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Priscilla     The warp pad is abrupt. Too abrupt, even. The loud, electronic, harsh, almost 'low-budget' sound washes over you, and you're suddenly stood indoors. Again. The walls and floor are the same deep purple as every other interior space in this zone, but you're clearly no longer in the Plastic Administrations. The smell is gone, for one; instead the vague scent of lukewarm ham filters indoors, for whatever reason. It's also much more cramped, and you can hear only the rain outside, instead of the ticking and tocking of the administration.

    It's a small building, with a straight of slightly lighter purple 'rug', a metal desk, and only one doorway out, where a single pasty drone is stood staring, blocking the exit, and casting his shadow deep into the room on the weak, grey light. The only other point of note is a trio of what appear to be fliers stuck to a wall --without a bulletin-- there for no discernible reason. They are, annoyingly, in French, and seem to correspond to dates of various concerts being played . . . somewhere. They're slightly crudely drawn in coloured marker and pencil, and rather elaborate in some of their simplistic symbology.

    Because there is only one way to go, it's inevitable that someone triggers the tie-wearing worker, looking even more grey-eyed and sleepless as the stamp jockeys before. The moment someone tries to get past him, he immediately shuffles in the way, blocking the extremely narrow door frame quite well with his big, squareish head. "Uh . . . I . . . I don't have the right to let anyone pass . . ." he moans quietly. That might be understandable, if Dedan came this way. All the other drones kept talking about Alma as a nice place they all aspired to transfer to, so there must be *some* security.

    "Unless . . . Unless they answer some questions." the, big airquotes, bouncer says. Whether anyone even actually says yes or not, he immediately begins spouting them off, as if insisting on the password. They're also all practically nonsense.

"One. The second came from Jerusalem, and the third . . ."
"Two. The Holy Trinity is made up of . . ."
"Three. Notre-Dame first appeared on the . . ."
"Four. How many threes are there in June?"
"And Five. Cyrille, Kevin, and . . ."

    He didn't even ask 'how many cows were at the farmsteads' or 'name all the tram stations' or anything conveniently pithy. What the hell?
Janine Liberi     The gentle sound of rain is a blessing after everything else. Janine leans against a wall and exhales for a long moment, a breath heavy with the anxiety the last building filled her with. "Thank God," she moans, before finally giving their surroundings a look. A single room, one exit, and another drone without clearance to let them pass. "Of fucking course," she says aloud.

    Looking back at the way they came, she briefly wonders if the answer, or some way of getting clearance, might lie behind. But no, she realises. Every other time, the solution to a problem has been nearby. So she instead examines the haphazardly placed flyers. French isn't her best language, but she's enough to kludge together an understanding by considering the common Latin root it and her native tongue Italian have.
Aoko Aozaki     Once more into the breach.
    The lack of a golden King does disappoint Aoko slightly; she'd hoped, perhaps, to see Gilgamesh continue his quest to ruin Dedan's life, to put that foul mouth in its place. Seems like they won't be getting any of that particular spectacle today.

    On the bright side, she's not a schoolgirl anymore. Then again that means Edison won't be SUPREME PRESIKING either. That is a loss.

    Though she wonders why Dedan would be leaving these workers behind to ask questions, assuming that's the reason the jittery puzzleman is there. Does the skull-faced clockman WANT to be followed? Why are the people with reason to follow him trivia experts?

    This is an awful world if that's how that works.

    "Huuuuh..." Aoko taps her chin. Working with the Association does mean hearing entirely too much of the Church's nonsense, and she's not religion-averse per se.

    "Well, the Holy Trinity is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I don't know about that Jerusalem one though, or... who're Cyrille and Kevin?"
Priscilla     When Janine examines the French-covered marker-scribbled fliers, she sees the following:

http://puu.sh/CNijd/4e7b47e7e6.jpg
http://puu.sh/CNimZ/a027308640.jpg
http://puu.sh/CNinT/0550b05a52.jpg

    It is . . . very contrived. To the point it might make one wonder exactly who something like this keeps out. Is Dedan somehow the only one capable of making heads or tails of something this basic? It's like a cheat sheet, albeit one that requires some squinting and counting and French. Why French anyways?
Staren     Staren is here! "Ah, what the hell?!" He curses at the strange arrival noise, then takes in the strange surroundings. Presumably the translation effect or software takes care of the fliers, although that makes their crayon composition strange. Did a child with a very detailed memory imitate fliers they'd seen for some reason?

