Scene #9536: APSIONIC FACTOR - 7 Days After Event (7)

Owner	Pose
Flamel Parsons	SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE... To the Acting Director of Project Mystic, Behavior like this is intolerable in any civil society. In my authority as head of investigations of the Psychogate Incident, consider the Parsons Institute of Anomalous Study to be formally dissolved, all materials and organizational structure pending reassignment or shutdown, and the Psychonauts organization itself illegitimate until immediately acting upon the demand to reject the Parsons Institute entirely. You are hereby and formally relieved of the authority which you disdain, Director. The world and its sensible adults have no place for your kind, and incidents like the Psychogate Event only prove that efforts to bring you into that world are a useless squandering of essential resources. No appeal of this decision will be accepted at this time. You can cite 'universal law' to me all you like, but after everything you've studied, you of all people can know most of all that our will can be just as absolute and universal. I've no interest in throwing lifesavers to someone who has chosen to drown in an ocean because he says water is not a cosmic truth. Director Deems, International Psychic Affairs Regulation Bureau
Flamel Parsons	To the Director of the IPAR Bureau, Then name the drops of water, Deems. I've had just about enough of you. The ones hurt here are the ones who stood in the depths of the Parsons Institute and made their choice. Do you know who they are? Or are you just trying to show off who the ocean can drown, scare every psychic straight again? It's your rule that brought us here. Your predecessors set the Astral Separation Standard, and your allies at the Watch, the Foundation, and who knows where else, are the ones who demand the supremacy of the consensus. Everything that Project Mystic's outcome manifested comes from someone with worldly experience in astral and physical matters reconciling your absolute boundary. The Psychonauts will be engaging the Concord directly, for the support you have chosen to withhold. Our organization voluntarily relinquishes accreditation and disavows association with the IPAR. On-site survivors of the Psychogate Incident, including specific members of the Foundation or Watch who engaged in secret audit, will be given the right to make demands for compensation and regulation. External regulatory bodies such as yours will not be accommodated and will no longer be guided through Green Needle Gulch. If you want something from the Psychonauts now, ask the agents who looked Flamel Parsons in the eye. Those names, at least, I expect you know. Expect no further communication. Sincerely, First Head of the Psychonauts, Director of Project Mystic Truman Zanotto
Flamel Parsons	-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UPE-1000-F: Ego, Dissonant Variant Classification: SHD-10, PRS-10 Containment Protocol: Uncontained. Derived from UPE-1000. During cases of severe tension such as high-saturation cognitive dissonance, subconscious-level external alteration, or irreconcilable artificial mental restriction, hazardous breach may occur and must be met with the greatest level of available violence and containment. !!! WARNING !!! UPE-1000-F IS A HOSTILE UPE-1000 VARIANT! READ BEFORE ANY PSYCHONAUTICAL ACTIVITY, AND REMAIN CALM. WE BELIEVE IT IS POSSIBLE TO SURVIVE AND REMAIN SANE. Description: The UPE-1000 mental element occurs in many human-like mentalities, embodying the functional reconciliation of tension between the forces of UPE-999 and UPE-1001 and responsible for primary executive function. As a channel of all lower and upper cognitive processes, UPE-1000 and all variants represent the sum total of psychic force available to any astral unit. All instances of UPE-1000 engaged violently must be treated with both caution and maximum prejudice, to preserve both Psychonaut and subject sanity. If you are reading this documentation, you have been given clearance for, and deployed to, an operation involving a UPE-1000-F instance. This is likely to be the byproduct of dangerous psychic efforts such as sabotage, poorly-formed mind control, mental self-modification, or negative outcomes from artificial mind creation. The core cause cannot be resolved once the 1000-F scenario is underway, dedicate any form of available focus of that type towards minimizing ensuing damage. Any combat-capable operatives deployed to this psychonautry must subdue the UPE-1000-F instance or enable its fulfillment. The UPE-1000-F variant occurs within high-level psychics during scenarios of entirely irreconcilable tension between fundamental subconscious truths encoded in UPE-999 and equally-unbreakable restrictions formed by UPE-1001 activities, which must both be heavily altered by outside material, social, or psychic impulses to prevent tension resolution. UPE-1000-F may be seen as a functional tear in astral space between anachronistic concepts of "id" and "superego". Both conflict and assisting encounters with UPE-1000-F carry severe risk of astral damage and psychohazard. Isolate at Motherlobe Psychoisolation facilities or local equivalents immediately, and unaffected psychic individuals must render immediate post-traumatic aid. ... --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Flamel Parsons	The tall man in the center of all of this, Director Parsons, raises his hands, he grips his guitar. His eyes don't close as he plays, not this time. His chords are agonized and the pulses of Truth that surge through the UPEs around him move in rhythm. Memories from Empathy are flowing into this, in crashing waves. They're accentuated by the lightning that slams into and through the cracks in the mountain, making it clear: The channels of memory are the cleanest, simplest source of 'fuel'. Director Parsons has no Truth inside him, only Truth from others. From Empathy, or from the UPEs around him, that energy flows into him, but none comes from inside him. Find some way to neutralize those core psychic impressions, make an opposite of them, and that'll stop the Truth. Or, find some way to cut the flow to the outside -- restore containment conditions in the Empathy Simulations. That could deprive him of Truth too. Just as easily, one could strike him violently. The massive waves of heat from his Truth cause damage in every direction though, and make incoming projectiles warp and distort. He doesn't hold a single ounce of hostility to those around him, but even still, the lashing heat blasting through the environment sure does. The doubts drawn from the opposition, though, do have hostile intent. Oily creatures of varying levels of humanoid shape form, the Doubts light aflame immediately and rush the opposition to try to bog them down, grip and burn them. Screaming and wailing to stop, to wait, to rethink this, they risk distracting everyone until Parsons can finish. But if killed properly, thrown into the heat, or simply cut down, those opposing Flamel will find their minds lighter, the heat lesser. The structure is starting to collapse, though. Even those who want to support Flamel would want the Parsons Institute -- and the mountain itself -- not to fall down and destroy the Motherlobe completely. Support systems, containment shutters, even stray Parsons Institute staff, might be rallied to stabilize everything. Save lives. Prevent the nightmare associated with this. Flamel's voice sings out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjMvknbnIxs "Pulled off the highway in Missouri," "And lo, our hearts were heavy laden!" "Made for the chapel with some spray-paint," "For all the things we'd held in secret." "Lord, lift up these lifeless bones!" "Light, cascading through the windows!" "All the rainbow's heavy tones!" "He has fixed his sign in the sky!!" "He has raised me from the pit and set me hiiiiiigh!!"
Timekeeper	"We can trust her." At Ahn's indication, Vertin eyes the retreating Psychonautra dubiously, given all they've heard about Petra from various sources. But Ahn's point stands: whatever Flamel's methods may be, every bit of information they've gathered about the project, every manifestation of Flamel's inner fears and feelings, the literal drawings on the wall, they all point to a unified conclusion. Nobody disagrees that the people in question need help, only that this isn't the time, place, or means to do what Flamel's hoping to do. "Can't we take a break? Talk it out? Don't make me blast over your song, maybe if we work together nobody's gotta burn--" Can't we? Even as the towering form of Flamel's ego bombards the Institute with heat and lightning, Vertin still can't help but look at him and see the goal of the Psychoportal project, not just what it's become. The work Flamel's done, to either kill him and decimate the organization, or amount to less than nothing at all, for the crime of not working together, is just too hopeless, isn't it? Vertin sighs, drowned out by a crash of lightning, while taking shelter behind Ahn's brambles. "I see. Then I have a plan, and I dearly hope that it's one that everyone will be able to agree on." While Ahn's barrier still holds, Vertin relays a series of instructions through the radio-- not just calling on her allies in the Watch and Paladins, but those sympathetic to Flamel too. "Everyone! Listen to me! If we work together, then we can all get through this!" "Firstly, nobody has to die or be sacrificed here! Agent Kramer, Agent Crenshaw, work together to use your pyrokinesis to siphon the heat out of Parsons' body and away into the storm! Rufus, Aika, Tamiel, dispatch those anomalies, and use my UPE-494's if they help with distracting them!" "Our goal is to prevent the Truth Phenomenon from reaching a critical mass, collapsing the Motherlobe and releasing Psychoportals into the multiverse. To that end, Schneider, Ahn, and I will be using the amnestic and the mirrors, along with whatever force is necessary, to break the connection that those anomalies are using the funnel power into Parsons." "Lastly, and please, let this be enough for you, Rufus and Crenshaw..." Vertin closes her eyes, taking a breath before continuing. "To the extent that neither of the previous goals are compromised, we ought to do everything in our power to leave the mechanisms of the Psychoportal project intact. Someday, after this has resolved, I would like to advocate for revisiting the project with oversight and input from organizations outside of the Psychonauts, so that the good that was attempted to be done here isn't wasted." "This, right now, is the result of a catastrophic lack of control, but the momentum that led here was created by choices, not inevitability. I don't want to leave this event as one where well-meaning intentions amounted to nothing because of a difficulty in changing course."
Rufus Shinra	> "To the extent that neither of the previous goals are compromised, we ought to do everything in our power to leave the mechanisms of the Psychoportal project intact." This... almost works. Ironically, the fact that Vertin has the strength in numbers works against convincing Rufus here. He can believe her! But what he'd be believing is in her volition at the given moment, when words are easy to say and promises are easy to make, versus later when it comes time to make the hard choices about how much of the project to save. When the dust clears it'll be five against one (he doesn't put much stock in how much Hiromi will care about preserving the psychogate tech) and it'll be easy to go 'Well, actually...' when there's no ongoing disaster to unite against, even if you thought you were being genuine back then. Or maybe that's just how Rufus is, and he's modeling everyone else's behavior after a mirror of his own. And so, Rufus takes his stand. Actually, it's more like he takes his ambush position. Stands are for the heroic types. Actually, speaking literally, what he takes before anything else is a ticket. \| ENEMY SKILL: HELL TRAIN \| It bursts onto the scene, smashing in from nowhere in particular. Anyone it doesn't slam into or run over has to deal with the waves of immense heat coming off of it. The train's just the opening act, though - the initial volley. Rufus himself makes an appearance afterward, running into the midst of the chaos to cast his next spell, energy glowing off of his hands as he channels. "Earth Arena!" He slams one hand palm-first into the ground. \| ENEMY SKILL: EARTH ARENA \| The ground itself shifts - massive walls forming in a twisting pattern with deadly traps scattered throughout.. Rufus doesn't have any control over the design that earthbends into position, but it doesn't matter - there's high walls that'll hopefully provide Flamel cover and split up the opposing party, traps that'll provide hazards or at least distractions, and ultimately a setup for the final spell he has queued up: \| ENEMY SKILL: BULLET BILL DASH \| There's a gigantic bullet careening throughout the labyrinthine arena, chasing down everyone in turn to slam into them with explosive force before moving onto the next, bouncing off of or breaking through walls in an unpredictable pattern. "If you want to keep people alive that's fine - but hands off of Flamel!" the bullet yells in Rufus's voice. "He's the one with a plan, all of you are just playing catch-up!"
Tamiel Luxis	Tamiel takes a moment, reeling, as the psychoportal latches onto her head. She grabs hold of it, trying to peel it off--but not fast enough! Doubts leap out of her, groaning leaving trails of sticky fear and self-loathing behind them. A shifting, pile of muck turns on Tamiel, lunging forward with its teeth. It impacts hard, sending her sprawling, down in her own mental residue adhering her to the floor. She tries to pull herself free--tries, and tries, but it's made from her very own doubts. Without words, they cry, crippling panic and uncertainty leaking through the skin where they touch, You can't! You can't tamper with it! Their babbling is indiscriminate, latching on anything and everything, without regard for how helpful they are to the project. The zeitgeist is made up of everything! Everyone! What would a mistake do?! It could change everyone forever for the worse! It could change me! A bubbling, panicked, fever pitch. What if the zeitgeist starts to devour them?! Another doubt crawls, desperate, from Tamiel's forehead. Not everyone who uses the portals will help! They'll manipulate everyone! It's over! It's all over! One last one leaps free of Tamiel's head, before she can finish peeling it from the. Something in the Timekeeper draws one of the doubts to her. It spews its caustic energy across her. We'll fail! It tries to hold fast to Vertin, like a drowning man pulling their rescuer in after them. We'll fail! When they're all dead, it will be because we couldn't save them!
Regulus	Well okay maybe Regulus is burning. The heat seems to be getting worse rather than better. Regulus is at a loss for what to do but-- ''Then I have a plan.'' Oh thank god, Verwtin has a plan. Regulus looks to her expectantly only to learn that Vertin doesn't actually have orders for her. Shit! Fuck!! She may be a free spirit but that doesn't mean she has any idea on what to actually do here. She's tried reaching out and is mostly receiving ouchies in return and Regulus does not like to receive ouchies as a general rule. And if Vertin isn't telling her what to do that means Vertin is telling her to figure something out on her own. Regulus takes a moment to think. >Plan A: Open Up Laptop And Deface Flamel's Website. If You Can Click A Button To Get Into Flamel's Mind Maybe You Can Hack Flamel. >Plan B: Get Out Record Player And Play Beatles At Flamel Until He Submits >Plan C: Cry And Act Real Pathetic So Flamel Gives Up Out Of Pity So far Regulus is strongly considering Plan C. Actually, she is already crying and whimpering a little so Plan C might already be underway. Maybe she can do something else and try combining Plan C with another plan. Rufus's incredible sense of teamwork in summoning an evil train from hell helps Plan C further by making Regulus cry and whimper more and get a considerably panicked expression on her face because now there's just some kind of fucking train bursting in out of nowhere why did that even happen. Why does that cannonball look so bloodthirsty??? How about... >Plan D: Fuck around with the instruments and hope you poke the right buttons that it stably shuts down rather than murders everyone and maybe something can be done later? Okay, Regulus thinks, time to combine Plans C and D to make Plan CD. rRegulus, choking and whimpering rushes over to the instruments and starts fucking with the controls, trying to figure out how to shut this thing off without ruining everything or the Psychoportal plan forever as per her interpretation of the spirit of Vertin's nonorders and Vertin's yesspeech. "Ahhhhhhhhhhh bugger bugger bugger bugger bugger this, APPLe time to disengage BRAINe mode and releash the APPLe, take notes of what happens when I push button we gotta figure this out on the fly oh John Lennon oh Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo." Regulus prays to her gods that lal will end well.
Aika Rosewater	Doubts. Horribly little goop gremlins pop out of Aika's head! There was no avoiding that portal, because she was, very intentionally, shielding Kramer from the heat Flamel is letting off. Moving to dodge would mean abandoning that, and she's just winded enough that swatting it away, if it would have even done anything, didn't pan out. So there they are! Awful little critters. ... there's a lot less than you'd expect. Under ordinary circumstances, Aika would stand behind something like the Psychogates or even the Seed of Light; the boundless POTENTIAL for good is enough to rattle and rally the optimist in her, the one who fundamentally thinks people are good by default and always worth helping out. The immediate cost is what weighs her down. That Flamel wants to burn himself for this-- that's fine. He chose that. Much like she frequently makes the choice to burn herself out for others. But that he'll potentially take everyone here with him, or at least, the people stuck outside-- and that's a light estimate, all things considered? There's the matter of the monsters that might emerge, too, but that's somehow a lesser concern than the first. "Awful little things aren't you..." The protective sheen of her inner flame lights up, her tattoos and eyes flaring bright silver-blue. The flame strives to prevent changes to her mind, but it's not painless and free. It's a splitting headache, and it makes it even harder to keep shielding Kramer, if that's even on the table anymore. In the haze of the headache, they bite and claw and burn her feet and legs, one even grabs her arm and tugs her around. She rumbles, trying to squeeze the bloody thing and then shove it back into the portal it came from. And then a dozen more, speeding up and gaining strength as she winds up to play ball. Well, THIS, she knows how to deal with. "Rufus, Aika, Tamiel, dispatch those anomalies," "Working on it!!" Or she would be, if not for... HELL TRAIN. "Oh you fucking schmuck!" Her accent's bleeding through a bit. A TRAIN smashes into Aika and scorches her. It's unambiguously bad and painful, and she tumbles onto the floor and roll-roll-rolls until she manages to shoot herself back up, and rockets towards Rufus, once again armed with an excuse to PUNCH A CEO. "He's the one with a plan, all of you are just playing catch-up!" "You're making a hell of an argument in favor of letting this place fall onto your stupid head, specifically! What is wrong with you?!" She never reaches him, smashing through one of his earthen walls instead, silver-blue fire starting to roar up around her. But neither is she letting up the chase, and she's starting to accelerate. Aika would love to grab that throat and BITE into it, but she'll settle for roughing him up and slamming him into something a few times if he's too nimble. The floor, a wall. Maybe both. Definitely both.
