah," Petra winces juuuust a little bit, inside her cockpit. "Well, I'll put in a good word for you."

But, despite all their valiant efforts, it's too little too late. At this altitude, the temperature begins to plummet past what you can stand, and all this running around is making oxygen too scarce to keep going. Accelerating more and more, the hazy blue-black sky is expanding into a full hemisphere overhead, above the clouds. With everyone stumbling to a halt from the continual bombardment of bombs and fists, Petra finally pulls the lever inside her cockpit that retracts the windshield, and then clambers out on top of the Egg-saucer.

    Squinting her eyes against the cold and wind, she hurries across the surface of the robot with much better balance than Matilda did, and then hops onto the arena with everyone else. Cupping her hand around her mouth and using her other arm to tuck Norton into her armpit, she shouts around at the Elites. "I'm *so* not kidding about grabbing onto a cage, by the way! I won't be responsible if you don't! It's on camera that I'm saying this!"

    Then, the pieces of the Beauty of Ash that were scattered around in the cages and along the platform to nullify the ritual start to shiver again. Shattering apart to spill through the bars of the cages, only to flood towards Petra and reform around her, the Beauty of Ash comes back into its full shape on the cracked center of the monument. Each of the cages, as she promised, starts to slow their rocketing and break off from the central mass, wizard or United States senator still contained inside, maintaining just enough thrust to keep their descent back down to Earth safely slow. This also gives some awkward face to face time with the wizards whose ritual got completely ruined.

    The Beauty of Ash lands on all fours, legs scraping four shallow grooves in the stone like fingernails through clay. The blur of Petra's vague shape and color is visible inside its chest, but it's the mech's head and body that moves around lifelike, swiveling to see Matilda collapsed and exhausted. It darts towards her, impossibly light on the ground, and hooks the point of its snout-like head through the back of Matilda's shirt to scoop her up.
Petra Soroka     With Matilda dangling from the snout of the Beauty of Ash like a puppy held by its scruff, the mech dives off the edge of the arena. It continues upwards, shooting higher and higher until it's a dot even this high in the sky, with the battered Egg-saucer flying up along with it. Floating in the air while everyone else falls, the Beauty of Ash shifts Matilda into its sharp, handless arms without cutting her, carefully maneuvering her along facets and in its joints instead of placing any angles where they could slice through her. Its face turns upwards, singular glowing gold eye locked on the receding monument, and the spikes on its back begin to accumulate light inside of them.

    Originating from a point in the air between its shoulders, a dot of pure white, searing and blank like the tinnitus after a flashbang, forms, and then streaks in silent cannonfire upwards. It hits the underside of the arena and explodes, equally soundless, to envelop the monument in pearlescent glass. A shockwave of gut-dropping emptiness without motion hits seconds later, and then continues past everyone to wash across the earth. The thunder, where it was before from the motion of the ritual monument, stops, and for a sickening second, it's replaced with a universal, sourceless squealing, pure audible tension and brittleness like trying to clench your teeth so hard that they shatter. Then the Eggsaucer detonates, and the monument fractures like the glass it is, leaving the collective belief in the existence of the United States' borders to vaporize in space.

    In the now placid and quiet Southwest desert below, snowflakes of shattered iridescent glass drift down from invisible fractures in the sky. It's prickly, but not painful, and there's an odd dissociative buzzing sensation in the corner of your mind when it starts to pile up on your skin. This is... sort of like hardlight asbestos, but hopefully it'll just dissipate or something, given the quantum observation based qualities of the Beauty of Ash's construction. The horizon gradually slides back into place, clouds rubberband into shape, and everything seems... perfectly fine?

    The people in the stands all look confused and uncertain why they're even here. Some of them look at the flags in their hands and just drop them in disinterest, while others wander off to leave. Probably, whatever psychic phenomena just happened to them would be classified as an apocalyptic psychohazard by Flamel, but everything seems to be returning to normal besides that.

    After all of the cages have touched down, and the (still-imprisoned) ne'er-do-wells are looking equally confused and disturbed themselves, the Beauty of Ash follows. It lightly touches down, first on two legs then lowering to four as Matilda is laid down on the dirt beneath it. It circles her once, like it's sniffing for wounds, and then raises its head to check everyone else.

