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Lilian Rook     Where Lilian takes those showing up for the 'test' mentioned before is impossible to tell. That is, it's not just 'some vague place that's difficult to pin down', but quite literally 'go through a warpgate, GPS stops working, tracking signals cut off, topographical senses cut off at a sharp boundary a few miles away, those lame racial bennies like 'sense how far below or above ground' don't give anything useful, and the like all happen. The air is filled with such a substantial, heady tingle of mystic energy, almost intoxicating for those who respire it, that it surely must be somewhere very important, but even if one were to ask Lilian herself, she doesn't know either. She, in fact, insists that nobody does, and that is the entire point; you're either here, or you can't interact with here, and that is the wisdom of the people who first built here.

    It more or less seems to be a city, described loosely, though instead of having been fully developed by urban planning and stretched out from there, it occupies a horizon that must be as big as New York without fully filling a tenth of it, leaving natural features like streams and massively ancient trees mixed in with the narrow stone paths and roads that weave between them, connecting 'blocks' more like facilities on a college campus. It butts up against the foot of a mountain further away, spreading out into more 'rural' areas, and what is either a very large lake or possibly the ocean, bizarrely close if it is (albeit still miles away in the other direction) at the other.

    You don't get to go near the greater bulk of it, as you appear to have been taken to its outskirts, where the land has been more heavily cultivated into being clear and level and not filled with anything especially old or valuable, but even from a great distance, you can spot clusters of massive towers of ancient weathered granite or gleaming better-than-modern glass, grand archives and galleries set with fluted pillars and endless steps, shaded streets of ivy-clad manors and secretive stores with either fantastic displays or dark tinted windows, winding roads into wooded enclaves or up hard mountain paths to a myriad small temples and dojos, floating city blocks out in the water, and some construction even up in the air. Fire smoke and alchemical steam rises from a distance, not too far from private fields for cultivating who knows what.

    Far from the ultra-compact, energy efficient, cleanly modernized, and heavily surveiled, beautiful panopticon of before, it's spacious, natural, full of private places, a little idiosyncratic, and buzzes with energy that is not a dome of protective wards, where people live a lifestyle of bespoke marvels and cultivated talents, rather than mass production and hourly jobs. It is, what Lilian called, The City Waking.

    The small part you're allowed to go to (for now) is what she'd given both the names 'House of the Seven Worthies' and also 'administrative offices of enlightened examinations and permissions'. All that can be said of it as an area or a facility from the outside is that it is a gigantic hemisphere of honeycomb metal lattice and dark crystal panels, with many different roads converging on it from many different directions across well-kept but empty landscape. There are a few parking lots, because some people here like cars and motorbikes enough to own them. Getting close on the approach to the heavily reinforced entries that permit visitors and business, you can faintly hear the sounds of field exercises far behind it, largely from the weird noises and frequent loud rumbles they make.
Lilian Rook     Inside is kept to 'relatively cool' indoor lighting by the dimmed amount of sunlight entering in through the exterior panelling and interspersed with warm indoor lights to guide attention around the extremely wide and labyrinthine spaces to the actual points people need to be going. Most of the actual height of the dome is divided up into what must be a good fifty floors, sorted by how much space each one needs. After some checking with the desks, you begin with the first.

    "So." begins Lilian as the group is lead down blued steel hallways to personal storage rooms. "Like you might guess from the name, there are seven discrete steps in examination and certification, because this culture likes the number seven. And thirteen. And five. And three." She begins counting on her fingers for emphasis. "In the spirit of 'humanity endures', you start and end with the two most grueling --the physical first-- so no part is easy. The seven virtues of worthiness go by excellence of the body, refinement of enlightenment, virtue of word, depths of knowledge, practical prowess, resilience of mind, and externalized arcana."

    "They'll test your physical abilities, mystical force and control, conduct interviews and questions, test psychological resilience, and push your limits on your special abilities. They'll dispense with the virtues of knowledge and prowess because, given your outside origin, most of you would get near or actual zero on the academia, and since you're testing for Immune auxiliary status, there's already so much combat data we can pull up that it's frankly sort of a waste of time to go through the kill house and all."

    "There's one thing that I should tell you now. Nobody will say it outright, but it's commonly understood here: consider what you show and what you don't. You'll receive a grade and certification based on the highest and furthest you can push, but plenty of people elect not to display *all* of their ability or knowledge, due to the way that things go here; whether that's reputation, wanting to keep trump cards, or swing for a specific position, plenty of people do it, and the examiners won't demand anything if they think you're holding out on them. They'll actually factor in how sneaky or how up front you're being into the assessment. You don't *have* to do anything, is the ultimate rule, knowing that what you let everyone know you can do, what you infer that you can, and what nobody knows, do make a difference." she finishes. "I already did my annual with the other group, so I'll be hanging around if you need me. Give me a shout."