Storm Investigators	- LAST TIME - <J-IC-Scene> Schneider Greco says, "Ahh. Good that it is to the front. I hope I do-not hit 'myself'." That'll be as good of starting point for Marcus as any. - NOW - The situation is quickly becoming one that might be too much for Greta and Marcus to stick around in, but they've already staked out their positions in this matter by virtue of following Vertin's lead and the older investigator making the decision for both herself and the junior. In another time and place, perhaps they would be helping Flamel, or they might have even found each other on different sides of the conflict. At least for this particular moment in time with this specific project, however, they're unified in purpose to not stop Flamel's plan to sacrifice himself for something that neither Greta nor Marcus fully comprehend. Hearing Vertin's plan has them taking only a moment to stop and think before nodding in unison. "You have my support, Timekeeper." "Y.. Yes, Miss Timekeeper! I can help with... Ah. With finding..." "The anomalies. Identify the ones pouring the most power into Parsons, and call them out so we can remove them first." "Understood! His... Mister Parsons' is not a bad person, right? Someone that wants to save people, even like this..." "It would be a waste to lose someone with his drive and motivations. Now, let's-" \| ENEMY SKILL: HELL TRAIN \| \| ENEMY SKILL: EARTH ARENA \| \| ENEMY SKILL: BULLET BILL DASH \| "-MOVE!" Without waiting for Marcus to grasp what's going on, Greta hoists the bookworm and her case up under her arm with a strained grunt, hauling ass so as to not get run over by a train or smashed into by a giant bullet-with-a-face. "Change of plans, Marcus. Find out whatever this is and how to stop it!" "Aaaa? Y-yes, Madam Hofmann! I can't read the p... Pages clearly...!" Once her head's back on straight, Marcus runs alongside Greta, struggling to both keep up with her and try to get a proper look at the things that Rufus just sprang forth out of seemingly nowhere. Should she be reading the train first, or the earth? Maybe the bullets-with-faces? Her only clue as to the source of at least one of those things is Rufus's voice matching the one coming from the bullet, and so she tries utilizing her Reading ability on Rufus himself, to see if she can figure out what his ability even is. There's also the matter of trying to find out which parts of Director Parsons are 'safe' for Schenider to shoot, too. She had made a good first impression on Marcus before, after all, and that means there's a lot of reading to do in too many directions at once! Greta, meanwhile, has her hands free enough to engage in some good old-fashioned gunshooting, although whether that's at Rufus or the train or the bullet-with-a-face is going to depend a lot on what Marcus' reading even tells her. She's got her work cut out for her, though, since she's also trying to keep Marcus relatively safe from harm between the anomalies and Rufus' shenanigans. That's probably why she's not too shy about shooting at Rufus himself. She's careful not to aim for the face, at least.
Hiromi	Vertin decisively dashes around to the back of Director Parsons, skirting around where Hiromi or Parsons himself would interfere... The evasion is successful, Hiromi keeping to her spot, even as the heat increases. This is a progressively difficult stance to keep, as her clothes smolder, dust in her hair already turned to smoke. 'What was that? Why did you do that? What's going on??' "I've given him this chance, to see his wish take form. I'll not let him die unknowing." But he might die, anyway. Hiromi couldn't see into his heart, even like this, to know the depths of Flamel's desire to burn away. She finds regret far more easily for others than for herself. 'Basically, Agent Flamel's gonna stick to his guns until there's no more guns to stick to, whatever he's got to cling to.' "Then let us see that conclusion swiftly." 'Let me and mine burn instead.' 'I don't accept your sacrifice, Agent Parsons.' Hiromi has a couple issues, here, but they're different from Vertin's. The structure is starting to collapse, though. A mountain is only a place, but... "'Yours.' Are they 'yours'?" She doesn't have to glance at Kramer. She won't ask something silly, like, 'couldn't you have self-destructed where no one would be dragged into it?' That's not how any of this works, and the Psychonauts were the ones who chose to live by a volcano, in the end. 'Our goal is to prevent the Truth Phenomenon from reaching a critical mass, collapsing the Motherlobe and releasing Psychoportals into the multiverse.' Not everyone who uses the portals will help! They'll manipulate everyone! "Are you taken by doubts, too? Or do you wish only for slowness? For caution? You don't feel his hopelessness, his desperation. There are fears, of moving and unmoving." "None need die. This, we agree. By foolishness, by weakness, by carelessness, they may die, but those who wish for growth are wasted. Other paths would save them, but this, they walked. 'Misfortune' is made."
Schneider Greco	"... and lo, our hearts were hea-vy laden." "Made for the cha-pel..." Alone among the UPEs, 1929 can't be synchronized in song. She catches the words, but the cadence of her voice doesn't suit the lines. Her song tapers into silence right around 'Lord, lift up these lifeless bones'. She believes this, deeply: a miracle is not coming for her. Not even an imitation of Schneider could sing those words sincerely. Her right-hand beautiful gun is trained on the Director's head. Guilt, according to Agent Kramer, is 'deep anterior of the frontal lobe', 'six centimeters behind the forehead'. Adjust to ten, for his inhuman size. The best firing angle to hit there, without obliterating the rest of the brain behind it, would be 'straight up from below': up through his jaw and out through the top of his head. The further from the Director and his firestorm-epicenter that Schneider stands, the worse her shot; the more of his brain her slug will compromise. She can't afford to be more than ten feet away, crouched and aiming up at forty-five degrees. At that distance, the heat is blistering her right hand. Her gun is becoming unbearable to hold. Her black coat billows in the winds, and she shuts one eye against it. BANG. Schneider's silver bullet passes through the Director's skull, entering through the bridge of the nose. For whatever seconds it takes his Hiromi-bestowed regeneration to recover, the gray matter required for 'guilt' blown out through a bleeding bullet-hole. And as if addressing that hole, speaking into it, she lifts her voice: "My dear lord Parsons, you are so kind. For the La-dy Rook, for oth-ers, even for me... that we suf-fer so, and you do-not know how to fix it, it drives you mad." BANG. It's starting to close. Keep the bore-hole open. Guilt can't be allowed. "I have nev-er known a gov-er-nor like you, to hurt for us so. Mhmhm, I did-not know, at first, what I was seeing? 'If on-ly the world knew', you think, 'if on-ly the world could hurt for them as I do, it would be kind to them again'." BANG. Director's head again. Only four bullets left in the right. Rufus's projectile hurtles towards Schneider; she dissipates her left gun into bladelike feathers, carving into it and deflecting it to her side. An exasperated sigh- BANG- and she spends her left gun's last bullet at him. "But it knows. They know they are kill-ing us, my-lord." The sigh evens out into a little delicate tremble. "And they do not care. You... you are rarer than you know. My-lord, it is not fair that we suf-fer and you do not... but you cannot suf-fer for us. That is what you are doing, right? Ahh... how greedy, my-lord." "Someone who cares must stay a-mong the living, and thrive." BANG. "If we die, it is your bur-den to live." Her right sleeve is smoldering, like it might catch fire now. The gun, this close to the fiery epicenter, hurts to hold. "To that end, Schneider, Ahn, and I will be using the amnestic and the mirrors..." "No, my-lord. I won't." UPE-1929, the traitorous little survival instinct, turns her head and looks back at Vertin with a half-sooty face and a wavery smile. "I un-der-stand him, now. That night in the pan-try, what I said to hurt you, how unfair it was that you have your shelter. Please. Put that on a bul-let for me, or get it in his head." 'How?'- well, Vertin can figure out all kinds of impossible things, except the things they can't.
Flamel Parsons	Kramer is quick, of course, to leap to the Timekeeper's orders. She's still stumbling, struggling, but she'll fight with everything she has just like she promised Hiromi. Survival above all else, no cowering. Pushing herself to work exclusively, specifically to save lives, save hers and herself in that order. Her lesser pyrokinetics siphon some, but she soon reaches her limit. Crenshaw... His stolen Aika energy has burnt out, though, and he can't turn against Flamel right now... Right? His hand clenches. He's given a lot for Flamel's plan. Vertin's words are convincing, It's worth it to try to trust. "I believe in you, 'Mel." He whispers. Rising to his feet, his arms burst into flame as his pyrokinetic specialty begins to siphon the heat. "That's why I know this won't stop you. Or the Truth. Come on, agent... You'll get this..." He carves paths in the heat. Those with human-level endurance, or projectiles that need less disruption, can use his channels. Regulus, for example, rushes to the controls of his device. Pulses disrupt, and she'll actually find it quickly becomes sensible to her. It's mental machinery, a device for circulating memories and lessons from the past. If she pushes herself, she might be able to mix the symbolic UPE energies in ways that destructively interfere, rather than resonate with each other. Here are the cores: The agonies of the vulnerable, the absolute nature of cultural narrative, the invisibility of pain, and... the Storm, what does that represent? And somehow, Petra is still wired into all of that. If Regulus can orient at least one of the ideas to cancel at least one of others out, she might be able to massively deprive Director Parsons of Truth all of a sudden, helping fulfill one of Vertin's most important core goals. She's already made intense headway with just chaos... But if she starts that, she'll surely draw attention. Director Parsons undoubtedly has controls to fight her. A musician with his instrument versus a DJ at her console... it's heating up under her fingertips. Can she endure it?
Vantablitz Remnants	Ahn barely gets within throwing distance with her mirror shard, much less direct contact. Her headlong charge into the burning heat, her neck, shoulders, and the arms shielding her face, coated with the black blood that gushes down the side of her throat from her hair, is stopped cold by the first blast of lightning directly in her path. Hurled back, she hits the ground with her arms guarding her eyes instead of her head, and the world spins when she hits the ground. 'Everyone! Listen to me! If we work together, then we can all get through this!' Those are words that Ahn has heard before, and they're never true. She thinks about that when the pain explodes from the back of her skull and makes her eyes throb. But they aren't words she needed to hear anyways, so Ahn plants both her hands against the burning ground and pushes herself up, hurriedly shielding Vertin again. 'Firstly, nobody has to die or be sacrificed here!' She's heard those words too. She's said them, even, and tried very hard to believe them. Clutching the side of her head again, wounding her fingers on the brambles, Ahn trains her shotgun one-handed on the floating Storm in a Bottle-- and then the tempest becomes a blizzard. The metal almost burning her hands through the plastic furniture cracks under the sudden switch, and the barrel fractures and bursts from temperature shock. Ahn flinches away from the wounding fragments, and her ruined weapon clatters down the mine floor. 'Our goal is to prevent the Truth Phenomenon from reaching a critical mass, collapsing the Motherlobe and releasing Psychoportals into the multiverse.' But that's correct. Regardless of how abstract and whelming the high concept of what's happening is, reducing it to another act of singular survival, breaking it down into the individual steps of 'stay alive', refocuses Ahn on the task. Gathering herself up, she sets her feet, breathes the stabbing air deeply, and locks her eyes ahead. The Caustic Amnestic will freeze if she throws it. She has to get closer. "Vertin." Ahn gasps, quietly stifling pain in her voice even as it vibrates through her posture. "We should separate the UPEs from him first. That's easier to do with the shards. Once we've done that . . . I think we can make him forget that 'truth'." The way forward, as ever, is clear; to use the resources she's sweat and bled to gather up along the journey here, all to throw at the very last push before safety. As she has over and over before. But it needn't be exactly the same as before. Although it may be the worst possible time, Ahn still has faith that the help she didn't have back then will come through. "Lotus!!" she shouts loud a second time, clutching the flower that shouldn't have survived a week off the stem, much less these conditions. Black fluid continues to spill from it, but the rate slows as it crawls past her chest, under her scorched parka. "I know you can do it! I know it's not the time yet, but you have to give it everything you've got! You can do that, can't you?! Haven't you always wondered if you could?!" Shuddering as if coughing up lungfuls of water, the flower clutched in her fingers-- it was a lotus flower, wasn't it?-- contracts its thorned roots like a muscular convulsion. Flickers of green pulse through all the wrong place to be veins under the skin, and the liquid coating Ahn's skin hardens, or rather, tightens, compressing into ferrfluid-alike triangular tessellations that twist together like fibres. Liquid extrusions flower from the surface and calcify into densely layered bone-white bark or carapace. The black film still clinging to her throat vibrates against the air, and the white noise sounds an awful lot like word-fragments rendered incoherent by sleep.%
Hiromi	"I wish to see this, these gates, this land within not-land, this future of new strengths. He seeks others reach, grasp, what they couldn't. To see, hear what they couldn't. If you can't defeat my smallest desire, you won't deserve your ends." Hiromi could be speaking to anyone, now, outside of a few. 'Basically, Agent Flamel's gonna stick to his guns until there's no more guns to stick to, whatever he's got to cling to.' "Yet still, his strength is tested. His form may break. His will, only, endures past its vessel. Pitiable. This growth, unbalanced." It was revealed only hours -- perhaps closer to minutes -- ago that all of this was within Flamel's own ego-scape, including the earth through which Hiromi had dug to find the metal barriers of his mind. To become a mountain... is, fundamentally, something Hiromi can't disapprove of. Everything is in danger of collapsing before the wish can be fulfilled, whether Flamel's or hers. She strikes the floor within Rufus's earthen arena, a shockwave narrowed to reach firmament, and then pulls, commanding stone to reach her will. Hiromi needs only make contact, between the edge of her own will, a thing so clear as to manifest an aura surrounding her, and the mountain. From there, she can push, firm, and arrange, building up a foundation that won't burn. It's nothing like 'an argument,' addressed to Flamel's goals or guilt. Neither, after all, involved the deaths of the other psychonauts, when he began his experiments. With quake and rumble, the earthen arena is augmented, swiftly, by stone pillars, reaching up at angles like mountains fresh from their tectonic slip to find the places above where they can meet with Hiromi's den and, from there, reinforce that shelter into a unified whole. The path to the storm above she not only keeps open, but rings with reinforcement. That's the path of the eruption, not something to block off.
Flamel Parsons	Schneider within and Schneider without are linked. UPE-1929, the Survival Instinct, the manifestation outside, shares an index or an appendix. And, you know what? Schneider's desire to avoid 'striking herself', that is, impacting the memories of Schneider within the brain of a Flamel-derived being, is actually... perfect. Because he hasn't hurt her yet, in ways he understands. He doesn't regret how he treated her. So when Marcus crossreferences it, it aligns a perfect trajectory. Strike the guilt out of his brain in a chaotic bullet lobotomy, and you risk collateral, but avoiding anything with Schneider in it can refine Schneider's aim from precise to surgical. How is she enduring all that heat when she fires? Why are there no Doubts in her? It's impossible to say. But Marcus also manages to identify the anomalies. UPE-1057, the Shattered Mirror, is surely the strongest, the ideal one to defuse as much as possible. That's information that'll be immensely useful to Ahn. But there's not much more she can read in all of this, unless she's willing to stay stable and still long enough to read deep... For Schneider, my god, that bullet was such a clean impact that the tiny hole it drilled barely leaks a stream of blood. There's no grand gush, she managed to avoid major blood vessels in one of the most blood-vessel-rich areas of the human body. How?! But it's starting to heal... The immortality of the Dissonant Ego, the Director, keeps him standing, keeps him playing, through all that. His hand shakes on his guitar. And then, again. Again. Again. Pulverizing one specific spot and leaving the rest as they are. But he's starting to evade. To preserve his guilt, just a little. Still, the raw violence of headshot after headshot drains his ability to channel Truth. "I have to try..." He whispers, struggling to regain a grip on his instrument. "I can't understand it. This Truth in you. But I have to try to bring it to the world. They may know it already, but at least... At least you could strike their cruelty, with that precision of yours. Don't I have to try at least, even if I have to live...?" But Director Parsons is accepting it. The idea that he must live. That, somehow, coming from the Survival Instinct herself, circulates quickly into his psychic energies quickly. And no, she doesn't hit the Schneider within. The Empathy-Schneider still skulks among Light Containment, unharmed. Marksmanship.
Vantablitz Remnants	It's enough for the time being. The synaptic joining is unbearably slow going, but it's fast enough that Ahn can leap out of the way of the Hell Train faster than she could before, channel one absorbed genetic memory down one arm, and fire a burst of thin needles from the wrist with a fluid-bone-cracking sound; then a second down the other arm, to throw out a wave of airborne particles like pollen in Rufus' direction which absorb not only the heat of the Truth, but the Bullet Bill exhaust as well, thickening from mere mist to a wave of ice blue gel that can stick him in place and slowly freeze him; a deadly combination with the darts now splitting into countless fragments that ricochet back and forth between the Earth Arena walls and leave blots of burning poison where they strike. Copied abilities thrown abilities would feel like more of a destined duel if Ahn wasn't trying to fixate on the one guy who's liable to kill everyone here if she ignores him. 'I un-der-stand him, now. That night in the pan-try, what I said to hurt you, how unfair it was that you have your shelter. Please. Put that on a bul-let for me, or get it in his head.' "I don't really get it but I'm not gonna die for that either! Help or get out of the way!" Ahn gasps out, at a dead sprint again already, her slowly spreading symbiote-skin reconfiguring for stolen fire resistance in motion. She lunges for UPE-1999; the mirror shard is held like a knife now, her fingers armoured, and she uses it to slash at the glass bottle-- inverting the inside/outside of the rain contained by the bottle. With preturnatural speed, she tries to convert the same motion into hurling caustic onto UPE-1630's blade as she passes.
