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Penumbra	The Day Before:     All three major factions keep up with new Warpgate developments as much they possibly can. From each world, they receive a steady stream of reports from authorities, helpful citizens, and client organizations, mapping out the steady crawl of their local network throughout its formative years. When no such cooperation exists, it falls to independent contractors, teams following after Elite operations, information purchased from freelance explorers, or commissions from smaller Multiversal factions, to fill it in. Never is it refuted that the Warpgate network cannot be allowed to fill with rising, uncharted waters. Many simply follow suit with the the big three, and share it openly.     So when it comes to truly new portals; infant connections to unstable paths, opening up in the vast hollow of the Soft Expanse; it falls to everyone with the equipment able to tap those silvery threads to know of each and every arrival individually. Without the means to venture into every single one, the process is much like labelling every new star in the sky; efficient, without character, and with very little known, cataloguing scores each day only to track them before they move on.     But every once in a while, the signature of one of these Warpgates is so notable that it invites immediate scientific investigation to determine the cause. Even amongst that exclusive number, there are very few that warrant an 'Elite first' survey out of hand.     This is one of those cases. When it opened, sheer weight of electromagnetic transmission blew out the nearest equipment almost immediately. Before it went, listening outposts were able to catch patterns that, when transposed, looked close enough to human brainwaves for someone to pick up the red phone before the day had turned.     The Day Of:     Softly blinding white to tarry black dark. In a moment, any sign of the Multiverse you know is swallowed into nothing, and deep shadow is the only truth left.     You're submerged into it. Suspended. A cold, cloying darkness. Midnight air that seeps under your clothes and condenses on your skin. Like thick drops of cold sweat. Like humid breath on your cheek.     You might think you were dead were it not for the sound of iron under your first, probing footfalls. The smell of dust, mud, and rust, follows shortly.     . . . . . . . .     The mouth of a pipe. That's where your journey takes you. You'd already walked for so strangely long, taking so many turns, that it seems difficult to believe. Even now, seeing that it empties over twenty feet of empty air, one struggles to imagine what purpose it could possibly serve.     You emerge surrounded by its cousins. A tangle of rust and iron that threads through every surface, where even the smallest among them are just wide enough to crawl through; strangles all but the last slivers of bare concrete. Above you, those pipes stretch on forever, fading into the faintest sliver of cold blue light before miles of shadow. The open space beneath you feels minute by comparison. A bubble of air, trapped in a far-flung capillary, lost in the circulator system of an unknown beast.     . . . . . . . .     Has it really been so long in the pipes? Just reaching the ground felt like twenty minutes. Or seconds. Or just the space between dreaming and waking up. It's hard to tell.     Nothing is wrong with your senses, and yet time feels oily and slow. It pools stagnant in your cupped hands when you watch carefully, only to drain away through your fingers when you look away. The colossal heaps of crumbled concrete all around you offer no help. Despite the thin, lukewarm fog that collects in every space, and the thick grey mud that squelches under your shoes, you can't find the slightest trace of mold.
Friz	It feels like the empty space where my breathing used to be. Air, thick with it. The inescapable heat of humidity and the chill that gets into your bones and tells you, this is not where a human goes. A cave and a north pole at the same time. Grit: We are afforded a thin smear of biosphere. Grit: Nothing else. Not this. Savvy: We can't afford not to. In a literal sense. Dirt: Finances aren't looking good, but this isn't looking better. Moxie: Bringing us out of the pipe. Dirt, can you mark it? Dirt: Memorizing it. Lots of others, can't afford to get lost. Moxie: I'll cable it up, get us the ground. Moxie: Where are we going next? Dirt: I'm not sure we're even out of the pipes yet. Dirt: Time is... Grit: Activating shudder response. Savvy: Stop that. Savvy: Moxie, self-arm-grip, let's stabilize. Flashlight when you can. Savvy: Dirt, what do we have? Dirt: Fog, boss. Nothing but fog. Grit: Shudder response. Savvy: I said take it easy. Save the adrenaline for when we need it. Lights? Moxie: Flashlight on. Grit: We will see them when they approach.     I light a smoke. Wouldn't make the fog worse either way. Too thick. But Friz, I can see the kid's eyes darting. I know she's feeling the same as me, just more visible. If mold can't live here, what's a human gonna do? That's what her gut is saying. Still, concrete is a surface, and every contact leaves a trace. Brain-waves means someone. No telling where or when.     She peers through the fog, tries to start moving. Tries to start finding traces of *anything*. Her little whisper, a little gesture, I catch the hint. I walk ahead, invisible, intangible, try my best to get a grasp of things. Safest scout in a place like this is the one is the one who already died. More superstitious type of man might be thinking he has some company himself. But I tell her, before I go...     "Stick to someone who can keep you safe here."     And she does.
Strawberry Princess	"Can you tell me it'll go alright?" "You know that's not how it works," Blueberry had said. "You're leaving me." "I-- I know. I just... want to hear it." "... It'll go alright. Move."      - - - -      The dark is oily to Strawberry Princess already. If her mind wanders a little more than it normally would, she hardly notices. That's not to say she likes it.      The metal that her footfalls clang on is lit by the 05:00 red glare of her wand's display. Her handgun's in her holster.      - - - -      Several times, she thinks about sending out her 'ghosts' to look ahead. And several times she doesn't. Light is scarce. They wouldn't see much anyway.      Maybe she feels like she'll run out of light with more eyes to drink it in. Nonsense, but--      What was that around the corner? Movement? Footsteps sloshing in mud. Oh god. Stay calm. Keep quiet. Stay--      - - - -      "Oh-!! Oh, you're-- you're normal, I-- sorry," gasps a rough-delicate voice at the next junction Friz comes to. The figure, shining a red light down, looms nearly seven feet tall. "Hahh. Okay."
Team Timekeeper	From those scattered monitoring stations in the Soft Expanse, to the three factors of the Sector, to the subisidiaries of the Commonwealth, to the St. Pavlov Foundation, to Team Timekeeper, to Vertin. Documentation and orders filter down like sand through a funnel to spill around her as their final resting place, a fine gritty layer of expectations filling her Suitcase one grain at a time, the weight invisible when she holds its handle. Venturing into the dark of an unknown world, it's just Sonetto by her side to investigate the warpgate as a pair.     The clack of metal on metal is louder than either pair of shoes hitting the interior of the iron pipe. Vertin's glossy wood-and-platinum cane, a gift from Druvis while she recovers from the psychical atrophy of her coma, makes its presence known first, and second is the diaphonous white glow surrounding Sonetto's upraised glass wand, halfway between held torch and drawn gun. They both have to adjust, when their senses are finally rewarded by being able to perceive anything besides the long, winding pipe. "... What is this? Somewhere where people are? Or were before?" "I am not sure. It appears to be abandoned for now, but we seem to be far below the surface. Could it be infrastructure for the society up above?"     Their chatter is hushed, not wanting their voices to get picked up by the endless echoing concrete and iron and bounce somewhere they can't see. Sonetto holds her arcane light down at any object that catches her attention, but none of the industrial waste around them reveals anything to her. At a sloshing sound, sourcelessly echoing all around them, she whirls around and points her glasfeder towards its direction.     "Who's there?!"     Sonetto winces at the amplified sound, then creeps towards the people who've certainly already heard her much more clearly than she's heard them. Vertin follows alongside, picking up her pace when there's audible voices conversing, and then recognizing one of them once they come into view.     "Friz! So it's Elites after all, not locals of this world, then. You've just come through the warpgate as well?"     Vertin tips her hat to Strawberry. Thankfully, Sonetto can provide enough light to illuminate the area in a non-scary manner with her arcane skill. "I'm Vertin, and this is my assistant, Sonetto."
Penelope Usher	All of the most familiar darknesses feel warm; blankets-overhead, shut-eyed fevers, humid summer nights, and hot-breathed pursuits, lit by the miniature fires of metabolism. Anesthetic void is nothing, not cold. Chest-tightening and heavy, lifted sharply by the presence of structure, if not life.     "Hello? Hellooooo..?" Inadvisable, cautiously sing-song, the pressure is too lonely to not reach out for signs of life. They're carried on the wind, in the dust. In the dimness of the pipes, clad all in white, Penelope Morgana Usher is brightest for her forward-facing eyes. Pipe-bottom mud hardly sticks to leather boots, made for horse paddocks rather than 'adventuring', but appropriate nontheless.     Two-ish days of headway to prepare, sits packed in a pouch across her shoulder, the noisiest element of her ensemble is the creaking of a standard-issue Paladins duffel, of familiar, utilitarian necessities. It's also the only element of color on her, beyond eyes, and a ribbon that may as well be black, in the light, tying back her hair. Other than that, she's as a ghost.     "I can tell if someone's there," is a true statement, but for all the murk of the ambiance, Penelope's hands stay low, and at her sides.     Motion and scent, echo-noise- Penelope's pace picks up, soft-stepped rush through pipes, following along the sensory gradient. A finger trails along on the pipe wall, gentle, like it might bite her to do so, like it would actually help her recall her trail. 'Oh, you're-- you're normal, I-- sorry,'     Emerging from behind, too quiet, Penelope adds on an immediate white flag- "I'm normal too, so don't shoot, okay?"
Friz	Dirt: Red light. Grit: Adrenaline. Savvy: See? I told you to save it. Keep it at-- Grit: Twenty percent. Savvy: Would prefer ten. Moxie, light on the source. Moxie: Moving it, but I've got a tremble here. Savvy: Why? Dirt: Because that's looking about seven feet tall and uncanny-thin. Savvy: Focus. Hostile? Dirt: Gleam. Consistent with human-typed scar tissue. Dirt: Gray's Clinical Neuroanatomy (2005): One hundred percent fatality rate for all wounds corresponding to the placement of that scar tissue. Grit: Forty percent. Savvy: Moxie, light on the source. Moxie: I'm *trying* but I'm outputting tremble and--! Savvy: Everyone get ready to fight. Dirt: WAIT! Boss! Voice! She says-- Savvy: Alright! Shut down adrenals as much as you can! Savvy: "Oh god, I was..."     "...so scared for a second there!" She says. Spooked the hell out of me, too, for a moment. Saw the shape, then the gun. But my gut said kind, and that put me at ease. Couldn't go yelling at the kid over nothing, though. Friz stumbles back, nearly dropping that flashlight. "N-normal! Normal. Yeah. Hhhhah... Um, call me Friz. Paladins mystery-solver." Then it swings on Vertin and Sonetto when their voices get heard, first up at their faces, then down at their feet. Real polite with that, huh? "Alright, looks like we're reconvening. Good to finally meet you, um, Timekeeper. Sonetto." Quick little nod. "That... Strangeness with the pipes. I feel like I've been losing time. I think it's going to be splitting us up a lot, so we need to find somewhere that isn't so covered in fog... (And we don't know what's dangerous here, so I'm looking for where anyone, any*thing*, else, has already gone.)"     She keeps the flashlight on the ground. Lets it glide around Penelope's feet. "You might be normal, but the terrain here isn't. Nobody caught signs of radiation or inhospitable hazards like that. But there's so much fog... The Alexopoulos says this much humidity should have *tons* of mold, but there's *none*..."     Kid's right back to the search for traces. Concrete means there was life at one point. Has to be something.