    The first few floors are indeed for physical tests, and they make it quickly obvious why they requires the most space. You get private space to store whatever you brought with you for the time being, having to do the first part with flesh alone. There's no kind of medical poking or measuring, since basic biometric data is readily gathered by stepping through a sort of energy gate that takes those measurements like a MRI right away, albeit you're all provided a choice of a few kinds of greyed, oddly perfect-fit clothes that amount to more or less 'swimsuit-tier' for this stage (alongside everyone else already using the place).
Lilian Rook     The starting stuff is all very ordinary in respects to the actual tests, though not the scale of it. Lifting weights, running at speed, running for distance, jumping heights, throwing for length, point turning relay exercises and the like, are pretty standard fare, like a military fitness exam, save that the provided equipment can go up to many multiples of tons to lift, gel 'sand pits' cleared to chuck things or jump hundreds of meters, and clocks that go down to the microsecond instead of millisecond, for who knows who.

    From there, it starts to get more esoteric. You're pushed to handle courses of increasingly improbable feats of coordination, meant to get as far as you can along what starts as climbing a difficult wall, gets to the tier of running across water atop tall and narrow poles spaced too far apart, and eventually becomes total nonsense 'sprinting across a winding rail that goes at multiple right angles while heavy objects are launched constantly' impossible TV unfairness, with the point of failure, or finishing time, recorded. You get shown to series of dummies and pressure plates and blocks of material to hit, to wrangle into place, to launch off of, and similar, starting off with expecting someone to be able to snap what amounts to a narrow tree in half or hop up to the top of a cluster of concrete blocks dangling from chains, and goes as far as smashing slabs of rock, steel, tungsten, and then esoteric magic materials, either to pieces, or as far back along pressurized tracks as possible.

    The worst parts are at the end, where you're subjected to an atmospheric pressure chamber that amounts to placing more and more crushing 'weight' on you, where you're asked to express when the discomfort sets in, when pain sets in, and then when you want to stop, while the actual physical effect is also measured separately via scanners. The process then repeats in what one especially 'characterful' instructure refers to as 'the hell chamber' and 'the hypothermia chamber'. There are professionals at every step making sure that nobody kills themselves and making sure to dutifully record the data, as well as providing any guidance or instructions anyone needs, who are, for the most part, curt but helpful, uncannily willing to accept 'I give up' at any time, rather than encouraging someone to keep going like a physical trainer *should*.

    After that, you get to go back to storage, take along any gear or use any enhancement magic or techniques you like, and do it all over again. The only qualifier is that you have to be able to fit and turn around in a cubic space about the size of a small office first, and also limit the 'area of effect' to that same cubic space --no mecha or giant explosions, but anything goes otherwise.

    The people here are all over the map. A great deal of them are pretty young (16 to 20), and clearly the real tryhards, though a large number of adults who are probably doing this routinely every few years for recert. It's easy to tell the aspiring Immunes from other forms of office in the physical test; people who look like they're here for the other tests are basically doing it 'to stay in shape', while the young adults looking to get into an elite combat role are trying their absolute hardest to impress supervisors with crumpling steel blocks or running the movie martial arts training courses, stubbornly sitting in the endurance trials longer than they probably should. The spectrum in between is pretty wide as well; the Immune goalposts are the highest, information work the lowest, and various kinds of crafts and practical professions in the middle.
Gilgamesh      Gilgamesh neither asks nor cares where he is. The magic in the air is a pleasant change from the empty, decrepit hellhole that is the modern world - though it pales in comparison to the Age of the Gods, it's strong enough to be noticable, and like an ex-smoker taking his first drag in years, Gilgamesh's breathing is deep and pleased as he follows Lilian. The taste of the air has him more pleased than the city's vistas; he's seen underground lands before and lived to tell about them, and though this one is impressive enough, it's not "building a city underground" that's interesting. It's the feel of it that's interesting. It's the taste of it that's interesting. The King doesn't quite *approve* - it's still no Babylonia - but he at least shows no open disgust, which for him is a massive change of pace.

     He's not dressed in his normal outfit. The King has come in full regalia. He is the King of Babylonia, the King of Uruk and of Denmark and of All That Is, Was, and Ever Shall Be, and he will not set foot in a foreign land and be subjected to their examinations without showing them that much respect. He's dressed in his regalia - shirtless, golden armor pants and boots, a red sash around his waist, red Magic Circuits occasionally glowing as he walks so strong as to be visible. He is the King of Heroes. He will conduct himself appropriately.

     He listens to Lilian, then heads off. At the biometric data, Gilgamesh simply snaps his fingers, and the Gate of Babylon consumes his armor, leaving him completely naked. He doesn't seem to care in the slightest. In fact, unless they insist, he remains naked throughout the physical challenge. He's always done physical challenges like this. This is what the ancient world is *like*. It's not barbarous; it's flexibility, strength, and skill. Besides, he's perfect. Gilgamesh has *nothing* to be ashamed of.

     And indeed he is perfect. His strength, speed, and endurance are all in excess of forty men's worth. He jumps, runs, and lifts like a star from Heaven, demonstrating genuinely superhuman prowess without ever using a hint of magical power. He climbs the wall, he runs the poles, he runs the rail, he punches and smashes and wrangles the dummies and the tungsten alike (he's not quite able to smash through genuinely magical materials on his own).