Timekeeper	Vertin's uncanny attunement to the flow of magic lets her see a photobleached streak slash through the air ahead of the Hell Train's manifestation, and she immediately pulls whoever's beside her into a dive out of its way. Covering herself from the scorching heat as it careens past, even being aware of the working of the labyrinth spell doesn't allow her to do anything to avoid getting stuck inside the walls as they raise up out of the ground. Vertin pushes herself to her feet and tries to reorient herself towards the Light Containment breach, no matter how frustrating the twisting walls make it. "He's the one with a plan, all of you are just playing catch-up!" "His plan was poorly considered, even to himself." Vertin carefully slides against the wall around the edges of a spiked pit blocking her way forwards through the labyrinth, talking into the radio the entire while. "His own regrets tried to abort it with a suicide mission. He's burning himself to ash as we watch. Everything he says, and all of these anomalies of his mind he's spawned, are created by pain, not irreplicable genius. This is his plan because he reached his emotional limits for not having one, not because it's his best option. Stopping him here is a kindness to him too." Vertin hesitates while a swinging pendulum slices in front of her, and then charges through before it swings back, stumbling out of the maze right beside Rufus. She whips out her wand to throw an incantation at him, but with her focus broken by the chaos, it fizzles and dissipates harmlessly, and then her moment of surprise is lost. They curse, and turn tail and run, dropping a floppy disk behind themselves that bursts into chilling mist. "You don't feel his hopelessness, his desperation. There are fears, of moving and unmoving." "I know. More than it seems, Archwolf." With a lot of effort, Vertin jams a piece of rebar into the dirt wall of the exterior of the labyrinth, hauling herself up to climb on top. "I know that desperation, and I know it's not the same as wisdom. I won't let perfect be the enemy of good, but leaping at the first salvation you find is desperation that can destroy yourself and those you care about. I have never once, ever, doubted the ability of someone to do good when they put their mind to it." From up there, Vertin scans the bedlam for the people she's searching for, and raises her voice to call to them. Except, when they see Regulus, she's already precisely where they'd want her to be, which is deeply reassuring in the moment. "Marcus! This way!" 'This way' means, along with Ahn, towards the mechanisms and the UPEs fueling Flamel. Vertin leaps off of the labyrinth wall just before a bolt of lightning strikes the high point, then hurries through a channel carved through the fire by Crenshaw. To Ahn, breathlessly and raspy from the heat, "Right. I have a feeling that we'll need to address the feelings embodied by the UPEs individually, which Marcus's arcane skill ought to help with."
Rufus Shinra	She's not shy about shooting at Rufus himself, either. She's careful not to aim for the face, at least. > Reading Rufus has magic marbles that let him cast spells that he's copied off of other people (specifically abilities that leave an impression or a lasting memory on him). These have limited uses, so in theory he'll run out. In practice: He's constantly on the hunt for new ones. Be warned: anything flashy or vaguely 'cool-looking' is liable to be used against you. Greta's shots land home, causing Bullet!Rufus to go careening off course and explode in an explosively explosive explosion. He looks a little frazzled but he's still on his feet. > "His plan was poorly considered, even to himself." He coughs. Firing off three spells and then exploding^3 might have taken more out of him than he was counting on. "Yeah. Maybe." "It's moving fast. It's breaking things. That's how progress goes." "But it's still getting results."
Flamel Parsons	Tamiel purges the last of the Doubts after a while. Each one, when it withers to charred ash, releases her mind. She's given the mental clarity she needs. Vertin's plan is the right middle-road, isn't it? Isn't there a way to get everything, and still save everyone? It might be. If she can trust her allies to fulfill the Psychogate plan, she has nothing to fear in fully dedicating herself to saving everyone. Hiromi's excellent efforts are already starting to pay off. The mountain is rumbling less, the ceiling no longer caving in, the structures finally stabilizing. If Tamiel moves quickly, acts as a sufficiently rapid disaster response, a combination of doubtlessness and nearby Truth will make it clear that she can prevent lives. A mental tally shines in the ambient telepathy, an exact number of lives saved. The terrain, the healing, whatever she can do, she can increment that until it encompasses the whole Motherlobe, surely. Maybe start with Crenshaw, who's starting to wither into ash as he tries to siphon the heat. He's still working on making paths through the searing heat, especially for Ahn. Amnestic to the dagger. Mirror to the bottle. Shadows and fire and wings and screaming surge out of the dagger -- something unremembered, something lost by history. A woman's voice. UPE-1630-Gate, a shadowy phantom, cries out in sobbing screams -- she was just about to lean over Ahn's shoulder?! "PLEASE! PLEASE, WE HAVE TO HELP THEM! They're hurting so much, why won't...!" Before she crumbles to shadow and dust. The rain bursts out of the bottle, a screaming peal of upward droplets that sizzle into evaporation, depositing a wild array of paints, inks, lights, sounds -- a cultural discharge of an era's obsessions concentrated. The vessels themselves may remain functional, but key pieces of their energy are being clearly siphoned. History and culture cease to hold the Truth that UPE-1000-F needs, but the discharge risks slamming Ahn around. She's someone who can handle some Truth in her, more than Flamel can, but it hurts to hold. Ahn might know some of that already.
Rufus Shinra	Rufus should be paying more attention. Aika smashes through the wall next to him, and he finds himself punched and slammed into the ground repeatedly. "Come... ON," he says, struggling to get free again. \| ENEMY SKILL: Silent Girl \| Even while being grappled, he manages to get off a spell, one that advantageously gives him some shadowy extra arms that are armed with hammers and nails. "It's still... better than doing nothing," he manages to get out, weakly, as he tries to hit back at her.
Flamel Parsons	Director Parsons is stumbling. Struggling on his last legs. Losing his grip on that guitar. Tears are streaming down his face as his body burns, heals, burns. The power is faltering -- key UPEs are being subverted, their network is disrupted, and his immortality struggles to keep up with pounding headshots. His mentality and focus are lapsing, and the Doubts of his enemies are subsiding. Allies are diverting to damage control, though Rufus is unthinkably dedicated and keeping so much heat off of the man who takes all this heat for himself. But Hiromi has opened the mountain entirely. The archwolf breaks the whole mountain into a stable split, forking the entire thing right down the middle in a way that would almost be comical under other circumstances. Director Parsons looks up through the new gap, out to the storm outside, and firms the grip on his guitar. "He has fixed his sign in the sky..." "He has raised me from the pit and set me high..." Tears become light. The stream down his cheeks sizzles, evaporating brilliantly. Regulus' console heats agonizingly. Every button-press and switch-flip is pain. The air refracts terribly in its superheating state, making gunshots hard to land. The UPEs that he's channeling begin to overload their conduction, spewing psionic phenomena even when they aren't damaged. It's becoming hellish to be here, though it would have become a thousand times as lethal without the work to prevent that. "Each morning new!!" "Each day shot through!!" "With all the sharp, small shards of shrapnel," "That seem to burst out of me and you!" "Head down toward Kansas," "We will get there when we get there!" "Don't you worry!" (His hand trembles. His breath shakes.) "Feel bad... about the things we do along the way..." (His grip firms.) "But not really that bad." "We inhaled the frozen air..." "Lord, send me a mechanic if I'm not beyond repair!" This is it. Save all the lives you can. Preserve these UPEs, the core of his Truth Phenomenon, if you want them saved, want them put to better use another day in a brighter future. Drain his mentality, convince him of his greed and his truly inappropriate understanding of the suffering he wants to solve. The mountain won't fall over now, but the storm outside surges in and Director Parsons surges up to meet it. His vast machine screams with strain as its final sequence activates... "HE HAS FIXED HIS SIGN IN THE SKY!" "HE HAS RAISED ME FROM THE PIT!" "AND SET ME HIGH!!"
Timekeeper	"Don't I have to try at least, even if I have to live...?" "That night in the pan-try, what I said to hurt you, how unfair it was that you have your shelter." Schneider's partial rejection of Vertin's plan is, in essence, the representation of what she's been talking about this entire time. Charging ahead with solving the problem in front of them-- that is, preventing the imminent explosion of the Psychoportal project-- is a necessity, but the whole of the solution can only be found by cooperating. Vertin had thought to put communicating with Flamel's 'soul' off until after the disaster was managed, but Schneider has chosen to 'save' it right here, one bullet at a time. "Help or get out of the way!" Vertin shakes their head. "No, she's right. If we can figure out the exact way to put that thought into his head, we ought to be able to end this in an instant, without breaking anything. ... These representations, where are they coming from?" Joined up with Regulus at the machinery, Vertin takes an offered mirror shard from Ahn, slathered in the amnestic toxin. To start, she slashes it through the red cloth of UPE-1057 to cut the mirror's connection to Flamel off, but after that she grips the edge of the desk, staring into the broken mirror to confront the reflection directly. Tensing her jaw, she's silent for several long seconds as if suddenly cut off from the fight raging all around, before she suddenly speaks up again. "Regulus? Is there a way to attach that device to me? To siphon a UPE out of myself and integrate it into the core functionality?"
Storm Investigators	Targets are identified, and Marcus fumbles her lantern as she continues racing along, panting slightly as the extended sprinting session already seems to be getting to her. She squinting slightly as she realizes there's eomething else deeper in the text, too, weighing her options when she sees that it's too hard to read it while she's running. Maybe staying still long enough to read it would be the solution! It's a risky move, but it could be worth it. Then again, would it even be practical, considering how little she still knows about what she only glimpsed a moment ago? Putting herself into this sort of danger so soon could help end things before they really snowball out of control, but if she jeopardizez the efforts by unwittingly putting someone else in harm's way because of that... And then Bullet!Rufus explodes. That draws a sharp inhale from Marcus as she starts to fret over whether Greta's just killed someone, and then that's followed by a relieved noise when he emerges from the smoke, and then another starrtled noise when she realizes what his magic marbles are capable of. "I should be safe from those marbles..." "What? Don't get distracted, Marcus. There's an opening, while those two are busy. Stick to the Timekeeper's plan." "Marcus! This way!" Between Vertin calling on her specifically and Greta's reminders, Marcus' mind homes in on something she can actually focus on again. "Coming! Ah, there's so much.. Running today..!" She complains, having some difficulty keeping up even while Greta's juggling both body-shielding Marcus and firing back at the anomalies that drift too close towards them. Marcus herself isn't completely safe from all the UPEs, either, taking some bumps and bruises and burns while also trying to keep her bookcase from getting caught up in all the crossfire. "The feelings of the UPEs... Ah! UPE-1057... The Shattered Mirror. That's the one we need to focus on!" She blurts out at all once, hopping forward and scrambling against the wall before Greta leaps over and pulls her up the rest of the way. "I saw there was something else, but I couldn't get a good look... Um. I-I'll try and read through it again!" She takes the gamble, and she stops moving. The lantern goes back up, and she tries to decipher what it was that she saw only a glimpse of earlier. "Something in here about the Mirror is tied deeply to all of this.. But why? What's the missing piece here?"
Vantablitz Remnants	'PLEASE! PLEASE, WE HAVE TO HELP THEM! They're hurting so much, why won't...!' "WHAT DO YOU THINK I'VE BEEN DOING ALL THIS TIME?!" Ahn screams the words before she realizes. Turning her her head to the next UPE target is a violent enough motion that she feels hot tears spill out from her eyes, vapourizing on her skin within seconds. "Shut up! Leave me alone! You weren't there! I didn't live because I deserved to! It was just dumb luck, and you can't make anyone's last will come true if the only good thing about you is luck! I tried! So, so hard! Where were you?!" The blast of the UPEs discorporating hurls her away in the same moment an icy blue flower blooms directly out of the back of her hand. Ahn, off her feet, violently strikes an Earth Arena wall; the black fluid lurches up to coil around her head, shuddering just short of coherence and splashing down to her shoulders. Ahn slides down the wall, collapses onto her hands and knees, and gasping for air, forces herself back up with a high-pitched growling throat noise. A second later, the living jelly cast from that flower, in the same moment as she was thrown away, has absorbed enough of the burning Truth to begin growing and multiplying around the Director, taxing his regeneration with lethal cold and exponential growth until it's dealt with. 'Right. I have a feeling that we'll need to address the feelings embodied by the UPEs individually, which Marcus's arcane skill ought to help with.' It burns badly enough to be worth trying. More than she has by accident, at least. She doesn't know much about the second she'd struck, and yet . . . "So stop trying to go back to it! Just because you accept you can't fix it doesn't mean you aren't-- redoing it in your head! Transplanting your heart into the past so you can cling to the 'better world' just ruins you in the end! Don't place everything so heavy on 'only if it works' so bad that you break in half if you can't make it come true yourself!" Ahn gropes for her mirror shard, and finds only half of it on the ground; she scrapes it up anyways. Her second of three amnestic canisters is slung off the tactical harness inside the shredded remains of her jacket. Staring at the blank space, she grips a handful of powdered chromatic psistone dust instead, mixed together like rainbow sand of which she can only see one-- two colours, now. That's a sign of hope. "If you can't be the one who saves all of them yourself, like a one-man army-- a miracle-- then keep looking for the one you can--" Ahn darts down the path opened up by Crenshaw. The straining growth finally reaches past her hips, accelerating her stride one step at a time. She sweeps past where she thinks there should be a UPE, and throws the stone powder at where UPE-1967 is theoretically recorded; then she grips and shatters a vial of the storm compound over the outline traced by the stone, pouring the polarizing essence of binary collapse and volatile extremes on the icon of desperate, silent forgetfulness and erasure. "--and keep looking for anyone else who thinks the same way you do to help the rest! You don't have any idea how lucky you are that you even can do that! You gigantic ass!"
Flamel Parsons	Marcus looks into the Mirror. What is it? What's in that Shattered Mirror? What did it all mean? She reads, she reads, she reads... Decapitation is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury is invariably fatal to humans and all vertebrate animals, since it deprives the brain of oxygenated blood by way of severing the jugular vein and common carotid artery, while all other organs are deprived of the involuntary functions that are needed for the body to function. The term beheading refers to the act of deliberately decapitating a person, either as a means of murder or as an execution; it may be performed with an axe, sword, or knife, or by mechanical means such as a guillotine. An executioner who carries out executions by beheading is sometimes called a headsman.[1] Accidental decapitation can be the result of an explosion,[2] a car or industrial accident, improperly administered execution by hanging or as the natural outcome of an individual placing the burden of the Truth Phenomenon on others.[L-57] Flamel died once, for doing this ages ago in a way that put the responsibility on others. Deep, deep, deep in his heart, he absorbed entirely the wrong lesson. He still can't imagine the vulnerable having their autonomy, only the suffering moving its seat. It is a good idea to stop this. If she takes this fragment of knowledge to the Psychonauts, or whatever's left of them after this, they'll be able to make sure something like this doesn't happen again -- they know how to heal Flamel, and this fragment is what's necessary to do that. Morceau Oleander can use this later. For now, other problems.
Hiromi	The mountain breaks open, yet stands. "There! Look! Feel!" Hiromi spreads her arms. The fire is reaching up the tips of her hair, and her gi is charring, in danger of scattering to dust, all from how she's refused to move. "Foundation, roots, a base to stand! Desire, fire, passion to fill your heat. In these lower mountains, you feel hunger, still. Destruction is never-ending, but consumption is more than hunger. Do you see? The fire needs its fuel. Even your pain, their pain, your suffering." She points above, to the sky and the storm, with one clawed finger. "Keeping all within you leads to death, or else, to death. <The cessation of desire is self-destruction.> <Internal pressure without cessation or direction is self-destruction.>" She's too pleased with the result to both blockading the UPEs, now. Not while others must brave the fires to reach them. 'I didn't live because I deserved to! It was just dumb luck, and you can't make anyone's last will come true if the only good thing about you is luck!' "Many worlds are broken in their cruelty." But not all? Hiromi suggests something without stating anything more. 'I know. More than it seems, Archwolf.' 'I won't let perfect be the enemy of good, but leaping at the first salvation you find is desperation that can destroy yourself and those you care about.' "You'll leap." She says it like a command. Like a promise. It rumbles away into some not-too-distant future.
Schneider Greco	Schneider's aim tracks the Director's swaying, as he tries his best to evade. The skin on her right hand is peeling from the heat now. She can't afford a tremble. Each bullet has to re-bore the same hole, through 'guilt and nothing else', like an archer splitting their own arrow. The trembles that her hand can't show come through in her voice. "Don't I have to try at least, even if I have to live...?" BANG. "My-lord... you are hurting me now," she says, perhaps a little too quietly. "Won't you smile, for me? Comfort me? Mhmhm-" devoid of its usual lightness- "I'd e-ven humor you ban-da-ging my hands..." "Lord, send me a mechanic if I'm not beyond repair!" BANG. "You know, do-you-not, that this will-not save me? Will-not have saved the La-dy Rook?" She has to hold the gun with both hands now to keep it steady, and the left starts to blister too, scrunching her expression. "Haah. What good does it do for me, that you cry for me? My dear kind self-less lord, do-not be selfish now." But it's coming to a head. This isn't getting her what she wants. Her teeth, quietly, grit. "Regulus? Is there a way to attach that device to me..." "No time, my-lord!" she shouts above the rising music, tearing off her dark coat as it finally catches fire. "Whatever you have, bring it here! Please!" One bullet left, but she racks the slide back and ejects it, holding the ejection port open for Vertin to crouch beside her and load just one bullet-sized thing. And if she has a moment, close-together, to lower her voice: "... If this parts us, my-lord, I will be alright. There will be a Schneider with you where you go, yes?"