Strawberry Princess	The tall figure slouches down in relief.      There is a discolored scar gouged through her skull. That's the first thing apt to catch your eyes in the light. Brains on pavement a long time ago, maybe. Walking and talking now.      Second thing is the device in her hands, long and childish and industrial. You could maybe still call it a wand. She holds it for comfort.      "Y-- yeah. I think so." The voice crackles like she might cry, but that's not her tone. Maybe she just sounds like that. "I mean, I know I... came through the Warpgate. I think, I think it's only been a little while."      That 05:00 can't help her keep track. It doesn't move.      From giving a gamely apologetic smile to Friz, her head whips around to Penelope. She doesn't have quite long enough to tense upright again, before realizing she ought to stay relaxed. "Ah! Oh, um... serves me right, I guess. Ahaha..."      "Right. Um. Strawberry Princess. Paladins, too. It's... good to meet you all. Um, you're...?" she says, sweeping to Penelope.
Penumbra	Turning a flashlight on, even in this gloom, should make it feel even just the slightest bit warmer. Instead, the drifting flakes of grey facade and glittering quartzite that the beam reveals only look even more like snow. Every step, every breath, feels as if it should echo on forever, but even those are swallowed up into sluggish air and stagnant space only shortly out of sight.     Everything smells like dirt, if it even smells of anything at all. Even the stench of rusted iron is so faint that you barely notice it. The gritty grey mud that allows water to pool in its hollows feels like badly mixed cement. The lack of a ladder, of stairs, of even a hanging cable across so much vertical space, makes everything seem as if was poured down here from above.     If you look closely, some of the discoloured streaks in the concrete look just like what should be caused by bacterial overgrowth. It's bone dry anyways. There aren't many of those streaks in the first place.     But scouting around, not so far off in the distance, there is the smell of oil, and a smudge of orange light.     . . . . . . . .
Penumbra	. . . . . . . .     Lanterns. That's what the orange light in the distance was. Tracing back your footsteps, you haven't gone far, but using twists of arterial pipe between concrete chamber walls to travel is more disorienting than you expected.     There are three of them, strewn amidst the rebar and piled-up silt. They're little more than glass jars, capped with metal, bound to thin twists of nylon rope, but a flame burns in each of them all the same, blurry and diffuse. They clearly haven't been moved in some time. It's hard to imagine who would even carry them here. There's nothing to find but steam, leaking from one of the pipes, cold, by the time it brushes your hair, and a wide, ankle-deep pool of muddy black water.     . . . . . . . .     It isn't water. You know that the minute you cross it. The marbled black reflection of the chamber around you doesn't change in the slightest as you move over it. The silt beneath is only visible through its shallowest edges. It's thick beneath your steps, yet glides frictionlessly from your shoes. You could pass your fingers back and forth through it and come away without a drop of it on your skin. It splashes where you step, but falls back into itself just a little too slowly. Now that you think about it. The way it ripples, to create that shimmering, oil black surface, doesn't follow the exhalation of the pipes at all.     You almost step on the bones in the mud on the other side. They've turned the same colour as the concrete.     . . . . . . . .     Someone lived here. Maybe someone still does. When the pipes finally contract into tunnels, rust-streaked metal giving way to mud-spattered cement bricks, you find tarp cloth hung from the capillary pipes that run through the ceiling. Tattered and ragged at the edges from use, its only purpose seems to be to block the cold breeze coming over the bent railings that hem your path, and even then, they do little more than block sight.     There are lights in the walls. Thin strips of ghostly blue white, low to the ground, running on a trickle of amperage. They're the only thing that shows signs of being cleaned. Going by the raised path to one side, and the enormous grates that seal off pipes that lead back into the endless blackness, you'd think this was a sewer, but a peeling transformer box around the next corner says otherwise. For some reason, the gluey remnants of a voltage warning sticker elicit a pang of uneasy relief.     Beside it, a dust-smeared oil drum, still sealed, watches unmarked plastic crates that are each nearly as tall as you, propped up on aluminium pallets and enclosed in criss-crossed iron bars. Plastic shopping bags crinkle underfoot. Old batteries and cans with the labels worn off lie scattered in a muddy puddle.
Penumbra	. . . . . . . .     There is no explanation for your surroundings that doesn't involve first being built by human hands. The eerie black liquid that pools here and there, in crumbled corners and muddy furrows, likely was too. And yet, a dead body slumped in the corner of a dry corridor, under a dying fluorescent bulb, feels like first contact with another species.     A man in a state of near-emaciation, clothed in little more than waterproof rags, arms and legs caked with layers of dirt and smeared with oil. His hair is long and shaggy, and greyed far in advance of his apparent age. The sticky blood against the wall isn't fresh, but isn't old either. The plastic satchel at his side had only a thermos, an old lunchbox, and an unopened tin can.     The thermos once had water in it. The lunchbox contains only what looks like dessicated meatballs, though despite their slimy sheen, they have no scent whatsoever. The can bears the remnants of once being labelled tomato soup. There is no expiry date
Strawberry Princess	Despite her timid posture and flinching demeanor, the woman named 'Strawberry Princess' instinctively gravitates somewhere near the fore. Or what's usually the fore.      "Think I... see something?" she murmurs sometimes, before anyone actually does. But she's never wrong.      . . . .      Tap, tap. The butt of her wand (staff? it'd be a staff if she were normal-sized) pokes the lantern-glass.      "Someone... refills them?" she guesses. It's just a guess. Maybe they burn forever, somehow.      She remembers to store the wand in a thin carrying-case on her back later, a little guiltily.      . . . .      Strawberry Princess hesitates remarkably little to pick up a bone out of the muck. She can't tell if it's human, but she puts it back carefully with a shiver, anyway.      The muck gets wiped off thoughtlessly on her nice khakis.      . . . .      "Oh. There's--" she says, before the dead man comes into view; and she hurries ahead with long strides through the muck, but she realizes that unfortunately there's no need to hurry before she arrives.      She crouches down low, checks his wrist unnecessarily, and then shivers from knees to shoulders. Her face gets sort of squirmy. She makes sure his eyes are shut, anyway.      "He still... still had food. What... oh, that's... it must have been so hard," Strawberry murmurs, with a half-step back. She glances at Friz, and then at the blood. "You're-- aren't you, um, some kind of detective...?"
Friz	I stop by the time I see the orange flicker. That's far enough, and I'm gonna tether back to you if I go much further. I head back, I stop by, I tell you, "Lights that way. Stop stressing about the fungus and come on, kid."     "Fungi are useful." She says, type of thing that you can say in this group and not get more weird looks than normal. "But at least I can see some signs of microbial activity." Dirt: Rogers has a direction for us. Savvy: Get us over there then, Mox. Moxie: Moving. Grit: Running cooldown cycle on adrenals. Moxie: You should explain for the others. Savvy: Right. Savvy: "That way. Some kind of light." Savvy: "What is this?" Savvy: That's you, Dirt. Dirt: I don't remember anything like this. Grit: Fire is the sign of thinking life. Moxie: But it hasn't been touched in ages. Savvy: And burns without oxygen or fuel. Moxie: Not much useful here. Savvy: "Guess we keep moving."     "Guess we keep moving." She mutters, near--silent. I put my cig out at the base of the lantern. But she shakes her head at the tall lady, Strawberry. "I don't think they're being refilled. They haven't been moved, haven't been touched, in a long time." Real confident words. Dirt: No reflection in the water. Savvy: Of me? Dirt: Of anything. Savvy: "Not sure what this is... Ghh--" Dirt: Crunch. Grit: Bones. Death. Savvy: "G-god...!!" Savvy: "Sorry about freaking out about the bones." Dirt: I could have studied them. Grit: Dead longer than uselessness. Moxie: I don't want to stay so still around here. Savvy: "It won't happen again."     --- Dirt: Strawberry Princess said, "Aren't you some kind of detective?"     "I am. A detective, I mean." This is familiar. Not good, but familiar. "Let's get this figured out." She goes to work. Get everything set up, everything solved, the way she does. Forensics.     "Those shopping bags -- we'll avoid contaminating anything, with them. Just cover your feet for now." She does, too. Keeps things as clean as she can, like contaminants are the issue here. "Blood's old, but not ancient. Let me estimate time of death.... And, what he was doing before he died should give us an idea of where we should go. Do... Um, do as the locals do, you know. He lived this long."     The kid sets up a five-second crime scene and puts the others to work on investigating where she can. Dim light makes for a bad autopsy or worse blood-splatter analysis, but if the man went horizontal before he stopped moving, nobody I'd trust in the galaxy more to figure out what direction he tried moving. Moxie: Safety has to be in the direction he was moving. Grit: In your final moments, your homing instict comes alive.
Penelope Usher	'Who's there?'     "Penelope Usher, Paladins Chevalier," Proper pronunciation to 'chevalier', intentionally shifting accent from a clean New-Englandian American for the single word. That name isn't familiar!     "It's a new appointment, no longer just a regular old 'covert logistics specialist'," she adds, with a little bit of levity-clawing eye-rolling-ness, as at least two of the others are, also, revealed to be Paladins.     Penelope stares at Friz. It's paired with a neutral expression, even as her head tilts just slightly to the side, but that doesn't make it anything less than unpleasantly intense. Hushed, "You're breathing awfully fast! Take a minute?"" 'I'm Vertin, and this is my assistant, Sonetto.'     Penelope smiles, raising a hand, balled-up, in front of her mouth, to hide her teeth when she gasps out "You're British!" and "Are those surnames?" in immediately fawning tone, like whatever Vertin's done (mostly stand there) is the cutest possible action. Truth be told, she might just be this ecstatic to see people, again, on the other side. It's tough to be lonely and alone! . . . It's by gently falling through a puddle of ink that appears at Penelope's feet, that she gets down to the ground below from the pipe chambers; and it's by quiet, quiet footsteps that she trudges through the landscape. Less at-alert than within the labyrinthine pipeways, she allows a hand to stray to the duffel's strap across her shoulder, but she doesn't fiddle with it. . . .     Looking up at the lanterns, Penelope, transparently, sniffs at the air. Everything is dirt, but if something is burning, it ought to off-gas something, petrochemical or otherwise. That it's the first point of energetic reaction draws interest. 'Someone... refills them?'     "I hope they get to them before they run out," Penelope says, wrinkling up her nose slightly. She reaches out as far as she can towards a lantern, but doesn't touch it. "Do you think they're just to mark a way?" She doesn't really expect an answer, but lonely little lights bring up lonely little thoughts. . . .     Pupils dilate, and fix on the bones, until they bubble back below. >Plastic, oil, metal, and electricity.     "It's so... sterile. Like a hospital feels like it should be? I don't think it would be comfy, here, even if it wasn't all..." She raises a heel from the mud, and lets the dripping noise finish her sentence. . . . 'What... oh, that's... it must have been so hard,'     Penelope claps her hands in front of her mouth, eyes wide. It's a still expression from her, and even as she takes a step to the side, her focus doesn't shift. Muffled by her gloved hands, mirror-tone to Strawberry, "Oh. It must have..."