     As the atmospheric pressure chamber crushes him, the King of Heroes lets out his trademark laughter. "Fuhuhahahahahaha! I am the King of Heroes! You think this is enough to crush me? I have walked on the bottom of the ocean floor! This much is nothing!"

     And then they turn it up to twice the ocean floor, and he's rammed into the floor, and one of his ribs breaks. This is fine. He does it again in the hell chamber and the hypothermia chamber, pushing himself to the point of absolute madness and generally coming out scorched or freezing.

     Then he's given the recovery time, and the storage, and he comes out not looking like an insane(ly beautiful) naked person but like the god-king he is.
Gilgamesh      This time around, things are entirely, unpleasantly different. Where before he was superhuman, now Gilgamesh simply solves problems with overwhelming force. The heavy objects being launched at him on the rail? Deflected by a storm of swords of proto-legend. The poles? He just snaps his fingers and a rainbow extends over them, which he just walks along casually. The magical materials? Easily cleaved through with what looks like a stone sword. The wall? He just launches himself upwards with some sort of magic extending pole. The atmospheric training chamber is met with golden armor, as is the Hell Chamber and the Hypothermia Chamber, and the temperature inside is held at bay by a staff that spills forth ocean in the Hell Chamber and a wand of fire in the Hypothermia Chamber. By the time he walks out of it, it looks like it's been through a biblical ringer, while the King himself is largely unphazed.

     The Gate of Babylon just keeps providing solutions, and the King himself, despite clearly being superhuman enough to deal with these challenges, just *doesn't have to*.
Aranea Highwind     "Accreditation?" boggles a man in a white and red military uniform, as he walks alongside two others.
    "Something like that. It's good to have all the paperwork in order if we're taking work in other worlds," Aranea replies to Biggs, idly tossing her helmet up and down as she walks, already suited up in that black, red and white armor, though unarmed.
    "Never hurt anyone to have more medals on his uniform," says Wedge, wearing a mirrored version of Biggs' uniform.
    "Think of it as getting a glimpse of what outsiders can do more than anything else," Aranea shrugs, tossing her helmet back to Biggs, who catches it.
    "Where ARE we though?" Wedge glances about, concerned.
    "Who knows! Who cares? Seems like one big campus to me, though," Aranea replies.

    And so goes the trip, for the most part, until they reach the indoors area and Lilian begins explaining. Then they have to get changed. Biggs and Wedge manage a snicker at the sight, while Aranea just looks like she's already bored with the mandatory uniform.

    "Can't say I'd wear this given a choice. Well, you two clowns wait for me here," she signals for her men not to bother with testing, so they can enjoy whatever observer deck this place has.

    The first test goes fine - when it comes to speed, jumping height and mobility in general, Aranea excels even without her gear. She's a lot stronger than her frame lets on, too - crossing gaps of water not by running but my making casual long leaps across. Where she seems to take a dip in performance is if projectiles become too numerous to dodge - she's not especially sturdy, unarmored, and speed only goes so far.

    Her atmospheric chamber results are -boring-. That is to say, she's a nudge above peak human performance, but nothing else.

    The second round goes better. Between now knowing the course, and having spear and armor, the obstacle course may as well not exist - the thrusters on her spear let her navigate the challenges trivially, and the armor handles the projectiles very respectfully. She's stronger and faster for it - it's probably within parameters. Having your gear makes you better, it turns out.

    The atmospheric chamber goes... slightly better. The magitek shielding handles the extremes better than cloth can, but eventually it's still beyond what it can handle and she gives the signal, unashamed to have limits.

    When the testing ends, she crashes into a seat, next to Gilgamesh, glancing up at the god-king with a wry smile. "I like what I saw, last round. Not sure that was uniform code-compliant, but good show."
Staren     Staren held off on going to the first exercise because he doesn't get on well with Lilly. But on second thought... he can show that a Hand of the Concord doesn't consider themselves above such opportunities as this.

    When lots of things cut off at the warpgate, he stops to send a message alerting home that this happened, especially concerting if they somehow block even inertial trackers, and briefly wonders if the people going to these things are being replaced. Who went to the first one, exactly?

    He has to concede that the isolation is a sensible security measure, though.

    Physical testing. He accepts the training outfit without comment. Staren's in a robot body today for a reason, and tests appropriately, hurling weights up to that of a small car. The obstacle courses, though... somewhere along the way he has to use gecko setae on his metal hands, or outright flying to go from pole to pole, and the 'no outside help rule' is explained, and he shrugs and waaits for round two, where he abuses such things to go as far as he can. Why hold back for any reason short of damaging himself? When it gets to breaking things, he even asks for the hardest material they have and tries to weaken it with a huge electrical discharge before attempting to break through with supercharged robot strength. He's used that move in the WMAT, so it's not like it's a secret.

    A robot body is incapable of experiencing discomfort (until safeties that indicate his brain is running slow kick in) so for those tests he simply goes until there's risk of damage and then stops.
Gilgamesh      Aranea's smile is returned, with exactly the same level of wry one would expect from the King of Heroes. "Indeed. I am Gilgamesh, King of Heroes. I do things as I please. The world is mine, after all."

