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Team Timekeeper	"... It was a pleasure to be your deskmate, Vertin."     You already know what's going to happen by this point. The half-dozen children crowding around Vertin in her memory don't, and the forced recall prompted by the Artificial Somnambulism machine masochistically drags its steps as it approaches the end, where the psychic embodiment of the trauma and Mesmer's treatment will be waiting.     The extranneous details of the dream fade and blur, like a poorly focused camera, while Vertin and the rest make their way past the fallen guards into the furthest reaches of the uneasily military tunnels. The rain outside is already audible, only meters away-- a sound that's exciting to the kids scrambling for the staircase out of the tunnel, and a death knell in retrospect.     "That goes up to the watchtower! We're nearly there!" "Freedom! Freedom!" "Shhh! We haven't escaped yet! Keep quiet and don't touch anything."     At the head of the pack, Vertin unwraps the captured Shamir worm to gnaw through the lock of the door barring them from the watchtower, and the excitement of the other children bubbles over uncontrollably. The Ring puts his hand on his chest and sighs dramatically, vibrating with eagerness.     "Food. Food! That's what I'm looking forward to the most! I'd never heard of so many kinds of food before! I wonder if we'll find a 'Pizza Hut' in the country outside?"     The floodgates open, and suddenly everyone's talking about what they're excited for the most. Isabella's long string of fantasies flip between mundane and exorbitant without any context for what might be which, grasping at the sheer torrent of opportunities the world may hold. "*I'm* looking forwards to seeing the clothes people wear, buying a car, seeing the ocean, climbing a mountain, and hanging things in *my* room."     "I wanna stay up late!" "Soon we'll be breathing *real air*!" "I want to go home back to my country!"     Inside the fortified watchtower, right on the edge of the SPDM, there's just one door between the kids and freedom. The Ring leans over Vertin's shoulder, her expression hidden and unreadable. "What about you, Vertin? What are you looking forwards to most?"     Vertin's been silent for a while while the others talk, methodically bringing down each obstacle left in their way. When she's addressed, she hesitates, and then her answer is utterly, childishly resolute. "I'm going to find my mother."     "Your mother? You have one?"     "Yeah. The instructors said I don't, but I remember her. I think they're hiding her."     "Really? Then-- once we're free, we'll all try to find her. We'll be able to do anything we want soon."     "... Yeah. You're right."     With the sound of rain growing louder, Vertin places her hand on the doorknob. The Ring places his on top of hers, then Isabella on his, until all the other kids pile together to open the door at once.     "Ready? Then, together-!"
Foundation Scions	'Wait, come back!' . . .     It's absurd to hope for different from a dreamt memory, but for one solitary instant, Mesmer, watching through this from the outside, familiar yet still seeing it through, first-second hand, for the first time, believes both that she's changed something for the better, and that she's even been heard.     She hasn't, on both fronts, and a stressed fist, no longer shaking, is slammed against a nearby console to wibbly-whiny electronic interference. Muttered to herself, there in the hospital room, is a quiet "No, no, someone was supposed to stop her. Why didn't they? They promised..." . . . 'She's one of us; I don't want her to be left behind in the dark.'     <I'm not,> she adds, defensive-desperate, even through the strange intonation of her transmissions. <I don't condone this. I didn't then, I was told better. I wanted her to stop, to call it off, I wanted no part in it anymore! I knew what would happen! She wasn't supposed to make it this far-> . . .     Shaking again, this time from emotion alone, Mesmer lays a hand on the side of Vertin's sleeping face. She stares, eyes tracking across closed eyelids, for any hint of REM-movement, like a cat hunting a mouse underneath a bed of leaves. What starts as a gentle caress tenses, until Mesmer's rough-cut nails are against fragile skin, a buzz of Animal Magnetism arcanum adjusting Vertin's own fields with surgical precision.     Calm-tone to her voice, not un-stressed, but suddenly re-conscious of volume, Mesmer addresses Sotheby, again, with, :Some water might be helpful. Bottled." It's un-subtly a call of 'you might not like watching any of what I have to do next'. . . . <The question is *who*.>     The ambient electromagnetic warble-hum from Mesmer's outside-interfering Animal Magetism *crackles*, like boiling water poured into frosty-cold glass. No emanating transmission comes through immediately, save for the obvious tension.     <I wasn't instructed as to how to do my job, Parsons.> She answers a different of his questions instead- <The original trauma was always apparent to me. Excision was my decision, my call as a medical professional. The only orders were to monitor her in treatment until she's healed enough to be deemed ready for continued field deployment.>     All this to say, the orders Mesmer received were given in ready-understanding exactly of what Mesmer's response would be, what she'd be familiar with, her sentiments towards Vertin. She didn't have to be fed her lines to play her part to the script. She's all but fessing that up.     What should happen next is some realization, some coming-to-terms, that perhaps a coverup exists, that perhaps Mesmer was lied to, Vertin was misled, and that someone is at fault. Tense signal-interference permeates, like she'll pipe up again, she'll start some emotional-crash come down- '... You will not regret this, right?' 'No. This is what we truly want.'     But instead, clipped, in sudden anger, Mesmer's interference-presence shuts off, like a slammed-down phone, the line dropped. That mote of blind certainty is too much to abide in retrospective emotion-stoking, caught in the swirling transition of memory to memory.
Foundation Scions	Together, students charge through the pushed-open door into the bright world outside the grey walls of the SPDM- stark contrast, the overcast sky, drizzling, but backlit in the daytime, is still the most hopeful welcome that could be imagined. It's wide open, and as they take their excited steps past the final threshold, finally, there's not a single more wall in their ways.     Thunder cracks, loud and close-by. The air feels charged, from the energy memory and the electromagnetic buzz both, but it doesn't fade with the thunder-crash or lightning-flash. Cheering children, free at last, aren't bothered by this- they jump in newly-forming bubbles, splashing with bent-knee landings and giggles. The treeline in the distance beckons, inviting, but nothing so inviting as the wide open field just on the outside of captivity.     Thunder cracks, again, closer this time, as once-students turn to beckon one another, and Vertin, onwards. Winds rustle at the leaves of trees, and there's the pitter-patter sound of raindrops falling upwards.     Caught mid-stride, some, or at the peak of a puddle-stomping jump, there isn't even a moment's divide between the escapees, save for Vertin, being there, an arm's span from one another, striding and celebrating-     -to clattering softly to the ground as jumples of geometric building-blocks in the rough outline of what used to be people, caught mid-stride, or at the peak of a jump, or spinning with arms wide-stretched. No longer with a head to wear it, The Ring's signature metal ring rolls, and rolls, falling softly to a halt beside Vertin's feet.     The upwards rain slows. Here is the heart of this trauma of hers, the recurrent disappearances right at her fingertips. The dream-mindscape swirls, darkens, and quiets, save for the metronome tick-tick-ticking heard on the psychoportal ingress, and a guilty-aching weight presses down on the observers.     Flamel Parsons, practiced psychonaut, can pick this moment out as reminiscent-coherent with the one before a psychohazard's monstrous-metaphorical emergence, here in something no longer quite a memory, as this no longer is. He'd be correct in that assumption, too- with a shiver and a pull, the geometric block-remains of Vertin's classmates start to move and unpeel, rolling over mud and grass into the barest start to a form, still shadowy and hazy in a shape that could be one of an uncountable number of individuals, silhouetted dark against the sterile overcast brightness of the dream-field. . . .     In the hospital ward, no longer at the helm of her control-consoles, Mesmer Jr. leans across the sleeping Vertin's body, from her side, a hand at her temple, another across her forehead, two-fingers together each, like checking pulse and like feeling for a vein, simultaneously. She's close enough, almost, for her forehead to touch the chrome edge of the Artificial Somnambulism machine, like she's on the edge of sticking her head into a shared oven alongside her once-classmate. Frustration, anger, and guilt paint over her face in welling tears, hidden by the posture but still marking-dark the white fabric of Vertin's gown.     Mesmer sets her teeth, and gets to work.
Foundation Scions	. . .     But Journey to the End of Night stops, stillborn, as a skull-splitting buzz of electromagnetic interference cuts the mindscape-dream into a vertig-causing stillframe.     <This is an active operation. Your help isn't necessary. I'm beginning the excision.>     Still in stillframe, the semimonstrous form is shredded apart, linear incisions torn in waveform scalpel-strokes, like butchering down a primal to its component cuts- geometric remnants twice-removed from their archeological context, now; silhouettes and ghost-shadows themselves cut apart like fabric.     <She won't feel a thing.>     Suture-threads stitch themselves into the empty-still air of the dream, wrapping themselves into the psychohazard's body-parts, pulling them back together out of order and into Frankenstein-formation, strung along by puppetstrings extending up and up past the edges of the moment's renderings. Flat-grey concrete stands in amongst the shadowy remnant hazes to make up a faceless humanoid body, towering in stature, with the geometric fragments dotted-over it like jewelry sinking into the morass of its torso.     Plucked up last, a finishing touch to this lobotomy-construct, here to stand in and fend off the trespassers' efforts to preserve the necessary truths of Vertin, is The Ring's ring, pulled as if by theater-wire and stitched-over filmreel to sit as a halo behind the construct's skull.                the End of Dreaming roars, mouthless and frantic, concrete of itself crunching inwards and inwards, as the dream around rapidly modulates and cycles itself through preset layers of sensory magnification and deadening, throwing every operant tool to attack the hindbrain disgust-discomfort associations and grief of this memory into sickening disorientation, a pure and simple harm-punishment for anyone else having to bear witness to Mesmer's work.