Regulus	Regulus would be relieved if she knew she was precisely where Vertin wanted her to be, but it isn't really until she reaches the instruments in question--the controls--that she really actually feels that she is where she should be. Plan C is temporarily put on hold as she wipes at her eyes as she feels that familiar intuitive sense fill her. Her intuitive sense tells her how to cause problems and even though Hiromi's abs are RIGHT THERE, she hesitates because--well, that'd probably shut the thing down, but would it shut it down safely? The heat doesn't really make her feel like she has any choice. Every time she touches something, her hand aches and burns and blisters and this might be the hardest she's ever really put her body on the line as a conscious choice of her own. We are discounting all the times she put her body on the line accidentally or because someone else decided it should be on the line. Did Regulus read all the UPE lore? Probably not, she probably barely paid any attention. She doesn't know what would be ideal. But she can guess. And so that's what she does. She looks towards the various UPE's out and about and just--guesses based on vibes, hoping to push one UPE's symbolic energy against the other. She yelps as the pain in her hands becomes too much and APPLe floats forward. "Captain...! Allow me!" And he takes over briefly, finishing the procedure Regulus started. ''Regulus? Is there a way to attach that device to me? To siphon a UPE out of myself and integrate it into the core functionality?'' "...Uh what? Vertin, love. I've got a sense for this thing but for all I know it's going to explode--I've never actually worked with these controls before!" But she sees something in Vertin's eyes and she swallows. "Aye aye, Captain." She bites at her lips, eyes running over the control console--spurned on by Vertin's need and Schneider's warnings. She suddenly latches out for a hat with dinglebopples on it and hisses as she grips it, quickly shoving it into Vertin's hands. "Put it on! Real quick, Vertin! Whatever you're thinking of, think it fast!"
Timekeeper	Looking at the central console of Flamel's machinery is a nearly synesthetic experience. The vast amounts of psychic energy, Truth itself, conducted through it burns patterns of buttons and switches into her palms when she presses her hands to it. The heat screams with wordless desperation, the dials are magnifying glasses and mirrors, the indistinct voices of entire worlds drowned out by radio static to fixate on the crying heard on a single frequency. It's more like dragging her hand through technicolor water than flipping a switch, when she supplies power to one of the unused terminals of the console. "Marcus, could you please read this machine, and make sure I won't get offed by this process when we're working it?" First, Vertin rubs a thin layer of the amnestic gel on the back of her head, carefully lifting up her hat. Where the caustic fluid sizzles, it leaves her hair and skin untouched, but erodes away at the barrier between mind and reality to allow a connection point for the device. Then, with Regulus's guidance, Vertin affixes the gadget-covered silly technohat to her head, sliding its gizmos and ports to center around the precise feeling in Vertin's mind that she seeks to manifest as a UPE. It materializes on the ground, only a few inches high, nearly lost in the heat and noise of the fighting-- but untouched, always, by all of it. A simple tree frog, green and smooth skinned, surrounded by a perpetual puddle of rainwater. Within the reflection of that puddle is a world only one person has ever or will ever see; grey smears of buildings drawn up into the distant sky along with raindrops, shadows of geometric shapes representing nothing from any era of humanity as the only feature on the landscape, alone in the Storm. UPE-000, Hyla Arborea. Within it is the utter certainty, bordering on pathological, that no matter how many people are lost to violence that can never touch you directly, your duty is to keep moving forwards rather than falling apart to join them. "Whatever you have, bring it here! Please!" When Vertin cups the frog in her hands, her palms quickly pool with rainwater that comes from nowhere, and doesn't evaporate in the intense heat at the base of the Director's body. She hurries to bring it over to Schneider, laying UPE-000 down on the ground, and holding out her hand for the last remaining bullet. She rolls it in the puddle, and the reflections of that empty, lonely world cling to the bullet like paint. "... If this parts us, my-lord, I will be alright." An acutely relevant feeling, for the thoughts harbored in the frog clasped in Vertin's hands. Crouching, voice lowered for the private conversation, Vertin's hand brushes against Schneider's when passing the bullet back, lingering to hold it for a moment. "There will. And I'll owe you another week, if you don't remember this one." Two hands, together, place the bullet into the port, and rack the slide to close it again. "... Thank you, Schneider. I'll see you soon, regardless."
Aika Rosewater	"It's still... better than doing nothing," Rufus' many arms smash and dig into Aika's sides with hammers and nails, as she struggles to hold him up. Everytime one of her Doubts gets smashed in the background her headache is getting worse. She's lost a lot of energy lending it to Kramer, taking hits, getting burned. She's running on fumes and the raw advantage of already having her hands on Rufus and not letting go, for however long that'll hold. Not too much more. "Yeah! Yeah let me just turn on the people-churning machine! Huh? No don't worry! It only churns people like, A FEW TIMES. Good things come out the other end! It's WORTH IT." She's growling, or snarling, or something between the two. "You can just NOT turn it on! You can just keep working on it until it makes good things WITHOUT churning people, dipsh--" A hammer cracks her jaw just as she looks like she's about to try chomping on his neck in anger, and she drops Rufus. Aika makes a whine like an injured cat, rubbing her jaw. Blue fire flows from her tattoos, accelerating her healing, but... "This is fucked up. You get at least that much, don't you? This could have been..." Vertin made a good point of it already. If Flamel hadn't kept secrets, and opened up more, it wouldn't have come down to picking between a good idea and the people it didn't have to harm but ended putting on the tracks. She wipes her mouth, frustrated, cooling down from the fit of feral rage. Put the smile back on. There's still a bit of work to do. "It doesn't bloody matter now. Look around you. You don't seriously want to die here at this point do you?" She decides to use the last of her strength to deal with anything left that might interfere with the others; falling debris, the few remaining Doubts if any. It isn't much, but they seem to have a plan, and Rufus seems as much on his last leg as she is.
Schneider Greco	Despite her blistering hands, and the feathers of her dress starting to singe black, Schneider's eyes linger a little too long on the surreal colors of the frog's puddle. Almost as long as they linger on Vertin's, really. She doesn't need to look at her gun to chamber the Storm-painted round anyway. "I don't sup-pose, my-lord, I could take you with me? Mhmhm. No, I won't be a hypocrite," she laughs so softly, dewy-eyed. "Thank you for trusting in-me." By now the hole from her last shot has healed. But she lines up that clean forty-five-degree bore one last time- "Please, steady my hands-" and... "Good-bye, my dear lord." BANG.
Tamiel Luxis	Tamiel's attempts to wrestle with doubts are interrupted, by train and bullet, casting her roughly above the room even as she struggles. "You ASSHOLE!" She spits, and shadows rise to strike him, only for the slippery little failson to slip out of her grip. She grimances, feeling her hand slapped back against the floor by the doubts. Shutting her eyes tight. You don't feel his hopelessness, his desperation. There are fears, of moving and unmoving. She grates her teeth, the doubts bearing down on her. "Of COURSE I feel it--It's everywhere...all these people--begging for help--needing HELP!" A shadow coiled into a blade in her hand, until she cut part of it free. Light radiated from her wings, burning away the doubt in incandesence. "We feel it--it aches, it hurts! But that's how we diagnose the problem! Fixing it takes more. I can't believe in this--" She holds her head high. "...But if we can preserve some piece of it, maybe we CAN work out a way to make it help...Together." This admission burns the anchor that keeps the Doubts presence, leaving them to erode away into nothing. "Crenshaw, you're going to get out of this--" Her light mingled with the Truth, and where it tried to burn him away to nothing, Tamiel's attempted to mend him, rejuvinate. "Make me a promise, and I will give you the power to endure." "Any of you--All of you--If you stand by it--and don't give up on saving everyone, and you will endure!" As her light pours into the room she leaves the air trembling with an offer Oath--of strength, of deathlessness, to anyone willing to take it.
Storm Investigators	To Marcus, seeing so much information about decapitation doesn't seem to bode well at first. What could this all mean? She's not familiar with Flamel's past or his history with so many of the people that have appeared through this entire ordeal, so she couldn't possibly make a direct connection to any of them. It couldn't possibly be an accident, however, since there's no way these pages could lie to her. Perhaps the connection is related to the event itself? The project, his actions leading up to all of this, his willingness to destroy part of himself, to kill his own... Oh. Marcus is going to have to remember this for later, if she's able to get through all of this conscious. "Marcus, could you please read this machine, and make sure I won't get offed by this process when we're working it?" Or killed, or trying not to panic when the idea of Vertin getting brain-electrocuted to death enters her mind. "Ah? Is that really a.. Oh. Of course it's a risk, but would knowing if it's going to decapitate you really-" "Marcus. Don't think so much about the what ifs. Focus on what the Timekeeper needs right now." Inhaling sharply, she nods quickly and continues reading with her lantern turned towards the central console this time around. "Right! O.. Of course. If there's something that could... Off you, then there must be signposts somewhere. Mister Parsons doesn't seem the type not to signpost those kinds of things." That's what she's hoping for, at least, as she skims through the masses of words and pages that she sees all over the place. It's getting harder to focus as it is, but there's still plenty to look for with occasional suggestions from Greta coming through to keep her on task.
Flamel Parsons	------------------------------------------------------------------------------ UPE-000: Hyla Arborea, Inevitable Barometer Classification: Fundamental Containment Protocol: Uncontained. Any attempt to deny is non-coherent. Description: Commonly found manifesting in the form of a European Tree Frog or similar regional equivalent. The human understanding of approaching difficulties and the necessity of moving towards the future is a core component of human and human-like minds, and any mental processes in conflict with it will conclude. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Collective effort. Regulus' intuition and hands on a painful console form and follow a protocol of extraction that Marcus manages to guide. The uncontrollable Truth meltdown opens safeties to let them pull something important from Vertin. At the height of Director Parsons' effort, a searing bullet tears through Director Parsons. Discharging its payload of a conflicting truth, it instantly terminates all processes in UPE-1999, as well as badly limiting UPE-1057, eliminating UPE-1967's visible effects, and dislodging UPE-1630 from its spot in the machinery entirely. They'll mostly stay coherent, but their energy output is almost nothing now. The cycle of Truth surging through the Director wavers, falters, and stops. The man is willing to continue, but the light of Truth is gone. Immortality can't keep the lights on. Crenshaw, newly immortalized in his agreement to rush and try to help Psychonauts survivors above, still knows that. And Director Parsons, what he has to say... "He has fixed his sign in the sky..." There is a moment, just one, where it almost seems like Director Parsons' guitar is about to alight. Surely, in this moment, his ambition and his suffering mean that his own inner strength will surge and seal the deal. There's a spark, a moment of heat. Crenshaw looks back, full of hope. "You've got this, 'Mel, you--" Twang. And then it's gone. A guitar string snaps. Flamel Parsons has never held the Truth inside him. And no matter how much he suffers on purpose, no matter how much he draws this into him, it doesn't work. His soul is too thin. UPE-1000-F of the Parsons Institute does not have the fire in his heart. The blizzard rushes all at once into the chamber, the heat suddenly dispersing, and a pile of snow is sweeping through. Even the blizzard is starting to die down, but it remains there just enough to make it so difficult to see. This... all of this is fading now. Without the UPEs maintaining the Truth Phenomenon, this astral inversion is fading away. First the walls. The chamber. The lovely henches that are quickly gathering and protecting the mental images. The doors, and the doubts. They all slowly pull away. Psychonaut-Petra, in her last moments on the physical plane, might find something interesting in the executive areas of the Parsons Institute's fading architecture, but it's still too late. Soon, Director Parsons himself is dispersing in the snow. "Then... then find something in all this for you." His whisper, still amplified just a little. "Please. Be as greedy as I was. Make this something for you. I just..." He reaches out, falling to his knees. "I wanted you to be able to take it for yourself..." A little of what Rufus wanted. To at least see what happens if this was fulfilled. Even if it means a burden on the suffering again. And he's gone. Back into Flamel's mind. Still immortal, one thinks -- though, at this stage, limited, unable to channel key elements of his Truth Phenomenon proxy system anymore at scale now that he's been dosed with UPE-000.
Flamel Parsons	His machine isn't gone though. The UPEs attached remain, in varying states of repair. And as it shakes itself apart slowly, a much smaller, familiar figure falls from it. Flamel Parsons, looking like he hasn't eaten for a week, wired deep in its core, unconscious on the ground. Looks like Director Parsons set him up in there when the Parsons Institute managed to manifest -- was this even intentional on Flamel's part, or was it just a weird coincidence as he was in the lower levels near the cave? Wait, cave? It's all a cave now. It was never the Parsons Institute anymore. It is blasted open to expose straight to the outside, where the blizzard has dispersed into a gray, but sunlit day, interspersed with light cloud cover that dispense soft flurries. Rescue vehicles of all sorts -- Psychonauts and otherwise -- are starting to circle, and moving to land. And Crenshaw and Kramer, having gotten way back up to the very top, have done their best to manifest Tamiel's wish and save as many as they could in the last moments of chaos in the Motherlobe. For the curious: UPE-1929 is still here. Listen close, though. Resonating in Flamel Parson's skull, you can still hear mental images sing a soft, somber song.
Flamel Parsons	Dear Truman Zanotto, Following a short conference of stakeholders and a day to examine priorities, I have determined that my past communications were inappropriately antagonistic and do not represent the interests of the Foundation, liaisons of the Watch, the IPAR, or, indeed, essential interests of the Concord and the Wisemen. We will be arranging a delegation to review the event directly, in heavy consultation with the Timekeeper and other auditors, reflecting their responsibility and their knowledge. You may choose to accept or reject them as you see fit. Sincerely, Director Deems, International Psychic Affairs Regulation Bureau
Hiromi	To say that what Hiromi most wished to see did not come to pass would be mistaken. Her wish for Flamel, however... 'It's over.' That's what one might say, on such an occasion. A certain passage of time is over, but its effects remain. The Archwolf, whose posture is unmodified by the charring of her outfit, skin beneath naturally unharmed, gives a reminder. "Words have been given. Let them be promises. I'll see them." Words from Vertin, that the project would be seen to. "Words and blood." From and for agent Kramer, whose gift remains, and whose service will not end here. Soon enough, she's gone.
Schneider Greco	UPE-1929's guns vanish into feathers and smoke, after the last bullet is spent. Even before she knows what that shot has borne, she staggers to her feet from her shooting crouch and smilingly offers Vertin a heat-raw hand up. Twang. She squeezes Vertin's fingers, even though it hurts to, and UPE-1929's last action in external reality might be to smile, fondly and pityingly, at the Director and her blurry-faced men. . . . Pitying fondness changes to mild surprise, as the other UPEs fade away. "Ah? Ahaha... oh, oh no, porca Madonna..." She looks down at her hands. She said, before, that she remembered coming to the Motherlobe, didn't she? Only that she couldn't trust the memory. "So I was flesh-and-blood... oh, to heal these hands will be suffering. My-lord," a little sniff and wiping at her eyes with a forearm, "I won't be able to cook for a week... ohh, and that week you promised me..." Her singed black coat has to be gathered up and clutched to her chest against the sudden chill, like a teddy bear. And after a moment, sticking-near-Vertin allowing, she steps up to the Director. He is vanishing, while she stays. "Some-thing in all this, for 'me'..." Her lips part. "... I promise. Kind dir-ec-tor. You've done your best. Now rest." The fallen Flamel, deeper in, has that singed black coat wrapped around his shoulders. Schneider tries to soothe the shuddering machinery with a stroke of her palm, and touches her fingertip to one of the wires that had gone into Flamel, trying to see if there's any response at all. "... It was a pretty machine, wasn't it, my dear lord?" she says to Vertin.
Timekeeper	Twang. The wish to be selfish falls on everyone but Vertin, parting around her like so much rain. She already knows how to be unbearably selfish, in the way that Flamel had to learn to be. "Words have been given. Let them be promises. I'll see them." "I'll make certain of it. I won't let your guidance in this be forgotten, Archwolf." The future shifts, just a little bit, from Vertin making that promise of inerring action to Hiromi. A director's e-mails get angrier after a conference. Even if Vertin was inclined to go back on her plans for the Psychogate project, invoking Hiromi makes that a deeply unwise choice now, like with any powerful spiritual entity. And then, Schneider, not UPE-1929, is what remains after the the Parsons Institute vanishes. Vertin gives her a tiny smile, subdued compared to the much more heartfelt response of her hands when they stutter to reach out to hers again, hesitating to squeeze like they might still disappear. Feeling more relieved than she sounds, "I'd suspected. That phantasm of you we spotted earlier didn't quite have the same quality to her." She reaches for where the Spinal Taps were held in her jacket pocket as an afterthought, but they've vanished along with the rest of the UPEs, and the cloth of the pocket crumbles into ash at her touch. Vertin's exposed skin is burnt, white blisters in odd shapes on her hands, and a patch of her nose bright red where a flame licked it in passing, but the small smile she wears is irrepressible on her face as she looks around to ascertain that everyone else is healthy as well. Their voice drops to a near-whisper, unclear whether they meant to say it out loud at all. "... I'm glad. I rather dislike having to repeat lost memories." Their pleased expression finally does slip off of their face some time later, when a grey and white diamond-patterned car joins the cluster of vehicles around the base of the mountain. There's a glimpse of orange hair in the passenger seat, springing out the moment the car comes to a halt, and driving is a Chinese woman in high ranking Foundation staff attire. Vertin's gratitude at seeing Sonetto like that is tempered considerably by the feeling that, in some way, they're also waking up from a dream. "And so we welcome back the light of day. ... However many promises I've made, to Hiromi, Parsons, and everyone else," Including, implicitly, the one she talked with Schneider about past the Kagoshima Gate. "I do still plan on keeping them. So goodbye, for now, Schneider."