Team Timekeeper	"I feel like I've been losing time."     The 1 8 : 5 6 on Vertin's wrist doesn't agree, but Vertin herself doesn't shrug off the suggestion as lightly. She glances beside her at Sonetto for corroboration on the feeling, and she nods, the shadow of her anxious finger passing through the glow around her wand. "I am uncertain how long we've been here as well. It feels a little bit like a dream, with irregular cognitive impressions of temporal compression or extension as if losing consciousness or engaging in Artificial Somnambulism. I haven't noticed any arcane skill being used that would cause that to happen." [ansi(115,"It's been just about twenty minutes. Let me know if you feel it changing all of a sudden.")]     Despite the fog and grey particles in the air, Sonetto just can't tolerate dimming the light emitting from her wand, whether or not it helps. It at the very least helps keep an eye on each other as long as they stick close, and whatever the environment holds, that's better than the alternative.     "It's like all the life down here has vanished over time, whether it's people or fungi," Vertin agrees aside with Friz. "Are there even any microorganisms?" "I do not have a microscope of sufficiently high viewing magnification, Timekeeper." "I know. We'll put it out of mind until later."     The name 'Strawberry Princess' signifies plenty all on its own to Vertin. She hushes for Sonetto to dim her spell to more clearly make out the lanterns. "A pleasure, Strawberry Princess. I'm the Timekeeper of the St. Pavlov Foundation, also affiliated with the Commonwealth." Not her, but that's not a lie!     "Refilled...? The flame does not appear to be magical." Sonetto squints to investigate, finding nothing of note.     "But it's proof of some kind of habitation either way. Let's keep looking for a local." . . .     "Careful-!"     Sonetto blocks Vertin's limping forwards progress with her arm, before she steps into the black goo. Vertin, rather than putting her foot into it, prods at it with her cane, and it shies away. "... I noticed that it was moving strangely assuming it was oil, but it does not appear to be alive."     "Magnetic, maybe? Polarized along a different sort of axis? The movement doesn't seem purposeful." . . .     "So there are people here," Vertin says, with audible hope, at the same time that Sonetto says "Ah... a modern world?" regarding the electrical lights and voltage warnings.     Sonetto still creeps around the decayed little living area like she's afraid any of it might leap out and attack her, but Vertin goes right to poking aroind at the objects within. She tugs at the cloth for its material, inspects the shopping bags for brand names or lettering, squats down to poke at a battery with the tip of her cane. Sonetto, around the corner, is confronted with... "He still... still had food."     "I see. He's already dead." She frowns at the grey industrial snow that's slowly carpeting the body. "But it does not appear like this is the standard living condition of the people of this world. These products had to be made by civilization elsewhere, and gathered here as garbage for this man to live by." "And, what he was doing before he died should give us an idea of where we should go."     "Not starvation, but are those wounds severe enough to have killed him? Was it some sort of illness?"
Strawberry Princess	Before she gets to helping Friz, Strawberry just stands by Penelope a little while longer. Her fingers rub together, where they'd touched the man's wrist.      She can't look away from him.      "He still had food," she repeats herself, in Penelope's direction. That's what she can't get over. You can count every rib, but he was still dragging it out a little bit longer.      - - - -      "Maybe it's not the, um... standard living condition, but..." she says to Sonetto, hugging her own arm. "He knew he wouldn't get to eat again. For a long time. It's--"      "Nn--"      "Things don't rot anymore," she realizes suddenly. It's said softly, unhappily, though. "They don't-- food lasts forever. He lasts forever. We didn't smell him. We should've smelled him. That food is old. It was-- nobody's making it. I don't think."
Friz	Dirt: Strawberry Princess said, "He still had food."     "He knew how to survive." Friz is still talking with the tall lady, that 'Strawberry Princess'. "He can teach us that, at least a little, if we'll hear him out... And, I'll thank him for the kindness when he does."     I pop a squat with the coffin-stuffer. What about you, old timer? You drifting around here like me, now? Or you gone off to a better world? Hope you are, fella. Looks like times were tough for you. If you have to punch out, I'll keep your look in my eye, maybe find whoever you left behind. Dirt: The Timekeeper asked, "Are those wounds severe enough to have killed him?"     "I should be able to tell once I have a good look, but he wasn't in a good state before whatever happened. We should be careful though. Whether or not they killed him, something here wounded him. And the food..." She looks up. "Speculation, I guess, but maybe this is a dump...?" Dirt: Strawberry Princess said, "Things don't rot anymore."     "That's so weird. Decay is a form of life. Food rots even in a space station. Why would nothing rot here...? Um, does someone know magic or things like that? Is there any 'magical' death stuff here? Something that works from the bottom up... I could really use the help, I'll owe you. But we'll figure it out one way or another."
Team Timekeeper	"You're British!"     "Yes," Vertin says to Penelope, equally as plain as the observation, like it's a perfectly normal interaction. In fact, though, she is acutely aware of the tendency for Americans to sniff about her particular accent and outfit like sharks, and thinking about Doris and Evie makes her a little bit awkward.     She adjusts her hat by the brim with her cane-holding hand. "Congratulations on your recent promotion to the field, and it's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Usher." "That food is old. It was-- nobody's making it. I don't think."     Sonetto and Friz are the investigators here, and the latter is the only detective. Vertin stares at the man while the others work, taking in all the details of his state and appearance. "Everything's decaying but the organics. ... What could have caused that...?" <J-IC-Scene> Friz says, "We'll take something to identify him by. And, maybe someone will know."     "What this tells us for now is that this world still has a recent, ongoing history, and that some people are isolated by necessity or by force. It could be the case that all of society exists within these tunnels, or that this man was alone down here for years. Wherever safety and numbers might be, we should assume they won't be easy to reach from here." "That's so weird. Decay is a form of life."     "Maybe that is why it is no longer happening." Sonetto is now seriously considering bringing a microscope next time. "Is there any 'magical' death stuff here?"     Is there? Without a particular source, Sonetto would have no way of noticing it, but if there's something in the atmosphere, Vertin could pick it out eventually. "Whether it's a curse or a naturally emergent phenomenon, something is smothering this place. Could it have been an environmental disaster?"
Penumbra	Even the lanterns smell like dirt. The texture is barely different from the rest. They smell like 'burnt', too. Like ash. But there's no kind of ash that has no fragrance do it at all. The only thing feeding the flame is a fine powder at the bottom, sealed in the metal base save for the thin hole that works as a fuse. There isn't any smoke. No one made a hole for any to escape.     Which means that there's no way for oxygen to get in either. But the glass is hot to the touch.     --------     The make of even the little things youfind is strangely unclear, even when dusted off and held to the light. The labels start in English, and try to cram twenty other languages into the margins. None of the space is used for branding; only frank descriptors of what the item is. Though the colouration and style of the labels and wrappers helps discern what the articles are by archetypal association, the only logical conclusion to draw is that there are no brands because there was never any competition. Despite being made like things you would find on a supermarket shelf, they could only be considered 'rations'.     --------     The man's eyes are shut. His posture isn't one that someone would arrive at by falling. He must have sat. There's very little blood. What there is to find is painted onto a small section of wall by hitting it with his body. The single wound in his side looks like it was caused by something sharp enough to rip through flesh, but not sharp enough to be clean. He hasn't bled enough to die from that alone. Some combination of shock, exhaustion, blood loss, and chronic malnutrition must be the cause.     The wound doesn't show any signs of infection. You can faintly smell iron and sweat, much too close, but nothing even slightly putrid.
Penelope Usher	'He still had food,'     "Wasting away," she says, in upset-agreement at the condition. "It's sad," still needs to be said. <J-IC-Scene> Friz says, 'We'll take something to identify him by. And, maybe someone will know.'     Penelope nods, and takes a big, slow breath- once more wrinkling up her nose, stale blood has a constant unpleasantness to it. From a leg-pouch, a leatherbound notebook is brought out, with a matching pen. Staring at the body, blinking-back feelings, she writes down (unnecessary, but important-feeling) notes to the context of this find- a 'just in case' to find it, again, after the body is moved for Friz's investigations.     "A real detective's a relief. I could do the opening-up, but," A gloved thumb comes up to her eyes, and presses down near the still-wet tear-duct, avoiding her eyelashes. "I'd kind of rather not? Oh, hahhhh... I don't like how it's getting to me."     Penelope puts the journal away, and balls her fist up. A breath goes in, and out, added tension releases, to take extra away with it. 'Everything's decaying but the organics. ... What could have caused that...?'     "It feels dishonest? Is that just me?" Penelope turns on her heels, at that, and makes space from the group, and the corpse. "Like, that's against the rules. You get used up, and eaten, and used up again. It isn't pretty, or happy, but this doesn't feel... real? What'd the point be in burying him, like this? Is that why he's still up here? Hahhh...."     Penelope stays a bit distant, and paces back and forth. Little practices to calm down take time; spending that time thinking about this is counterproductive. At least there's no rush.
Penumbra	--------     The only place to search for anything identifying is the bag. There's little more in it than what you've already seen. The box of unidentifiable clumps was originally kept at the bottom, packed in with padding that would suggest they're somehow precious, but the soup had to have been carried in his arms when he dropped it. The only other items are an improvised knife, little more than old cloth wrapped around a piece of metal with its edge ground down, and a second, bigger thermos, oddly heavy to hold.     The threading inside the cap is ground down from being screwed on with nervous force. Inside, it's filled to the brim with the black substance from the pool. Silt is piled at the bottom, but he clearly tried to skim the top as much as possible. The name (or just the word?) 'White' is scratched out on the bottom of the thermos, in English.     It's strange. There's nothing 'arcane' to the lanterns, or the pipes, or the air around you, but when you open the cap, there's something like a gust of air. A shifting pressure current between somewhere warm and somwhere cold; arcane and non-arcane.