Odette Raskins	As one of many following Vertin's memories, Odette's not sure how to feel about finding out when this is all happening. She's started to draw a vague mental image of why this moment in time would be so important to the Timekeeper, but the picture isn't quite clear yet. Right now, there's a crowd of children getting excited over the future, and there's another bit of somewhat terrifying information courtesy of Vertin herself. "She must've found her by now, right...?" Odette asks herself aloud, sounding like she both hopes the answer is yes and is dreading that the answer is no. She hears the rain, she sees the kids at the door, and she doesn't ask her next question out loud, but she's very much hoping that the answer is yes, too. She watches as the door opens, the kids jump into the rain, and finds out that no, nobody was waiting for them out there. Odette's teeth chatter lightly as she watches everything moving in what feels like slow motion, clutching her bag strap at her shoulder and holding the container tightly against her chest. The disorientation hits Odette first and she feels a sharp pain in the back of her head, and Flamel's warning to get down keeps her head from being consumed by the roar fully. Her head still feels like it's going to burst, but hitting the ground with her arm cushioning her head does put a dull pain into it that's slightly better than whatever she might have felt dead on. "The heck are... Darn it, do we just keep running away, then?!" Odette asks, desperately hoping for some kind of direction as she scrambles to her feet to try and find somewhere to run to. She can't imagine running away to be useful against something like this, but she does certainly seem to be favoring a watch-and-see approach while staying light on her feet to dive again. When it looks like the psychohazard is roaring or hurling something at someone else, she follows up by taking carefully aimed shots at it with her Trideag-standard handgun, and then she's on the run again.
Riku Asakura	Watching Vertin's memory unfold like this is really hard.  Until a few moments ago, he didn't know the ending of this story; he didn't hear how Vertin found out she was immune to the storm.  All he ever heard was that she was 'responsible' for the deaths of some of her classmates.  As a child, it's hard to hold someone accountable for that, but now... It wasn't some Manus plot; he knew that, but he never imagined that this would happen.  Three children running off into the Storm without any earthly idea that they would be reversed.  Watching it makes it worse, somehow, to know the trauma that someone had experienced is... not easy to swallow yourself.   'I wasn't instructed as to how to do my job, Parsons.' "What do you mean you weren't instructed?" Riku starts; he's unsure of the greater implication, other than... up till this moment she was looking for something that would blame Vertin, and not finding it... Then the surgical knife itself came down, taking the forming psychohazard from one form... into a completely different and dangerous form.  He'd scream at Mesmer to stop, but they seemed to be past that point.   "You go!" he states, activating an Ultra Capsule, and a figure of a giant of light appears beside him.  Sliding that into a holder, he activates the next one. "I go!" he states again, and this time a giant of darkness forms.  He slides this one into the second slot on the holder.  "Here we go!" he states again, grabbing the Fusion Riser and scanning each capsule.  "It's time to get ready!" He nearly shouts before raising the Fusion Riser above his head, and then over his chest.  "GEEEEEEED!" FUSION RISE! ULTRAMAN ULTRAMAN BELIAL ULTRAMAN GEED PRIMITIVE Ultraman Geed is immediately forced to protect his face and body from the psychohazard's monstrous attack.  It was as if the very thing itself were throwing Vertin's mind at them.  Geed starts growing to match the size of the hazard itself before attempting to throw himself into it.  He attempts to grapple the thing, trying to hit it with a variety of chops and punches while he engages with the thing.   "I hope you have some ideas, Flamel!" he calls out to the Psychonaught.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel knows where they are. He knows they're in the eye of the storm, they're in the calm that exists in the space within a major trauma. This is a minefield, a space where recovery is still long ongoing, and any bad movement, any turning back, could be total disaster.     The children move out. Into the rain. When it slows, his stomach drops. When it begins to reverse, he goes pale. "We're at the moment." He says. "Nobody disturb this, the mind's in a very precise equilibrium mid-healing, and the slightest unplanned nudge could light the powderkeg. On my mark, get ready to run for the future." Fortunately, the one that cuts through here is planned. Unfortunately, it means his plan is instantly out the door.     "--HIT THE DIRT!!" ---     The Parsons Institute rocks painfully in place, struck by an earthquake and a huge breach in the Sensations and Experience Department as dissonance and overwhelming sensation floods the halls, instantly incinerating mental figures instantly before emergency firedoors shut seconds later. ---     When the roaring abates, Flamel's shield flickers painfully, and he gasps for breath. "Crap...!" He wheezes. "We have to hold out until UPE-000 reasserts itself! And get clear when it does, because the impact is going to be...!" He slams two fingers on his temple and flares his palm out. A hand rushes forward to try to grip and hold sutures in front of him. Another from the side on the ring. Another from the other side, wrestling with shapes and forms. Above. Below. Behind. The corners, the gaps. A dozen, now dozens of hands slamming into the form. Containment is the only thing his mind can come up with.     The icepick is sinking into the brain. Flamel's hands struggle to push it back out, or at least stop it from sinking any deeper.     "MESMER!!" He shouts. "You can't excise deep-core memory and still have her be *healthy*!! I thought you were going after a reprocessing, not a removal! Her UPE-000, her core truth, it's going to snap this back *violently* if you try to mess up her flow of time like this!! It's strong enough to resist the Storm unmaking time, you know it's going to mess up your operation too, and the only thing you'll have to show for it is feedback and pain!!"
Regulus	Regulus's plea bounces around nowhere in particular and she'd be lying if she said she didn't somehow hope that would do it. But it isn't really a surprise. "Mesmer, you were a kid, none of you should have been in this position to begin with." Regulus says. "You aren't to blame for believing them when they said they'd stop them. But I can't let you hurt Vertin because of your guilt." Within the dream, she can't see the tears, but even her heart won't let Mesmer tear out a memory so important to a dear friend. She doesn't wait for Flamel before she is working up an incantation, spinning her finger as an intertwined circle of arcane energies appears, crackles of light sputtering at the end of her fingertips as they burn hot, biting her lip as she channels more arcane energy into offense. She has had plenty of time to feel disgusted at what happened to Vertin, and at having her past exposed, that the attempt to channel Regulus's disgust-discomfort and grief hits up against nerves already rubbed raw from repeated blows to the heart. And even if that might not have been enough--Regulus had months ago confessed to Vertin what she had learned. Even the grief strikes against eyes that have dried up. "Nnnot...going to let you! LIGHTS!" She sends a blast of burning light from her fingertips to engulf The End of Dreaming in a singular blast, smoke billowing out from the ends of her fingers that she quickly shakes away, exhaling a long unsteady breath, sucking on her middle and index finger after. ''Do we just keep running away, then?!'' "No! We gotta stop it!" Regulus shouts to Odette, jogging back to avoid terrain as it twists about and floats up here and there. "You want to help Vertin? You really want to help Vertin? You don't have to do any of this! Vertin's doing just fine, but she's been waiting for you, hand outstretched, all this time. I have cleaned your room for months already I'm basically a virtuouso of making a place spic and span, now!" She exhales. She made a promise to herself. "You should come by and tell me how to do it properly, though, or I'll never get it just right."
Holly Asturias	Lilian.     Lilian is throwing a very normal fit about the world being apathetic. Holly frowns, just a bit; she can't help it, recalling that 'the world pushes back against kindness', and now hearing 'the world doesn't care' 'sometimes misery just exists, without anyone to direct it' 'there isn't always a reason something happens'. "Maybe it's true this all just... happened, but is there harm in looking for a culprit?"     She considers, and backs down. Did the Resurgence have a culprit? It was a natural disaster. If it had been someone's work...     It wouldn't really change anything years after, would it?     "... I'm sure we can put this aside for now. It isn't as though we have free reign to--" "Ready? Then, together-!"     They don't, of course. The memory continues playing out. There's no stopping that door from opening, despite Mesmer's increasingly concerning noises. It seems fine at first, until Holly notices the obvious direction of the rain. Just like in the Suitcase. "Ah..."     It would scar her too, watching her friends be washed away. It's different from Schneider, and everyone else at that table. It's the same pain anyway, and if it weren't, it wouldn't matter, because it brings back that one too. <Excision was my decision, my call as a medical professional.>     "This wasn't ordered?"     She thought--     Now she's worried about the 'bomb' again.     There's a skull-splitting buzz. Holly covers her ears, whining at how sudden it is. Is Mesmer mad? If they go anything here it'd harm Vertin wouldn't it? Why would she risk this! <This is an active operation.>     "Oh."     That's... a giant mindscape monster. "I'm going to find my mother." <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "Put any force, anything you have that's charged with major psychic energies, dead on into that thing!"     How she wishes she could go find her own mother. Instead all she has is a traitorous father in a coma. She'd promised Vertin her unconditional support, on the grounds Schneider had put her faith in the Timekeeper herself, against odds she probably knew were against her. If she could help find her mother, now... wouldn't that be wonderful, too? Help someone do something she can't.     "Vertin! Please hold on a little bit longer! You deserve to get to find her, after all this!"     Vertin, so defined by moving on... Mesmer, making a horrible monstrous effigy out of grief and loss... really, the type-advantage favors Vertin.     Thrown about, shaken, distorted, toppled - Holly loses her footing and tumbles back, hit numerous times by both ripples through the dreamscape, harm in its purest form, and a tinge of grief, and loss, and reiterated *hate* for her father, the reason she lost in the first place.     "Mesmer, this is ridiculous! You were so concerned about *recklessness* earlier but now you weaponize her memories?"     Holly is not a mind expert! She can see Flamel panic, and that is reason enough to also take the matter seriously.     The only thing she has, 'charged' with 'psychic energy' or even just 'memories', might well be the guns her mother passed down to her.     ... it's convenient they are sized for such a monster.     Holly's twin triple-gatlings splash into her hands, golden blood surging out of her arms and torso to form the weapons. They click, start spinning, and the steady flow of Ichor from Holly's heart to the thorned, rose-like reservoirs of the cannons produces a staggering amount of bullets.     Maybe a weapon cherished for being her mother's will have the psychic punch Flamel is talking about. If not, it's still extreme destructive force.
Tamamo	She knows what's going to happen. Neither Mesmer nor Vertin needed to tell her -- Tamamo already knew, going into this. In a way, that's good. She's prepared for some of it. She's already processed some of it. But... she wasn't here, and she'd heard nothing of these details that even Mesmer hadn't known.     "I should bring a pizza to the suitcase," she mumbles, staring ahead into nothing. Rousing a bit more, "Did she ever mention her mother?"     Struggling with something, "Was their air not real?"     . . .     Thunder cracks.     "No. No, no..." She flinches. It happens. It's too quick to understand in the moment. It has to be processed afterward.     <She won't feel a thing.>     . . .     "What is that?" Her ears hurt. Raising her hands to press the end of her sleeves over them, flattened against her head, helps only the smallest amount.     "Why leave something like that in its place? You would end her questioning, too, is that it? You would end the journey, to keep her here. You..." Greater understanding of Mesmer's feelings come by the second, and Tamamo likes it less and less. That edge of sympathy she'd felt before remains, even in this, but that's not changing the result. "You say that you do it for her, but we both know the truth of that. You -- I will get to you, later."     Tamamo doesn't, in fact, have immunities to psychic damage. She can only get as far as avoiding showing that she's in pain, which isn't really all that useful in such contexts, and she rarely sees fit to exercise it. What she can do is set up a boundary of defense, scattering talismans from her sleeves to establish a defined area within the boundless -- but not, importantly, formless, here -- expanse of Vertin's mind, and trigger the shimmery gold effects of a barrier to increase the effective distance between herself and the sensations of the incision.