    He's about to ask the drone if he has the right to be forced past, but then the questions come up.

    He jumps on question two with Aoko -- he's seen movies, after all. The others... he googles.

    And frowns. Something about a second temple, but that's not 'came from', is it?

    And Notre Dame is a church, "It didn't 'appear', it was 'built'..."

    3's in June is again not a famous riddle as he expects. The fudge? "You'll have to define the question better." He points out, annoyed.

    Five is like one and four, a trick riddle but not one that's famous. More frowning!

    Staren figures there's a decent chance that as long as they answer at all they can proceed. After all, the drone didn't say they have to answer /correctly/. So he'll see what answers the others come up with.
Thomas Alva Edison     Edison is no longer in his final form.

    It also means Edison's injuries are back. Walking with the rest of the group towards Alma, the gentle rain causes him to stick his hand out, to see if it really is plastic...and well, he's not disappointed. Strange. He wonders if it sticks to them like plastic would in their worlds, or if it works like water? Bizzare, but there have been weirder things he has seen out there. Though, the issue with Dedan weighs on him...it makes no sense he would kill the spectres and be their cause? There has to be a way to get to the bottom of this without resorting to violence...but at the same time it feels like with who he's with, there is no other options.

    He's snapped from his thoughts as the questions are asked, which causes him to raise an eyebrow. Those don't make any logical sense, and it's not until Aoko asks a question that he shrugs his massive shoulders. Someone is already checking the posters, and he looks for anything else that sticks out. Though failing that...

    He looks at the meat they have. They know it 'restores health'. Screw it, he eats some of Abaddon's meat. Hopefully, it's not actually what it says it is...
Janine Liberi     Janine is pretty good at school, but she's not really a good test-taker. She doesn't like coming back to a question she doesn't know, she has to answer it now. So first of all, she considers question one. Scouring the posters, she finds a mention of Jerusalem. Two in face. One and two, the first and the second. But the third name on the poster...

    "Answer to 1 is 'Orta,'" she calls out. Next, she looks again for a mention of a 'trinity' and finds it again. "La Sainte Trinite," she says, probably incorrectly. Looking on that poster, there is one word that is very very heavily highlighted. "Uh... 2 is roses?" Much less sure this time.
Yuuki Kuran Once more, a slipping flash, like snapping back into reality from thinking while driving, or thinking while reading.

Yuuki Kuran hadn't been doing anything like that, though, but she sure snapped back into awareness with no way to go back and some living captcha embargoing the way forward.

And a riddle. "Oh, no, not a riddle."

"Well, I guess..." Yuuki tries to brain out one of the answers. "Either it's not a trick, or it's one of two tricks, right?"

"It's, um, 'none', there's no threes in the word June, or four - 3, 13, 23, 30. Or, well, it could be ten?"

Yuuki frowns deeply, pulling out her phone to check the calendar feature. "Or fourteen? 3, 13, 23, 30, and ten more for each time three goes into it?"
August Kohler August isn't in the mood for puzzles. He's been thinking about things. The redhead appears, and when they see the drone in the way, momentarily considers cutting through him - but the others wouldn't agree, and he's still unsure if they're people or not.

The big problem, though, is that August is really low energy. He moves to check their inventory as Edison does so, and looks for anything that will refuel 'drive', because he assumes that's energy.

As he's doing so, August speaks up to the drone. "There's a bunch of us here. Are you really going to remain in our way if we don't answer your riddles?" Checking if he'll just move if threatened a little. Probably not, though.
Starbound Flotilla     George wanders through the office and up to the warp pad after Dedan clears out, still looking like he never left in the first place. He wanders up to the drone, and puts a hand on his chin, tapping it with one finger. He puts a lot of thought into the questions, then checks out what Janine's examining, presumably to hassle her in some way. "Ohhhhh, I get it. He's a captcha. That makes a lotta sense now." He says, leaning against the wall just nearby and starting up a fresh cigarette. "Don't worry, as long as you're not a spambot, I'm sure you got no problem with this."

    He gestures Yuuki towards the wall. "Hey, we got calendars here! You /kids these days/ and your /celluar telephones/, back in my day everyone just folded up an entire calendar in our shirts." He gestures her towards the "Juin" concert flier! "Y'mind? My eyesight isn't what it used to be."
Yuuki Kuran Yuuki squints her eyes at George, clearly exuding an aura of 'confused Zoomer'-approximate baroque eurojapanese teenage shoujo protagonist and not awful lady of darkness. It's a specific wedge of feeling.