    Stepping over to where Lilian is, the mech crouches down and tilts its head to look at her, hindlegs still raised. Telepathically broadcast, it communicates, <Wanna get out of here?>
Madeleine Cadrasteia     The cage Madeleine clings to begins its descent, but Maddie's eyes are locked skyward. If Petra's trying to symbolically and perhaps literally destroy the United States, Madeleine wants to know whether it actually works and if so, *how*. The center of the nation turns to glass and is shattered into dust, and in that moment even Madeleine, removed as her spirit is from the world, feels the detonation's effects. The frown on her face softens. Even if she didn't much care for America-the-nation (this one specifically), she did still think it was *real* - until a moment ago, when that stopped being true. She clears her throat and looks at the equally befuddled wizard in the cage. "You're still in trouble, you know."

    Below, the land shifts, contracting like one of those plastic sphere toys. Strange canyons and unfamiliar rivers fold under the fields and mountains of a more recognizeable American Southwest. There is a great rushing of wind above, as the atmosphere realigns itself. The sun shines from only one place in the sky, like it should.

    After touchdown, most of the wizards are confused or even distraught at the damage they very nearly did to the landscape (or did do, and very nearly made permanent). But for one man this will not, nay, MUST not stand. "I was going to be so RICH!" babbles the (former?) senator. "So much real estate, lost..." He breaks down in tears, shaking the walls of his cage. Even if he doesn't care about his (again, former?) nation, he still cares about *money*. "Whatever, dude," saith Madeleine.

    The huntress walks over to the other cage-riding Elites. "Well, she won," Madeleine says, "Whatever that means. I'm heading back to the van. Somebody find us a warpgate."
Ozhira     Ozhira's chosen cage breaks off, slows, and descends. The beast's attention remains alarmingly fixated on the politician inside, gnawing on the bars, staring at him with countless quivering eyes during the entire descent. Only once the cage has landed does the creature recede; sliding off and sidelong in a fluid movement that also sees Ozhira regaining the shape of their human disguise.

> "I was going to be so RICH! So much real estate, lost..."

    Their eyes remain fixed on the senator, "You are rich. In nutrients. Would you join our song? It does not matter. We-- do not want your voice."

    Given he just witnessed what they really are, that isn't a particularly appealing offer on the worst of days. Ozhira eventually turns from him to rejoin Madeleine.

    "We think we did well. It was-- a good test, for us."
Foundation Scions 'Oh? And what'll happen if I do?'

    "Necessary medical intervention, as per an in-field guidelines." What does she mean.

'I'm not going to develop gangrene.'

    "Good for you. Do you need a congratulatory sticker? This medical kit has a 'I didn't cry' sticker, and one of a shark."

'This sort of thing just happens.'

    "No, it doesn't." Mesmer doesn't even know what it is really, yet. "The body has very specific ways in which injuries spontaneously occur- cancerous growth, arterial rupture, cardiac disease. Epidermal injuries, abrasions, contusions- none happen without a source. It's not a matter of worth in 'hassle', as it is a matter of fault, and taking the responsible course of action." That's not really the point at all.

    The closest thing Mesmer's seen to this manner of injury still doesn't map- while irregular and staticky, Lichtenberg figure scaring tends to trace along blood vessels, and is distinctive. Next, seen only in glossy photographs, trace evidence of Storm Syndrome effects replacing veins and arteries with electronic cabling, in early stages, had skin-level evidence as strange as that- but necrotizing blood vessels don't affect the fingernails. Muttering, confused, the first bits of anything diagnostic out of Mesmer's mouth are, "Like rug-burn and radiation,", cutting off with an annoyed sigh.

    "It isn't contagious, is it?" Mesmer's still opening bandage packages- without even asking first, she's re-dressing the wounds instead of just handing over fresh material, obviously, because she wants something to do. It's an easy one, too! Yay... "I don't want to know how you did this to yourself, so don't tell me, and don't tell me what it even is, so long as it can't spread. That's all."

    "If it can-" Mesmer doesn't finish the thought, continuing to unpackage gauze and bandage, and to wrap both- but very clearly, she's holding her breath. 'If it can, get away'? 'If it can, go jump off a cliff'? 'If it can, I'll go jump off a cliff'? Fill in the blanks, Mesmer sure won't be!