Flamel Parsons

SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE...

To the Acting Director of Project Mystic,

    Behavior like this is intolerable in any civil society.
In my authority as head of investigations of the Psychogate
Incident, consider the Parsons Institute of Anomalous Study
to be formally dissolved, all materials and organizational
structure pending reassignment or shutdown, and the
Psychonauts organization itself illegitimate until
immediately acting upon the demand to reject the Parsons
Institute entirely.

    You are hereby and formally relieved of the authority
which you disdain, Director. The world and its sensible
adults have no place for your kind, and incidents like the
Psychogate Event only prove that efforts to bring you into
that world are a useless squandering of essential resources.

    No appeal of this decision will be accepted at this
time. You can cite 'universal law' to me all you like, but
after everything you've studied, you of all people can know
most of all that our will can be just as absolute and
universal. I've no interest in throwing lifesavers to
someone who has chosen to drown in an ocean because he says
water is not a cosmic truth.


Director Deems,
International Psychic Affairs Regulation Bureau

Flamel Parsons

                    To the Director of the IPAR Bureau,

                        Then name the drops of water, Deems. I've had just about
                    enough of you. The ones hurt here are the ones who stood in
                    the depths of the Parsons Institute and made their choice.
                    Do you know who they are? Or are you just trying to show off
                    who the ocean can drown, scare every psychic straight again?
                    It's your rule that brought us here. Your predecessors set
                    the Astral Separation Standard, and your allies at the
                    Watch, the Foundation, and who knows where else, are the
                    ones who demand the supremacy of the consensus. Everything
                    that Project Mystic's outcome manifested comes from someone
                    with worldly experience in astral and physical matters
                    reconciling your absolute boundary.

                        The Psychonauts will be engaging the Concord directly,
                    for the support you have chosen to withhold. Our
                    organization voluntarily relinquishes accreditation and
                    disavows association with the IPAR. On-site survivors of the
                    Psychogate Incident, including specific members of the
                    Foundation or Watch who engaged in secret audit, will be
                    given the right to make demands for compensation and
                    regulation. External regulatory bodies such as yours will
                    not be accommodated and will no longer be guided through
                    Green Needle Gulch.

                        If you want something from the Psychonauts now, ask the
                    agents who looked Flamel Parsons in the eye. Those names, at
                    least, I expect you know. Expect no further communication.

                    Sincerely,
                    First Head of the Psychonauts, Director of Project Mystic
                    Truman Zanotto

Flamel Parsons

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UPE-1000-F: Ego, Dissonant Variant
Classification: SHD-10, PRS-10

Containment Protocol: Uncontained. Derived from UPE-1000. During cases of severe tension such as high-saturation cognitive dissonance, subconscious-level external alteration, or irreconcilable artificial mental restriction, hazardous breach may occur and must be met with the greatest level of available violence and containment.

                               !!! WARNING !!!
                  UPE-1000-F IS A HOSTILE UPE-1000 VARIANT!
          READ BEFORE ANY PSYCHONAUTICAL ACTIVITY, AND REMAIN CALM.
            WE BELIEVE IT IS POSSIBLE TO SURVIVE AND REMAIN SANE.

Description: The UPE-1000 mental element occurs in many human-like mentalities, embodying the functional reconciliation of tension between the forces of UPE-999 and UPE-1001 and responsible for primary executive function. As a channel of all lower and upper cognitive processes, UPE-1000 and all variants represent the sum total of psychic force available to any astral unit. All instances of UPE-1000 engaged violently must be treated with both caution and maximum prejudice, to preserve both Psychonaut and subject sanity.

If you are reading this documentation, you have been given clearance for, and deployed to, an operation involving a UPE-1000-F instance. This is likely to be the byproduct of dangerous psychic efforts such as sabotage, poorly-formed mind control, mental self-modification, or negative outcomes from artificial mind creation. The core cause cannot be resolved once the 1000-F scenario is underway, dedicate any form of available focus of that type towards minimizing ensuing damage. Any combat-capable operatives deployed to this psychonautry must subdue the UPE-1000-F instance or enable its fulfillment.

The UPE-1000-F variant occurs within high-level psychics during scenarios of entirely irreconcilable tension between fundamental subconscious truths encoded in UPE-999 and equally-unbreakable restrictions formed by UPE-1001 activities, which must both be heavily altered by outside material, social, or psychic impulses to prevent tension resolution. UPE-1000-F may be seen as a functional tear in astral space between anachronistic concepts of "id" and "superego".

Both conflict and assisting encounters with UPE-1000-F carry severe risk of astral damage and psychohazard. Isolate at Motherlobe Psychoisolation facilities or local equivalents immediately, and unaffected psychic individuals must render immediate post-traumatic aid.

...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Flamel Parsons

    The tall man in the center of all of this, Director Parsons, raises his hands, he grips his guitar. His eyes don't close as he plays, not this time. His chords are agonized and the pulses of Truth that surge through the UPEs around him move in rhythm.

    Memories from Empathy are flowing into this, in crashing waves. They're accentuated by the lightning that slams into and through the cracks in the mountain, making it clear: The channels of memory are the cleanest, simplest source of 'fuel'. Director Parsons has no Truth inside him, only Truth from others. From Empathy, or from the UPEs around him, that energy flows into him, but none comes from inside him. Find some way to neutralize those core psychic impressions, make an opposite of them, and that'll stop the Truth. Or, find some way to cut the flow to the outside -- restore containment conditions in the Empathy Simulations. That could deprive him of Truth too.

    Just as easily, one could strike him violently. The massive waves of heat from his Truth cause damage in every direction though, and make incoming projectiles warp and distort. He doesn't hold a single ounce of hostility to those around him, but even still, the lashing heat blasting through the environment sure does.

    The doubts drawn from the opposition, though, do have hostile intent. Oily creatures of varying levels of humanoid shape form, the Doubts light aflame immediately and rush the opposition to try to bog them down, grip and burn them. Screaming and wailing to stop, to wait, to rethink this, they risk distracting everyone until Parsons can finish. But if killed properly, thrown into the heat, or simply cut down, those opposing Flamel will find their minds lighter, the heat lesser.

    The structure is starting to collapse, though. Even those who want to support Flamel would want the Parsons Institute -- and the mountain itself -- not to fall down and destroy the Motherlobe completely. Support systems, containment shutters, even stray Parsons Institute staff, might be rallied to stabilize everything. Save lives. Prevent the nightmare associated with this.

    Flamel's voice sings out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjMvknbnIxs

                    "Pulled off the highway in Missouri,"
                    "And lo, our hearts were heavy laden!"
                 "Made for the chapel with some spray-paint,"
                  "For all the things we'd held in secret."
                    "Lord, lift up these lifeless bones!"
                   "Light, cascading through the windows!"
                       "All the rainbow's heavy tones!"

                     "He has fixed his sign in the sky!!"
            "He has raised me from the pit and set me hiiiiiigh!!"

Timekeeper

"We can trust her."

    At Ahn's indication, Vertin eyes the retreating Psychonautra dubiously, given all they've heard about Petra from various sources. But Ahn's point stands: whatever Flamel's methods may be, every bit of information they've gathered about the project, every manifestation of Flamel's inner fears and feelings, the literal drawings on the wall, they all point to a unified conclusion. Nobody disagrees that the people in question need help, only that this isn't the time, place, or means to do what Flamel's hoping to do.

"Can't we take a break? Talk it out? Don't make me blast over your song, maybe if we work together nobody's gotta burn--"

    Can't we? Even as the towering form of Flamel's ego bombards the Institute with heat and lightning, Vertin still can't help but look at him and see the *goal* of the Psychoportal project, not just what it's become. The work Flamel's done, to either kill him and decimate the organization, or amount to less than nothing at all, for the crime of not working together, is just too hopeless, isn't it?

    Vertin sighs, drowned out by a crash of lightning, while taking shelter behind Ahn's brambles. "I see. Then I have a plan, and I dearly hope that it's one that everyone will be able to agree on."

    While Ahn's barrier still holds, Vertin relays a series of instructions through the radio-- not just calling on her allies in the Watch and Paladins, but those sympathetic to Flamel too. "Everyone! Listen to me! If we work together, then we can all get through this!"

    "Firstly, nobody has to die or be sacrificed here! Agent Kramer, Agent Crenshaw, work together to use your pyrokinesis to siphon the heat out of Parsons' body and away into the storm! Rufus, Aika, Tamiel, dispatch those anomalies, and use my UPE-494's if they help with distracting them!"

    "Our goal is to prevent the Truth Phenomenon from reaching a critical mass, collapsing the Motherlobe and releasing Psychoportals into the multiverse. To that end, Schneider, Ahn, and I will be using the amnestic and the mirrors, along with whatever force is necessary, to break the connection that those anomalies are using the funnel power into Parsons."

    "Lastly, and please, let this be enough for you, Rufus and Crenshaw..." Vertin closes her eyes, taking a breath before continuing. "To the extent that neither of the previous goals are compromised, we ought to do everything in our power to leave the mechanisms of the Psychoportal project intact. Someday, after this has resolved, I would like to advocate for revisiting the project with oversight and input from organizations outside of the Psychonauts, so that the good that was attempted to be done here isn't wasted."

    "This, right now, is the result of a catastrophic lack of control, but the momentum that led here was created by *choices*, not inevitability. I don't want to leave this event as one where well-meaning intentions amounted to nothing because of a difficulty in changing course."

Rufus Shinra

> "To the extent that neither of the previous goals are compromised, we ought to do everything in our power to leave the mechanisms of the Psychoportal project intact."

This... almost works.

Ironically, the fact that Vertin has the strength in numbers works against convincing Rufus here. He can believe her! But what he'd be believing is in her volition at the given moment, when words are easy to say and promises are easy to make, versus later when it comes time to make the hard choices about how much of the project to save. When the dust clears it'll be five against one (he doesn't put much stock in how much Hiromi will care about preserving the psychogate tech) and it'll be easy to go 'Well, actually...' when there's no ongoing disaster to unite against, even if you thought you were being genuine back then.

Or maybe that's just how Rufus is, and he's modeling everyone else's behavior after a mirror of his own.

And so, Rufus takes his stand.

Actually, it's more like he takes his ambush position. Stands are for the heroic types.

Actually, speaking literally, what he takes before anything else is a ticket.

| ENEMY SKILL: HELL TRAIN |

It bursts onto the scene, smashing in from nowhere in particular. Anyone it doesn't slam into or run over has to deal with the waves of immense heat coming off of it.

The train's just the opening act, though - the initial volley. Rufus himself makes an appearance afterward, running into the midst of the chaos to cast his next spell, energy glowing off of his hands as he channels.

"Earth Arena!" He slams one hand palm-first into the ground.

| ENEMY SKILL: EARTH ARENA |

The ground itself shifts - massive walls forming in a twisting pattern with deadly traps scattered throughout.. Rufus doesn't have any control over the design that earthbends into position, but it doesn't matter - there's high walls that'll hopefully provide Flamel cover and split up the opposing party, traps that'll provide hazards or at least distractions, and ultimately a setup for the final spell he has queued up:

| ENEMY SKILL: BULLET BILL DASH |

There's a gigantic bullet careening throughout the labyrinthine arena, chasing down everyone in turn to slam into them with explosive force before moving onto the next, bouncing off of or breaking through walls in an unpredictable pattern.

"If you want to keep people alive that's fine - but hands off of Flamel!" the bullet yells in Rufus's voice. "He's the one with a plan, all of you are just playing catch-up!"

Tamiel Luxis

    Tamiel takes a moment, reeling, as the psychoportal latches onto her head. She grabs hold of it, trying to peel it off--but not fast enough! Doubts leap out of her, groaning leaving trails of sticky fear and self-loathing behind them.

    A shifting, pile of muck turns on Tamiel, lunging forward with its teeth. It impacts hard, sending her sprawling, down in her own mental residue adhering her to the floor. She tries to pull herself free--tries, and tries, but it's made from her very own doubts.

    Without words, they cry, crippling panic and uncertainty leaking through the skin where they touch, You can't! You can't tamper with it! Their babbling is indiscriminate, latching on anything and everything, without regard for how helpful they are to the project. The zeitgeist is made up of everything! Everyone! What would a mistake do?! It could change everyone forever for the worse! It could change me!

    A bubbling, panicked, fever pitch. What if the zeitgeist starts to devour them?! Another doubt crawls, desperate, from Tamiel's forehead. Not everyone who uses the portals will help! They'll manipulate everyone! It's over! It's all over!

    One last one leaps free of Tamiel's head, before she can finish peeling it from the. Something in the Timekeeper draws one of the doubts to her. It spews its caustic energy across her. We'll fail! It tries to hold fast to Vertin, like a drowning man pulling their rescuer in after them. We'll fail! When they're all dead, it will be because we couldn't save them!

Regulus

Well okay maybe Regulus is burning. The heat seems to be getting worse rather than better. Regulus is at a loss for what to do but--

''Then I have a plan.'' Oh thank god, Verwtin has a plan. Regulus looks to her expectantly only to learn that Vertin doesn't actually have orders for her. Shit! Fuck!! She may be a free spirit but that doesn't mean she has any idea on what to actually do here. She's tried reaching out and is mostly receiving ouchies in return and Regulus does not like to receive ouchies as a general rule. And if Vertin isn't telling her what to do that means Vertin is telling her to figure something out on her own. Regulus takes a moment to think.

>Plan A: Open Up Laptop And Deface Flamel's Website. If You Can Click A Button To Get Into Flamel's Mind Maybe You Can Hack Flamel.

>Plan B: Get Out Record Player And Play Beatles At Flamel Until He Submits

>Plan C: Cry And Act Real Pathetic So Flamel Gives Up Out Of Pity

So far Regulus is strongly considering Plan C. Actually, she is already crying and whimpering a little so Plan C might already be underway. Maybe she can do something else and try combining Plan C with another plan. Rufus's incredible sense of teamwork in summoning an evil train from hell helps Plan C further by making Regulus cry and whimper more and get a considerably panicked expression on her face because now there's just some kind of fucking train bursting in out of nowhere why did that even happen. Why does that cannonball look so bloodthirsty???

How about...

>Plan D: Fuck around with the instruments and hope you poke the right buttons that it stably shuts down rather than murders everyone and maybe something can be done later?

Okay, Regulus thinks, time to combine Plans C and D to make Plan CD.

rRegulus, choking and whimpering rushes over to the instruments and starts fucking with the controls, trying to figure out how to shut this thing off without ruining everything or the Psychoportal plan forever as per her interpretation of the spirit of Vertin's nonorders and Vertin's yesspeech.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhh bugger bugger bugger bugger bugger this, APPLe time to disengage BRAINe mode and releash the APPLe, take notes of what happens when I push button we gotta figure this out on the fly oh John Lennon oh Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo." Regulus prays to her gods that lal will end well.

Aika Rosewater

Doubts.

    Horribly little goop gremlins pop out of Aika's head! There was no avoiding that portal, because she was, very intentionally, shielding Kramer from the heat Flamel is letting off. Moving to dodge would mean abandoning that, and she's just winded enough that swatting it away, if it would have even done anything, didn't pan out. So there they are! Awful little critters.

    ... there's a lot less than you'd expect.

    Under ordinary circumstances, Aika would stand behind something like the Psychogates or even the Seed of Light; the boundless POTENTIAL for good is enough to rattle and rally the optimist in her, the one who fundamentally thinks people are good by default and always worth helping out. The immediate cost is what weighs her down.

    That Flamel wants to burn himself for this-- that's fine. He chose that. Much like she frequently makes the choice to burn herself out for others.

    But that he'll potentially take everyone here with him, or at least, the people stuck outside-- and that's a light estimate, all things considered? There's the matter of the monsters that might emerge, too, but that's somehow a lesser concern than the first.

    "Awful little things aren't you..."

    The protective sheen of her inner flame lights up, her tattoos and eyes flaring bright silver-blue. The flame strives to prevent changes to her mind, but it's not painless and free. It's a splitting headache, and it makes it even harder to keep shielding Kramer, if that's even on the table anymore.

    In the haze of the headache, they bite and claw and burn her feet and legs, one even grabs her arm and tugs her around. She rumbles, trying to squeeze the bloody thing and then shove it back into the portal it came from.

    And then a dozen more, speeding up and gaining strength as she winds up to play ball. Well, THIS, she knows how to deal with.

"Rufus, Aika, Tamiel, dispatch those anomalies,"

    "Working on it!!"

    Or she would be, if not for...

HELL TRAIN.

    "Oh you fucking schmuck!"
    Her accent's bleeding through a bit.
    A TRAIN smashes into Aika and scorches her. It's unambiguously bad and painful, and she tumbles onto the floor and roll-roll-rolls until she manages to shoot herself back up, and rockets towards Rufus, once again armed with an excuse to PUNCH A CEO.

"He's the one with a plan, all of you are just playing catch-up!"

    "You're making a hell of an argument in favor of letting this place fall onto *your* stupid head, specifically! What is *wrong with you*?!"

    She never reaches him, smashing through one of his earthen walls instead, silver-blue fire starting to roar up around her. But neither is she letting up the chase, and she's starting to accelerate.

    Aika would *love* to grab that throat and BITE into it, but she'll settle for roughing him up and slamming him into something a few times if he's too nimble. The floor, a wall. Maybe both. Definitely both.

Storm Investigators

- LAST TIME -

<J-IC-Scene> Schneider Greco says, "Ahh. Good that it is to the front. I hope I do-not hit 'myself'."

That'll be as good of starting point for Marcus as any.

- NOW -

The situation is quickly becoming one that might be too much for Greta and Marcus to stick around in, but they've already staked out their positions in this matter by virtue of following Vertin's lead and the older investigator making the decision for both herself and the junior. In another time and place, perhaps they would be helping Flamel, or they might have even found each other on different sides of the conflict.

At least for this particular moment in time with this specific project, however, they're unified in purpose to not stop Flamel's plan to sacrifice himself for something that neither Greta nor Marcus fully comprehend. Hearing Vertin's plan has them taking only a moment to stop and think before nodding in unison.