"George you fly in a spaceship and build warp cores, please."

But GEORGE INDICATES THE 'Juin' poster, and her eyes light up. "Oh, hey, does that mean 'June'? Is... was that a puzzle?"

She starts counting with her fingers, like a stupid rube. "Uhm... Twenty-two?"
Janine Liberi     Janine fixates on the third question for a long time. Biting her thumb as she stares at the one poster that mentions 'Notre-Dame' until one word jumps out at her. "'"L'annee!' Annee, anno, annual! No matter what, always the same. This is a date!" She begins working her way back. "Dans, probably a connecting word. Diamanche, no goddamn clue. But 'Sixieme?' Six. Notre-Dame appeared on the sixth!"

    She moves on the four, but George seems to have that one. "The old man kind of has a point. I don't think any of these puzzles are gonna make us break out the calculators or something. The answer is always right in front of you." And with that, she starts on the fifth. There are bolded names on each poster. Two of the names are the names that make up the fifth question. "Fifth is 'Jonas!'"
Janine Liberi     With a bunch of potential answers reached, Janine marches up to the drone and says, "Orta, roses, the sixth, 22, and Jonas. There, we done here? Can we move on?"
Priscilla     When people try to give the dude the sensible answers that apply to every world basically ever, he just looks confused and nervous, staring blankly and bleary eyed at the ostensibly correct answers regarding the holy trinity and notre dame. "Um . . . yes . . . that's . . . my job." he says to August, not seeming to comprehend why staying in the way would be a problem. George frankly may not be wrong. It's entirely possible that none of the dull and timid residents of any of the districts could figure something like this out, and Dedan hadn't bothered with terribly extensive security, being someone who can apparently act like a (very very rude and shitty) person.

    One by one, though, the group begins figuring out the answers. The man blocking the door doesn't actually verify any of them in order, just standing there, tired and gormless as the group discusses amongst themselves, clearly not actually *knowing* the codes, but the knowing not being the issue --only giving the right ones in the end. When they finally hit 'Jonas', he finally stutters out ". . . All your answers are correct . . . That's . . . that's correct . . . correct . . ." like he doesn't know what to do, quivering like an overloaded washing machine, until the desk in the corner of the room begins to rattle.

". . . My . . . My nails are all dirty . . ." he says, with a tone of serene lifelessness.

    He then promptly explodes. The terminally nerve-wracked tie-wearing nobody bursts at the seams like a paint bomb of black goo, splattering the walls and floor with that tarry, burnt, burnt plastic and rusted iron and charred meat and acrid smog-smelling pitch black ichor. He's just gone. Popped. Like his body couldn't take the overwhelming, panicked indecision.

    You step out into the rain again, back onto bright green solid ground, though practically an island once more. Rather than being surrounded by the white plastic 'ocean' however, you're flanked on both sides by gigantic, squared canals, clearly artificially dug into the ground, almost like rambling swimming pools that go between and around high walls and buildings. The canals aren't filled with plastic, despite the rain, but churning with thick, gooey, greasy red liquid --red like blood-- bubbling up from somewhere beneath like a swamp. Semi-solid mats of slick pink and red float in it, bumping alongside ragged chunks of crimson, all of which reeks of a butcher's shop --like blood and fat and slightly foul ham. Thankfully, a yellow cube with its silver button floats obnoxiously on the green isle, promising some relief after the Plastic Administrations.
Priscilla     Once again, you're stopped by a pasty white nobody, though he has no ability to really get in the way. He is the introduction to Alma, as the other three zones, though even more stressed and seemingly stunned than any of the others.r
"You . . . You . . . uh . . ." the startled drone wheezes.
"I'm here to see Dedan." the Batter states, with the calm, even confidence of having an appointment, rather than being here to kill him.
"De . . . Dedan . . . Yes of course . . ." the blue collar wobbles on, as if sick.
"Hhh . . . You're here at the meat fountains of Alma, the center of the first zone. Here, meat flows freely, continually filling these immense metal pools you see before you. Our work consists of pouring this meat into bottles before the fountains overflow. The meat is then immediately delivered to all the other Zones, from Zone 1 on. As the first of four elements . . . It's an important element . . . Because without meat, people would have nothing to eat. They would die of starvation, one after another."