Penumbra	. . . . . . . .     Following the direction the dead man must have run isn't easy, but it has clear results. Here and there, hanging tarps and and raised boards of corrugated iron almost amount to rooms, of a sort. Through cold banks of billowing fog and drifting flakes of insulation, the spectre of a proper path emerges, following the endemic stream of wires, breaker boxes, steam pipes, and metal stairs. In rare instances, you find wooden boards, used to make bridges over deep, water-filled fissures, but no matter how swollen the planks are, none have even begun to rot.     No wood is involved in the flames you find still burning in an empty drum; only chips of something like burnt chitin, boxed in by neat and properly piled stones, as if camping outdoors. The warm light is a welcome relief, but all it reveals is the unnerving assortment of electrical boxes on the walls, so numerously and bizarrely mounted that they resemble a clock collection instead. Not far away, the giant letters C-5 are still readable against blue-grey paint.     . . . . . . . .     A robot, of all things. Not a simple one, either. Everything you've seen so far could have been made back in the 70s, and yet the rusted-out husk of a semi-humanoid figure, half-submerged in liquid blackness, would look straight out of science-fiction were it not for the occasionally makeshift hose or pipe under its once-white chassis.     'Has it really been so long?' The notion is bizarrely intrusive. It's been hours by your watch, not centuries; it's absurd to even check. You could almost swear that the archaic brass gears buried in the same muck were placed there to just mock you.     . . . . . . . .     One body is an anomaly; this many is a pattern. They aren't so close as to feel crowded, but there aren't so few that you can quite forget the last before stumbling on a new one either. All of them are in similar states, save only for their age, and the majority are not far from the makeshift lanterns that seem to serve as path markers where the electrical lighting has failed.     You can almost hear it. Like a steady hum, pitched too low to be perceived, loud enough to drown out your quietest thoughts. It hasn't changed in the entire time you've been here. You've only begun to notice it in the prolonged absence of any sense of time or place.
Penumbra	. . . . . . . .     If this place truly had a purpose, you may never come to know it. The longer you walk, the faster it sprawls out beyond knowing. Each new bend, door, and tunnel passes by without any more awareness of their greater purpose. No grand design slowly takes shape. No form reveals itself to your intuition. Even the existence of a deliberate path cannot drive back the sense of being lost; of being cast into an unimaginable vastness, without purpose or end.     . . . . . . . .     Perhaps this is only a memory. A realm of hazy recollection made manifest, rendered in fog and iron and concrete. Perhaps 'C-5' means something to the dreamer; a fragment of a past event embedded in their subconscious.     In one chamber, the pipes converge both their vast arteries and narrow veins into a tangled mass that winds about itself and passes through the walls far above your head; and never do they join. Breaker boards, grid connections, and transformer boxes battle for space with them, as if they grew this way like fungus. The slivers of pale light that had once seemed like some glimpse of daylight far above reveal themselves as nothing more than incandescent strip lights, straight from an old office, hanging from cheap, nickel-plated ventilation shafts across the ceiling, running between pipe valves and crank wheels.     The stone tiles of the floor; cracked here, strewn aside there, worn and slippery; are only a facade over endless iron drainage gutters. Frayed tarp cloth banners hang from silos that rise from floor to ceiling, patterned with faded warnings and hazard stripes turned white with age. Railings out of a subway station urge you to stay away from rust-stuck reactor turbines, sharing space with centuries old boilers.     Tattered banks of cold fog roll through in waist-high waves, allowing you only momentary glimpses of the corpses littered across the chamber, all facing the only doorway out.     The cheery glow of EXIT -> hanging over it on a little white sign feels like delirious sarcasm.
Friz	Dirt: Penelope said she could do the autopsy, but doesn't want to Savvy: "Honestly, probably wise. I don't like these conditions." Savvy: They're some really bad conditions. Dirt: I gotta say, I don't remember worse, in terms of life per square meter. Savvy: "I appreciate it, though. I might need coroner's assistance before long." Moxie: Found something. Savvy: What is it? Dirt: Looks like a thermos of the black stuff. Dirt: I see words on it. 'WHITE'. Savvy: Then we'll look for someone who knows 'White'. Savvy: "He was moving this way. We should go." Savvy: "This thermos had so much of that black stuff in it..." Savvy: "Can someone analyze it? I can only match it to more of the same."     The detective gets going. Along these path markers, we know now. I'll go ahead of her. Always better a dead man ahead when he's already dead. I can see more of my colleagues ahead too, anyway.     ...
Penelope Usher	'Can someone analyze it? I can only match it to more of the same.'     Perhaps it's out of a bit of frustration, or stress-induced curiosity, but, at the thermos being filled with the oily liquid, Penelope is very quick to pipe up in an offer of assistance! She's shaken off most of her upset tone, by taking a little break.     "Oh! Yeah, hand that to me for a second, and don't do what I do," she says, as she just dips a gloved finger into the substance, and (recklessly) puts her finger past her lips.     She's confident she can handle whatever tasting it does to her! It's informative, to let it happen, a little! And if it's just icky-gross watery-muddy-goo (it obviously isn't,) it's not as if walking her dog hasn't ever resulted in tripping face-first into streambanks. Gross!
Team Timekeeper	"Like, that's against the rules."     "Something's broken them." Vertin immediately catches on to Penelope's phrasing, nodding in agreement. Uneasily, knowing how quickly her mind would leap to this answer, they find no other explanation to dismiss it.     "Time isn't moving forward as it should. The lanterns are burning without consuming any oxygen. The blood isn't drying nor the wound becoming infected, and nothing's rotted. It's possible-- though I'm not certain it's likely-- that he starved because he wasn't able to digest food held in stasis." "Can someone analyze it? I can only match it to more of the same."     Sonetto's bold enough to be the one to gather and unscrew the thermos. She pulls it away from her face, eyes following the intangible gusting change of state as if there's a ghost to be uncorked from the bottle, but there's nothing. She tilts it around in her hand, watching it slowly slosh back and forth.     "It is worth gathering, for some reason? Perhaps his mental faculties were not functioning correctly near to his time of death, but it seems more likely that the fluid is useful somehow, if it has been contained and labeled this way. We should bring it with us."     Sonetto's best ways to analyze it are either by magic, or by perception. Isolating a small puddle of it, she draws her glasfeder across her body and extends a ribbon of light from its tip, to encircle and pour into the fluid, disturbing and illuminating any arcane presence it might have. "Anima Appear!" "Yeah, hand that to me for a second, and don't do what I do,"     "Oh," Sonetto says, when Penelope plucks the thermos from her and takes a devilish little sip. "Er-- Miss Usher?! Is that safe?!"
Penumbra	--------     The reaction to drinking it is immediate. It slides down your throat with such frictionless ease that it wraps back around to disgusting. You can feel it pouring down every crease and fold in your soft tissue. It feels like lubricating the space between your organs. Would a robot feel this way if you pumped blood into its gears?     It tastes of nothing. Perhaps cold water from a well. For an instant, you get a breath of damp earth after the rain. It's as poisonous as drinking an equivalent amount of gasoline. When it begins breaking down in your stomach, the result is-- almost indistinguishable from arcane glow.     You can feel your own biolectric current sparking off your skin. It scatters into hazy waves that bounce off the walls around you and paint the world's secret magnetic schema. Energy wells up within you, for a moment. Then the urge to throw up. You could swear it shifts around in your stomach when you think about it.     --------     The remainder in the thermos should sit still. It doesn't. When touched by a ribbon of light, brushed by gnosis, the squirming surface flattens out like paper, and the glow diffuses throughout a million tiny particles inside of it. Some trace arcane mineral, perhaps, emulsified by nothing but plain water, rendering one undrinkable and the other unusable.
Strawberry Princess	It's maybe gratifying, depending on the kind of person Penelope is, to see Strawberry Princess's eyebrows shoot up past her bangs when Penelope puts that oily finger in her own mouth.      "Um."      - - - -      It isn't perceptible to anyone without a fine sense for magic and the incorporeal- even for them, it's the softest whisper of a presence- but ghosts start to peel off of Strawberry as she moves, left behind every so often as static sentinels like breadcrumbs.      In theory, this should let her 'see' the whole way back.      In practice, she only just thought to begin doing this now, so...      - - - -      She's convenient to have when navigating ill terrain. One or two steps can take Strawberry up and down most drops, and she has no trouble giving others a hand up after herself. She likes it, actually.      - - - -      More bodies. Strawberry gives each one the solemn, queasy compassion she gave the last one. When she catches her eyes glazing over the fifth or the seventh, she stops herself, and deliberately takes it in with the freshness of the first.      "Were they all at once, or...?" It's not hard to imagine some great sterilizing wave, washing over human beings and microbes at once. "... I guess, um, there's no way to tell. ... Sorry."      - - - -      Then the sprawl of corpses just shy of EXIT.      "Oh," says Strawberry, slightly shakily. Her face draws queasily again. "That's... that's too mean." Those words aren't breathed to anyone in the group. They're aimed at the world, really. How could you?      She takes a long breath in, despite the cold hurting her nose. If she's afforded each body the same amount of compassionate tragedy, for a dozen bodies at once, does she have to make her heart ache a dozen times as much?      She tries. Then when she's sick of trying, she moves to-- no, 'Strawberry Princess' wouldn't resentfully kick the door open. Even if it's a horrible door, for not letting them quite reach it. She opens it gently.
Friz	Moxie: Can you see what someone wanted from making all this? Savvy: No. Almost feels fake. Dirt: I think I'm getting lost. Grit: More death.     "I feel like I'm... dreaming." The kid shakes her head. "I haven't been able to figure out why this is the way it is. It can't be a dump, can it? But it's like someone only made it *on* purpose, and not *with* purpose..." Dirt: Sonetto said, "Perhaps his mental faculties were not functioning correctly."     "Feels like mine aren't too. Maybe that distortion we're feeling was affecting the architects and manufacturers. Human industrialization under the circumstances of insanity? (...That's wrong. I don't have all the pieces to form a theory yet.)" I'm leading her between bodies now, letting her check them. They're a relay system. They're a pathway as much as the lights are. No, this is too many to bury, kid. Too many to go missing on accident. When I wade knee-deep in C-5 and catch a glance at what's on the floor of it, I know the shape of this. This is 536, this is something so wrong it didn't matter how many bodies you threw at it.     "I don't remember this model of reactor, I'm not sure what I'm looking at. Turbines next to a subway station... Was their nuclear power so dangerous they needed to move huge numbers of people in and out? (...No, also wrong...)" Savvy: We need to move forward. Grit: We will die if we do. Dirt: It says 'exit'. Moxie: All due respect, I usually love running for an exit but... Savvy: We gotta.     Hold the grip of the .38 close, kid. Here there's no sky, so you keep a half-moon of your own on you for a special occasion. Now keep it tight, and follow along. Let the others take the lead. You're the one here easiest to kill, so be the readiest, when you head to the door. Slow steps, slow breaths, and don't look at your feet.     "I saw." She says, to nobody. Well, kid, at least it's only humans here. Wait until the door on the other side is open. Then, get going.