Ein	Druvis III had gone to retrieve the Suitcase, and her wand, from Foundation lockup. With the wake of the celebration and the motions of release among the Arcanists there among the Foundation among chess-white figures letting loose their masks for a moment, Druvis walked in leather-black to retrieve her 'promised land' and Otherworld. The irony was not lost on her on what she was getting, softly amused at it and pleased for a walk. That the Suitcase was entrusted to an apple. . . merely meant that the last Druid merely had to search for the fallen fruit. Meanwhile, Gwendolyn Vera Sotheby had seen to every ailment of Mesmer Jr. with her alchemical curatives. She would have claimed that they weren't concoctions, but she had concocted them to treat specific symptoms live on location with a hand torch and her own set of vials. That Mesmer took to them, and that she *took* them with only one single 'it's not poison, right?' which, to an Alchemist, was a trite but expected part of doing any business at all with anyone with a shred of self-decency even if, vial in hand, what possible answers were there? Yes and Yes (Lying)? Still, the great Sotheby is no liar as she is both genius alchemist and proper little lady, and so scoots back to watch Mesmer fall quite deeply into an intimate interaction with Vertin. Clearly, this was secret quiet time for very important medical procedures! That's why Sotheby started whispering. "Miss Mesmer! I can't find a proper-shaped beaker or small glass jar to put some water in, and do you have any clean drinking water? Is it bottled in a special place?" A curious look overtakes her. "Do you cellar water in Laplace? I've never heard of cellaring water before for a home... wowww, it's like a castle!" Giddy, she gets up. "Don't worry!" She giggles, sharply assurant and self-praising. "I'm *sure* I can find my way to the castle water!" Not three steps out of the door after a graceful-gliding exit, Sotheby is immediately confronted with a four-way intersection. Now certainly, she knows where Vertin and Mesmer is, but. . . everyone else has gone somewhere else! Into a *portal*! Perhaps...? Sotheby crosses her arms and taps chin, considering deeply while people laugh and celebrate in the distance. Eventually, she decides that it would in fact be somewhat noble to ask for help -- no, advice! Yes, advice, from her advisors! Certainly, the adults were always saying to ask them before making any major decisions. "Mister Karson?" ..."Mister Kar~son!" . . . "Mister..." She almost doesn't want to finish her spell, squinting eyes shut. "Karson?" She opens eyes. There's nobody there. Certainly, the castle water wouldn't be *too* big a challenge, but -- oh no! What if Mr. Karson has been captured by Jupiter? --- Hannah Grier had not directly attended the SPDM, and there is a long and silent part of her attendance to the memories in the wake of everyone else as a quiet minder of things like the 'lights on behind them' and doors to be softly closed. In the wake of everyone she 'cleans up', setting things in a restive order in place rather than manicuring each scene. She does a tiny bit of sweeping. She... ...avoids the etching-bugs, nasty things... ...and picks up as a schoolmatron might upon finding younger children still present. Orphanages, orphans, the sights were so damned tiring that only the faintly neurotic setting-of-eases about the memories as ward and whisk keeps at bay the sticky and tarry feelings of agony that settle like radioactive dust to skin. It is a slow, twisting pain to be here. It is a damage that lingers. It is a place without honor, yet, also, it is somehow the place for children. Ms. Moissan hadn't been here, but seeing it brings so much into sharp reality for her.
Ein	The ending of it she watches, from behind the door, knowing better and in her dull adult-sense being lacking and two paces behind the bravery of youth, and in her horror hides mouth with hand, then fist, then drills shut eyes, then hears -- something -- and opens them to see the Ring-hung halo of what Mesmer's mental construct emerges as. Fear, turned to running automatically by the autonomic response and effect of the lobotomized being, keeps her 'mobile' among the memories. Ms. Moissan isn't an expert at mental combat nor causing mental damage, but her realist approach to the matter lets her carve through the horrors of casualty reports and bloodspatters of ink across page to condemn hundreds of lives as they assault her in accusation with the truth: "Miss Mesmer!" Moissan calls, chopping through the air like a teacher sharply calling on a student. "It is roundly agreed upon that the duty of developmental learning is to build resilience and mechanisms to grow and live, not to ignore and deny and construct a false reality around contexts!" "Do you think, now, you'll make her forget the Storm? She, among all of us, is called to face them!"
Regulus	APPLe is presently within the Suitcase, sweeping up the same area that he had been the prior day because he's stressing the fuck out and he needs to do something or he'd be even more worried. "My word, my malic acid is acting up. At this rate I'm going to end up a sour apple indeed if I don't get news soon. Oh Captain..." He asks the world. "When will you return home?" Only The Last Druid can save him now...
Tamamo	This is not going to be nearly as useful as usual, because establishing firm boundaries inside someone else's mind strikes Tamamo as something to be done with a lot more delicate care and forethought than may be practical at combat speeds. She'll just have to do her best... but what can she do, apart from attempt to strike down a psychic construct?     Well. Yes, of course. She could do that. She hasn't seen Flamel's work before today, but it's a reasonable guess that he can work exactly like that, and enables others to do the same. The disgust-unease response reaching her even encourages that, triggering fight-or-flight, even if she's suppressing both. Obviously, 'flight' is only an option if Lilian leaves, and she won't while Vertin still needs them here.     "You only want to remove what would make her leave you, Mesmer Junior. I understand that too well. I understand, but that does not mean I can let you do this."     The question of 'where is Vertin in all this' is 'all around,' but it's easier to think of her as being 'there,' in a particular place near the exit, watching the tragedy unfold, just before it froze. That's where Tamamo's attention shifts when she says, "My apologies for the mess, Timekeeper. Would that I could find you an apology that meant something for all you endured, before now."     More loudly, "Lilian! Draining and regrowth. Medical work requires both." The talismans Tamamo tosses her wife are both curses and blessings, to be used as she sees fit. The ones she tosses near the faceless creature are different, closer to 'ordinary' misfortune, to make use of what's already here.     Though the dream does not continue, thunder cracks again, lightning called by a twist of Fate.
Lilian Rook	'I know you can't come with us. But if you could please deliver this message to Annika?'     Everything about what's happening feels unbearable. Weight upon new weight, heaped on a core of already-heavy dread, growing by the minute until it feels as if it's slowly crushing the air out of her lungs. It's the door at the end of the corridor that finally leaves Lilian feeling as if she almost can't breathe, but it's the MRE in little Vertin's hands that makes her feel ill.     How long ago had Mesmer realized that her 'I have surplus from being kept from the field for two weeks' excuse was total bullshit? Did she ever? Did she think anything at all when she got them? Or did young Mesmer never even get this one, much less the note?     'She's one of us; I don't want her to be left behind in the dark.'     'People knew and they were glad.'     She'd offered Mesmer similar kindnesses in the past a dozen times before. She'd been bitten for every single one of them in the end; each proportional to how hard she tried. This time, Lilian had thought she had finally been cured of her constant vacillation on the subject of Mesmer Junior. And yet now, hearing those words, recalling her own, she can't help but dwell on every time she had wished out loud that Mesmer would just kill herself, and feel sick to her stomach.     A night with Manus Vindictae was what it took to come back to Laplace and see Mesmer for the first time as 'one of us', hanging by a thread; and yet two months at the Foundation had reacclimated her to hideous contempt. 'Now isn't the time', no matter how urgently blared in her brain, can no longer stop Lilian from thinking about it; what that could mean, and why.     'All of this... it should be helpful for escaping, and then to survive until we can get somewhere with people.'     But seeing Vertin, as a child, steal, scheme, lie, plot, and even retaliate with violence, no matter the messianic halo of innocence about her ever action; no matter the far nobler cause; makes her another kind of 'Us' to Lilian. So she can't let herself be mislead either.     '"No, no, someone was supposed to stop her. Why didn't they? They promised...'     'I'm going to find my mother.'     Fingers curled tight, clutched against her collarbone, eyes shut as if she could somehow drown out the rain, Lilian mutters feverishly, too loud and too fast to stay under her breath, "Thou art responsible to thy blood first above all else, both the blood of thy line, and the blood shed for thee. The many outweigh the few. The righteous outweigh the unjust. Stay thy hand not for unnecessary persons."
Lilian Rook	'She won't feel a thing.'     '--HIT THE DIRT!!'     It's absurd to expect that psychic safeguards mean anything when she's already inside of the mind the harm is being materialized in. The motion Lilian takes by spine-deep reflex is to wrench the pendant from her neck and draw the sword with it. It's an instant of mindless clarity; of breathless zen that is bookended by the misery and disgust she was already feeling. The cognitive dynamics are complicated, by the metaphor drives wave-scatter holes into the wet dirt when the stroke of her blade through thin air overlaps with the electromagnetic pulse.     A moment later, Lilian's self-awareness returns. Enough to look around for Tamamo, instantly interpose herself between her and the novel psycho-surgical-hazard, and then to draw the length of that line all the way down to--     'Her UPE-000, her core truth, it's going to snap this back *violently* if you try to mess up her flow of time like this!! It's strong enough to resist the Storm unmaking time, you know it's going to mess up your operation too, and the only thing you'll have to show for it is feedback and pain!!'     --rebounding from a spray of concrete amidst a shower of suspended raindrops, double-defying their God-given course to spatter in every direction like shrapnel from a grenade. Lilian hits the ground on her feet, slides in the wet grass, and stops in the same stance as she'd started. Even before she extends her arm and twists her wrist back to catch the talismans thrown her way by Tamamo, she gives off the impression of nothing unintentional.     "Parsons. If I reach 'UPE-000' beneath, this will work?" Lilian says, side-eyed, almost rhetorical, but not quite. "We can't introduce any new psychohzards, can we? I intend to cut loose."