'Help yourself to a drink for all I care. It's all canned.'

    Only after she's done and returned to staying more than her height's distance away does she answer. "No, thank you. I've brought water-" She has, this time, no doubt from those specific vending machines, some time before leaving the motel, "And I am, in fact, on the job. I'll be fine without." When you think about it enough, sometimes the hit of superiority in denying something is a suitable replacement for the niceness of having something like a cold drink- when you think about it more, actually, it's not equivalent at all and she's just making horrible calls.
Lilian Rook     'Necessary medical intervention, as per an in-field guidelines.'

    Man. For once, Lilian is in such a specific situation that she just doesn't want to find out what that is.

    'Good for you. Do you need a congratulatory sticker? This medical kit has a 'I didn't cry' sticker, and one of a shark.'

    Lilian settles for "What would you do if I did cry?", opportunistic as can be, evading sincerity at any cost.

    'The body has very specific ways in which injuries spontaneously occur- cancerous growth, arterial rupture, cardiac disease.'

    "I'm not getting any of those either." Lilian says, finding space to scoff, as if grateful for a handhold. "I've even checked." Okay what does that mean? "Would you prefer 'unavoidable' then? There's no fault; it's just something that naturally occurs in the course of doing what you're supposed to." She dares a sideways glance while Mesmer is somewhat distracted eyeing her bizarre injury. "Like you throwing up in the sink on the job. It just happens. Not on its own, but because it can't be helped."

    'Like rug-burn and radiation'

    Lilian presses her lips together and holds her breath. She distinctly dislikes how accurate that guess is. She stares down into her drink.

    'It isn't contagious, is it?'

    "If it is, then the world's about to end." Lilian says, then laughs darkly to herself, slamming back the remainder of the canned drink so she can get it out of her hands, and enjoying a moment of completely unadulterated truth that can still pass as mean-spirited obfuscation. "Pwuh . . . Did I look like I was about to explain anything?" At first, her question is automatically rhetorical, but Lilian blinks and stares at Mesmer again with an aftershock of genuity. "Do people often bombard you with their life stories umprompted?" she asks, in obvious disbelief. "Where I come from, it's considered good manners to not tell a doctor anything they didn't explicitly ask for, and only if it's related to why you're there." That's a total lie.

    'If it can-'

    "It can't."

    She has nothing with which to fill the awkward pause. It feels tense, rather than pleasant, to leave this task to Mesmer. Even if it's something done out of a perverse sense of solidarity with the only thing that Lilian perceives they share, it's not exactly a sequence of actions where they can have small talk. Lilian busies herself with the television, groaning softly at the sudden downturn and making thoughtful sounds at the short-lived reversal, and otherwise tries to ignore Mesmer's existence as much as possible. The fact that she doesn't flinch from pain when prodded through bandages, but suddenly does when incidentally grazed by gloves, probably means nothing.

    Unfortunately, she finishes first. Lilian begins to fill space by saying "Well? Do you expect a--" only to break and sigh in dismay at what she'd just started. "My thanks." comes out as an obligation, now.

    'And I am, in fact, on the job. I'll be fine without.'

    Eager to break her side of the silence, Lilian says "Suit yourself." and habitually puts her empty can right back in the cooler. She picks up her cardigan as if retrieving her rain jacket before heading back out of the office. "Though it looks like you won't be for much longer."
Lilian Rook     She is of course, flawlessly on cue for Petra's arrival, because she timed it in her head. Lilian wanders towards the landing zone of the Beauty of Ash with an absence of fear of being crushed that only comes from having done so many times before, waving not quite at its head, but slightly behind it. She glances down at Matilda, pauses to think, then shakes her head, saying, "The Mesmer will get pissy if I treat her myself." followed by, in much brighter tones. "She's really got potential, doesn't she? Not like the usual new crop we get! I'm really looking forward to when she--"

    <Wanna get out of here?>

    Lilian vaults the Beauty of Ash with a tiny pulse of vertical assist magic, which she could have easily used to chase the platform, and finishes "--'s up and about again!" Of course she doesn't even need to say it. They're done. She filters Mesmer out of her cognitive awareness of reality, and leaves the last thing audible between them as just a faint snatch of "Do you think we could still make California? You and I should talk with her about..."