"You have my support, Timekeeper."
"Y.. Yes, Miss Timekeeper! I can help with... Ah. With finding..."
"The anomalies. Identify the ones pouring the most power into Parsons, and call them out so we can remove them first."
"Understood! His... Mister Parsons' is not a bad person, right? Someone that wants to save people, even like this..."
"It would be a waste to lose someone with his drive and motivations. Now, let's-"

| ENEMY SKILL: HELL TRAIN |
| ENEMY SKILL: EARTH ARENA |
| ENEMY SKILL: BULLET BILL DASH |

"-MOVE!" Without waiting for Marcus to grasp what's going on, Greta hoists the bookworm and her case up under her arm with a strained grunt, hauling ass so as to not get run over by a train or smashed into by a giant bullet-with-a-face. "Change of plans, Marcus. Find out whatever this is and how to stop it!"

"Aaaa? Y-yes, Madam Hofmann! I can't read the p... Pages clearly...!" Once her head's back on straight, Marcus runs alongside Greta, struggling to both keep up with her and try to get a proper look at the things that Rufus just sprang forth out of seemingly nowhere. Should she be reading the train first, or the earth? Maybe the bullets-with-faces? Her only clue as to the source of at least one of those things is Rufus's voice matching the one coming from the bullet, and so she tries utilizing her Reading ability on Rufus himself, to see if she can figure out what his ability even is.

There's also the matter of trying to find out which parts of Director Parsons are 'safe' for Schenider to shoot, too. She had made a good first impression on Marcus before, after all, and that means there's a lot of reading to do in too many directions at once!

Greta, meanwhile, has her hands free enough to engage in some good old-fashioned gunshooting, although whether that's at Rufus or the train or the bullet-with-a-face is going to depend a lot on what Marcus' reading even tells her. She's got her work cut out for her, though, since she's also trying to keep Marcus relatively safe from harm between the anomalies and Rufus' shenanigans.

That's probably why she's not too shy about shooting at Rufus himself. She's careful not to aim for the face, at least.

Hiromi

    Vertin decisively dashes around to the back of Director Parsons, skirting around where Hiromi or Parsons himself would interfere...

    The evasion is successful, Hiromi keeping to her spot, even as the heat increases. This is a progressively difficult stance to keep, as her clothes smolder, dust in her hair already turned to smoke.

    'What was that? Why did you do that? What's going on??'

    "I've given him this chance, to see his wish take form. I'll not let him die unknowing." But he might die, anyway. Hiromi couldn't see into his heart, even like this, to know the depths of Flamel's desire to burn away. She finds regret far more easily for others than for herself.

    'Basically, Agent Flamel's gonna stick to his guns until there's no more guns to stick to, whatever he's got to cling to.'

    "Then let us see that conclusion swiftly."

    'Let me and mine burn instead.'
    'I don't accept your sacrifice, Agent Parsons.'

    Hiromi has a couple issues, here, but they're different from Vertin's.

    The structure is starting to collapse, though.

    A mountain is only a place, but... "'Yours.' Are they 'yours'?" She doesn't have to glance at Kramer.

    She won't ask something silly, like, 'couldn't you have self-destructed where no one would be dragged into it?' That's not how any of this works, and the Psychonauts were the ones who chose to live by a volcano, in the end.

    'Our goal is to prevent the Truth Phenomenon from reaching a critical mass, collapsing the Motherlobe and releasing Psychoportals into the multiverse.'
    Not everyone who uses the portals will help! They'll manipulate everyone!

    "Are you taken by doubts, too? Or do you wish only for slowness? For caution? You don't feel his hopelessness, his desperation. There are fears, of moving and unmoving."

    "None need die. This, we agree. By foolishness, by weakness, by carelessness, they may die, but those who wish for growth are wasted. Other paths would save them, but this, they walked. 'Misfortune' is made."

Schneider Greco

     "... and lo, our hearts were hea-vy laden."
     "Made for the cha-pel..."

     Alone among the UPEs, 1929 can't be synchronized in song. She catches the words, but the cadence of her voice doesn't suit the lines. Her song tapers into silence right around 'Lord, lift up these lifeless bones'.

She believes this, deeply: a miracle is not coming for her.
Not even an imitation of Schneider could sing those words sincerely.

     Her right-hand beautiful gun is trained on the Director's head. Guilt, according to Agent Kramer, is 'deep anterior of the frontal lobe', 'six centimeters behind the forehead'. Adjust to ten, for his inhuman size.

     The best firing angle to hit there, without obliterating the rest of the brain behind it, would be 'straight up from below': up through his jaw and out through the top of his head. The further from the Director and his firestorm-epicenter that Schneider stands, the worse her shot; the more of his brain her slug will compromise.

     She can't afford to be more than ten feet away, crouched and aiming up at forty-five degrees.

     At that distance, the heat is blistering her right hand. Her gun is becoming unbearable to hold. Her black coat billows in the winds, and she shuts one eye against it.

     BANG.

     Schneider's silver bullet passes through the Director's skull, entering through the bridge of the nose. For whatever seconds it takes his Hiromi-bestowed regeneration to recover, the gray matter required for 'guilt' blown out through a bleeding bullet-hole.

And as if addressing that hole, speaking into it, she lifts her voice:
"My dear lord Parsons, you are so kind. For the La-dy Rook, for oth-ers, even for me... that we suf-fer so, and you do-not know how to fix it, it drives you mad."
BANG. It's starting to close. Keep the bore-hole open. Guilt can't be allowed.
"I have nev-er known a gov-er-nor like you, to hurt for us so. Mhmhm, I did-not know, at first, what I was seeing? 'If on-ly the world knew', you think, 'if on-ly the world could hurt for them as I do, it would be kind to them again'."
BANG. Director's head again. Only four bullets left in the right.
Rufus's projectile hurtles towards Schneider; she dissipates her left gun into bladelike feathers, carving into it and deflecting it to her side. An exasperated sigh- BANG- and she spends her left gun's last bullet at him.
"But it knows. They know they are kill-ing us, my-lord." The sigh evens out into a little delicate tremble. "And they do not care. You... you are rarer than you know. My-lord, it is not fair that we suf-fer and you do not... but you cannot suf-fer for us. That is what you are doing, right? Ahh... how greedy, my-lord."

"Someone who cares must stay a-mong the living, and thrive."
BANG.
"If we die, it is your bur-den to live."

     Her right sleeve is smoldering, like it might catch fire now. The gun, this close to the fiery epicenter, hurts to hold.

     "To that end, Schneider, Ahn, and I will be using the amnestic and the mirrors..."
     "No, my-lord. I won't." UPE-1929, the traitorous little survival instinct, turns her head and looks back at Vertin with a half-sooty face and a wavery smile. "I un-der-stand him, now. That night in the pan-try, what I said to hurt you, how unfair it was that you have your shelter. Please. Put that on a bul-let for me, or get it in his head."

     'How?'- well, Vertin can figure out all kinds of impossible things, except the things they can't.

Flamel Parsons

    Kramer is quick, of course, to leap to the Timekeeper's orders. She's still stumbling, struggling, but she'll fight with everything she has just like she promised Hiromi. Survival above all else, no cowering. Pushing herself to work exclusively, specifically to save lives, save hers and herself in that order. Her lesser pyrokinetics siphon some, but she soon reaches her limit. Crenshaw... His stolen Aika energy has burnt out, though, and he can't turn against Flamel right now... Right?

    His hand clenches. He's given a lot for Flamel's plan. Vertin's words are convincing, It's worth it to try to trust. "I believe in you, 'Mel." He whispers. Rising to his feet, his arms burst into flame as his pyrokinetic specialty begins to siphon the heat. "That's why I know this won't stop you. Or the Truth. Come on, agent... You'll get this..."

    He carves paths in the heat. Those with human-level endurance, or projectiles that need less disruption, can use his channels. Regulus, for example, rushes to the controls of his device. Pulses disrupt, and she'll actually find it quickly becomes sensible to her. It's mental machinery, a device for circulating memories and lessons from the past. If she pushes herself, she might be able to mix the symbolic UPE energies in ways that destructively interfere, rather than resonate with each other.

    Here are the cores: The agonies of the vulnerable, the absolute nature of cultural narrative, the invisibility of pain, and... the Storm, what does that represent? And somehow, Petra is still wired into all of that. If Regulus can orient at least one of the ideas to cancel at least one of others out, she might be able to massively deprive Director Parsons of Truth all of a sudden, helping fulfill one of Vertin's most important core goals. She's already made intense headway with just chaos...

    But if she starts that, she'll surely draw attention. Director Parsons undoubtedly has controls to fight her. A musician with his instrument versus a DJ at her console... it's heating up under her fingertips. Can she endure it?

Vantablitz Remnants

    Ahn barely gets within throwing distance with her mirror shard, much less direct contact. Her headlong charge into the burning heat, her neck, shoulders, and the arms shielding her face, coated with the black blood that gushes down the side of her throat from her hair, is stopped cold by the first blast of lightning directly in her path. Hurled back, she hits the ground with her arms guarding her eyes instead of her head, and the world spins when she hits the ground.

    'Everyone! Listen to me! If we work together, then we can all get through this!'

    Those are words that Ahn has heard before, and they're never true. She thinks about that when the pain explodes from the back of her skull and makes her eyes throb. But they aren't words she needed to hear anyways, so Ahn plants both her hands against the burning ground and pushes herself up, hurriedly shielding Vertin again.

    'Firstly, nobody has to die or be sacrificed here!'

    She's heard those words too. She's said them, even, and tried very hard to believe them. Clutching the side of her head again, wounding her fingers on the brambles, Ahn trains her shotgun one-handed on the floating Storm in a Bottle-- and then the tempest becomes a blizzard. The metal almost burning her hands through the plastic furniture cracks under the sudden switch, and the barrel fractures and bursts from temperature shock. Ahn flinches away from the wounding fragments, and her ruined weapon clatters down the mine floor.

    'Our goal is to prevent the Truth Phenomenon from reaching a critical mass, collapsing the Motherlobe and releasing Psychoportals into the multiverse.'

    But that's correct. Regardless of how abstract and whelming the high concept of what's happening is, reducing it to another act of singular survival, breaking it down into the individual steps of 'stay alive', refocuses Ahn on the task. Gathering herself up, she sets her feet, breathes the stabbing air deeply, and locks her eyes ahead. The Caustic Amnestic will freeze if she throws it. She has to get closer.

    "Vertin." Ahn gasps, quietly stifling pain in her voice even as it vibrates through her posture. "We should separate the UPEs from him first. That's easier to do with the shards. Once we've done that . . . I think we can make him forget that 'truth'." The way forward, as ever, is clear; to use the resources she's sweat and bled to gather up along the journey here, all to throw at the very last push before safety. As she has over and over before.

    But it needn't be exactly the same as before. Although it may be the worst possible time, Ahn still has faith that the help she didn't have back then will come through.

    "Lotus!!" she shouts loud a second time, clutching the flower that shouldn't have survived a week off the stem, much less these conditions. Black fluid continues to spill from it, but the rate slows as it crawls past her chest, under her scorched parka. "I know you can do it! I know it's not the time yet, but you have to give it everything you've got! You can do that, can't you?! Haven't you always wondered if you could?!"

    Shuddering as if coughing up lungfuls of water, the flower clutched in her fingers-- it was a lotus flower, wasn't it?-- contracts its thorned roots like a muscular convulsion. Flickers of green pulse through all the wrong place to be veins under the skin, and the liquid coating Ahn's skin hardens, or rather, tightens, compressing into ferrfluid-alike triangular tessellations that twist together like fibres. Liquid extrusions flower from the surface and calcify into densely layered bone-white bark or carapace. The black film still clinging to her throat vibrates against the air, and the white noise sounds an awful lot like word-fragments rendered incoherent by sleep.%

Hiromi

    "I wish to see this, these gates, this land within not-land, this future of new strengths. He seeks others reach, grasp, what they couldn't. To see, hear what they couldn't. If you can't defeat my smallest desire, you won't deserve your ends." Hiromi could be speaking to anyone, now, outside of a few.

    'Basically, Agent Flamel's gonna stick to his guns until there's no more guns to stick to, whatever he's got to cling to.'

    "Yet still, his strength is tested. His form may break. His will, only, endures past its vessel. Pitiable. This growth, unbalanced."

    It was revealed only hours -- perhaps closer to minutes -- ago that all of this was within Flamel's own ego-scape, including the earth through which Hiromi had dug to find the metal barriers of his mind. To become a mountain... is, fundamentally, something Hiromi can't disapprove of.

    Everything is in danger of collapsing before the wish can be fulfilled, whether Flamel's or hers. She strikes the floor within Rufus's earthen arena, a shockwave narrowed to reach firmament, and then pulls, commanding stone to reach her will. Hiromi needs only make contact, between the edge of her own will, a thing so clear as to manifest an aura surrounding her, and the mountain. From there, she can push, firm, and arrange, building up a foundation that won't burn. It's nothing like 'an argument,' addressed to Flamel's goals or guilt. Neither, after all, involved the deaths of the other psychonauts, when he began his experiments.

    With quake and rumble, the earthen arena is augmented, swiftly, by stone pillars, reaching up at angles like mountains fresh from their tectonic slip to find the places above where they can meet with Hiromi's den and, from there, reinforce that shelter into a unified whole.

    The path to the storm above she not only keeps open, but rings with reinforcement. That's the path of the eruption, not something to block off.

Flamel Parsons

    Schneider within and Schneider without are linked. UPE-1929, the Survival Instinct, the manifestation outside, shares an index or an appendix. And, you know what? Schneider's desire to avoid 'striking herself', that is, impacting the memories of Schneider within the brain of a Flamel-derived being, is actually... perfect. Because he *hasn't* hurt her yet, in ways he understands. He doesn't regret how he treated her. So when Marcus crossreferences it, it aligns a perfect trajectory. Strike the guilt out of his brain in a chaotic bullet lobotomy, and you risk collateral, but avoiding anything with Schneider in it can refine Schneider's aim from precise to surgical.

    How is she enduring all that heat when she fires? Why are there no Doubts in her? It's impossible to say. But Marcus also manages to identify the anomalies. UPE-1057, the Shattered Mirror, is surely the strongest, the ideal one to defuse as much as possible. That's information that'll be immensely useful to Ahn. But there's not much more she can read in all of this, unless she's willing to stay stable and still long enough to read deep...

    For Schneider, my god, that bullet was such a clean impact that the tiny hole it drilled barely leaks a stream of blood. There's no grand gush, she managed to avoid major blood vessels in one of the most blood-vessel-rich areas of the human body. *How?!* But it's starting to heal... The immortality of the Dissonant Ego, the Director, keeps him standing, keeps him playing, through all that. His hand shakes on his guitar. And then, again. Again. Again. Pulverizing one specific spot and leaving the rest as they are. But he's starting to evade. To preserve his guilt, just a little. Still, the raw violence of headshot after headshot drains his ability to channel Truth.

    "I have to try..." He whispers, struggling to regain a grip on his instrument. "I can't understand it. This Truth in you. But I have to try to bring it to the world. They may know it already, but at least... At least you could strike their cruelty, with that precision of yours. Don't I have to try at least, even if I have to live...?" But Director Parsons is accepting it. The idea that he must live. That, somehow, coming from the Survival Instinct herself, circulates quickly into his psychic energies quickly.

    And no, she doesn't hit the Schneider within. The Empathy-Schneider still skulks among Light Containment, unharmed. *Marksmanship.*

Vantablitz Remnants

    It's enough for the time being. The synaptic joining is unbearably slow going, but it's fast enough that Ahn can leap out of the way of the Hell Train faster than she could before, channel one absorbed genetic memory down one arm, and fire a burst of thin needles from the wrist with a fluid-bone-cracking sound; then a second down the other arm, to throw out a wave of airborne particles like pollen in Rufus' direction which absorb not only the heat of the Truth, but the Bullet Bill exhaust as well, thickening from mere mist to a wave of ice blue gel that can stick him in place and slowly freeze him; a deadly combination with the darts now splitting into countless fragments that ricochet back and forth between the Earth Arena walls and leave blots of burning poison where they strike.

    Copied abilities thrown abilities would feel like more of a destined duel if Ahn wasn't trying to fixate on the one guy who's liable to kill everyone here if she ignores him.

    'I un-der-stand him, now. That night in the pan-try, what I said to hurt you, how unfair it was that you have your shelter. Please. Put that on a bul-let for me, or get it in his head.'

    "I don't really get it but I'm not gonna die for that either! Help or get out of the way!" Ahn gasps out, at a dead sprint again already, her slowly spreading symbiote-skin reconfiguring for stolen fire resistance in motion. She lunges for UPE-1999; the mirror shard is held like a knife now, her fingers armoured, and she uses it to slash at the glass bottle-- inverting the inside/outside of the rain contained by the bottle. With preturnatural speed, she tries to convert the same motion into hurling caustic onto UPE-1630's blade as she passes.

Timekeeper

    Vertin's uncanny attunement to the flow of magic lets her see a photobleached streak slash through the air ahead of the Hell Train's manifestation, and she immediately pulls whoever's beside her into a dive out of its way. Covering herself from the scorching heat as it careens past, even being aware of the working of the labyrinth spell doesn't allow her to do anything to avoid getting stuck inside the walls as they raise up out of the ground. Vertin pushes herself to her feet and tries to reorient herself towards the Light Containment breach, no matter how frustrating the twisting walls make it.

"He's the one with a plan, all of you are just playing catch-up!"

    "His plan was poorly considered, even to himself."

    Vertin carefully slides against the wall around the edges of a spiked pit blocking her way forwards through the labyrinth, talking into the radio the entire while. "His own regrets tried to abort it with a suicide mission. He's burning himself to ash as we watch. Everything he says, and all of these anomalies of his mind he's spawned, are created by pain, not irreplicable genius. This is his plan because he reached his emotional limits for not having one, not because it's his best option. Stopping him here is a kindness to him too."