Team Timekeeper	Sonetto gasps lightly when the fluid responds to her incantation. Saving the rest-- and screwing the cap of the thermos back on hastily in case Penelope gets any more ideas-- she isn't fully satisfied with the results, but getting *something* that responds with some semblence of life to their presence is a million times better than nothing.     "The fluid contains some precipitate that is responsive to arcanum. We could bring it back to the LSCC for study, or attempt boiling it down to consolidate it, or experimentally manipulate it here, but it is certain that this arcane fluid is a significant environmental factor in the state of this world. It may even be the cause of its current condition, after an incident made it so widespread."     Far too hopeful, Vertin takes explicit note of the 'C-5'. She writes it down on a small notepad of hers, tucked away into an inner pocket of her jacket, imagining that somewhere else will be a 'C-4', or even a 'B-5'.     Sonetto, in the same vein of attempting to record where they've been, drops a trail of thinly glowing ink-curls out behind the passage of the group, "Filum Follow!" that hangs like Ariadne's thread through the maze of concrete. Hopefully it won't be necessary at all, but it's too easy to imagine, in this maze of concrete, that they could make three right turns without noticing it and end up crossing over their own path. . . .     There's nothing good about seeing more corpses, besides the knowledge that the first dead man wasn't the last living soul in the world to go dark before they could arrive to help. The word settles in, clouding the air, muddying the fog, draped over every corpse collapsed on the rust and stone: 'apocalyptic'. "... I guess, um, there's no way to tell. ... Sorry."     "They're too close together to have been separate by cause. Even if it didn't take them all at the same time, death was too nearby for them to either scatter or gather to survive." Vertin's tone is quietly grim, not lingering on any of the corpses at all, but not unaffected by them.     "None of this gives the impression that people lived down here for long when whatever killed them began happening. The infrastructure is too old and complex, and the bodies are both too many and too few."     Vertin, not Sonetto, can track the ghosts spilling out of Strawberry Princess as if they're as visible to her as body language. The saccharine pink aura around her consolidates into the sparkly, childish images keeping lookout behind the group, and Vertin's nose twitches to confirm what she already expected, in the faint synesthesic strawberry smell.     The robot's not remarkable though! Robots are the same time period as rusty seventies infrastructure. There's nothing to get out of that for the Laplace-familiar besides confirmation of what they assumed. "That's... that's too mean."     Vertin smooths her damp coat down, edges tugged at by the banks of fog. The exit sign is foreboding, rather than encouraging, and the many corpses here could indicate why.     "So it came quickly, then. Whatever it was. Was that door their escape, or where the threat came from...?" "I don't remember this model of reactor, I'm not sure what I'm looking at."     Vertin shakes her head. "I'm not an expert. It doesn't seem like anything detonated or failed mechanically that could cause this much widespread disaster, and Strawberry Princess confirmed the lack of radiation. What could those pipes have been transporting? That black fluid...?"     In a moment of calm, while Sonetto prowls around to warily peek ahead at corner that could be hiding movement or threat, Vertin hangs behind to murmur nearby Friz without facing towards her, or to Rogers. "You aren't a local spirit either, are you? I wasn't sure at first, but now I'm confident."
Penelope Usher	'Er-- Miss Usher?! Is that safe?!'     Still shaking-clean her finger, Penelope responds, "No."     She's still, focusing on the immediate effects, and she shivers. She's confident in an immediate reassurance to Sonetto, and Strawberry, even without having to take reactive measures, that "I'll be fine, though." That's before the little wince of nausea. She takes in air, and says, first, "It's awful. It makes my skin feel endless? All tingly. It's magical, I feel- bad, but rejuvenated? I did for a moment. I don't think this could keep me alive, I don't think it's useful; I think it might keep someone moving, if it's all there was, but... Eugh." She shivers, again.     "Yeah. I'm fine! Don't worry! But don't do that." . . . 'They're too close together to have been separate by cause.' &t"But nothing's so much as moved, to be hunting them," 'Hunting', as if the bodies are prey, rather than... intruders? An infection being cleansed? A bit of near-whiny upsetness comes back into her voice, in an attempt to outsource clarity on the feelings, "This place is dead. What's the point in killing more?" . . .     It's more difficult to see one body than a dozen, as paradoxical as that is; it shouldn't be that way. But the cluster by 'EXIT ->', is a type of upsetting that makes one mad, too. In passing, with furrowed brows, Penelope's gaze skips from fog-obscured body to fog-obscured body. She's quiet in saying, "If anyone were coming back for them, I don't think they'd still be here," as a quiet little resignation on the idea of providing some living soul, somewhere, with any closure.     At the door, in practiced caution, one of Penelope's hands goes to the hilt of a horizontally-sheathed dagger across the small of her back (its leather sheathe white, matching boots, matching pants, matching pouches, matching her equestrian blouse,) and lets her other rest near a thigh-strapped pouch. Friz's similar caution with the door is noticed, with another, over-intense lingering stare.
Penumbra	Even ghosts are more real than this place. Here, lingering is a waste of time even for the dead. Glance away and it's nearly impossible to find your own footsteps in the mud again. Listen to the darkness and you'll stop hearing the dripping of pipes completely. Time and again there are signs of motion, and time again, they're nothing at all.     The black has a way of playing tricks on you. Especially where it gathers in pools. The random direction of the ripples sometimes looks like a silhouette, and then pareidolia tells you that it's trying to crawl out. But ripples always disperse.     Stay far enough behind, though, and you can hear rumbling in the earth. The groan of metal that should follow it never comes, but everything ripples at its seams. Just for an instant, the seismic shockwave makes everything shudder. It's as if the pipes could feel a chill down their spine.     . . . . . . . .     More of the same. More bodies, more wounds, more dead. Each and every sign of humanity feels like an anomaly in this place. Any shade of skin looks as real as the blotchy afterburn of staring into a light. It shouldn't be possible for anyone, dead or alive, to fade into the dirty concrete and rust like nothing; and yet, by now, it's become easy to lose count. It's as if apathy claimed the bodies in rot's stead.     All of the wounds are the same; rows of lacerations that are too dull for blades, but which lead to massive bleeding all the same. They're only deeper and more numerous than on White. Everyone here died on the spot     --------     You can feel the exact moment that time slips once again into the muddy river of dissociative environmental hypnosis. The interruption is that well-timed. The pitched whine of mechanical motion and the plastic-aluminium crack of weight rhythmically striking concrete reaches you from just past the exit, almost the very instant you decide to move on.     A single point of red glare, at the center of a featureless metal plate, is all it takes to feel like a hostile gaze is upon you. Eight feet off the ground, atop an industrial-humanoid frame; even in the thicker fog, the silhouette is unmistakably the same as the one before. Though grime is caked into its panels and struts, this one still shows clean white paint, and walks with a smooth, artificial gait.     Both arms end in weapons; not hands. The tiny pilot light suddenly igniting at the end of one is the only warning you get; the other vomits searing blue sparks at the same time as a fist-sized hole appears through the opposing concrete wall. A deafening bang arrives a split second late. The buzz-whine of an invisible projectile is processed in post.
Penumbra	--------     The robot moves without effort, but it isn't quick. The processing delay between each change in motion is brief, but noticeable. Its white chassis is shockingly hard, but there are no shortage of exposed pistons and hoses to strike if you aim carefully. The battery banks embedded in its back are barely shielded. One arm is a flamethrower below the elbow, and the other is a railgun, but it can't point them in separate directions. It has to turn at the waist to aim outside a ninety-degree cone.     When it collapses, you find no markings; no manufacturer's stamp or brand, though it is clearly, if sporadically, maintained. There was no wireless signal before, and none after. Closely inspected, it lacks even so much as a radio transciever. Its ruined insides are highly technical, but the metal itself is oddly low quality, impervious to neither rust nor wear.     Nothing about it adds up, but that doesn't really matter anyways. Everyone in the room was killed by something with claws.
Friz	Dirt: The Timekeeper said, "You aren't a local spirit either, are you?" Savvy: Ahh-- Shit!! Savvy: Uh oh!!     Huh?     The stout, gruff spirit raises a bushy brow, interrupted in the middle of lighting a fresh cigarette. There's a long pause before he continues. "...I'm the kid's partner. We were assigned the same beat, before I bit it." Friz glances towards Vertin, anxiously, for a moment. "But try keeping it under that *hat* of yours, lady. Not a lot of people tuned in to hear me. Best they get's a glance or a flicker, but you..."     Well, either way, kid's back to focus, maybe a little more sweat on her brow from it. Where she comes from, tough for even the *sensitive* to pick me up, and she's real sensitive herself, about being called a freak about it. She's in hot enough water like this already. So keep it careful. But you can listen in, if you want, and it won't hurt her as long as it stays quiet.     And then, this next part...
Strawberry Princess	And parts of Strawberry have stayed 'far enough behind'. She looks back over her shoulder for a moment, body tensed, when that ripple comes.      ... It comes to nothing. She shakes her head, uneasily, and keeps moving.      - - - -      "I don't know. I don't know if it's 'wrong', for... for people to stay. And everything else to go. People are... the only thing that's forever. Kind of. Nothing else really, um... matters? Sorry, that's... I'm not thinking right."      She rubs her face, uneasily. The faint-spun eidolon Vertin may perceive is vapor-edged and monochrome, shorter, with the suggestion of a skirt and a twisted arm. It stares through them, with its fuzzy-blank visage, and doesn't track them as they move on.      "It does, um... sort of seem like something attacked them," she agrees with Vertin uncertainly. "All at once. I want to say machines, but... they look kind of, um, bitten? That, that soup can Mr. White had, it didn't-- it was weird there wasn't any expiration date. So was he... things already weren't rotting, when that happened...?"      "I don't know. It's just-- DOWN!!"      - - - -      One thumb is on the terrible red button of her staff quick-drawn from her back like a sword and the other hand's index is on her pistol's trigger by the time the gunshot comes. Weapon on each arm but moves predictably so inside its reach is safe and just pull the control rods if something goes wrong because it's worth a lot but it's not worth your life. Eight feet up is still in arm's reach so press muzzle to the eye and      - - - -      A few moments later, Strawberry's conscious mind will catch up to the fact that she put five bullets through the robot's camera point-blank, shoved its arm upwards to duck under, and ripped a battery from its back while it couldn't track her.      For now she heaves a few gulps of air while halfway bent over, dry-swallows, looks down at her hands dumbly, and drops the battery into the black water like she's just realizing it's unclean.      "What was... huhhh. I... I hate this. Was that it? Did we... that can't have been... didn't have teeth..."