The eerie commonality of these unprompted characterizations of their work --possibly the only thing that distinguishes these people at all-- terminates with "Ma . . . Master Dedan has an office in the center of the fountains . . . But . . . but nobody has ever found it. Generally . . . speaking . . . Master Dedan seems to only appear when necessary . . ."

"Well, uh . . . there."
". . ."
". . . . . . Who are you, anyways?"

    The Batter answers first, this time, perhaps sensing the question is more relevant to him than the much more obviously out of place members of the Choir, or maybe perhaps prompted by        .

"I've come to liberate the world of malignance." he says.
"Oh . . . Oh really?" the exhausted, pallid man replies, shivering all of a sudden, almost in relief.
"Uh . . . well then . . ."
"Can you liberate me?"

    This time, his head pops free of his body and flies far into the air on a gushing torrent of tarry ichor, like the cork from a champagne bottle, just like his identical twin before the secret elevator. Wildly jerking from the geyser of sickness from his neck stump, the new Burnt comes swinging at the group, just like before. The Batter intercepts him for a moment, with a meaty crack of his bat sending the Burnt flying back long enough to scarf items and quickly activate the cube.
Staren     The living CAPTCHA technician... pops. Staren's not expecting that, but he's glad for his environmentally sealed armor once more.

    Especially when he steps out into the rain to wash off and it's freaking plastic. And there are blood and gore canals. What the hell. "I wonder if this place is some kind of Minus World... Like a conceptual pointer got set wrong somewhere, and it loaded plastic for rain, blood and meat for water..." If the cube cleans people off, he touches it too.

    They meet a second guy, who pops like a champagne bottle instead of a balloon. "Oh for fuck's sake!" He tries to shoot it down and take evasive action, but it seems the batter's got it handled?
August Kohler 'Delicious' silver meat. It's probably actually revolting, but luckily, August is not right near the exploding guy and doesn't get covered in black goo. Carefully stepping over to walk into the rain, August glances out to the canals, and then proceeds forward. Blood in the canals, huh...or meat, according to the Nobody they meet. August wants to go touch the healing cube, though.

And while he goes to do so, the other guy explodes into a Burnt while talking to the Batter. "Shit. Come out, Dietrich!" In a flash of grey and dark red energy, a massive black knight in power armor appears, wielding a mechanical buster greatsword, and dashes ahead of August. With how these guys are acting, August's theory about them is furthering, as Dietrich moves to slam the huge blade into the Burnt with surprising agility and colossal strength, the Persona moving to chop into it, as the mechanical parts of the blade hide the chainsaw gears within.
Thomas Alva Edison     The nobody explodes.

    Edison looks horrified, as the goo covers where it exploded. That's...really disturbing, and it does not sit right with him. However, The Batter moves on, and a few moments later so does Edison. There isn't anything he can do for the man, and now his mind shifts to thinking about something must be terribly wrong here. The mind of the inventor wonders, is it actually tied to the land's guardian? Despite being a loud, rude asshole...which might be more caused by the stress of the situation that's going on...but then again, here in his head office?

    Edison was starting to reexamine his information, but that is what the scientist does. Takes the evidence presented and builds from what he knows. They finally reach the meat fountains and during the explanation he touches the button. Oh well, that's convient, and very much welcome. Some of Edison's injuries vanish just like that.

    "First of the four huh?" Edison says, wryly, as if he's heard that phrase at least three other times now. However, they at least have a way forward... until the nobody becomes a burnt.

    "Oh goodness..." he says, just barely able to brace himself in time for the swing of the burnt. "Son come on, you do not need to...do this!" he says, but there is probably no talking him out of this. There is almost a resigned sigh, the knowledge that he's looking to die is a depressing one to say the least.

    Lightning surges around his fingers, before releasing a blast from them. He had to defend himself, as depressing of a job as it was. They do not seem to listen when it becomes this far. Energy surges through his body, reenforcing his magical output and strength.
Aoko Aozaki     Why do people keep popping?

    "I don't know about minus world, but I'm pretty sure that's not normal. Hey, Batter, mind explaining why people are popping and turning into angry flailing zombies?" Are they specters, too? Is that how specters form?

    Well, at least zombies are easier to deal with than translation puzzles. Or whatever that mess of words was. She didn't quite follow the logic, truth told!