Flamel Parsons	Flamel groans with effort as he shouts back to Lilian, the roar and telekinetic strain producing way too much sound. "Go as deep as you can!" He's struggling, grunting. "Look for... ghhh... Look for a puddle, look for the European Tree Frog...! The deeper that goes, the worse it's going to be when UPE-000 snaps it back!" ---     The Director faxes a critical dossier to a colleague and to a partner agency, huddled in his office, protected from the chaotic fire consuming his Institute by blast doors and emergency fire suppression. ---
Foundation Scions	'No. No, no...'     Gentle, almost whispered, poisonous, <ansi161, I gave ample warning. None of you should have had to be here. Even Vertin shouldn't have to have seen and recall this. It's horrendous, it's a tragedy, I wouldn't recall it if I had the choice. I wasn't even there. I can spare her from this; you all chose to not spare yourselves.)> Frantic, there's a buzz in the air, like a sigh and an inhale as one, <So don't start with that.>     As Flamel's telekinetic hands swarm the trauma-construct, bits of its mass flinch inwards, concrete swelling nearly like breath in order to cycle and submerge the geometric remains further and further. The encasement isn't easy, like the spheres and cubes and triangular prisms are facing magnetic resistance, or struggling to bypass bouancy, in the dusty-crumbling body-structure.     Less on a flinch, Mesmer's response to Flamel trying to grab the ring is more severe- suture-thread puppet strings try and pull against his force, like that's a keystone piece to not let be disturbed. What's more, when Flamel does make traction, the construct follows along, as if now held attached to it, despite the air-gap.     <Stop interfering!> is a sharp-stiff intrusion into the butchered memory, hissed and desperate and warble-buzzing to a frequency visible mirrored in tremor-flickers around the construct. . . .     Now, more frantic, almost heaving in the desperation of this confrontation happening purely on the battleground of Vertin's hippocampus, with Sotheby somewhat shooed off, and her sense of control on the operation (and more acutely, of Vertin) now truly at risk, Mesmer climbs atop the cot herself, overtop Vertin, with both hands squeezing against the sides of her face; index and middle on temples, ring against her occipital plate, pinky against the base of her neck, thumbs on her lips. She's trembling and wrist-deep in her electromagnetic fields, carefully meddling and manipulating the functions of her consciousness itself- . . .     Within the dream, the hazy specter-outlines of hands appear in the sky, twisting at the construct's puppetstrings, pulling it more forcefully, and guiding it to swing its concrete-geometric arms at the trespassers. Even the phantom hands look as if they're barely keeping their grips, trembling and unsteady and bleeding through with emotion. Mesmer is focused, and exhausting and exerting her control far more than she's ever demonstrated a willingness to; the results are sickening.     As the construct is attacked, by blow and sword-chop, and charring lightning-bolts and eroding rain, shattered concrete fragments spray and fall, and while more of it roils outwards, occasional strikes free the geometric bits, against the apparent hopes of Mesmer and the construct.     <You're going to harm her!> is almost a screech, frustrated and like it's originating from so much closer than any of her other emanations; it's not apparent to anyone within the dream what she's doing outside of it, but it's itchingly uncomfortable that she's obviously interacting so much more intimately and directly.
Foundation Scions	As a chunk of the construct is severed in the fray, a lower arm, and while the concrete pours out and stitches itself solid again, the freed pieces of geometry tangle and shine with puppetstring wires, and in some flinch-desperation move from Mesmer, along another well-trodden heuristic of dream-jockeying, they fall from her grasp and bring with them an utter mess of emotion-tied memories-     -First and most obviously, forced and re-broadcast in shadows and image-projection, is that of the breakaway incident's reversal of Vertin's classmates; that memory is key here, but the projections hardly stop there- they continue into Vertin's recall of Schneider, and then the recall leaks outwards, dragging to mind what Mesmer can grab of others' memories of that incident, and then continuing until she's grabbed and clawed at pulling new, novel grief-tied memories out from as many of the present Elites that she can dig her fingers into while they're here, inside Vertin's head, and between her hands.     Unfortunately, it still doesn't end there, whatever instinctual wellspring Mesmer's drawing on to use and over-use her arcane skills, here, isn't so defended and stable that her own mind and memories in close-proximity don't leak in.     At the tailing end of the string of grief-memories is a simple re-projection of a Laplace hallway with blaring alarms, spattered-over with arterial blood spray, and a lab-coat wearing woman crumpled on the floor, technicians scattered around trying to slow and stop an outwards gush from a neck-wound. From the memory's point of view, whoever is seeing it is short, scared, and placing trembling arms near the bleeding woman's face. There's a beg to lean in and hear final words-     Which never come. The memory ends too soon; or that was the end of the forced-to-be-seen memory, it's impossible to say, and Mesmer, beyond the rainy sky, isn't saying more than what her trembling hands transmit.     The severed geometry-pieces stay scattered on the ground, no longer graspable by Mesmer's work here; freed from the overall excision.
Foundation Scions	'You only want to remove what would make her leave you, Mesmer Junior.'     <I want to fix her! She's dangerous to herself and others, like this. I'm sparing her pain and suffering; I'm sparing others from pain and suffering she'll bring. You saw her! You saw what happened, if no-one had listened to her, or if she had listened-!> . . .     Tears fall against Vertin's face, and fall so short a distance that Mesmer's frantic and heaving breath could still ripple them where they landed. . . . 'Do you think, now, you'll make her forget the Storm?'     <Of course I won't. I'm careful with my work. This is a simple excision of problematic traumas, not a hack-job-> less directed now, painfully frantic, <And nothing close to an archaic icepick lobotomy.>     She's not sure if she noticed someone saying that, or came to the roundabout assumption that that association must be on the audience's minds, in order to preemptively defend her course of actions. Either way, her defensiveness is telling, and her miserable tone is painted through the dreamscape. 'You should come by and tell me how to do it properly, though, or I'll never get it just right.'     <Why would you do that? Why? I'm not involved with your nonsense! I have a job, I can't afford to fall into that, folly and nonsense! She's no logical reason to do any of that!> A frantic bat away in emotion; matched to the flailing construct's actions. Desperate emotion floods, and the whole preserved-for-excision memory trembles. . . .     Mesmer holds Vertin's forehead to hers, picked up off the pillow for the first time in months; trembling.
Flamel Parsons	"I can't convince you, nnnnh..." Flamel squeezes his eyes shut as hard as he can. Schneider's there, his heart says. She's dissolving in the rain. Her component pieces are ascending into the sky, leaving only feathers and a jacket that was always a little too empty. Puppet-strings pull the empty man-who-is-not-a-person painfully, seared light tearing out of flesh like fishhooks were lodged in his body.     "I can't convince you what's right. That the Psychonautry solution is better, thhhhh, hhhhh, that you you have to let the patient guide the healing. You have to let the target guide the infiltration. You have to be there on their side, not want them to be someone else." He says, torn away by strings. Forceful attempts to extract traumatic memory finally bear fruit: the strings finally pull his third eye open.     Tears are welling in his closed eyes. He's struggling to choke back a sob. Mental energy drains out of him. But his own hands move to grab the sutures. Two heavy telekinetic hands hoist his own body, himself puppeting himself. "I know someone who can, though. She convinced me absolutely. And her argument is here. It's *here*. The trauma is here, but so is UPE-000, here, It's *here*." His teeth grind. "So if I can't tell it to you, she can."     "Lilian, find any UPE-000 you can on this layer. If she's going to put herself in here, I'm going in." The telekinetic hands yank his strings into a painful, dashing run through a dozen leaking memories of Schneider vanishing at the dinner table. His next words are telekinetic, so the meaning will convey properly: <Cutting the psychoportal safeties. Positioning for Cobb Maneuver.>     He brandishes the mental image of the Psychoportal and flings it into the howling storm of lobotomy-construct. He delivers a massive, pounding psychic push, to pierce Mesmer's mental defenses, and tremendous psychic slingshot-pull, to bring Lilian into Mesmer's mind. If she can find a trace of UPE-000 here, a piece of Vertin's absolute truths drawn from this trauma, she can slam it straight into not just the lobotomy-construct, but the astral substance of the surgeon holding the tool, now that her bare hands are so close to the operation.     A soft jolt, like static, flickers from Vertin's forehead to Mesmer's.
Odette Raskins	"They had... They didn't even realize what they were going into. Did they even..?" Odette murmurs while struggling to even comprehend what emotions are hitting her and, more importantly, the ones that aren't. She's horrified by what she's just seen, sure, but it's not as much as she'd imagine seeing a whole group of kids just erased from existence. Constantine already said it once before, that so many people didn't know about the Storm, and that they didn't know that their existences would just end that way. Should she be feeling relieved that they might not have even realized it? She's certainly disgusted with herself for asking that, even if it's just in her own head. "No! We gotta stop it!" <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "Put any force, anything you have that's charged with major psychic energies, dead on into that thing!" <J-IC-Scene> Regulus says, "Hey hey Odette. Remember what we talked about." "Right.. Right! J-just like we usually do!" Odette replies to Regulus with a shaky shout, although she's not clear if it's for Regulus' sake or her own. With Flamel calling for psychic energies specifically, she's not entirely sure if she has anything that fits the bill, but... She still has her staff, the one she spent so much time practicing with Lucius to learn how to use, and certainly the closest thing she has to a fitting weapon in this situation. As long as she focuses on what's needed to treat this psychohazard and remove it from Vertin's mind like a true professional instead of thinking too hard about what qualifications she doesn't have, everything will be fine. "I can spare her from this; you all chose to not spare yourselves." "Mesmer... Pulling out painful memories like this can't be good for Vertin. I know it might sound really convenient to just take it out, and... THere's definitely things I wouldn't mind forgetting about, but just cutting it out like this can't be good for her!" Seeing the spectral hands in the sky manipulating the construct, Odette points at it with her sidearm and fires once into the sky at one of the hands. "Up there! There's something coming down to control it!" She calls out with another volley of bullets, and there's a brief flicker of regret as she realizes she might be shooting Mesmer's hand doing that. that quickly gets shoved away, though, as the sweeping arms come dangerously close to plowing right into her. "Taking something this big and for-geh! Formative out of Vertin's mind can't not change her. Maybe she would be happier and healthier if she didn't know about this, but taking something that important out now, after so long... She'll end up being a completely different person if you go through with it!" Breaking into a sprint away from the arms, Odette glances back to gauge the distance between herself and said arms. She's looking for an angle to leap between them, over them, or even slide beneath them to keep herself from getting battered away. Once she thinks she sees one, she takes one more quick hop away from the arms into a crouch, then springs up and over the arms coming her way! Almost. The execution's a little sloppy with the arms still knocking her into an awkward somersault that leaves Odette falling on her front and hitting her face right on the ground. There's some blood as she picks her head up off the ground, but it's far better than getting crushed wholesale, and it leaves her facing the psychohazard's main body and the arms puppeteering it once again.