Team Timekeeper	"I think it might keep someone moving, if it's all there was, but... Eugh."     "I see. So it's neither obviously hostile and dangeous to people, nor immediately useful in its current state, almost like it's a raw material rather than a finished product. Thank you, that's good to know."     Sometimes, even Sonetto stares at Vertin like she's lost her mind, for being so politely thoughtful about the utility of slurping down a fingerful of mysterious magical oil. "Not a lot of people tuned in to hear me. Best they get's a glance or a flicker, but you..."     Vertin tugs down the brim of her hat, shielding her eyes from the direction of Rogers, leaning her weight on her cane to give her legs reprieve. "Of course." There's a beat, and an imperceptible shift in her tone when she murmurs, "I just wanted to be sure I wasn't seeing things." "But nothing's so much as moved, to be hunting them,"     "But something has struck them all down," Sonetto remarks while carefully inspecting the claw marks left on a body. "It is only that they weren't killed for the sake of consumption, or even removal."     Vertin is getting as close to a railing as she dares, trying to make out any identifying industrial features about the turbines and boilers beyond them, when that plastic sound rings out. "Timekeeper!" "...!"     The gout of flame that erupts from the robot's arm would've only grazed her anyways, but Sonetto tackles Vertin to the ground to shield her, landing hard on her knee to immediately pivot into an incantation. Swiping her wand in a circle around the both of them, a wobbling ring of light orbits and then tightens, lingering around Vertin to protect her while Sonetto scrambles back to her feet. "Uguale raggio mi chiude in un centro di buio!"     Hastily scrawled lines of cursive compact into plates of light that act as momentary forcefields interposed in front of the robot's shots, shattering on contact with the railgun's projectile. Several arcing projectiles of that same shimmering white light splash off of its chassis harmlessly, and longer incantations are broken when she's forced to move. She ducks her face behind her arm to block a shower of concrete shrapnel kicked up by a near miss, grunting at the cuts that still get through her uniform.     "Ah-! It can only face one direction at a time! If I can get behind it...!"     Either enabled by Strawberry's grappling, or by some other incidence of teamwork, Sonetto skirts around its circumference far enough that she'd buy several precious seconds of safety before it can turn on its core to face her. Adjusting her grip on her glasfeder, holding it to her chest and closing her eyes for a meditative moment, she reaches out and draws cursive ribbons of light in tune with her incantation.     "She is thin and lustreless, but I love her. / I know the moon, and this is an alien city."     A cold white light shines down from a wide disk on the ceiling, hanging like a spotlight over the robot before it plunges down in a cascade of sharp-edged flat pillars. A few hoses and hydraulic connections are severed by the impact, slowing it down to be disabled by any of the others.     Vertin has spent this whole time working herself back up to her feet with the assistance of her cane, making her way over once it's downed. "What kind of a place has working robots, but no living people? And why would it be weaponized...?"
Friz	Dirt: Penelope is staring. Savvy: Are we doing something wrong? Grit: Generating tension. Savvy: No! Don't do that! Savvy: Just let me figure out what she might criticize us for!! Dirt: Wait, we're seeing something. Savvy: Huh? What? Moxie: Holding the walk for a moment. Dirt: About two and a half meters this time, with the red light. Grit: That's not Strawberry Princess. Savvy: I could have told you that. Moxie, flashlight it. Moxie: Lighting it up. Savvy: Dirt, data? Dirt: Relaying. Savvy: Looks to be an industrial machine. Or a machine for enforcement, war... Dirt: Pilot light. Savvy: Pi-- Grit: FLAMETHROWER. Savvy: Technically incorrect, that data looks more like a plas-- Grit: ENGAGING ADRENALS SEVENTY PERCENT, PULMONARY TENSING ALL AVAILABLE. Dirt: Someone shouted "down". Moxie: Moving!! Dirt: Bang. Dirt: Ringing. Dirt: Ringing. Dirt: Ring-- Savvy: I get the idea! Savvy: Grit, Mox, get us moving *now*, on feet! Dirt, bring vision back online!! Dirt: I'm trying! Glasses got-- Moxie: I've got them back on! Moxie: Drawing gun! Grit: I'M RUSHING IT. Dirt: The Princess just put bullets in it. Tore a battery-- Savvy: Batteries are sensitive. Explosive. Watch o-- Moxie: Grabbing! Grit: POTENTIAL EXPLOSIVE IN-HAND. Savvy: Jesus!! Then get it away from us! Moxie: Throwing! Aiming for the enemy weapon! Grit: STABILIZING. AIMING. FIRING. Dirt: Bang. Second bang, louder. Ringing. Ri-- Savvy: I said I get it! Firing at-- Did you *shoot* the battery?! Grit: SLINGS AND THEIR IMPACTS ARE USED TO KILL LARGE ENEMY CREATURES.     Friz dives, loses her glasses, holds her head. Before the kid's got her senses back she's already back on her feet. Rushes in, catches that battery before she even realizes Strawberry Princess tossed it. Slings it straight back at the bot's weapon, pops it mid-air. Discharge or detonation, can't tell what happened, but that ought'a be the end of that plasma blaster, plus some extra.
Penelope Usher	'Thank you, that's good to know.'     Dwelling on it more leads Penelope to, somewhat politely, cover her mouth with her sleeve, and try and wipe her lips off on it without that being too-seen. With her other hand, she gives Vertin a little thumbs up. . . . 'I don't know. It's just-- DOWN!!'     Penelope looks at first like she's quickly (and enthusiastically!) following Strawberry's warning, to drop- but green flames spark up from something held (having been quickly grabbed out of a pouch, with a soft *thwip*) burning up, and she keeps falling right through a murky puddle of ink, conjured right at her feet.     Launching out already low to the ground, behind the robot, and with her clothes momentarily stained with green ink so dark as to be black, Penelope's pulled the dagger she's kept sheathed on her back into hose-severing strikes, quick and targeted, as would a wolf nipping at a deer's tendons. Almost kicking off, she touches the robot's back for a moment- when she ducks away, and vanishes back into another puddle of ink, the robot's back has a globule of noxious green fire burst to life, and claw its way over its plating. . . .     Breathing fast, but not hard, on the outskirts of the room, Penelope approaches again, the now-decommissioned robot. She stares at it, and sits down, nearby, watching glowing fires fade as they turn plastic material into tarry soot and fumes. Looking in the cavity where the battery ought to be, is like staring into a gutted corpse- watching the battery drop to the ground is a discarded trophy. She sighs, and almost pouts, "What's the point? It didn't even talk!" 'Did we... that can't have been... didn't have teeth...'     "It didn'ttttt," is in similar frustration- it's making Penelope tense, the more she thinks about there being something out there, that's even that one further step towards the 'natural, fair' cycle of hunt-and-be-hunted. Even then, it's something wrong. She takes a big breath.
Penelope Usher	Quiet, but still towards the group, Penelope says, "I really want to take a shower after this. Right? This is all so dirty feeling-" More mud kicked off from where it's trying to stick to her heeled boots, "Like, even if it isn't icky and rotten, everything's all 'oh, you better wash this feeling off when you get home', and I'm getting a little tired of it already."     Gumpy. %
Penumbra	Leaving that terrible scene behind you shouldn't feel like this. It's as if the moment the exit sign passes over your head, none of it ever happened.     Not really, but close enough. The shakes are real. It's only that the scent of charred rubber and ozone doesn't even carry up the stairs. Your senses, so alive mere moments ago, are now only of use in telling you how silent everything is too. How the robot didn't leave footsteps. How you wouldn't be able to tell battle damage from age after just one corner. It doesn't take long to settle back into that semi-hypnotic rhythm of travel again, but the minutes before feel like vertigo.     It wasn't your imagining, though. The arcane energy in that room spiked when the robot began firing. They're gone without trace before the metal even cools.     . . . . . . . .     'Void Beast'. That's what the scrap of paper stuck to the wall reads. Whatever the maker intended to draw, the thick strokes of pitch black ink depict something only loosely resembling a living thing, much less a specific one. The only other words, scrawled by an unsteady hand, are EXTREME DANGER!     It's on the wrong side of the concrete arch. You'd only see it if you had come the other way, towards where you first arrived. The dried residue of other letter-paper posters suggests that many notices were once plastered here beside it. Perhaps one of them said something about robots.     . . . . . . . .     You understand why the exit sign was posted there. It would be impossible not to by now. Though it isn't daylight that greets you, you've unmistakably 'emerged' from wherever you were. What's in front of you now is somewhere else.     It's the pit that draws the firmest line. The strange metal spheres you've seen recently discarded along the way, some too tall to see over, none small enough to hold, all still plugged into scraps of insulated hose, had been an indicator, but it's the pit beyond the next railing that truly seals it. Here, your footing dwindles to only a narrow steel catwalk, bolted to the wall of an unfathomably deep shaft, and the stamped-in texture is the only traction you have. The matching stairs only run one way, coiling upwards along the inside wall, broken up by similar landings with no doors in and out.     A fine layer of frost collects on the outermost edge of the metal. There is no culprit but the thick fog that billows down from the top of the shaft, utterly frigid, possessed of a sharply chemical scent. Near the wall is tolerable, but when close to the rail, it stings your bare skin, and blisters before too long. For as dense as it is, it can't obscure the massive column that runs all the way through the shaft's center, too far to hit with anything you could throw. Titanic rubber-insulated cables pour down over it like a rime-coated waterfall and follow it down, down into the abyss.