    She hops back, before the flailing headless man can draw too much blood. A snap of her fingers produces a single beam of blue light, trying to scorch and blast back the 'Burnt'.
Janine Liberi     Pop goes the weasel. Janine can think of a few teachers she'd like to see explode from her getting a right answer, but she has to quickly backpedel to not get any bits on her. Sadly to no avail, she's soaked in oil. "Honestly, is this going to happen every time?" she complains. But hey, the door is open, and so through they go.

    She pinches her nose at the reek of fat from the liquid pools and grimaces until they hit the cube, which she kicks with her foot to receive its blessing. "Ahh, that's good shit." Only for her basking to get interrupted by some tour guide. Meat, the most important element? Well, it is food. But calling this shit 'meat' is like calling ultra-processed meat 'meat.' If it's fluid, it's not meat. "Hey asshole, did we ask? Get lost?"

    And then he pops too, seemingly out of a desire to die. "Oh /come on/." Out comes her sword, which she clashes against its flailing spasms. She pivots the blade, and drives it towards the next attack, aiming to use its own strength to slice it deeply.
Starbound Flotilla     George mutters, "Fuck's sakes." Quietly under his breath, nerve-wracked and exasperated when the Burnt starts taking its swings. He swiftly speed-walks to the cube, planting a hand on it hard, pressing his palm to it and letting it bring a little integrity back into his armor. Just enough, it looks like. "Thought we were in the clear of this bullshit after the first captcha popped 100% and not 10%." He plants one foot forward and... moves like water. Two hyperglass pylons jut out of his shoulders like wings, thrumming with power, as he weaves and evades around the strikes.

    "Alright, guy," He mutters. "You want liberation, well, that's always been my specialty." He brandishes a heavy hydraulic claw, ducks around the ranged attacks from Staren, Thomas, and Aoko. He moves in among August and Janine's melee attacks, and tries to snag one of those arms, and then judo-slam the man and pin him to the ground with a heavy palm, pinned in place for the Batter to finish him off.
Yuuki Kuran "Your nails are f-" Yuuki begins to the gormless door-guard, and then he explodes into rank black tar. Awful. Terrible. She wasn't introduced to this mechanic, like a waking dream, but she was along for the ride. The stinky, awful, explosive ride of tarry awfulness.

"Reminds me of the Tower..." She complains, walking out into the fountains of MEAT (what is this amazing smell we've discovered? I hate it!) and the rain of plastic, finding the next of the jittery NPCs and the inherent Wrongness of their insides. Flying heads?

"Dedan's place is in the center, but nobody's ever found it? If it's in the center, then..." Yuuki works through this INTENSE THOUGHT (really the most basic of deduction) while the Batter declares his name and purpose. 'Liberate the world of malignance' is the line, and the poor jitterer asking if he could be liberated twangs on a specific heartstring of Yuuki. "Liberate... wait, what?"

More attacks. More awful, almost more for the smell than the pain, buffets Yuuki, but she flicks out Artemis into a long pole as the batter's cracking attack expels no blood. "This one's safe to just hit, right?" She confirms, before lunging as if wielding a spear, leading with the silver cap of the long staff-baton to knock the maruading Burnt around like a pool cue.
Priscilla     Having some idea of what they're up against, and not being trapped in a tiny, cramped, dangerously cluttered and metallic office space, the Burnt doesn't survive long against the Choir this time. It's blasted, zapped, stabbed, impaled, slashed, scorched, ground, and bludgeoned into oblivion in prompt sequence. The Batter holds back its panicked assault at bat length, struggling with thwacking it back for several seconds, before finally striking a critical blow againsts its burnt and ragged form as it slows to a crawl from its injuries and is pinned conveniently down by the power claw, abruptly turning the black gushing from its neck into a violent spray of red, rolling up the walkway ahead like a carpet, before the Burnt promptly drops dead, finally ceasing its eruption. "This one is Elsen. He is not a spectre. This Zone is impure, and its impurities build up inside its inhabitants. All corruption becomes too much eventually." the Batter answers.

    Moving on from there to further vistas of towering green buildings and fountains of barely qualified 'meat', like the absolute lowest of the runoff from a slaughterhouse factory floor, no more workers appear for the time being. Instead, you run into a different face, and for once, it isn't the Judge yet again.