     "And you?"
Septette Arcubielle      Septette gives the simultaneous impressions of being quite happy to be here, and in a hurry to get it done and over with. She's smiling and chatting and moving with the brisk efficiency of someone who's going to be very late for something as she pulls off her purple shawl and steps through the scanning energy gate. "So, there's no pass-fail element- just a pure capabilities assessment? Given that we're being allowed to test, have we presumptively 'passed' barring profound acts of stupidity?"

     Not that she plans on doing anything profoundly stupid. Aha.

     Lilian's words about not tipping one's hand echoed her own thoughts- but it makes little sense for Septette to restrain herself on most aspects of the physical. This data will likely factor into how she's handled and supported, so hiding anything that could be easily deduced from her normal fighting would be utterly counterproductive.

     The first and second parts of her assessment go essentially identically: there are magical powers she could abuse here, but they're essentially secondary to her raw inhuman physicality. She lifts weights equal to multiple cars, tears across the obstacle courses with immaculate coordination at nearly a hundred miles per hour while shrugging off the launched objects, and crushes every material known to man and several that aren't against the blunt edges of her ceramet armblades.

     The endurance tests are where she really excels. At several points during the pressure test, she makes hand-motions to urge the supervisors to speed up the rate of increase. After ten minutes of increasing pressure, or enough force to literally produce artificial diamond at room temperature, or the chamber's failure point- whichever comes first- she finally waves for them to stop, though it isn't visually clear how she might've been inconvenienced. The hypothermia and hell chambers find essentially the same thing: she facetanks temperatures of absolute zero and hotter than the surface of the Sun with apparent equanimity.

     For the second test, she puts her perfectly mundane purple shawl back on with a little smile, and does everything exactly the same way again.
Maya Maya was a Paladin and if an alled group needed a licences exam to do monster hunting it would be something that would be a good idea to get done so here she is today. The whole place feels of magic to her. It feels more like home does than most other places and she seems happy about that. She'll enjoy the sights on the way in as she travels taking in everything it doesn't' take too long for them to reach the training halls.

They get the rundown from Lilian and she listens. Skipping the local book learning made sense along with some of the fighting. After all, Maya had nearly two decades of combat data on her floating out there in the multiverse.

Further information is given to her and at the idea of holding back some trump cards.

"That's good to know some things are best left relatively unknown to the world at large as it has saved the lives of my comrades and friends in the past."

Maya has no issue with the scanning though if they are detecting magical levels on all the test she will be stupidly high on her readings.

She will stash all her gear in the space provided a change into. She doesn't seem to have an issue with it though she does tie her hair up a bit more than she normally does.

She'll get to work and do pretty damn well on the physical exams, she's clearly superhuman around the board, she's not like the Hulk but she's quite beyond what a human woman of her apparent fitness and build should have.

Then what comes up looks like a Terran Gameshow a long time friend Made Maya a fan of so long ago.

She'll go through it quite well even thing moving with a good deal of experience with traps, another dungeon crawling thing like this she clear it quite well. The smashing of things, she has no issues smashing the wood, the metal not so much at least on her own she is able to move a good deal of stuff no move? She's able to move things up to the Tungsten noticeably but clearly she' pushed herself to do those.

The pressure chamber is not fun she does get up fairly high but she will call out eventually and when it comes to the heat and cold? She's a bit above normal like someone who has adapted to living in a desert might heave but she's tap out after a bit but it's still not a shabby performance.

When she goes recover change and does the course again? Well, now that's where things get interesting.

WIth fate cards and rifle on her? Maya chews through the course using magical and weapon to support her when she gets to the destruction test? With full access to her spells and her rifle, she's done quite a good job of smashing up most thing save the strongest of the magical materials.

Afterwards she's taking a break and will be watching some of the other constants while seeking out others who have finished up to chat there are a few people here like Staren she's not talked to in a long time outside of work.
Yang Xiao Long     Yang walks along with the group, taking in the sights with an energetic glee that's fairly charactaristic of a Hunter trainee. They're taught from the get go that negativity brings death, fear, anger, all of those emotions just bring more Grimm to you, until you're overwhelmed. So she's a chipper girl, wearing her regular outfit, not the special one Arthur made for her a while back. She dutifully strips off and puts on the trial suit, storing away the only gear she brought with her other than her clothes, a pair of golden bracelets that seem far too big to be practical. "Right, double check, just what I can do physically without special abilities. Saying 'what I do alone' is kinda vague, y'know. My Aura is part of who I am." she shrugs, and with a concentration pause, causes a yellow 'sheath' around her body to appear, then collapse with an electrical-like fizzle. "Okay. First run! Here we go!"

    The blonde moves up to the weights, starting low, doing a few repetitions, then adding more weight, swapping the measures until she's pumping a good 750lbs, and only just starting to show signs of strain in her muscles. Moving from there to the speed trial, she comes in fairly average, about what you'd expect from someone built for strength, but not lagging behind too far. Over distance she maintains a good deal of stamina, maintaining a decent speed over the entire course, while her jump height is fairly impressive. Not Olympic grade but still professional level.

    When it comes to throwing, the young woman manages to break a few records (for entry level prospects at least).