    Vertin hesitates while a swinging pendulum slices in front of her, and then charges through before it swings back, stumbling out of the maze right beside Rufus. She whips out her wand to throw an incantation at him, but with her focus broken by the chaos, it fizzles and dissipates harmlessly, and then her moment of surprise is lost. They curse, and turn tail and run, dropping a floppy disk behind themselves that bursts into chilling mist.

"You don't feel his hopelessness, his desperation. There are fears, of moving and unmoving."

    "I know. More than it seems, Archwolf."

    With a lot of effort, Vertin jams a piece of rebar into the dirt wall of the exterior of the labyrinth, hauling herself up to climb on top. "I know that desperation, and I know it's not the same as wisdom. I won't let perfect be the enemy of good, but leaping at the first salvation you find is desperation that can destroy yourself and those you care about. I have never once, ever, doubted the ability of someone to do good when they put their mind to it."

    From up there, Vertin scans the bedlam for the people she's searching for, and raises her voice to call to them. Except, when they see Regulus, she's already precisely where they'd want her to be, which is deeply reassuring in the moment. "Marcus! This way!"

    'This way' means, along with Ahn, towards the mechanisms and the UPEs fueling Flamel. Vertin leaps off of the labyrinth wall just before a bolt of lightning strikes the high point, then hurries through a channel carved through the fire by Crenshaw. To Ahn, breathlessly and raspy from the heat, "Right. I have a feeling that we'll need to address the feelings embodied by the UPEs individually, which Marcus's arcane skill ought to help with."

Rufus Shinra

She's not shy about shooting at Rufus himself, either. She's careful not to aim for the face, at least.

> Reading

Rufus has magic marbles that let him cast spells that he's copied off of other people (specifically abilities that leave an impression or a lasting memory on him). These have limited uses, so in theory he'll run out.

In practice: He's constantly on the hunt for new ones. Be warned: anything flashy or vaguely 'cool-looking' is liable to be used against you.

Greta's shots land home, causing Bullet!Rufus to go careening off course and explode in an explosively explosive explosion. He looks a little frazzled but he's still on his feet.

> "His plan was poorly considered, even to himself."

He coughs. Firing off three spells and then exploding^3 might have taken more out of him than he was counting on. "Yeah. Maybe."

"It's moving fast. It's breaking things. That's how progress goes."

"But it's still getting results."

Flamel Parsons

    Tamiel purges the last of the Doubts after a while. Each one, when it withers to charred ash, releases her mind. She's given the mental clarity she needs. Vertin's plan is the right middle-road, isn't it? Isn't there a way to get everything, and still save everyone? It might be. If she can trust her allies to fulfill the Psychogate plan, she has nothing to fear in fully dedicating herself to saving everyone.

    Hiromi's excellent efforts are already starting to pay off. The mountain is rumbling less, the ceiling no longer caving in, the structures finally stabilizing. If Tamiel moves quickly, acts as a sufficiently rapid disaster response, a combination of doubtlessness and nearby Truth will make it clear that she can prevent lives. A mental tally shines in the ambient telepathy, an exact number of lives saved. The terrain, the healing, whatever she can do, she can increment that until it encompasses the whole Motherlobe, surely. Maybe start with Crenshaw, who's starting to wither into ash as he tries to siphon the heat. He's still working on making paths through the searing heat, especially for Ahn.

    Amnestic to the dagger. Mirror to the bottle. Shadows and fire and wings and screaming surge out of the dagger -- something unremembered, something lost by history. A woman's voice. UPE-1630-Gate, a shadowy phantom, cries out in sobbing screams -- she was just about to lean over Ahn's shoulder?! "PLEASE! PLEASE, WE HAVE TO HELP THEM! They're hurting so much, why won't...!" Before she crumbles to shadow and dust. The rain bursts out of the bottle, a screaming peal of upward droplets that sizzle into evaporation, depositing a wild array of paints, inks, lights, sounds -- a cultural discharge of an era's obsessions concentrated. The vessels themselves may remain functional, but key pieces of their energy are being clearly siphoned. History and culture cease to hold the Truth that UPE-1000-F needs, but the discharge risks slamming Ahn around. She's someone who can handle some Truth in her, more than Flamel can, but it hurts to hold. Ahn might know some of that already.

Rufus Shinra

Rufus should be paying more attention.

Aika smashes through the wall next to him, and he finds himself punched and slammed into the ground repeatedly.

"Come... ON," he says, struggling to get free again.

| ENEMY SKILL: Silent Girl |

Even while being grappled, he manages to get off a spell, one that advantageously gives him some shadowy extra arms that are armed with hammers and nails.

"It's still... better than doing *nothing*," he manages to get out, weakly, as he tries to hit back at her.

Flamel Parsons

    Director Parsons is stumbling. Struggling on his last legs. Losing his grip on that guitar. Tears are streaming down his face as his body burns, heals, burns. The power is faltering -- key UPEs are being subverted, their network is disrupted, and his immortality struggles to keep up with pounding headshots. His mentality and focus are lapsing, and the Doubts of his enemies are subsiding. Allies are diverting to damage control, though Rufus is unthinkably dedicated and keeping so much heat off of the man who takes all this heat for himself.

    But Hiromi has opened the mountain entirely.

    The archwolf breaks the whole mountain into a stable split, forking the entire thing right down the middle in a way that would almost be comical under other circumstances. Director Parsons looks up through the new gap, out to the storm outside, and firms the grip on his guitar.

                     "He has fixed his sign in the sky..."
               "He has raised me from the pit and set me high..."

    Tears become light. The stream down his cheeks sizzles, evaporating brilliantly. Regulus' console heats agonizingly. Every button-press and switch-flip is pain. The air refracts terribly in its superheating state, making gunshots hard to land. The UPEs that he's channeling begin to overload their conduction, spewing psionic phenomena even when they aren't damaged. It's becoming hellish to be here, though it would have become a thousand times as lethal without the work to prevent that.

                              "Each morning new!!"
                           "Each day shot through!!"
                "With all the sharp, small shards of shrapnel,"
                    "That seem to burst out of me and you!"

                           "Head down toward Kansas,"
                     "We will get there when we get there!"
                               "Don't you worry!"

    (His hand trembles. His breath shakes.)

             "Feel bad... about the things we do along the way..."

    (His grip firms.)

                           "But not really that bad."
                         "We inhaled the frozen air..."
              "Lord, send me a mechanic if I'm not beyond repair!"

    This is it. Save all the lives you can. Preserve these UPEs, the core of his Truth Phenomenon, if you want them saved, want them put to better use another day in a brighter future. Drain his mentality, convince him of his greed and his truly inappropriate understanding of the suffering he wants to solve. The mountain won't fall over now, but the storm outside surges in and Director Parsons surges up to meet it. His vast machine screams with strain as its final sequence activates...

                      "HE HAS FIXED HIS SIGN IN THE SKY!"
                        "HE HAS RAISED ME FROM THE PIT!"
                              "AND SET ME HIGH!!"

Timekeeper

"Don't I have to try at least, even if I have to live...?"
"That night in the pan-try, what I said to hurt you, how unfair it was that you have your shelter."

    Schneider's partial rejection of Vertin's plan is, in essence, the representation of what she's been talking about this entire time. Charging ahead with solving the problem in front of them-- that is, preventing the imminent explosion of the Psychoportal project-- is a necessity, but the whole of the solution can only be found by cooperating. Vertin had thought to put communicating with Flamel's 'soul' off until after the disaster was managed, but Schneider has chosen to 'save' it right here, one bullet at a time.

"Help or get out of the way!"

    Vertin shakes their head. "No, she's right. If we can figure out the exact way to put that thought into his head, we ought to be able to end this in an instant, without breaking anything. ... These representations, where are they coming from?"

    Joined up with Regulus at the machinery, Vertin takes an offered mirror shard from Ahn, slathered in the amnestic toxin. To start, she slashes it through the red cloth of UPE-1057 to cut the mirror's connection to Flamel off, but after that she grips the edge of the desk, staring into the broken mirror to confront the reflection directly. Tensing her jaw, she's silent for several long seconds as if suddenly cut off from the fight raging all around, before she suddenly speaks up again.

    "Regulus? Is there a way to attach that device to me? To siphon a UPE out of myself and integrate it into the core functionality?"

Storm Investigators

Targets are identified, and Marcus fumbles her lantern as she continues racing along, panting slightly as the extended sprinting session already seems to be getting to her. She squinting slightly as she realizes there's eomething else deeper in the text, too, weighing her options when she sees that it's too hard to read it while she's running. Maybe staying still long enough to read it would be the solution!

It's a risky move, but it could be worth it. Then again, would it even be practical, considering how little she still knows about what she only glimpsed a moment ago? Putting herself into this sort of danger so soon could help end things before they really snowball out of control, but if she jeopardizez the efforts by unwittingly putting someone else in harm's way because of that...

And then Bullet!Rufus explodes. That draws a sharp inhale from Marcus as she starts to fret over whether Greta's just killed someone, and then that's followed by a relieved noise when he emerges from the smoke, and then another starrtled noise when she realizes what his magic marbles are capable of.

"I should be safe from those marbles..."
"What? Don't get distracted, Marcus. There's an opening, while those two are busy. Stick to the Timekeeper's plan."

"Marcus! This way!"

Between Vertin calling on her specifically and Greta's reminders, Marcus' mind homes in on something she can actually focus on again. "Coming! Ah, there's so much.. Running today..!" She complains, having some difficulty keeping up even while Greta's juggling both body-shielding Marcus and firing back at the anomalies that drift too close towards them. Marcus herself isn't completely safe from all the UPEs, either, taking some bumps and bruises and burns while also trying to keep her bookcase from getting caught up in all the crossfire.

"The feelings of the UPEs... Ah! UPE-1057... The Shattered Mirror. That's the one we need to focus on!" She blurts out at all once, hopping forward and scrambling against the wall before Greta leaps over and pulls her up the rest of the way. "I saw there was something else, but I couldn't get a good look... Um. I-I'll try and read through it again!"

She takes the gamble, and she stops moving. The lantern goes back up, and she tries to decipher what it was that she saw only a glimpse of earlier. "Something in here about the Mirror is tied deeply to all of this.. But why? What's the missing piece here?"

Vantablitz Remnants

    'PLEASE! PLEASE, WE HAVE TO HELP THEM! They're hurting so much, why won't...!'

    "WHAT DO YOU THINK I'VE BEEN DOING ALL THIS TIME?!"

    Ahn screams the words before she realizes. Turning her her head to the next UPE target is a violent enough motion that she feels hot tears spill out from her eyes, vapourizing on her skin within seconds. "Shut up! Leave me alone! You weren't there! I didn't live because I deserved to! It was just dumb luck, and you can't make anyone's last will come true if the only good thing about you is luck! I tried! So, so hard! Where were you?!"

    The blast of the UPEs discorporating hurls her away in the same moment an icy blue flower blooms directly out of the back of her hand. Ahn, off her feet, violently strikes an Earth Arena wall; the black fluid lurches up to coil around her head, shuddering just short of coherence and splashing down to her shoulders. Ahn slides down the wall, collapses onto her hands and knees, and gasping for air, forces herself back up with a high-pitched growling throat noise.

    A second later, the living jelly cast from that flower, in the same moment as she was thrown away, has absorbed enough of the burning Truth to begin growing and multiplying around the Director, taxing his regeneration with lethal cold and exponential growth until it's dealt with.

    'Right. I have a feeling that we'll need to address the feelings embodied by the UPEs individually, which Marcus's arcane skill ought to help with.'

    It burns badly enough to be worth trying. More than she has by accident, at least. She doesn't know much about the second she'd struck, and yet . . .

    "So stop trying to go back to it! Just because you accept you can't fix it doesn't mean you aren't-- redoing it in your head! Transplanting your heart into the past so you can cling to the 'better world' just ruins you in the end! Don't place everything so heavy on 'only if it works' so bad that you break in half if you can't make it come true yourself!"

    Ahn gropes for her mirror shard, and finds only half of it on the ground; she scrapes it up anyways. Her second of three amnestic canisters is slung off the tactical harness inside the shredded remains of her jacket. Staring at the blank space, she grips a handful of powdered chromatic psistone dust instead, mixed together like rainbow sand of which she can only see one-- two colours, now. That's a sign of hope. "If you can't be the one who saves all of them yourself, like a one-man army-- a miracle-- then keep looking for the one you can--"

    Ahn darts down the path opened up by Crenshaw. The straining growth finally reaches past her hips, accelerating her stride one step at a time. She sweeps past where she thinks there should be a UPE, and throws the stone powder at where UPE-1967 is theoretically recorded; then she grips and shatters a vial of the storm compound over the outline traced by the stone, pouring the polarizing essence of binary collapse and volatile extremes on the icon of desperate, silent forgetfulness and erasure. "--and keep looking for anyone else who thinks the same way you do to help the rest! You don't have any idea how lucky you are that you even can do that! You gigantic ass!"

Flamel Parsons

    Marcus looks into the Mirror. What is it? What's in that Shattered Mirror? What did it all mean? She reads, she reads, she reads...


Decapitation is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury
is invariably fatal to humans and all vertebrate animals, since it deprives
the brain of oxygenated blood by way of severing the jugular vein and common
carotid artery, while all other organs are deprived of the involuntary
functions that are needed for the body to function. The term beheading refers
to the act of deliberately decapitating a person, either as a means of murder
or as an execution; it may be performed with an axe, sword, or knife, or by
mechanical means such as a guillotine. An executioner who carries out
executions by beheading is sometimes called a headsman.[1] Accidental
decapitation can be the result of an explosion,[2] a car or industrial
accident, improperly administered execution by hanging or as the natural
outcome of an individual placing the burden of the Truth Phenomenon on
others.[L-57]


    Flamel died once, for doing this ages ago in a way that put the responsibility on others. Deep, deep, deep in his heart, he absorbed entirely the wrong lesson. He still can't imagine the vulnerable having their autonomy, only the suffering moving its seat.

    It is a good idea to stop this. If she takes this fragment of knowledge to the Psychonauts, or whatever's left of them after this, they'll be able to make sure something like this doesn't happen again -- they know how to heal Flamel, and this fragment is what's necessary to do that. Morceau Oleander can use this later.

    For now, other problems.

Hiromi

    The mountain breaks open, yet stands.

    "There! Look! Feel!" Hiromi spreads her arms. The fire is reaching up the tips of her hair, and her gi is charring, in danger of scattering to dust, all from how she's refused to move. "Foundation, roots, a base to stand! Desire, fire, passion to fill your heat. In these lower mountains, you feel hunger, still. Destruction is never-ending, but consumption is more than hunger. Do you see? The fire needs its fuel. Even your pain, their pain, your suffering."

    She points above, to the sky and the storm, with one clawed finger. "Keeping all within you leads to death, or else, to death. <The cessation of desire is self-destruction.> <Internal pressure without cessation or direction is self-destruction.>"

    She's too pleased with the result to both blockading the UPEs, now. Not while others must brave the fires to reach them.

    'I didn't live because I deserved to! It was just dumb luck, and you can't make anyone's last will come true if the only good thing about you is luck!'

    "Many worlds are broken in their cruelty." But not all? Hiromi suggests something without stating anything more.

    'I know. More than it seems, Archwolf.'
    'I won't let perfect be the enemy of good, but leaping at the first salvation you find is desperation that can destroy yourself and those you care about.'

    "You'll leap." She says it like a command. Like a promise. It rumbles away into some not-too-distant future.

Schneider Greco

     Schneider's aim tracks the Director's swaying, as he tries his best to evade. The skin on her right hand is peeling from the heat now. She can't afford a tremble. Each bullet has to re-bore the same hole, through 'guilt and nothing else', like an archer splitting their own arrow.

     The trembles that her hand can't show come through in her voice.

     "Don't I have to try at least, even if I have to live...?"
     BANG. "My-lord... you are hurting me now," she says, perhaps a little too quietly. "Won't you smile, for me? Comfort me? Mhmhm-" devoid of its usual lightness- "I'd e-ven humor you ban-da-ging my hands..."

     "Lord, send me a mechanic if I'm not beyond repair!"
     BANG. "You know, do-you-not, that this will-not save me? Will-not have saved the La-dy Rook?" She has to hold the gun with both hands now to keep it steady, and the left starts to blister too, scrunching her expression. "Haah. What good does it do for me, that you cry for me? My dear kind self-less lord, do-not be selfish now."

     But it's coming to a head. This isn't getting her what she wants. Her teeth, quietly, grit.

     "Regulus? Is there a way to attach that device to me..."
     "No time, my-lord!" she shouts above the rising music, tearing off her dark coat as it finally catches fire. "Whatever you have, bring it here! Please!"

     One bullet left, but she racks the slide back and ejects it, holding the ejection port open for Vertin to crouch beside her and load just one bullet-sized thing.

     And if she has a moment, close-together, to lower her voice: "... If this parts us, my-lord, I will be alright. There will be a Schneider with you where you go, yes?"

Regulus

Regulus would be relieved if she knew she was precisely where Vertin wanted her to be, but it isn't really until she reaches the instruments in question--the controls--that she really actually feels that she is where she should be. Plan C is temporarily put on hold as she wipes at her eyes as she feels that familiar intuitive sense fill her.

Her intuitive sense tells her how to cause problems and even though Hiromi's abs are RIGHT THERE, she hesitates because--well, that'd probably shut the thing down, but would it shut it down safely?