Regulus	This rebroadcast is more effective in harming Regulus's heart. She is still not so numb to Schneider getting reversed. She is not numb to seeing her era reversed. She is not immune to the fear of getting reversed. Even though Matilda made her see these memories again and again, and brought out the terror of being seen quietly reassured by Vertin that she needn't ever help her because she was too much of a coward to ever do so in her kind way, never saying it so directly, but all but assuring Regulus's heart would forever know. Even though she still dreams of Schneider, enjoying the local tasty beverages in Chicago, wondering if maybe she noticed that was a sign that The STorm was coming--maybe she would still be here. Don't forget. Don't forget my heartbeat on the right. Like an old scar being ripped open, tears spill freely from Regulus's eyes once again as she scampers. Visions of seeing her friend melt into that big black goo. She sees her entire world fall into the sky. She always feared she'd grow numb to that, but you never get used to it, you never do Regulus. Even those bureaucrats will shed tears at half remembered tunes from long gone eras. "Yesterday..." Regulus sings to try and compose herself. "All my troubles seemed so far way o/~ Now it looks like they're here to stay o/~ Oh, I believe in yeterday o/~" But her truest fear isn't because of what happened in the past, but what may happen in the future. Slowly feeling her world become a distant memory that fades more and more with every passing year. That deadlocked grip she holds onto her era pulls and pulls, threatening to pry her fingers away and be lost forever as an entire multiverse of cultures and times pour into her skull one by one and she can't help but learn of them and be excited by the music, the worlds, the exploration. But her only safe harbor is that Suitcase. The fear of Vertin being taken away. The fear of Sonetto turning her back on her for being too much trouble. The fear of being too fearful. "Fff..ffine..." Her fingernails dig into her arms, leaving thick welts through her clothes as she struggles to push the memories out of her head, even as she can't. Then someone else's memory, Mesmer's? Regulus stumbles back and fills so ill that she collapses to the ground and pukes on the floor. Or mind pukes at least. A memory of seeing a man crushed into paste involuntary surfaces. "Mesmer... Vertin told me, that I didn't need to do anything. She always tells me that everything I've done was more than enough for her. I actually wished," She laughs hoarsely. "That she'd be willing to ask more. Do you really think that she wants to leave you to be the only one suffering?" She is slow to rise again, her fingers trembling as she manages to summong brilliantly bright and colorful musical notes, trying to push back against the negative emotions with her own joys and her own love, each musical note that impacts making a little musical jingle with each time they make contact. ''Why would you do that? Why? ... She's no logical reason to do any of that!'' "I didn't know either... Until now.." Regulus manages, prying her eyes open. "She still wants there to be an open door for you, that's all, because she doesn't want you to be suffering alone. You got your job... And my job..." She hobbles over to the psycho portal, intent on protecting it until Lilian and Flamel do whatever they're doing. "Is to look after those she wants to be happy and well taken care of. So I'm sorry I did a bad job, but please... don't do this."
Odette Raskins	More importantly, it lets Odette see the other memories being pulled on. Not all of them are things that only Vertin remembers, as Odette remembers seeing some of these things happening herself. For a moment, she finds herself wondering if she'd be happier not remembering so many of these days, too. It'd be much easier, wouldn't it? ... But then she wouldn't have learned more about everyone here, about the Foundation, and about what she wants to do going forward. She wouldn't have learned about what she wanted to do beyond her job. She wouldn't have learned about not just settling for what she knew how to do. She wouldn't have learned to think more critically about why bad things kept happening to the Arcanists, or to other people that didn't deserve it. She wouldn't have had a chance to play music with everyone. "Mesmer! Have you seen what happened when people die and don't find out how they did until they've been forced to remember?!" Shouting at the sky again, Odette forces that yearning for the easiest path down, and she puts the handgun away to find a more familiar handle: The grip of her training staff strapped to her back. She pulls herself up as she points the staff at the puppetstrings. The EMT takes a deep breath to steady her own mind even while she has to focus on fighting the psychohazard and trying to reason with Mesmer at the same time. "I've treated people that died and got brought back up without anyone telling them what happened. I've seen what happened when they came face to face with something reminding of them of how they died, and the backlash was horrible. Some of them became unresponsive, some of them had horrible breakdowns, and the luckiest ones retired because they couldn't deal with working anymore. Ripping a memory... Ripping this many memories, this many important things out of Miss Vertin's mind is just setting her up to get hurt even more once she finds out. She won't be happy with you when that happens, she won't be happy knowing she's been forced to forget so much, and she won't be able to save anyone if she can even go back outside after all that. So..." The tip of the staff lights up steadily, and Odette holds it out further until her arms are fully straightened out. She remembers her training, to feel the flow of magic in her body, to focus on that within her without letting extraneous thought distract her from that feeling. That feeling coalesces further into the staff until it turns into a bright beam of light, thin and focused, poised to crash right into some of the strings connecting the hand and the psychohazard's arms as she tries to cut right through it. "Please, stop this!"
Riku Asakura	The screaming and drawing in of the traumatic memories that try to rip themselves out of Ultraman Geed's head cause the giant of light to stagger back from the construct in Vertin's mind to grab his own head.  It's painful, drawing out an awful time in his head... the feeling of hopelessness and powerlessness rushes to the surface.   "Get... out... of... those... memories!" he screams at Mesmer, fighting back against the invisible hands that dig into his head.   'You saw what happened, if no-one had listened to her, or if she had listened-!' "She was a child!  She was a child brought up ignorant of the real dangers of the Storm!  You're trying to cut her off from important memories because of how they make /you/ feel!  She isn't dangerous!  Right now more than ever the Foundation needs its Timekeeper!"  Geed focuses on what he needs to do right now, "And Vertin needs you to stop hating yourself most of all." FUSION RISE! ULTRAMAN HIKARI ULTRAMAN COSMOS ULTRAMAN GEED ARCO SMASHER Ultraman Geed's appearance changes, from the chaotic reds and black to the calming blues and silver.  His entire fighting style changes in this form, from uncontrolled and powerful to calm and directed.  He does not immediately go right back into fighting the giant psychohazard, but instead walks around it carefully. Finally, Geed acts, bringing his arms together and then carefully leveling them over his chest, as they seem to glow with soothing light and water-like bubbles.  He finally brings them to bear directly in the center of his chest, eventually pushing it forward into a prismatic beam of soothing energy.   "Tidal Moon Healing!" The energy attempts to work its way on the psychohazard itself, trying to cure its artificial pain and suffering imposed on it, but also attempting to soothe the underlying memory itself.  The goal is to return it to balance, instead of it being a dangerous thing in Vertin's mind.
Holly Asturias	<You're going to harm her!>     "We're *all* going to harm them if you don't stop! Is that what you want them to know you did, when they wake up? Think about the aftermath for one second, is this really worth it?" grief-tied memories     What Mesmer knows of Holly, already, is the grief that crippled and then pushed her, as a child. Memories of her mother, alongside an escort from the staff of the time, announcing her departure for a secret, world-healing mission. The days that stretched into weeks and then months, waiting for her to come back. The unhelpful silence of her father, until Holly was old enough to go from the hate of a child to the hate of a teenager, and then an adult, years of moulding resentment into a dozen justifications for it.     What she hadn't seen, before, is the stakes.     The innumerable Revenants who, over her years treating them, had begun turning, and with nowhere to go and pass on, had become Holly's responsibility. The slow turn towards her staff, bidding them leave the room. The refusal to ever receive any help with it, let alone let them see. The simple question, 'are you ready?', as if a yes or a no really made a difference, at that point.     For every Revenant she couldn't save, she raises her hands, sorrowful, putting on a brave face, forming a thick golden stake covered in glowing Ichor-fueled runes and spell-lines. Sometimes she strikes them in the back as they kneel and wait. Sometimes she administers sedatives and they simply won't wake up. Sometime it's up front, through the ribcage, when their survival instinct kicks in and they begin turning faster. Sometimes it turns into a battle, and the stake becomes Snowdrop, always ending cleanly in the heart.     Grief for every life she should have been able to save.     Grief for every life that, once she finds a cure, she can't bring back, can't retroactively cure, and can only remember.     It stings like a stake through her own heart, vivid, bringing her to one knee and dispelling the gatlings. <I want to fix her!>     "You can't fix someone like this, Mesmer. You can't just... cut away what you don't like out of someone else. You can't remove the pains endured, because those pains inform who we are!"     Holly lifts a hand, and finds she can't produce a weapon. Not the gatlings. Not Snowdrop. They have enough blood on them. They have so much.     She hits the side of her head, tries to clear Mesmer's meddling.     Can't. There's too much grief. She's never had to deal with someone drawing it out like a well-honed knife to use against her like this!     Revenants, Horrors, humans, they don't do stuff like this.     Even if she tried aiming some ice, all she can see inbetween herself and the hands, is Schneider. The most recent grief.     "... I'm sorry. I should have tried something. Anything."     Her hand plants into the ground. If she can't attack, she can heal. Bright golden and blue runes spread around her, tracing lines along the ground and firing off pulses of rejuvenating light.     "Let me at least try to help them save Vertin for you."     The healing is good for everyone present, but most especially for the Timekeeper themselves. This is their mind. The terrain, the sky, it's all them. Indiscriminately spreading the healing energies should help strengthen them against Mesmer's meddling, and in turn, weaken her hold.     But it's a lot of it. Too much of it. Her right arm aches, and the red marks spread, up her shoulder, a bit down her back. It stings like having her skin peeled off and cauterized clean.     And it's fine.