    On to the more esoteric trials, she climbs the wall with relative ease, makes it across the pole run with an unorthodox style of cartwheeling and springboarding to bridge the gaps, and punches the heavy objects out of the way on the insane rail course, though she manages to bloody her knuckles doing so. "Keep forgetting I don't have my Aura on... jeeze." she complains, but after a moment with it active, her fists are mostly recovered, the cuts and scratches sealing up but deeper damage still remaining. Breaking the materials proved a bit more difficult, the woman managing to bend a relatively thin rod of tungsten before she calls it quits, complaining of a cramp in her arms.

    Within the hyperbaric chamber, the blonde kneels and focusses, only complaining and asking to stop when the chamber reaches about ten atmospheres of pressure. Heat and cold are equally withstood, a few hundred high, and a few dozen low.
Yang Xiao Long     After reclaiming her gear, she grins and knocks her fists together, causing the walls of the 'office' to shudder with a release of energy. "Now I'll show ya how a Huntress does it." she caws, going back out into the field and deploying Ember Celica, the bracelets unfolding into massive forearm vambraces and gauntlets, a chamber of shotgun shells rotating into place as the weapon finishes transforming.

    The blonde's Aura flares to light, coming online like one may imagine a sci-fi shield emitter to function, a sheath appearing around her body, golden hued, before it fades to invisibility. Going back through the course, she easily lifts a few tons, though her speed isn't really increased by all that much. Distance comes back much the same though she doesn't seem as worn after finishing.

    Throwing for distance likely causes some defensive shield to activate as she tosses the object clean across the field markers and into the imaginary 'stands' at the far edge, using her weapon in combination with her enhanced strength to boost the spin on her throw.

    Cracking the materials comes to her having to stop because she ran out of materials to break, rapid punches from her augmented and armoured fists pulverizing most of the materials and badly denting the hardened magical ones to an acceptible level.

    Meanwhile she breaks her previous scores for the esoteric tracks. Bypassing the log poles by launching herself with weapon recoil and a running leap to land on the other side. Going into the chambers, she withstands pressures up to double her previous, 'turtling' up behind her Aura. Though the heat and cold don't progress all that far past her previous scores, only earning a few degrees each way.

    "Whew! That's a workout though... even Beacon doesn't go to the trouble of making us practice pressure and temperature changes like that..." she ponders. "Atlas might, they're on a continent that's perpetually in winter, lot of snow and ice."

    Yang waves to Gil though, giving the King of Heroes a big beaming smile as she runs over, and leaping tacklehugs the demigod. "Heeeey Gil. Been a while, how's it shakin'?" she asks.

    Yang doesn't understand the concept of personal space.
Septette Arcubielle      With all that finally done, she flops into a chair near Aranea and Gilgamesh- or pantomimes flopping without actually resting her full weight on the poor furniture, anyway. "One hell of a show back there," she says conversationally. "Be glad they're not testing anyone on frugality."
Orchid      As it happens, Orchid has one of those tracking signals. And were she watching estimated position, the 'error' circle would start expanding. And expanding. And expanding. To the point that the signal could be coming from anywhere, but isn't actually lost.
     This is something Orchid may wonder about later.
     But at least she is still aware of the local vector of gravity. Once she realizes what kind of place this is, Orchid releases a few of her drones, just to get an idea of the layout of the place. Only a few, she doesn't expect trouble yet. Really, it's more of a personal habit than anything else; she likes being able to look in all directions. Of course, that's all the traveling bits, we want to get to the juicy bits. The only gear Orchid brought with her are the tools in her arms, her armor, and her rocket surfboard. "Seems reasonable enough so far," she says to Lilian, as the third is put into storage, along with the drones for the first round; the others are extensions of her body, and while she could remove them for the test, she usually sleeps with those hands and armor equipped. She's here mostly for the magic term 'accredited.' The Paladins encourage getting education, and offer raises for useful accreditations.

     The first run through the tests is direct enough. She can lift and carry four times her own weight, her dash boots give her good ground speed, and the ability to air-dash makes her long-jump a feat to behold. Her ability to swim is nil, but even underwater she can run fairly quickly, not needing to breath.
     Orchid's performance on the wall test is amazing, as she jumps at the wall, kicks away, and air-dashes back to repeat the process, climbing the wall in a matter of seconds. From one pole-top to the next she springs, lithe form well built for rapid movement, and the rails only provide moderate challenge, as she possesses good situational awareness, letting her know when to pause.
     Against the 'hit this' plates and dummies Orchid's results are not so good when it comes to 'pushing' things, but when it comes to 'breaking' things, a few seconds of careful study, and she uses her sonic devices to cause the targets to shake themselves apart, the resonant frequencies putting energy into the system so much faster than it can leave.
Orchid      When she gets to the pressure test, Orchid tells the testers that her rated limit is 77 atmospheres, or about 800 meters deep in water. Still, she takes the test, and holds out to 85 atmo. The cold she can handle down below -40, but she notes that it drains her battery quickly. The heat she's only able to stand up to 130F for sustained periods.