The heat doesn't really make her feel like she has any choice. Every time she touches something, her hand aches and burns and blisters and this might be the hardest she's ever really put her body on the line as a conscious choice of her own. We are discounting all the times she put her body on the line accidentally or because someone else decided it should be on the line.

Did Regulus read all the UPE lore? Probably not, she probably barely paid any attention. She doesn't know what would be ideal. But she can guess. And so that's what she does. She looks towards the various UPE's out and about and just--guesses based on vibes, hoping to push one UPE's symbolic energy against the other.

She yelps as the pain in her hands becomes too much and APPLe floats forward.

"Captain...! Allow me!" And he takes over briefly, finishing the procedure Regulus started.

''Regulus? Is there a way to attach that device to me? To siphon a UPE out of myself and integrate it into the core functionality?''

"...Uh what? Vertin, love. I've got a sense for this thing but for all I know it's going to explode--I've never actually worked with these controls before!"

But she sees something in Vertin's eyes and she swallows. "Aye aye, Captain."

She bites at her lips, eyes running over the control console--spurned on by Vertin's need and Schneider's warnings.

She suddenly latches out for a hat with dinglebopples on it and hisses as she grips it, quickly shoving it into Vertin's hands. "Put it on! Real quick, Vertin! Whatever you're thinking of, think it fast!"

Timekeeper

    Looking at the central console of Flamel's machinery is a nearly synesthetic experience. The vast amounts of psychic energy, Truth itself, conducted through it burns patterns of buttons and switches into her palms when she presses her hands to it. The heat screams with wordless desperation, the dials are magnifying glasses and mirrors, the indistinct voices of entire worlds drowned out by radio static to fixate on the crying heard on a single frequency.

    It's more like dragging her hand through technicolor water than flipping a switch, when she supplies power to one of the unused terminals of the console. "Marcus, could you please read this machine, and make sure I won't get offed by this process when we're working it?"

    First, Vertin rubs a thin layer of the amnestic gel on the back of her head, carefully lifting up her hat. Where the caustic fluid sizzles, it leaves her hair and skin untouched, but erodes away at the barrier between mind and reality to allow a connection point for the device. Then, with Regulus's guidance, Vertin affixes the gadget-covered silly technohat to her head, sliding its gizmos and ports to center around the precise feeling in Vertin's mind that she seeks to manifest as a UPE.

    It materializes on the ground, only a few inches high, nearly lost in the heat and noise of the fighting-- but untouched, always, by all of it. A simple tree frog, green and smooth skinned, surrounded by a perpetual puddle of rainwater. Within the reflection of that puddle is a world only one person has ever or will ever see; grey smears of buildings drawn up into the distant sky along with raindrops, shadows of geometric shapes representing nothing from any era of humanity as the only feature on the landscape, alone in the Storm.

    UPE-000, Hyla Arborea. Within it is the utter certainty, bordering on pathological, that no matter how many people are lost to violence that can never touch you directly, your duty is to keep moving forwards rather than falling apart to join them.

"Whatever you have, bring it here! Please!"

    When Vertin cups the frog in her hands, her palms quickly pool with rainwater that comes from nowhere, and doesn't evaporate in the intense heat at the base of the Director's body. She hurries to bring it over to Schneider, laying UPE-000 down on the ground, and holding out her hand for the last remaining bullet. She rolls it in the puddle, and the reflections of that empty, lonely world cling to the bullet like paint.

"... If this parts us, my-lord, I will be alright."

    An acutely relevant feeling, for the thoughts harbored in the frog clasped in Vertin's hands. Crouching, voice lowered for the private conversation, Vertin's hand brushes against Schneider's when passing the bullet back, lingering to hold it for a moment.

    "There will. And I'll owe you another week, if you don't remember this one." Two hands, together, place the bullet into the port, and rack the slide to close it again. "... Thank you, Schneider. I'll see you soon, regardless."

Aika Rosewater

"It's still... better than doing *nothing*,"

    Rufus' many arms smash and dig into Aika's sides with hammers and nails, as she struggles to hold him up. Everytime one of her Doubts gets smashed in the background her headache is getting worse. She's lost a lot of energy lending it to Kramer, taking hits, getting burned. She's running on fumes and the raw advantage of already having her hands on Rufus and not letting go, for however long that'll hold. Not too much more.

    "Yeah! Yeah let me just turn on the people-churning machine! Huh? No don't worry! It only churns people like, A FEW TIMES. Good things come out the other end! It's WORTH IT."
    She's growling, or snarling, or something between the two.

    "You can just NOT turn it on! You can just keep working on it until it makes good things WITHOUT churning people, dipsh--"

    A hammer cracks her jaw just as she looks like she's about to try chomping on his neck in anger, and she drops Rufus.

    Aika makes a whine like an injured cat, rubbing her jaw. Blue fire flows from her tattoos, accelerating her healing, but...

    "This is *fucked up*. You get at least that much, don't you? This could have been..." Vertin made a good point of it already. If Flamel hadn't kept secrets, and opened up more, it wouldn't have come down to picking between a good idea and the people it didn't have to harm but ended putting on the tracks.

    She wipes her mouth, frustrated, cooling down from the fit of feral rage. Put the smile back on. There's still a bit of work to do.

    "It doesn't bloody matter now. Look around you. You don't seriously want to die here at this point do you?"

    She decides to use the last of her strength to deal with anything left that might interfere with the others; falling debris, the few remaining Doubts if any. It isn't much, but they seem to have a plan, and Rufus seems as much on his last leg as she is.

Schneider Greco

     Despite her blistering hands, and the feathers of her dress starting to singe black, Schneider's eyes linger a little too long on the surreal colors of the frog's puddle.

     Almost as long as they linger on Vertin's, really. She doesn't need to look at her gun to chamber the Storm-painted round anyway.

     "I don't sup-pose, my-lord, I could take you with me? Mhmhm. No, I won't be a hypocrite," she laughs so softly, dewy-eyed. "Thank you for trusting in-me."

     By now the hole from her last shot has healed. But she lines up that clean forty-five-degree bore one last time- "Please, steady my hands-" and...

     "Good-bye, my dear lord."

     BANG.

Tamiel Luxis

Tamiel's attempts to wrestle with doubts are interrupted, by train and bullet, casting her roughly above the room even as she struggles. "You ASSHOLE!" She spits, and shadows rise to strike him, only for the slippery little failson to slip out of her grip. She grimances, feeling her hand slapped back against the floor by the doubts. Shutting her eyes tight.

    You don't feel his hopelessness, his desperation. There are fears, of moving and unmoving.

    She grates her teeth, the doubts bearing down on her. "Of COURSE I feel it--It's everywhere...all these people--begging for help--needing HELP!" A shadow coiled into a blade in her hand, until she cut part of it free. Light radiated from her wings, burning away the doubt in incandesence.

    "We feel it--it aches, it hurts! But that's how we diagnose the problem! Fixing it takes more. I can't believe in this--" She holds her head high. "...But if we can preserve some piece of it, maybe we CAN work out a way to make it help...Together."

    This admission burns the anchor that keeps the Doubts presence, leaving them to erode away into nothing.

    "Crenshaw, you're going to get out of this--" Her light mingled with the Truth, and where it tried to burn him away to nothing, Tamiel's attempted to mend him, rejuvinate. "Make me a promise, and I will give you the power to endure."

    "Any of you--All of you--If you stand by it--and don't give up on saving everyone, and you will endure!" As her light pours into the room she leaves the air trembling with an offer Oath--of strength, of deathlessness, to anyone willing to take it.

Storm Investigators

To Marcus, seeing so much information about decapitation doesn't seem to bode well at first. What could this all mean? She's not familiar with Flamel's past or his history with so many of the people that have appeared through this entire ordeal, so she couldn't possibly make a direct connection to any of them. It couldn't possibly be an accident, however, since there's no way these pages could lie to her. Perhaps the connection is related to the event itself? The project, his actions leading up to all of this, his willingness to destroy part of himself, to kill his own...

Oh.

Marcus is going to have to remember this for later, if she's able to get through all of this conscious.

"Marcus, could you please read this machine, and make sure I won't get offed by this process when we're working it?"

Or killed, or trying not to panic when the idea of Vertin getting brain-electrocuted to death enters her mind. "Ah? Is that really a.. Oh. Of course it's a risk, but would knowing if it's going to decapitate you really-"
"Marcus. Don't think so much about the what ifs. Focus on what the Timekeeper needs right now."

Inhaling sharply, she nods quickly and continues reading with her lantern turned towards the central console this time around. "Right! O.. Of course. If there's something that could... Off you, then there must be signposts somewhere. Mister Parsons doesn't seem the type not to signpost those kinds of things."

That's what she's hoping for, at least, as she skims through the masses of words and pages that she sees all over the place. It's getting harder to focus as it is, but there's still plenty to look for with occasional suggestions from Greta coming through to keep her on task.

Flamel Parsons

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPE-000: Hyla Arborea, Inevitable Barometer
Classification: Fundamental

Containment Protocol: Uncontained. Any attempt to deny is non-coherent.

Description: Commonly found manifesting in the form of a European Tree Frog or similar regional equivalent. The human understanding of approaching difficulties and the necessity of moving towards the future is a core component of human and human-like minds, and any mental processes in conflict with it will conclude.
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    Collective effort. Regulus' intuition and hands on a painful console form and follow a protocol of extraction that Marcus manages to guide. The uncontrollable Truth meltdown opens safeties to let them pull something important from Vertin.

    At the height of Director Parsons' effort, a searing bullet tears through Director Parsons. Discharging its payload of a conflicting truth, it instantly terminates all processes in UPE-1999, as well as badly limiting UPE-1057, eliminating UPE-1967's visible effects, and dislodging UPE-1630 from its spot in the machinery entirely. They'll mostly stay coherent, but their energy output is almost nothing now. The cycle of Truth surging through the Director wavers, falters, and stops. The man is willing to continue, but the light of Truth is gone. Immortality can't keep the lights on. Crenshaw, newly immortalized in his agreement to rush and try to help Psychonauts survivors above, still knows that. And Director Parsons, what he has to say...

                    "He has fixed his sign in the sky..."

    There is a moment, just one, where it almost seems like Director Parsons' guitar is about to alight. Surely, in this moment, his ambition and his suffering mean that his own inner strength will surge and seal the deal. There's a spark, a moment of heat. Crenshaw looks back, full of hope. "You've got this, 'Mel, you--"

    *Twang*.

    And then it's gone. A guitar string snaps. Flamel Parsons has never held the Truth inside him. And no matter how much he suffers on purpose, no matter how much he draws this into him, it doesn't work. His soul is too thin. UPE-1000-F of the Parsons Institute does not have the fire in his heart. The blizzard rushes all at once into the chamber, the heat suddenly dispersing, and a pile of snow is sweeping through. Even the blizzard is starting to die down, but it remains there just enough to make it so difficult to see. This... all of this is fading now. Without the UPEs maintaining the Truth Phenomenon, this astral inversion is fading away.

    First the walls. The chamber. The lovely henches that are quickly gathering and protecting the mental images. The doors, and the doubts. They all slowly pull away. Psychonaut-Petra, in her last moments on the physical plane, might find something interesting in the executive areas of the Parsons Institute's fading architecture, but it's still too late. Soon, Director Parsons himself is dispersing in the snow.

    "Then... then find something in all this for you." His whisper, still amplified just a little. "Please. Be as greedy as I was. Make this something for you. I just..." He reaches out, falling to his knees. "I wanted you to be able to take it for yourself..." A little of what Rufus wanted. To at least see what happens if this was fulfilled. Even if it means a burden on the suffering again.

    And he's gone. Back into Flamel's mind. Still immortal, one thinks -- though, at this stage, limited, unable to channel key elements of his Truth Phenomenon proxy system anymore at scale now that he's been dosed with UPE-000.

Flamel Parsons

    His machine isn't gone though. The UPEs attached remain, in varying states of repair. And as it shakes itself apart slowly, a much smaller, familiar figure falls from it. Flamel Parsons, looking like he hasn't eaten for a week, wired deep in its core, unconscious on the ground. Looks like Director Parsons set him up in there when the Parsons Institute managed to manifest -- was this even intentional on Flamel's part, or was it just a weird coincidence as he was in the lower levels near the cave? Wait, cave?

    It's all a cave now. It was never the Parsons Institute anymore. It *is* blasted open to expose straight to the outside, where the blizzard has dispersed into a gray, but sunlit day, interspersed with light cloud cover that dispense soft flurries. Rescue vehicles of all sorts -- Psychonauts and otherwise -- are starting to circle, and moving to land. And Crenshaw and Kramer, having gotten way back up to the very top, have done their best to manifest Tamiel's wish and save as many as they could in the last moments of chaos in the Motherlobe.

    For the curious: UPE-1929 is still here.

    Listen close, though. Resonating in Flamel Parson's skull, you can still hear mental images sing a soft, somber song.

Flamel Parsons

Dear Truman Zanotto,

    Following a short conference of stakeholders and a day
to examine priorities, I have determined that my past
communications were inappropriately antagonistic and do not
represent the interests of the Foundation, liaisons of the
Watch, the IPAR, or, indeed, essential interests of the
Concord and the Wisemen.

    We will be arranging a delegation to review the event
directly, in heavy consultation with the Timekeeper and
other auditors, reflecting their responsibility and their
knowledge. You may choose to accept or reject them as you
see fit.


Sincerely,
Director Deems,
International Psychic Affairs Regulation Bureau

Hiromi

    To say that what Hiromi most wished to see did not come to pass would be mistaken. Her wish for Flamel, however...

    'It's over.' That's what one might say, on such an occasion. A certain passage of time is over, but its effects remain. The Archwolf, whose posture is unmodified by the charring of her outfit, skin beneath naturally unharmed, gives a reminder. "Words have been given. Let them be promises. I'll see them." Words from Vertin, that the project would be seen to.

    "Words and blood." From and for agent Kramer, whose gift remains, and whose service will not end here.

    Soon enough, she's gone.

Schneider Greco

     UPE-1929's guns vanish into feathers and smoke, after the last bullet is spent. Even before she knows what that shot has borne, she staggers to her feet from her shooting crouch and smilingly offers Vertin a heat-raw hand up.

     *Twang*.

     She squeezes Vertin's fingers, even though it hurts to, and UPE-1929's last action in external reality might be to smile, fondly and pityingly, at the Director and her blurry-faced men.

     . . .

     Pitying fondness changes to mild surprise, as the other UPEs fade away.

     "Ah? Ahaha... oh, oh no, porca Madonna..." She looks down at her hands. She said, before, that she remembered coming to the Motherlobe, didn't she? Only that she couldn't trust the memory.

     "So I was flesh-and-blood... oh, to heal these hands will be suffering. My-lord," a little sniff and wiping at her eyes with a forearm, "I won't be able to cook for a week... ohh, and that week you promised me..."

     Her singed black coat has to be gathered up and clutched to her chest against the sudden chill, like a teddy bear. And after a moment, sticking-near-Vertin allowing, she steps up to the Director. He is vanishing, while she stays.

     "Some-thing in all this, for 'me'..." Her lips part. "... I promise. Kind dir-ec-tor. You've done your best. Now rest."

     The fallen Flamel, deeper in, has that singed black coat wrapped around his shoulders. Schneider tries to soothe the shuddering machinery with a stroke of her palm, and touches her fingertip to one of the wires that had gone into Flamel, trying to see if there's any response at all.

     "... It was a pretty machine, wasn't it, my dear lord?" she says to Vertin.

Timekeeper

    Twang. The wish to be selfish falls on everyone but Vertin, parting around her like so much rain. She already knows how to be unbearably selfish, in the way that Flamel had to learn to be.

"Words have been given. Let them be promises. I'll see them."

    "I'll make certain of it. I won't let your guidance in this be forgotten, Archwolf." The future shifts, just a little bit, from Vertin making that promise of inerring action to Hiromi. A director's e-mails get angrier after a conference. Even if Vertin was inclined to go back on her plans for the Psychogate project, invoking Hiromi makes that a deeply unwise choice now, like with any powerful spiritual entity.

    And then, Schneider, not UPE-1929, is what remains after the the Parsons Institute vanishes. Vertin gives her a tiny smile, subdued compared to the much more heartfelt response of her hands when they stutter to reach out to hers again, hesitating to squeeze like they might still disappear.

    Feeling more relieved than she sounds, "I'd suspected. That phantasm of you we spotted earlier didn't quite have the same quality to her."

    She reaches for where the Spinal Taps were held in her jacket pocket as an afterthought, but they've vanished along with the rest of the UPEs, and the cloth of the pocket crumbles into ash at her touch. Vertin's exposed skin is burnt, white blisters in odd shapes on her hands, and a patch of her nose bright red where a flame licked it in passing, but the small smile she wears is irrepressible on her face as she looks around to ascertain that everyone else is healthy as well.

    Their voice drops to a near-whisper, unclear whether they meant to say it out loud at all. "... I'm glad. I rather dislike having to repeat lost memories."

    Their pleased expression finally does slip off of their face some time later, when a grey and white diamond-patterned car joins the cluster of vehicles around the base of the mountain. There's a glimpse of orange hair in the passenger seat, springing out the moment the car comes to a halt, and driving is a Chinese woman in high ranking Foundation staff attire. Vertin's gratitude at seeing Sonetto like that is tempered considerably by the feeling that, in some way, they're also waking up from a dream.

    "And so we welcome back the light of day. ... However many promises I've made, to Hiromi, Parsons, and everyone else," Including, implicitly, the one she talked with Schneider about past the Kagoshima Gate. "I do still plan on keeping them. So goodbye, for now, Schneider."