Tamamo	Tamamo was there to see so many disappear from inside the suitcase during the Storm, of course. She hadn't seen the disappearance of those rescued by Einar, the Storm before that, but she'd heard of it. She knew enough to know what would happen.     That's the vision Mesmer pulls from her. The spectres of abandonment and betrayal aren't there for her, but elsewhere. Tears on nameless desert sands. Arrow flying over fields of golden grain. In a shadow within a shadow, glittering cracks fuse together, again in gold. Tears well now, not just in memory, as her thoughts threaten to scatter, but she holds on.     <I'm sparing her pain and suffering.>     "I have often thought of the same. A healer should, after all, seek to relieve pain, and to ease suffering, to provide succor to those in need, and not only those who seek it... no?" She sounds better than she's doing. Calmer, by trick. It can't be perfect; even silent tears and suppressed grief scrape rough edges to the voice.     She doesn't have the time to stop working. She has to keep moving, keep thinking, even as she's being struck, or it won't stop. Even if that's not true, it's a fundamental, instinctive truth she holds in the moment. She has to lay her magic in its patterns, wishing she had the time for the shamir to etch it for her, and the stone for them to track. She mutters, "If I cannot raise a temple to peace, even so..."     <You saw her! You saw what happened, if no-one had listened to her, or if she had listened-!>     "I saw no one warn her. No one told her the truth. What they hid killed her -- a tragic accident, if they cared. Did they, then?" She's looking for the fragments within the containing concrete, tracing the paths, watching for bubbling, the patterns of resistance in form. No, never mind the Foundation's callousness. "Let us suppose some did. Did they do aught to gain her trust, that to merely say 'it is dangerous' and 'do not ask' would be enough of a warning? All children are curious. Only the mad would expect them to never try stepping outside."     There. Calculating the point, Tamamo fires off, by flinging between two fingers -- a cursing talisman onto The End of Dreaming, following it up with two others that plaster themselves on contact. The curses activate a moment later, a malaise ramped up by unreasonable levels of energy and refined skill to the point that what's fundamentally 'lethargic discomfort' becomes closer to 'instant death' through the draining of effective energy, just so she can follow into the gaps with her healing charms onto the fragments of Vertin's memories of her friends' remains.     What that could possibly do for them, Tamamo doesn't know. She can't revive the dead, but there aren't any dead here... strictly speaking.     "Whether a healer, a friend, or a lover, one must try. And yet, I knew I would be wrong to take it all away. Even if it meant I would be left alone again, I could not cross that line unbidden. I could not selfishly 'fix' someone about whom I truly cared." Taking a breath, "Would you have cared about her so, if she had never held a dream in the first place?"
Ein	'You're going to harm her!' Ms. Moissan continues even though she believes, broadly, that Mesmer Jr. is correct. There's no reason she wouldn't be. Long enough at this, and even 'being careful' would result in someone being hurt. In the Timekeeper being hurt. In a child being hurt. Harsh dangers, rakes of mental anguish, and visions of trauma lash out at Moissan and she wonders briefly, one more lash across the back from a whip in her own metaphorical hands (all to literalized by the flashes of images), if she is just causing all of this herself. Certainly, she had trudged forward because she was called to, she wanted to, she had to. Did she jump into that strange portal because it was her path forward? Was it her best choice? Denied any way to formally answer that while tormented by her own problems, Moissan steps forward and must part-- --tent flap, as she ducks her head into the central tent that had been moved into the Suitcase. Ms. Moissan stands there, helpless, as she sees someone barely holding onto their existence, a held breath, nod and turn away the little Sotheby with her cheeks red and her big hat turning, holding a drink for someone who seemingly was no-longer present. Past that soul - they are gone, disappeared in an instant of empty clothes, Schneider is among Druvis and Vertin and others, loved, and Moissan believes that even in the tragedy and the anguish and the loss that at least Schneider (God, so slight. Unfed? Already Moissan was considering a diet plan) could be recovered with Ms. Sotheby and Ms. Druvis. 'I am not an arcanist.' They were never words, in any construction, that Ms. Moissan hears. She simply perceives their wake, like a gunshot's passing, the dull ring of ears and empty watery-full sense of some hearing returning. Cruel. So cruel. She brings her hands together-- --lurching forward, purposeful, and it is earlier, and the pain is still ongoing, the last being the first, and Ms. Moissan wrestles her hands around the neck and mask of a Manus 'cultist', some human convinced of salvation and made monstrous in the interim. Pressing thumbs into hot neck, the cold mud doesn't reach her clay-clasped hands, like brick around the neck, and she throttles another creature to death frantically. Still in the 'danger' while the ache is fresh, Moissan draws a pistol out from her skirts to point down the aid camp's range at-- --Mesmer's image, the mental construct-- --Mesmer Jr., standing with eyes shaded-scribbled out, anonymized, a target that Moissan could justifiably remove. Just execute the mission, Moissan, for the peace of Mankind. For the peace, Moissan, for Vertin's peace, just pull the trigger! Her finger trembles as in a once-again frantic haze she finds herself gunsighting a child, again, not some civilian in a street, not some (damning) ragamuffin she had to divert away from because the objective was once again not lives, not futures. Her finger trembles and clears the trigger, resting on guard, thumb catching safety, and then clearing weapon and dropping it aside after. A cheap trick (harrowed, harmed, recovering badly by papering and claying over the wound with fresh resolve and Needs Must), Moissan rises from the image of her own pain and advances on the Mesmer that is, present in feelings, even just as Flamel makes motion to directly interface with the other psychic. She advances, to kneel besides Mesmer, and as if counciling Mesmer and not Vertin, tries to simply be present besides Mesmer's image in the memory-moment, the reprocessing of *that* trauma, some equally valid thing that need not be shouted down. "You can't spare her from these moments, even if you know first-hand that they're awful. And you have to be able to forgive yourself, for believing that the people qualified would help."
Ein	Ms. Moissan has to try and speak to the manifestation of Mesmer, because she can't fight the phantom with her own grim reality. She is unwilling to use Authority here, for she not only doesn't believe it would work, but does not feel would be 'helping'. If anything, were her first act to immediately lean on Foundation authority... The entire meaning of Team Timekeeper might be lost before it had a chance to be born. "Someone didn't act," Or didn't care. "And sometimes the lesson is that change should happen." Like the Storm Reformation. Would it mean anything? "It's not just Denial, Mesmer Jr. You've made a gallery of it. A bright medical report, when it's her mind. Is this what... you need, Mesmer?"
Lilian Rook	'<You're going to harm her!>'     Mesmer's panic is entirely predictable, despite its unusual intensity. It is no less pathetic than it always is for her grief. It is no more noble for her sincerity. Lilian saw this eventuality days ago, if not weeks, and viewed it only as a tactical risk. And still her voice strains under the weight of queasy apprehension.     "If she comes to harm, they'll have your head. "You'll be lucky just to lose your license. I'll make certain of it." says Lilian. "Don't test me. Don't try. I mean it." At the moment she says it, she does.     But she means a lot of things. The dreadful nature of her foe in the mindscape is that it doesn't attack her in only ways that she recognizes; and the nature of her foe outside of it is too. Lilian's gaze races back and forth to keep up with the slowly submerging memory fragments, committing them to memory as fast as possible so that she can avoid them with her her cuts; the tip of her blade blurs in pursuit of each saccade in order, slicing through puppet strings with spittinging embers that embody Night Mist's hatred for the unreal intruder; her feet lob her up over a piece of rolling geometry and then carry her waltz-like in a semicircular path around the fresh flow of concrete, then slide messily through an inch deep puddle beneath a giant, flailing limb; and her thoughts aren't in lockstep with them.     At the tail of a two-handed swing, through such an arc that Lilian's fingers must leave the hilt at its furthest extension, she finds the same keycard she'd used in her empty hand. Smooth polymer blocks the expected kiss of metal the next moment, and she hurls it down in her reactive haste. It strikes broken congrete at a broken-neck angle, snapping down one side, and releasing from it the ghastly vivid recollection of a voice, clear as day, and a face, painterly-dream-fogged least around red-sparkling eyes stained heartbroken by cruelty and the faint tremble of the lips that speak the words '... Mmh. Then we were together a-lone.'     If it isn't grief, accurately targeted, pulled from Lilian, defying sense, bending to the will of Animal Magnetism, then any other explanation is more frightening. Lilian's face pales; the tip of her shoe meets the edge of the card and sends it flying across the field. In its wake trails the ethereal images of others, dissipating like smoke, and as easy to choke on.     A letter that rests on her polished Director's desk, shrouded in the reek of cigarette smoke and salt, trailing back to the drained corpse of a man in a blood-red bathtub, complicatedly bitter, ashen-sweet in its aftertaste, followed by the red-headed blur of a young woman through the vanishing sliver of a heavy metal door, filling the lungs with iron and guilt as it slams shut overtop a girl; a mere teenager, like the walking dead, sat in her place at an outdoor table and counting down the seconds on her watch, each motion of the hand like a spidery itch. The same age, a boy, platinum blonde, black-clothed, skewered hideously and left like refuse on the nauseatingly vivid green, acrid vermouth and cyanide; and even younger, a girl before even reaching middle school, or the remains of her, weighing so very little in her arms, cooling in the frigid air against the charcoal sting of burnt flesh and the rising urge to puke. The plastic clacks off something far in the distance, and the images follow beyond sight
Lilian Rook	And as the mist fades, leaving only the ephemeral coals beneath for a moment longer, the arc is painted in the eerie neon shades of someone/where that could be a coral reef or smoke above a wildfire. Mingled with its edges are the warm red stars of a lonely, unborn universe. The pale-to-vanishing arms of someone's silhouette follow along at its far tail. Lilian, at its leading edge, shakes her trembling hand, and jagged, perfectly cut flakes of pure black metal fall away like dust, stained with golden traces of starfield starlapse, sickly poppy-sweet.     'Why would you do that? Why? I'm not involved with your nonsense!'     "Shut the fuck up." Lilian's voice quavers, heavy with emotion, tainted with the taste of bile. "If you're not involved then get the fuck out right now and never come near her again."     'Lilian, find any UPE-000 you can on this layer.'     "Because I don't believe you and neither does anyone else. If you care about her this much then you're involved whether you like it or not."     'If she's going to put herself in here, I'm going in.'     "So chant it all you like, but an incantation won't protect someone who refuses to acknowledge them."     '<Cutting the psychoportal safeties. Positioning for Cobb Maneuver.>'     "Regulus is right. And you're a piece of shit. Nobody hurts Vertin on a daily basis as much as you do."     'Would you have cared about her so, if she had never held a dream in the first place?'     "That girl is holding up the weight of the entire world to give you time to squeeze through before it falls, and she's got me and Regulus and the others to help her hold it for just a little longer. Even now. And every time you slap her hand away, you make it worse."     §Someone§ presses the implied shape of §her§ imperceptible hand over Lilian's, who curls her fingers around what it bestows, and holds it protectively to her chest. Familiar with the absurdly dangerous maneuver already, she needs not ask Flamel anything; nor does she take her rightful chance to balk and excoriate him for choosing it. The moment the breach is formed, the the division-of-a-heartbeat where the static leaps from brow to brow, Lilian leaps into the rift, slashing open the walls thrown in her way with the sword in one hand, and falling until she reaches solid ground, protecting what is curled up within the other with the impact roll of her whole body; all the way until the moment she can release it on the ground.