     Then there's doing it again. There isn't much difference except for the movement tests. Here, the rocket surfboard lets her climb faster, go further distances, and using her drones as extra eyes lets her DANCE through the dodging test.

     Coming out of the final test, Orchid nods. "That was... good so far, I think," she says, leaning on a wall.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur Lowell is here! For his part, he's seen his fair share of fantastical cities. The magical, the technological, and the magitechnological all are things he has enough experience with to admire the place with a well-traveled eye, tracing the skyline with visible interest. The House of the Seven Worthies has his attention though. Primarily for his interest in it as a classic Challenge Dome. As he wanders in behind Lilian, he says, "Yeah, know the DEAL with NUMBERS. You guys ever start running into the number FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN real often, you GIMMIE A RING, yeah? Yeah! Coo'." He says.

    They get into the nature of the challenges themselves. "I ain't even finished HIGHSCHOOL, dawg!" He says, giving a brief "HAH" sort of a laugh. "Don't know SHIT about ACADEMIA!" He's already limbering up as they get towards the first floor. Arthur, for his part, doesn't actually open his locker, because instead he just wanders up to it and "INVENTORY SUSPENDED" sort of floats above it for a few seconds.

    Alright, let's dig into the business.

    He assumes things like this are more to test his raw physical abilities, and so lifting, running, or jumping are the sorts of things he ought to do without the assistance of magic. And, let's be honest. Arthur Lowell is not going a whole lot without the assistance of magic. He has a fairly considerable RUNG on the ECHELADDER, but he just really isn't that swole, so despite all the flexing and suchlike, his raw lifting strength is only a little above-average. His endurance is quite good, with solid cardio, and his jump height is /weirdly/ good, especially given that he can triple-jump multiple times. His agility is surprising, and his coordination is quite impressive. Running up walls, dodgerolling along rails, and other feats are quite a display of power for him.

    The weird thing is, throughout all of it, very clear and obvious displays of his prowess are constantly projected like videogame UI. At each station, a little minigame seems to be played; when he's lifting or dashing, an A button is being mashed. Jump height is a timing game, trying to hit A when a bar is at its most green, and things like that, and scores are tracked even without the measurement equipment. This comes back to bite him when he heads to the striking range. "NO STRIFE PORTFOLIO", declares a big display with a NO icon near him, anytime he goes near the dummies and plates. "You guys said I couldn't bring my stuff!" He explains, as if that explains anything.

    Every time Gil gets near him, there's even a Sims censor.

    The pressure, hell, and hypothermia chambers are probably the best display of it. His little minigames stack raw willpower with breathing exercises andother physiological tricks, but his Health Vial is what shows his apparent true resistance. He lets it drain, and drain, and drain, seeming willing to suffer some kind of abstract injury to stay within for a while, and having a tremendous resistance to space-associated risks like pressure and heat, but calling to stop when his Health Vial gets a bit dangerously low.
Arthur Lowell     And then once more unto the breach. He seems to find some kind of... save point or something in the locker rooms? Because he came out of them with full Health Vial again, and ready to go. His broom is revving and his Strife Portfolio is active. He does things again mostly the same... but with more /style/. He grinds the rails with rockets, he leaps with gravity-boosted jumps, he fires and uses portals. He enters "PB" on arcade high-score tables that nobody else has ever interacted with, defeating some of his own efforts previous.

    The striking bits get silly. He's brought out his rocket-powered broom for this, and when he strikes, everything is measured in points of Health lost, never in newtons or other suchlike. It's some /tremendous/ force, of course, for his raw striking, and with enough charge time he seems well capable of breaking super-materials, but it's clearly gamified in ways that make such measurements almost entirely non-indicative of anything physical for him.
Aranea Highwind     "Aranea. No fancy title or station. Commodore, if you want," Aranea replies to Gilgamesh, perking a brow up when Yang surges from the test chambers to tackle him. "King of the ladies too, huh? Guess the title isn't just for show. You keep a tally of how many conquests you've made?"

    Drinking buddies are important, though she's not sure how much she'd fit into a king's idea of a night out. It's probably entirely too frilly for her.

    Her head perks up when Arthur enters the room, entirely on the basis of his use of rockets and jumps. "Unorthodox but not bad, kid. Why a broom instead of spear? A point serves momentum better than bristles."
Gilgamesh      Gilgamesh also finds himself tackled by Yang. He's a little bit more durable than most people she probably tackle-hugs, especially fully-equipped, so rather than winding up on the floor he just sort of catches her. A moment later he's spun her off her feet into a princess carry, that wry smile on his face.

     "Some time indeed." He whispers something into her ear.

     He laughs at Aranea. "Commodore, then. I am King of All That Is, Was, and Ever Shall Be. No, I do not keep tallies. I am the King. That sounds thoroughly low-class."

     He finally puts Yang down after he feels an appropriate amount of time has passed. "Are you both doing this test for some reason other than your own amusement?" The implication, of course, being the he's absolutely doing it for his own amusement.
Arthur Lowell     "Fuckin', seriously!! You not get any EQUIP BONUSES, homie?" Arthur says, agreeing with Septette Arcubielle, drifting with anti-gravity weightlessness to relax near the end. "Love this shit though, been real goddamn AGES since I had a CHALLENGE GYM thing. Only did ONE THING like this back on LOSAF, a goddamn ETERNITY ago. That shit was HELLA RUNG TEST."