Penumbra	. . . . . . . .     For a while, it was easy to see how far you've climbed. All you had to do was look down. After a full twist of the rifling stairs, however, all of that fades into mist. The glittering flakes that drift down like deep ocean snow aren't paint or insulation, but ice; which means that there is no water in the fog.     . . . . . . . .     The column ends. The top is flat and level, but it was clearly never meant to be walked, only remarkable for its pristine metal and crisply stencilled hazard markings. The bridge across to it from the stairs is held in place by a colossal gantry. From up here, under the pale glow of indicator lights, you could imagine that the gargantuan robotic clamps that hold the column's vertical overhang were originally meant to raise and lower it. Going by the visible tracks in the walls, you've only now reached their lowest point.     You can't see how far they go up anyways; a mercy or a curse. Everything above you is eclipsed by clusters of spherical machines that dwarf their cousins, discarded in the tunnels below, by magnitudes that begin with five zeroes. They're networked together, with endless braids of pressurized hose and insulated cable, woven into the shaft like sinew around bone. Each one bears an access plug wider than any of you are tall, which glows with cherenkov blue bright enough to see by.     There is no radiation. If they process anything, the signal must run exclusively through countless miles of bundled wire. The hum is stronger here nevertheless. The nameless, formless thing that pools around your thoughts, immiscible with your mind, incidentally submerging your most abstract senses beneath a palpable neural tide, is concentrated here     There is a pool of unnatural blackness here, above the icy fog. Its basin is a flat, two inch deep indentation that takes up most of the column's top, but it still it ripples without the slightest current of air. It's as if graphene could shine like a mirror; if latex could flow like water; if tar could cling to nothing; if oil could be seen all the way through at just the right angle; as if the dark of an empty room a million miles away from the light of the sun could splash around your ankles as you walk. Something about the shallow pool is intuitively 'pure', which makes it feel eerily almost sacred.     Yet the only thing in it is a lump of metallic crystal. Sharp, angular, blandly silver, yet twisted up in the organic knots of tree bark, it curls into most of an oval shape before reaching as high as your head, and spreads 'roots' under the surface of the pool from its base. The faint pressure on your mind grows so strong from approaching it that, at the edge of the pool, it feels almost tangible; yet when you cross over the circle, it disappears completely. The vacuum is filled only with quiet white noise, like melodic static.
Penumbra	Here is the closest place to innately 'arcane' you have felt; and not slightly, either. It's difficult to tell whether it radiates from the crystalline root and reflects off the black liquid, or whether the black liquid condenses it so that the crystalline roots can feed on it. Both feel strangely plausible.     --------     The only other living being you've come across this entire time, and you almost didn't see her. By the pool, collapsed forward, arm on her knee for support, head hung low in crushing exhaustion. Though the white metal plates in her clothes camouflage her against the column, they clearly aren't the only cause. She would have to have been completely invisible until you stepped over the boundary; if she was actually there at all. Yet, even then, it's long after you're aware of her that she finally seems to become aware of you.     --------     You've already seen humans here. She isn't one. Her eyes are blue only because they glow like the clustered machinery. Her skin and hair are only barely different shades than the frost-fogged metal all around you. Half her clothing is jarringly ornate, though its purples and golds have faded; the rest is only suggestive transparent plastic that bares naked black polymer from hip to breast.     She stirs as if struggling to wake from a dream. She rises as if pulled from above. Her feet aren't much more than decorative points anyways. Invisible energy pools against the floor and shifts into the blue spectrum as it splashes over steel in silent ripples. The levitation act matches how her crown hovers over her brow; if you could call it one. It's been stripped down to sterile grey casing. You can see the screws.     Her only remaining adornments are a diamond design on her forehead, and rows of beautiful crystals that dangle from one arm by silver wire, radiant in the gloom. They're not attached to anything. She threw them over her arm and carried them here by hand.     »"You've arrived safely? Welcome."« She doesn't sound nearly as artificial as she looks. Granted, there's something 'off' about the inflection, or maybe her accent, but the texture of every word is recognizable as 'regally composed burnout exhaustion'. She smiles while unable to fully open her eyes.     »"It's a pleasure to see you. My name is Asteria, the Branchweaver. You must have many questions, but unfortunately, I can only answer a few."« she says, strangely serene for how clearly she is hurrying.     »"I'm not supposed to be here, and I don't have the authority to be speaking to you. I will be discovered very soon. You are in an ancient, underground drainage tunnel, in the south regeion of Havenswell. There are still many humans, and my wish is that you will save them."«
Strawberry Princess	"Yeah. I, hate it. I hate it," Strawberry mutters to Penelope, before she's even straightened back up. 'Hate' is a loanword to her language. It has no native pronunciation. Still it feels appropriate.      "I'm gonna, throw out my shoes or something. And everything. And--"      She remembers where she is and what she's responsible for, a moment later, and for just that moment- clear-eyed and straightening up, only a little hesitant now- she seems like someone else. "Ah, um, is everyone alright? Any injuries to account for? Ms. Vertin, your knee...? Ms. Penelope, you scared me a little when you vanished, you know."      Sonetto almost certainly beats her to steadying Vertin, but she offers with a gesutre anyway, with an oddly overflowing almost-sunny camaraderie.      It fades again to her usual uncertainty within the minute. But it was there.      - - - -      Big metal spheres plugged in with thick hoses. "Eggs," Strawberry feels compelled to say about them, inanely. Just that one word.      - - - -      She steps up to the railing over the vast, vast pit with much too much comfort for the heights, and postures like she's going to lean over and look down before she realizes the freezing fog stings.      - - - -      "Oh. Really big eggs," Strawberry says at the top. Then, judging the orbs' skyscraper-like size, she burbles even more inanely:      "I wonder if all the people are in there."      She isn't sure in what sense she means it. But what other than 'people' could be so important?
Strawberry Princess	Strawberry surely felt that mental pressure, but she seems more surprised when it's gone at the black pool's edge, rubbing her own shoulders with her hands as if she'd just shed a layer of clothing.      When she sees the pale-blue lady, she takes in a tight-half breath and holds it for a long time, even when 'Asteria' rises and speaks.      As she does, Strawberry is slowly approaching, and holding out an empty hand. It's not so different from how she meant to steady Vertin, as if the levitating figure might need her help.      "... discovered very soon." "Thank you," she says, and means for her trust. "We'll do our best. I-- I really will," she says, and means that too, and,      if things are really so dire and so urgent that there's only time for a few things to be said, then even with her head full of intoxicating mysteries and 'saving humanity' and the weight of the world, and even with 'Asteria' choosing selflessness with these moments,      "Ms. Asteria, what's going to become of you?"      'Strawberry Princess' is someone who tries to care for the person in front of her, too.
Friz	Grit: SPOOLING DOWN CARDIOPULMONARY OVERWORK. Moxie: Doubling over a second. Savvy: Can't say much, panting too hard... Dirt: Looking like we got it, though. Grit: Spooldown complete. Moxie: Ready to walk. Dirt: No more threats. Savvy: Alright. Let's go. Dirt: Penelope said she wants a shower. Savvy: "Same here. Same..." Grit: Breathe. Savvy: "...Same here." Dirt: Strawberry Princess took an account of injuries. Savvy: "Okay here. Just a little dirty from the dive. Bit of bruised pride." Savvy: "Good move with the battery."     ---     I flick a phantom cigarette stub down the shaft. The dim ember that only Friz and I can-- Well. Friz, Vertin, and I, can see, goes out a long time before it hits the bottom. Not a fan of this. Too far down. Or up.     Just too far.     --- Dirt: Strawberry Princess just said, 'eggs'. Savvy: Man. Savvy: Whatever. Savvy: I guess. Savvy: "At least they won't hatch." Savvy: "Someone installed the incubator upside down." Dirt: Snow. Savvy: No it's not. Dirt: Ice from the sky. Savvy: Well, close enough. Wait... Savvy: "What is this? The fog?" Savvy: "The freezing point must be below water's..." Savvy: "I really wish I had a chemical testing kit."     ---     Friz stops to look at the top of the giant rod. "I can tell it's supposed to elevate. But I wish they'd left *us* an elevator." She looks pretty beat by now. "What *is* this column... Mechanically-speaking, separation like this is either mechanical or access. If it's not for something mechanical (no moving parts) then what is it securing...?" Doesn't stop to linger on the question. Don't got the answers, after all.     ---     "Those eggs are too big." Her face is a little pale when she converses with Strawberry. Princess. "So I don't want them to be eggs."     --- Dirt: I'm seeing a pool of-- TENSION:                      Dirt: --the black stuff-- TENSION:                          Savvy: Harder to think. TENSION:                                    Grit: This is a threat. Worse than the pipes. TENSION:            Savvy: I'm trying. TENSION:                                                              Savvy: Let me just Savvy: Lock in.                     Savvy: Oh, augh, this is so sluggish.     Moxie: This *sucks*.                               Grit: Find some way to get this under control. Grit: It's a threat.     Having trouble focusing here. Kid, you got it bad as I do? Come on. Clear your head, I know you're trying. Gut tells me, there's an eye to this storm. And there is. We find it. Cross the pool kid, I know you've got worse static in that brain than--     There. We're through. Whatever that was.
Team Timekeeper	"What's the point? It didn't even talk!"     "Still, it came from somewhere."     Vertin's happy enough to take Strawberry's hand in steadying herself, though she's not particularly feeble anymore. Getting up is a bit of a struggle without help, but the cane is to help keep her from exhausting herself, rather than being necessary for her to stand at all. "It had to have been built for a purpose, with materials gathered someplace, by someone. Either these robots were present before all of these people passed away, or they only arrived after." "I really want to take a shower after this. Right? This is all so dirty feeling-"     "It is dusty," Sonetto agrees, sort of; the dust isn't even dust at all, and it's definitely not what Penelope was referring to. "And we have traveled a long way."     More solemnly, while she lets her glass wand dim lower than she had before the fight while sheathing it, Sonetto's expression falls, moving away from the robot. "... I don't like it at all. I feel like the atmosphere of this place is clinging to me like a curse. Really, what became of all of these people...?" . . .     Vertin's musings about the 'society' that a killer robot must suggest are proven correct. If there's anyone left in this industrial maze who might make use of these warning flyers in the future, then they can't possibly justify taking them, but Sonetto borrows Vertin's notepad to make an accurate sketched replica of the 'Void Beast' and the markings surrounding it. "At least they won't hatch." "They're smaller than the robot was, for the most part." "Timekeeper?!" . . .     The pit. Sonetto doesn't let go of Vertin until they're both safely past the catwalk portion to the central spiral of stairs. Vertin stops in the middle and looks up through the impenetrable mist, and then down, lips turning blue and the words crystalizing as ice on her chin.     "... It's so much infrastructure. If this were all an apartment building, it'd house millions. As just... what, waste transport? Incidental underground utility tunnels? It could be the entire population of Earth right above our heads, or no one at all." "Please don't get frostbite!" "Right, I'm coming." "I really wish I had a chemical testing kit."     "The request came through too quickly for me to catch the LSCC's attention. They'd be more than willing to test every part of this, if I can get their support." â"You've arrived safely? Welcome."á     Sonetto is distracted by the building mental pressure, squeezing her eyes shut and shaking her head as if it could be repelled from her like water. Her insistence on vanguarding the group's travel falters the closer they get to the tree, and then for a moment she's left behind when Vertin lunges ahead to see the first living person in this whole world.     "Hello, Asteria! I'm Vertin." The number of questions possible to ask is longer than they'd have time for even if Asteria wasn't in a rush, but the most urgent one is always the first that comes to mind for Vertin. "How can we save them?"     Sonetto is more passively reverential to the oddly alien-natural feeling shrine, skirting around the edge of the pristine pool with careful steps. Her hand is clasped around her wrist, and it's difficult for her to find her voice for a moment, but Vertin and Asteria's urgency forces her to.     "What is the 'authority' here?"