Foundation Scions	'Did they do aught to gain her trust, that to merely say 'it is dangerous' and 'do not ask' would be enough of a warning? All children are curious.'     <There's a utility-filled idiom exactly about that, 'curiosity killed the cat'. I find it grim. It is grim. And the idiomatic is often unnecessary. It's true, still; curiosity will result in harm and death. Rules exist for a reason, they're right there in the SPDM Student handbook, and any other guidances- most of them are there because of circumstances exactly like this!> . . .     Pressed right up against Vertin, sobbing through the frustration of this circumstance, without even a thought to what's visible through the hallway window, Mesmer's exhale-whine is like a kicked animal, desperate and miserable and digging fingertips into soft skin, gently shaking Vertin's unconscious body.     When she realizes it's the same maneuver of trying frantically to wake a corpse, Mesmer freezes, still, and stares daggers into Vertin's closed eyes. . . .     With no tools but hands to pull puppetstrings, and a massive construct of cement to stand and obliviate Vertin's traumas, like concrete over radioactive waste, should others let it, the frantic flailings she can utilize here are many, but most insufficient. The faceless construct thrashes and slams its bulk around, trying to hurt and distract while she keeps grabbing what she can for it to bury inwards under durable grey material.     Chipped away and away, more geometric artifacts fall out and out, meaningful progress pushing Mesmer more on the backfoot. To reach for another weapon, she calls back to the sensory-fluctuation, throwing it out to buy more time, more opportunity, another moment and another minute of staying in control, here, with Vertin underneath her thumb. . . .     Unthinking, Mesmer's thumbs twist on Vertin's cheek, some distracted part of her fascinated that she's even there. . . . 'You'll be lucky just to lose your license. I'll make certain of it.'     <I was ordered to treat her.> She believes this to be armor. Still, <I'm not hurting her. I can't. I don't hurt people, I won't, and this, even if you disagree, isn't 'hurt'. It's surgery. A healer's knife cutting doesn't harm. How many times do I have to say it to make you believe it? What do I have to do? I'm safe!>
Foundation Scions	A crack splits down the torso of the construct, from accumulated strikes and chips, from strain under Mesmer's own puppet strings, and chunks start to abrade away, pebbles to fist-sized to skull-sized. Where one such chunk lands, and fizzles-away into nothing but the remnant geometry- it plunks unceremoniously into into a rainpuddle, as slow-forming droplets still move upwards into the sky. There, right there, besides that chunk is one Hyla aborea specimen, none other than UPE-000 itself.     Whether it was there all along, or summoned up by the activity, or the splash, is unexplained, and will forever remain that way. But it's there, for the taking, and for the rescue. Breathing in and out, croaking quietly, in the midst of the chaos, unbothered, or simply looking elsewhere than the current moment, it won't resist being plunked up for the various hopes placed upon it. 'You can't spare her from these moments, even if you know first-hand that they're awful.'     <I can! I have to. I'm to heal maladies of the mind and fix traumas and insanities. Decreasing of hysteria and pacification of the unstable is the role of those with the Mesmer bloodline arcane skill. I can do this, and I have to.> 'Is this what... you need, Mesmer?'     Desperate and echoing is, <Of course it is!> 'So I'm sorry I did a bad job, but please... don't do this.'     <You'd do the same thing if you were in my shoes,> Mesmer pleads, scrambling once-more and as-always, towards self-exoneration. <I'm the only one who can, and I'm the only one who's willing. I don't need any 'doors' held open, I'm not suffering. I'm doing exactly what I have to.>
Foundation Scions	<Positioning for Cobb Maneuver.>     <Explain what that is? This operation needs to not be interrupted more, you're already-> A static-ridden frustrated cry, mirrored here as it is in Vertin's ward, albeit without the signal interference. <I won't let you talk me out of what needs to be done. I refuse. It's not possible, not right, and not safe!>     Flamel is right to go for something more drastic, to force understanding. Mesmer will double down all she can, back herself into a corner of her own making, and chew her own legs off to prevent being grabbed and dragged out of it. This, at least, might be workably-faster than she can chew.     Mesmer's defenses, in this moment, nearly overlap with Vertin's. Their electromagnetic fields are reshaped by pressure and potential, so close together, and so strongly by the efforts Mesmer lets flow into and around the nervous system of the Timekeeper. When Flamel pushes to try and bridge that gap and psychoportal across, and take himself, Lilian, and UPE-000 through, the flux and polarity of the system help them all along, like that's the new downwards direction of electropsychic gravity, here and now. It's with a sudden and static-hazed impactless shift that they arrive to- - - - "Mesmer Jr. Would you mind explaining as to why note, and this map, were found hidden away in your locker?" - - - "I assure you, Mesmer Jr., you're not in any further trouble. Your compliance is for the good of everyone involved, and commendable." "-Hic- But, Vertin, and the others, they're still in danger from the Storm-" "Now, now, of course they won't be in harm's way. We'll set those lost lambs straight." "Oh, don't cry. Everything is to be right as rain."     That line, here in an evening-lit white-and-grey office, from none other than Vice President Constantine herself, isn't delivered with the viciousness her tight smile so readily conceals, there leaning against the front of a great wooden desk. Across from her, a young Mesmer Jr., only as old and just as timid as she'd appeared at the dreadful choir performance. She nods, her whole head moving with emphasis, as she tries to wipe away tears and eye-puffiness with a sleeve cuff.     "Now, run along. I'm sure you're needed back at Laplace. I've heard no small amount of praise as to your skill in remedying the Storm syndrome. Not everyone can be as strong as you, so keep a brave face for them, won't you? That's better." - - -     The moment shifts. Where Flamel and Lilian come to is here, outside of the office now, the much-younger Mesmer leaning against a wall, to take a breath, and let out more of the anxiety-riddled tears she had to nod and hold back. Higher pitched, more emotive, yet, unfortunately, familiarly worried-frantic, "Oh, Vertin... be safe, and come back..."     Sobs mixed with wiping at tears. Still, held there in hand, UPE-000 seems to draw Mesmer Jr.'s attention, to stare at with heartbreaking earnest hope.     This is the last resonant moment in Mesmer's memory-recall to UPE-000, filled-through with the hope that those around her will work to make tomorrow a better day than today- that Vertin and her friends will be saved, that others will, too, by her work, and even that, now that the faculty are aware of the children's feelings and desperation, something may shift for the better. Not even once since then has she done anything but claw back at yesterday. - - -
Flamel Parsons	Flamel skids when he lands in here, waving his arms to steady himself. In the real world he's zoned out. In the first Astral Plane, he's unconscious. And now, here, he's unsteady. This is the limit of how much he can separate from reality. But he's here. Cobb Maneuver complete. ---     ... ---     Flamel taps the side of his head. "Nothing? Jeez, we're really on the edge here." He whispers. He glances aside to Lilian, to the UPE-000, to the memory -- and then out to the hallway. He steps through the door, to join her. "Who was *that* back there?" He... hasn't seen Vice President Constantine. Then he's turning to look at small Mesmer, leaning outside the office, widening his eyes.     "Lilian," He whispers. "Can you give her...?" He kneels down near the girl. He looks back up to Lilian, back to Mesmer, and says to her, "Hey. I can help cover for you at Laplace just for a little, little while. Do you think you could," He scratches his cheek. "Go, and see that girl?" He tries to smile, showing his Laplace visitor badge. "I'm here for some mentalism myself. I could cover just long enough, promise, if you don't keep too long."     "Whatever happened, you probably can't stop now. But you could go help her with how things are now instead, if you want."     But he knows the one to do more will be Lilian. She knows her better. He's here to facilitate her work. And, oddly, he's totally certain she'll treat Mesmer with the kindness, gentleness, and support that she needs, here.