    He gives a wave to Aranea. "Yo! ARTHUR LOWELL, PROFESSIONAL JERK, INTERGALACTIC HOOLIGAN, KNOW-NOTHING PUNK. The BROOM stuff? It's RAD is what it is! Also, I can't use SPEARS." He gestures, showing a Strife Deck full of a vast array of weird broomsticks. "I don't got the KIND ABSTRATUS for it. Been ages since I saw someone with a ROCKET SPEAR though! I used to do a ton of good FIGHTS alongside the guy who HAD SOME, it was HELLA RAD. You do TIME STUFF too, or is that just the ONE GUY?"
Yang Xiao Long     "Oh, I'm no conquest. He's still got a ways to go for that." remarks Yang with that trademark grin of hers. She oofs as she's scooped up, then and looks over at Arthur. "Oh, hey dude, thought I heard that thing in there." she says to the guy, moving over to give him one of those esoteric greeting handshakes he's so fond of once Gil lets her down. She does glance back at Gil with a bit of a spark in her eyes and a wry grin. "Oh, right. Name's Yang. Yang Xiao Long. Huntress in training." To Gil's question. "Oh, this is mostly for amusement, but if I can learn a few things from these people, more the better, I say. Expand horizons. I am, after all, Unstoppable."
Arthur Lowell     Arthur immediately assaults Yang's hand with one of the most diverse handshakes to date. Not just daps, pounds, bumps, and low-fives, but also even a short yaw-ways flip since he's drifting in anti-gravity. "HELL YEAH," He says. "I bring those REVS." Demonstratively, he lets his broom's engine rev a few times. "Good seein' ya up in this biz too! Haven't seen ya since the PUNCHCARD ALCHEMY stuff."
Staren     Staren is mildly surprised by Gilgamesh's choice to go nude, just because it's something almost noone else /would/ do. But whatever, people have bodies, he stopped being squeamish about that stuff long ago.

    There's also a new person here! Staren introduces himself to Aranea as "Staren Wiremu, Hand of the Concord."
Orchid      Walking in on Gilgamesh's words, Orchid chuckles. "Being honest, I'm hoping to get a raise from this," she says to the King of Heroes. "Also to expand my portfolio. The magical stuff I expect to learn a lot about." She nods to Staren, Yang, and Arthur, those being the ones she knows. To the others... "I don't think we've met, I'm Orchid."
Lilian Rook     Because Lilian is exactly that type, she's already told all the people who matter in her general proximity that *she* knows *Gilgamesh* and has sworn up and down about it to crowds of varying willingness to believe. She then gets to sit and watch with gradually growing smugness as Gilgamesh rampages through the course the first time, with the kind of ability that gets proctors going from looking vaguely expectant to big_concern.png, and then outright cheeses his way through the second time. Lilian gets to the point of gloating humming by the time rainbow bridges are in play. "That's as close to a perfect score as I've personally ever seen~" she says, clearly self-satisfied.

    Nobody seems to quite be able to figure out why Aranea can jump like she's flat out flying compared to her other areas of performance, but obviously most of the mobility challenges become pretty trivial, and she's pushed through them at speed to see how quickly she does them moreso than how well. Staren, meanwhile, gets some sour optics for showing up as a robot --not from any of the professional examiners themselves, but from a lot of the 'clientele' too young to want to disguise it or too tenured to care that they do. The point is still 'ability to function in the role of Immune support', so it's technically within the spirit of it, but it seems the general populace doesn't look highly at just getting a semi-generic cyborg body to do it.

    "You *could* fail." Lilian explains to Septette on the way in, "But you're here because of the reasonable assumption you won't. It'll be pretty obvious you're yanking everyone's chain if you fold like a soft little mundane calf in every test." The general disdain for Staren's approach doesn't seem to apply to Septette. Is it because she's magic? Because she's a bespoke piece of technology instead of a 'model'? Because she doesn't really have a choice one way or another? By contrast, who must be the more technically minded appear to be distantly interest in what went into building something like her. This clearly isn't a place where constructs are expected to grossly outperform people outside of narrowly specialized tasks. The pressure test especially has to be given up because the chamber will suffer damage before she does. They try to record as much about her as they can, on account of the scan being basically useless.

    Maya seems to fit in the most 'cleanly', accomplishing a well-rounded set of what it seems people generally expect (from someone who's a career fighter). Yang isn't far off the mark either though. The 'Aura' thing appears to be relatively well-understood, though going by benchmarks, unusually tough for where they expect her general bar of spiritual refinement lies. Someone is silly enough to ask how Ember Celica folds like that, and how the ammo fits. "I've never seen your Beacon program" Lilian comments from the bench when Yang comes back, "But this is *the* place to be for serious examination. It doesn't matter what your dojo or temple or coven scores you as; you're not for real until you've been put through at least these paces."
Lilian Rook     Nobody has any fucking clue what Arthur's doing. There's just nothing to be said about this nerd playing minigames through everything *without* magic. He's stopped several times to really make sure he's not using any special abilities on the first run, before they eventually just have to conclude his physics kind of . . . work that way. Eventually, they get him the closest thing to something from his strife deck he has to let him do the strike portions. By the time he starts doing the bonkers stuff with his gear and Aspect, it seems their capacity to be surprised has pretty much run dry. The lead supervisor has come in to basically just shrug and say 'try your best' at the examiners.