    Standing in the middle of a 'hub' island, branching off into long walkways to the left and right which follow their respective channels of flowing, churning meat, is a man in a simple light-grey sweater and pressed black pants, cozy and casual enough to be working in a bookstore. He has short, somewhat messy black hair, and skin as pale as the Batter, Dedan, and frankly everyone here, with only the environments themselves having much in the way of colour. He also has a white mask fixed to his face by a length of tied string, which could be described as 'poorly made' if it didn't seem sort of intentional, with off-center, drawn-on eyes, and a big, uneven mouth line which lifts all the way to where the top of a nose would be, like some kind of bizarre frog.

    When you get nearest to him, he looks you up and down (probably?) with some obvious interest, and then chuckles into the inside of his mask, hands in his pants pockets, he leans forward just a little, and says "The characters are really starting to pile up, aren't they?" in a slightly muffled and laid back, but slightly nudge-nudge voice.

    The Batter responds to him, and not as if to one of the office drones. "Pardon?" he asks, as plain and concise as always though.

"What I'm saying is that you don't need all these complicated and tedious dialogues and events. There should be more action and fewer questions. Don't you agree?" the mysterious man says.
"Who are you?" the Batter asks what is probably going to be immediately thought.
"I'm Zacharie. I'll always find myself in places you're going to visit before you arrive. But enough blather. I'm not one of those protagonists you need to listen to for hours. Lemme see the colour of your credits."

    Then, out on the platform, Zacharie begins pulling things out of his pockets which definitely don't fit, laying them out in an orderly sprawl. He intends to trade/barter/sell/pawn off this stuff in the middle of Alma while he's had a run in with people who look like they have money. What kind of money exactly is really uncertain. What he's actually *selling* is . . . even more difficult to conceptualize.
Priscilla     There is an easy to identify pile of Luck Ticket x10, Silver Flesh x 5, Moloch's Meat x3, and Joker x1, but the rest is just confusing. Something that is an aura, radiating from Actually Nothing, coming from something that isn't there and expressing a gut reaction of Fear towards it, and another which gives a strong feeling of Justice. Strange symbols that don't seem to parse into anything in the brain, drawing a visual and mental blank that would make them impossible to actually draw or copy, but which give the idea that one is especially Audacious, and the other Persistent. One is a collection of faintly glowing bones of some sort, yet also a skin? Or a wrap? A cloth? But bones. They radiate soothing, holy light. Then there is a swatch of just . . . colours. Once again, you couldn't try to paint them if you tried, but one gives off the distinct sense of being a Painful colour, and the other a Wrathful colour. He is also selling a day. Monday, to be exact. You don't know how, but Monday is for sale. Lastly, a pretty ordinary looking Bat and outfit. The Bat is signed 'Emmanuel' and the Tunic is signed 'Min-Woo'.

Aura of Justice: Once Each Time, your attack of level 1 or 2 becomes a Critical Hit.

Aura of Fear: Once Each Time, an attack of level 1 or 2 on you becomes a Miss.

Audacious Symbol: Regain 2 Drive with each exchange of blows.

Persistent Symbol: Once Each Time, at the start, regain a quarter of missing Drive.

Radius Epidermis: Once Each Time, at the start, regain a quarter of missing HP.

Colour of Wrath: When dealing a Critical Hit, regain 2 Hype.

Colour of Pain: When taking a Critical Hit, regain 2 Hype.

Monday: Reduces the chance of taking Critical Hits.

    The Batter stops for a second, then reaches into his pockets. "If you want something,         will pay for one each." he says. "Or the pile."
Aoko Aozaki     "Okay, so impurities make people's heads pop off and they turn into... angry flailing zombies. Got it. Not specters. Is this the only form impurity can take? Should we be on the lookout for worse?" A guy's head popping off and his corse flailing dangerously is surprising, but ultimately kind of mild on the monster scale. She expects they get bigger.

    Then they reach a shopkeeper, of all things. A nice one! A chatty one, even if he seems to prefer action over words. Aoko takes a look at the wares, curious, and then settles on her prize, because it's FREE and being offered and you never say no to gifts.

    "Dibs on Monday. It's Aokoday now," Aoko says, grinning.

    She always wanted a day all to herself.
August Kohler August still doesn't believe they're people, but that explains why they're exploding. As they proceed forward, Dietrich remaining out in the plastic rain as they see Zacharie, August quietly listens to him. He doesn't seem to care who they are, exactly, so he doesn't introduce himself, and as the Blank is willing to pay for one each, August nods. "Persistent Symbol." Always getting his energy back sounds good. "Unless we want to get the pile of goodies, though I think getting everyone a unique thing sounds better."