Regulus	''You'd do the same thing if you were in my shoes.'' Regulus takes in a sharp breath. "Maybe..." Regulus admits. ansi173,"I don't know what kind of person I'd be if I had your life. But I don't think I could be this stubborn.") Which might be a pretty shocking thing to hear from someone as stubborn as Regulus! "I can't stand loneliness." She pushes at her eyes with her hand, exhaling out a shuddering breath, her shoulders and arms shaking from multiple strikes at her greatest fears and regrets via hooks intent on dragging them out. She wants to lie down and have a nap. She wants to rest. She wants a big vacation where she can have joy in the work she does rather than endure the work so that there will be something left for that joy to reside in. She's so tired. She's emotionally tired and physically tired and the best rest she's gotten in months is when she was in a cell. Even after the proposal was approved, she dreaded this confrontation even before she knew for sure that'd be an option. "I would've run. And if I couldn't have been there when everyone else got reversed ... Well, I do understand that a little bit. Doesn't everyone here understand that? We all share that, human, investigator, arcanist, bureaucrat. Whether it was with our own eyes or by a cold quiet notice we learned we wouldn't see our friends again." Maybe she's just saying this for herself at this point. She's never felt she's managed to do anything to help Mesmer before in her life and she doesn't expect it to change now. But that doesn't mean she wants her to spitefully suffer anyway. "Maybe you don't need that 'door', but Vertin needs to hold it open. Don't make her slam it shut." The construct has fallen. And Flamel and Lilian are doing ... some maneuver. Regulus doesn't remember every detail she's heard while infiltrating the Motherlobe. She coughs, her still sore throat tingling with the sensation of a lump lingering there. She looks towards Lilian. Maybe she can do something. She's honestly surprised by the level of trust that she's been shown by the Paladin over the past couple months, especially after she threw up all her anxieties at her. About not having a place, about being too strange even for the other arcanists. She wasn't always kind. She wasn't always gentle. "There is still time." She says, flopping down on the floor as her exhaustion finally overtakes her, pain wracking her from her burnt fingers, to the numbness in her legs. She has to hope that Flamel's gambit will pay off, once again, even without entirely understanding it. It's a sickening feeling, but she'd still rather put her hope in it than assume that the world can never change no matter the sum of so many efforts.
Lilian Rook	'There's a utility-filled idiom exactly about that, 'curiosity killed the cat'.'     "Satisfaction brought it back." The impulse is irresistible. The words stick in her throat, coming out froggy and harsh. "That's the other half. Before it was two parts, it was 'care'." Her mouth feels as if it's full of sand. "It's about how caring about someone compels us to danger."     'I was ordered to treat her.     "Nuremberg Junior." Again. Ashen. Listless. Heavy with bitter venom. Each moment she listens to her, what she has to do gets a little bit easier and feels no less awful.     'What do I have to do? I'm safe!'     The outburst of feeling is too much for what her left hand has to keep safe, so Lilian channels it all into the grip on the sword in her right, until the edge of the blade shakes. "Don't say that. You don't deserve to worry about it. You shouldn't feel anything at all. Not like that." She has no hope of reply. The Mesmer she points her anger towards is the one so deep beneath the surface, so far in the hypothetical future, that the one she speaks to couldn't possibly understand. She vents them like discarding ballast; right before the moment she's steeled herself for.     --------     'Lilian,can you give her...?'     The moment where Lilian becomes aware of the smothering haze about her is the one where Flamel's voice makes a pinhole through it. Clean white, numb and gauzy, chalk and antiseptic and fabric starch; like sterile dust that's settled on her in half-remembered stillness; layers built in the blink of an eye. Constantine's voice still rings in her head, muffled by a quality of ethereal-echoing tinnitus that delays the realization of what else is drowning it out. The last fifteen seconds come back to her, reprocessed, in a singular rush, like gaspin in air. Lilian blinks, slowly moves her eyes to Flamel, and then lets her gaze gingerly fall to a tiny, fretful Mesmer, worrying at the last moment she ever had any hope for the future in in her life, and then the dull roar in her head that she had been unconsciously filtering out comes back all at once in perfect clarity.     She had, for a moment, been too angry to think. The demand to process it all at once had jammed up her short-term memory. Lilian stares at Flamel like a ghost, and doesn't dare open her mouth until the war-drum thudding in her head subsides and the feeling of being strangled goes with it.     'Who was *that* back there?'     "The Vice President of the Saint Pavlov Foundation." Lilian says, wisphered like a secret that will damn them both. She forces herself, bit by bit, to release her aching grip on her sword, and in doing so, remembers why her other hand is still kept so tenderly closed.     'Oh, Vertin... be safe, and come back...'     The girl in front of her may be Mesmer Junior, or rather, a memory of her inside that same woman's head, but there's simply no way that Lilian can make herself feel anything similar between one and the next; nothing save the faint, melancholy wish for them both, impossible as it is, that this moment could be the one that finally shoves her from the doomed track of 'a Mesmer'. A future filled with betrayal, disownment, and meaningful, lasting happiness, is even more impossible for this little girl-- a mere ghost of the path-- but the locus of choice she represents makes it feel all the more guilty-urgent to believe.
Lilian Rook	Crouching down, slowly, nearly to one knee, Lilian lowers her sword to the floor, hilt rested across her thigh, and extends her left hand to Mesmer Junior. Unfurling her fingers, the bright green tree frog is just as it was found, by §her§, the one who could see it; and then Lilian herself can't help a gasp passing her lips and the slightest sparkle of wonderment in her eyes at just how strange and precious the little amphibious creature looks in her own palm.     "She wanted you to have this." Lilian says. There's no MRE to have, and she can't repeat what was on the note, so this is the best she has. That it is still the truth, rendered in psychic metaphor, momentarily escapes her; it doesn't feel relevant. "She wanted you to know that she's not going to leave you behind. She said 'you're one of us'. Even though you didn't go with them, she wants you to know that. It might be frightening, and it might take a while, she's going to find a place for you in her life, with the others."     "Be patient and don't give up, okay? There'll be a chance to explain everything later. You haven't done anything you can't make up for, so until then, let's go do something else instead."
Foundation Scions	'Maybe...'     <So why won't you leave me alone to do it?> The construct, frustrated, slams a crumbling fist into the mud-substrate of the rainy field, rippling it all with a dull bone-deep impact. It's truly nothing more than a tantrum at this point. 'Satisfaction brought it back.'     Shrill-hissed, resonant-achy throughout the memory-arena, Mesmer screeches a <What?> A stunned shutter falls through the body of the construct she's puppetting, enraged and baffled and confused and scared- <But none of them ever came back! None of them ever do, it isn't possible, it can't happen, it's all forever, until it's over. Can't you see that? Only memories are different.> . . .     Shaking, pressed up close to Vertin, Mesmer's worried fingers and frantic eyes cross the side of the comatose girl's head, widening in worry and revulsion and skin-surface bleeding scratches, mirrored to red beneath Mesmer's own fingernails. She tries to rub it dry and healed, ineffectual; at least Vertin can't feel the sting. . . .     <Isn't this the most caring thing? Sparing her of that?> And sparing Mesmer of having to do anything but grab on to yesterday.
Foundation Scions	- - - 'She wanted you to have this.'     Unquestioned, unlike the vacant memories in Vertin's dream, thankfully, the child here in this hallway notices Lilian and Flamel, albeit still only after the direct address. She startles, silent, staring up at the two of them, breathing slowing to try and hide that she has, and still is, crying; red faced from that, from fear, and frustrated embarrassment at being seen like this.     But nothing expected comes; instead, gentle and quiet, as it's offered out to her, UPE-000 draws a similar hesitant wonderment from the younger Mesmer. While she reaches out immediately, distracted for a moment from her anxious-desperate sobs, she stops, to look first to either side, and over her shoulder, out an evening window with nothing definite beyond it. Only after the coast feels clear enough, nobody coming yet to whisk her away, again, to Laplace, or the dormitories, or another office-meeting, does she nod, sniffle, and hold outstretched hands ready to take the precious remnant. 'Be patient and don't give up, okay?.'     Tears still fall, as Mesmer looks down at the small frog, now held cupped in her trembling hands- . . .     Tears still fall, as Mesmer looks down at Vertin, now held by the robe collar, pulled above the pillow of her hospital bed- - - -     "I'm frightened," says the younger Mesmer, looking between Lilian, and the tree frog cradled in hand, a little admission of the obvious made softer and easier. She turns, again, and looks to the window, as shaky hands gently set the animal atop its sill. She stays with bated breath, watching its lack of motions, going so far as to tip-toe to push the glass open.     Nearly whispered, still, to Lilian, and to UPE-000, and mostly to the Vertin of that long-past day, who isn't present, "They won't let me go. They've all told me how mad the world out there is- it's not like we hoped it would be at all. I can't go see it yet. I'm frightened," she repeats. Like either Lilian or the frog should know the answer, pleading and hushed, "Is she safe? Is someone watching out for her?"     Just as she'd hoped, by placing UPE-000 on the windowsill, a little sad-scared-hopeful glance and a fingertip nudge, outwards, into a courtyard beyond and outside, has it hop away, with a surprised little jolt mirrored in the girl, with that sudden motion. She stares out at it after, tip-toed, hands on the windowsill, as it vanishes away, caught still in this moment again. Frogs are meant to jump free, out into the rain, after all.     Despite the obvious fact that she wouldn't fit through, Mesmer's attention stays fixed, in such a way it's crystal-clear how much she still wants to climb out after it; her hands pull away from the sill, curled up in self-preservation. Even quieter now is, "Will I see them again? Will we all still be 'us', after..." 'You haven't done anything you can't make up for, so until then, let's go do something else instead.'     "I... yes. Okay." Turning once more back to Lilian and the hallway, Mesmer Jr. nods, wipes tear-puffy eyes on her sleeve-cuff, and takes a big bracing breath. For a moment, there's a glance of ugly guilty-worry, but it's wiped away in the same motion.     In an act of childish dependence, she raises a hand out to Lilian, there, to be taken and led by to somewhere else-     But the moment ends, there, harsh and abrupt. Electrostatic interference crackles, and the details fade and fuzz into a buzz and a whine and nothing-more, ejected back and away into-
Foundation Scions	- - -     That still-frame memory dream, in that rainy field. The puppeteer's hands floating menacingly in the sky are gone, pulled back and back and out of the memory's extent, the bare-handed grip on Vertin's unconscious mind easing up in a stunned, silent moment. No emanating announcement comes from Mesmer on this backfoot-retreat, no explanation, no clawing-thrashing set of violent words to vent emotion or grab back control.     It just gets quieter. The glass armonica hum, the constant electromagnetic warble of interfering-overlapping fields, both dimish, hush, and slow. . . .     Out there, trembling and sobbing in the hospital ward, rendered under flat fluorescent sterility and reflected in every accent strip of chrome, Mesmer lets Vertin fall, gently, back to the hospital bed. Her hands no longer at the helm of the machine, nor touching up against Vertin's mind, and her own head and body now pulled away, despite still sitting atop the frail girl, it's over. She doesn't have an audience to see that chance she'd grabbed at fall away, and the guilt and shame for it wash over her, (not) alone.