Friz	Dirt: Someone's here. Savvy: Wh-- Moxie: Augh! *Just now?!* Moxie: Jumping!! Savvy: Why didn't you tell me?! Dirt: She's been here the whole time. Dirt: Looks mostly human-like. Grit: Cancelling adrenals. Savvy: Christ. Thanks. Dirt: She's saying something... Savvy: ...     ---     Once she's done yelping, once she's done listening, she focuses on the woman. Crystals, floating -- it's the paygrade above. She's something a thousand times past all the bodies. Still, Friz can talk with her. "Friz, Debtor Volunteer Security Department." What's a badge gonna do for her, showing something like that, kid? You treat it like a comfort totem, not a qualification. Like it ought to set her mind at ease. "It's... my wish to save lots of people too. I really would like to know, ah, if you know anyone else whose wish is like that...? Who could help us, or, who we could help. Who I could work with." Detect or die, huh? See if it pans out. Sure keeping your heart on your ratty little sleeve there, but, might be the fastest path to the most people helped. Maybe you'll start your own little VSD again. But you're squandering questions.     Me? I'd ask, what's in the air? What's keeping everything dead? So dead, it can't even rot.
Penelope Usher	' Ms. Penelope, you scared me a little when you vanished, you know.'     "'Ms. Penelope,'" gets mimicked, to feel the texture in her own mouth, before an answer can come. She's a little bit gigglier about it, in some manner of tension-release, and adds a little silly-spooky sauce to it, complete with the finger-wigglies, "Were you worried? It's ~demon magic~, it's okay to be a little scared. It's scary!"     A breath clears it out of her system, "It gives it away a little if I give a warning, but, you've seen it now, at least! Sorry about the surprise, Strawberry. I mean it! I think I'd have gotten worried, too? But, it's O.K!"     Penelope shuffles in her duffel for a moment, and pulls out something not Paladins standard-issue- a couple wrapped-up dum-dums lollipops. When she says, "All of this, *trudging*, is kinda leaving a bad taste in my mouth," she's being literal. One's opened up- and on seeing that an unopened one is strawberry flavored, it's offered out! Candy is always a good little pick me up. Everything else here is flavorless. . . .     "It's got to be a good sign, that this warning is stuck up on this side. That means we're headed towards where people, or... whatever reads these, must come from." Penelope is gentle, when she touches the paper, and tries to see if it holds up between finger and thumb. "Must be the teeth." . . .     When her lollipop is finished, in time, she just discards the stick with a little spinning-flick, off into the abyss below the catwalk. There's nowhere to put trash that'll be dealt with; taking it with her is odd sentiment. Maybe the void wants a hit of sugar, too.     Penelope shivers. . . . 'Eggs,'     Penelope sticks her tongue out, in classic 'ewww' expression. . . .     Staring at the gnarled crystal... growth? in the pristine pool, Penelope murmurs out, "This is like a vision. A test or omen, to pick apart. It's not quite a dream, it's too, too-" She cocks her head and looks into the reflective-rippling not-water, "There's too few pieces, and they don't change enough."     The buzz in the air demands a bit of hushed reverence. Even it feels eerily clean. Wordlessly, at the muddling of thoughts, Penelope thumbs at a piece of paper- actually looking, rather than feeling, for the correct one -from the pouch in her hip, and places it squarely at the center of her chest. It erupts into flickers of green flame, then sparks, a little jump-start to her internally-focused practices of metabolism, and alchemical neutralization of toxins. How long ago was it that she imbibed the fluid? It's fuzzy- in trying to clear her head, she resolves to burn that out of her system; she can't quite be sure it didn't have a lingering effect. 'There are still many humans, and my wish is that you will save them.'     Penelope's stare is unflinchingly on Asteria's eyes, but she's vigilant- noticeably so, of periphery movements. She didn't startle at her sudden movement from the camouflaged stillness, and she stays there.     It isn't personal! It's caution!     "Penelope Usher, Sign-bearer of the 66th." Leading with 'I'm taken!' just to be safe! "What's hunting them? Who's hunting you?"     "How much is like 'here'? I don't like it. I'd like them to be saved, too. It's too sad to see it." Emphatic agreement, shying away from the likes of a promise. Her eyes only then stray. Pointing at the head-height growth, "Are those your 'branches', 'Branchweaver'? What do you do?"
Penumbra	'How can we save them?'     Though she hardly sems to have energy left for expressions, 'Branchweaver' Asteria pushes just a little more into her faded smile. That motion feels like the most normal rate that time has moved at all day.     »"An excellent question."« Asteria says. Feeling your expanded proprioception catch up to you all at once is something like your ears finally popping after hours of high altitude.     'Are those your 'branches', 'Branchweaver'?'     »"Yes."« And nothing else. The way she watches Vertin while speaking to Penelope can only mean that the answers they're asking for are one and the same.     »"The Branch before us is one of an uncountable many. They are my life's work."« She gestures towards the sharp-angled knot of mineral growth in the center of the pool. »"This Branch has been damaged since long ago, as have many others like it. I have always done everything in my power to protect humans, but there are many who disagree with me."« Just by saying those two things together, the implication is made unmistakably clear.     »"It's no longer possible for me to restore them. There are others who are trying to repair the scattered Branches in my place, but far too few. This world has no salvation until they are all functional."«     She doesn't ask for anything. Not out loud. The way she begins picking apart the tangle of silver wires over her arm says everything. Each crystal handed over to one of you is another key to the machine that has been set in motion.     'What's hunting them? Who's hunting you?'     »"There is a power struggle. Humanity is dying out as a byproduct. Only those who are chosen to be sheltered are spared."« Despite saying so little, the way she says it comes off as if everything you need to know is already loaded into those words. First she hands a wire-strung crystal to Vertin, then to Penelope.     »"Above you is a community of refugees, hiding beneath Havenswell. I can no longer protect them. Above that is Havenswell itself. The fighting is concentrated there, in the last city of humanity."« She delivers one to Sonetto, next.     'What is the 'authority' here?'     Her eyes linger a moment. One she doesn't quite have. »"The authority is the Sphere. The Sphere has revoked my authority to speak to humans."«     'I really would like to know, ah, if you know anyone else whose wish is like that...? Who could help us, or, who we could help. Who I could work with.'     »"Others have come before you."« You can see her trying to deliver Frizz's crystal faster, to make up for hesitating with Sonetto, but her body can't be pushed any further than this. »"Some are humans. Others are my children. You will know them by their seals. Please help them."«     Then Asteria looks slightly over Frizz's head, at the crown of her skull, and traces lettering into the air. The character is a fusion of several east-asian languages. It variously means »dust/clay/earth/chaos, but the word she says is »"Mud."«     'Ms. Asteria, what's going to become of you?'     The relief she feels when giving Strawberry her crystal is visible in her eyes, even if they don't blink. »"I don't know for sure."« she says. »"The Sphere will find me soon. Once it does, I will most likely be recycled. The only alternative is--"«
Penumbra	You don't need to see the clock to know that was the last second. The way she freezes, and cranes her neck to look 'up', tells you everything you need to know. In the scant few remaining seconds, she looks back at you, bows gingerly at the waist, and says »"May the Branches guide your path."«     There isn't even time to straighten back up again before her body has turned pitch black on the spot. Droplets separate from her body, rising into the air and whisked away into nothing. You wouldn't be able to repeat her farewell before she's completely disintegrated before your eyes.     The remaining crystals tumble to the ground in a jumbled heap of silver wires. The only purpose of handing them away was the slim possibility that more might come after you.
Friz	...? Mud... Alright. Wait, kid, what are you thinking? I can see your eyes racing, you only get that way when-- Savvy: She's speaking like she's going to die. Moxie: We have to do something. Grit: Her death is guaranteed. Moxie: I'm taking the crystal. What else do I do? Dirt: I don't-- Moxie: No way to fix this? Dirt: --know about any-- Moxie: Dammit dammit dammit *act*. Moxie: Give me the-- Savvy: Hey! Moxie: GIVE IT!!     And Friz just blurts out, hollering, fast as she can, "This saved them! This saved them!! Thank you!!" Friz, you don't know any of that. You know you don't. You're lying to comfort someone dying. But... Well. You're lying to comfort someone dying. Is that even the type of person, type of being, gonna feel any better about this? Moxie: ... Moxie: Squeezing the crystal just a bit. Closer. Savvy: And what's that actually mean? Moxie: It's for us, not you. Savvy: Alright, gather the rest of the crystals. Dirt: The others are pretty tough in a fight, I'd better mule up to help. Moxie: Alright. Let's go. Grit: The humans need us. Let's go find the others.
Strawberry Princess	Asteria looks and moves like the smoldering embers of a person. It's never too late, Strawberry knows, to gather those embers back up and carefully breathe light back into them.      'Let me,' her eyes are saying, when they meet Asteria's. 'This was easy once. Being this you. You smile like it still is, but it's not. Let me care for you, or do your work, or fix the world until it's easy again. I want to see you shine like you used to.'      "Thank you, Ms. Asteria, but--"      "Ah, wai--!!"      Strawberry lunges, and her hand closes around nothing.      - - - -      Time passes in strange ways. Strawberry feels like she's here for a long time, clutching that crystal still in her palm.      - - - -      "... Go on ahead. I'll, um, catch up. You won't... You won't lose me," Strawberry says. It might sound like a lie, but it's not.      She does catch up, twenty minutes later, with the bottom tip of her wand scraped blunt.      - - - -      The perfect smoothness of the black pool is interrupted by several crystals in a pile, on silver strings, and an upright jagged metal sheet behind them. Words are carved into it.      Here Asteria the Branchweaver gave a crystal to each of us. She asked us to save the unchosen humans and repair all the scattered Branches, like this one. She said they were her life's work and the only way for the world to be saved. For speaking to us, she was taken away and recycled by the Sphere...      . . .      ... Please take a crystal if you can help. She was very kind. "May the Branches guide your path."      It will probably be there a very long time.