For now, August leans back, seeing what the others get.
Thomas Alva Edison     This is something Edison can aid in, because...

    Edison was a wealthy person, had access to his earnings in life, and also backed with the treasury of the United States of America!

    "I will..." he says, looking at the Radius Epidermis. With a bit of trepidation, he points at the item. "I will purchase this," he says, and considers the other items and how much he has on him to spend right now. "The Joker and as many of the Tickets I can get.." he starts getting ready to spend his personal money.
Janine Liberi     Janine examines the corpse of the Burnt for a long time, far longer than anyone who insisted that she didn't want to think of the ramifications of it should. But eventually, she cleans off her blade and puts it away. Batter gives some explanation, and she shoots August a filthy look. "So they are people. Just got a bad lot in life."

    They progress, and come face to face with a masked man, a far cry from the drones they've met. This one can talk in complete sentences! And he has stuff for sale! "Credits? Uh..." She digs into a pocket, produces a wallet, and very carefully with one hand produces a few euro notes. She then scoops up that persistent feeling and offers the notes in exchange.
Yuuki Kuran The Burnt is Liberated. 'All corruption becomes too much eventually' causes Yuuki to wince.

"There's a few people that would say time itself is an impurity. Weathering on the soul." Yuuki lets her stance drop back to a more casual standing, twirling Artemis once to couch the staff in the crook of her arm and heave a practiced, tired sigh.

'Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.' It's long-suffering, like an old coat, but after doing so, Yuuki brightens. "At least it just smells like pastic and meat here." She offers, before ZACHARIE shows up - and there's a lot of things for sale!

And immediately Aoko takes MONDAY. "Dang. I wanted Monday, too. So I could ban it, and the weekend would be three days long. It'd be much better than right now. But then again, that's probably silly."

She roots around in her coat pocket for a wallet that looks more like a dayplanner, revealing billfolds and cards of all sorts. "Uhm, do you take cards? I have cash too... I'd probably want the stuff for the Batter, and..."

She makes doe-eyes at the Aura of Justice, but... "Mmm, that persistent one looks good?"
Thomas Alva Edison     "Ban monday? Why would you want to ban the greatest day of the week?" Edison asks, not understanding why people hate monday! It's a missunderstood day!
Yuuki Kuran "Well, I'm not, Aoko is buying monday. I don't want a time-share on Monday. Time-shares are awful investments, even I can tell you that, Thomas." Yuuki replies.

As if that explains everything.
Staren     This place is so messed up. Maybe it's actually managed to sicken Staren, but he's not feeling up to trying to make sense of it all today. Maybe he's just filed this place away under too nonsensical to exploit.

    They come to an oddly placed merchant NPC(?). "They come and go. Unless you mean us, in which case, yeah, we do pile up." Staren tilts his head to one side. "I don't mind the dialogues and events so much as I'd like the ones we have to be higher quality... no, perhaps that's not the word. Less nonsensical?" He chuckles at the comment about protagonists. "Is it the protagonist that goes on for hours, or is he silent while the mysterious NPC shows up after every level and goes on and on?" He wonders if these comments will move the merchant to say anything especially interesting...

    And then he's confronted with items! They shouldn't make sense, and yet they kinda do. The batter's offering to buy one of each, and... part of Staren mentally reviews his recent battles and selects what seems like a solid option. He points to the... nothing that radiates an aura of fear. "That one."

    If you think about it, that's easily over a hundred extra HP per fight!

    A thought comes to Staren. "The color of our credits, huh... do you take black?" He reaches into his bag, pulls out a wallet, and from it pulls out what look at a glance similar to black credit cards, except without visible numbers, security devices, magnetic strips, or the like. Well. Actually, there are numbers, in shiny finish instead of matte, which makes them kind of hard to read, but they're clearly denominations rather than account numbers.
Starbound Flotilla     George stretches his arms, working the kinks out of one shoulder. "Hate it when these guys do this shit." He moves on, pressing forward, flicking his cigarette to the ground and smearing it into the generic environment as he steps by. "Hey, Z." He says, greeting the man as if perhaps he already knew him in some way. "Bats needs to swing a little tougher. Put my portion of        's budget to a good solid Emmanuel, won'tcha?" George pulls out a hefty brick of moderarely rare earth metals from his Matter Manipulator, instead of any kind of card or cash. "Metal's good around here, isn't it? I'm not very liquid right now."