    There seems to be some manner of debate as to whether Orchid's megaman items constitute gear or parts of her body. Considering that it seems that they can't really be lost, disabled, left behind, or subverted without it happening to her body itself though, they eventually give it a pass. The drones are fine indoors, but they don't get to go far outside; trying to get them to stray further into the city is a recipe for them immediately disappearing.

    "This group is good stuff!" Lilian comments at the end. "The last one certainly weren't slackers, for the most part, but this one's certainly been interesting." She somehow gets 'interesting' to sound like it means five different things at the same time. Scale impressive. Uniquely gimmicky. Hotties doing^5^5^5 Elucidating as to social attitudes regarding the origins of their abilities. Yes.
Lilian Rook     Given about enough time to cool off and grab the rest of your stuff (and probably shower a little), the next couple of floors up are mostly broken up into an assortment of sealed chambers of largely identical contents, built up to capacity to handle probably at least a thousand people going through on a busy day. Just the one of them is reserved for all of you, given that it's something which can apparently be taken in turns. The reason there are sealed doors becomes pretty obvious, when the inside is clearly lined with heavy layers of materials that should be capturing basically any kind of radiation, traces of magic, sound or shock, to isolate everything from every other room for the sake of capturing fine measurements.

    The isolated room is defined mostly by a series of circular steps leading up to a pedestal of sorts, the size of a small, round table, mostly made of various metals and visible mechanical extrusions, but seemingly having no machinery more complicated than clockworks going on, and made of a lot of mechanically non-useful items, such as gold, jade, diamond, and traces of rare mythical metals. The main fixture is a perfectly spherical, polished stone set into the center of the top surface, filled with some kind of grey fog, big enough to lay two hands on. That appears to be the purpose, as Lilian reconvenes with the group to lead them through it, apparently being very simple and not requiring a supervisor.

    "These are the standardized setups we use for more comprehensive and reliable measurements of generalized mystical ability than portable devices." she says after a brief intro. "Rather than testing the execution of specific powers --just yet anyways-- these are keyed to receive whatever energies you can muster and direct, and to gauge the quality, quantity, and degree to which you can control them, on the more fundamental scale. They don't do anything so crude as just take a raw number of how much you can squeeze out and compare it; there is a trick to these, going along the seven stations and five stages of enlightenment."

    Lilian demonstrates by putting her hands on the big glassy orb, and straight away the grey fog becomes a shining white light, pure and untinted, causing tiny sensors in the walls and ceiling to gleam. "There are five stages to each station, which this setup displays based on colour. There's a bit of a poetic way of referencing them, but they mean roughly what they sound like."
Lilian Rook     "White is where everyone starts. White light contains all other colours and kinds of light, not being any one thing, but containing the potential to be just about anything, once it's focused and refined. It illuminates the world around you, but reflects back the qualities of the things that you can now see, more than it illuminates yourself. The intensity here is usually seen as latent potential."

    The white light then becomes a deep, shifting, shimmering silver. "Silver is where you progress to next. White becomes silver as insubstantial light becomes a metal, hard and defined and capable of interacting with the world. Silver is a substance associated with purity and driving back evil things, indicating mastery enough to keep out the potential for all the worst facets of any power from plaguing you, but though it has taken shape and is stable, it's still a somewhat fragile metal, and can tarnish or break if neglected or used poorly. That's a metaphor for mystical talent still, obviously. The hue here is interpreted as how diligently you're maintaining and refining your power."

    The silver then becomes brilliant, glimmering gold. "Gold is where it has matured and revealed its inherent value and worth. It's now solidified into something weighty and permanent and imperishable, as well as malleable as the metal, easily shaped into just about anything without breaking, as mastery over power allows you to use it in any form you're able to imagine and skilfully craft it into. The degree of shine here is typically interpreted as how much work you've put into polishing and molding those talents."

    The light then loses its metallic cast and becomes bright, glaring, almost lurid red. "Crimson comes after gold, and indicates when power has ceased to be something external to you, which you appraise and polish and sculpt and define, crafting and developing and improving it, into something internal to you. Crimson represents blood, as power becomes an integral part of you that is no longer just a talent, but something vital and fundamental. If it is diminished, it diminishes you. If it is lost, you're all but dead. Even if you expend it rashly, it's never without reason. Its flow and structure is palpable to you, rather than something to think on or invoke or practice. The intensity of the colour here is usually thought of as hinting at your fundamental capacity."

    Finally, the light is sucked back in, and the room goes dim, where the orb becomes a sphere of pitch blackness interspersed with tiny, glittering stars. "Lastly, black indicates that there is nothing left to learn or master at your current state of enlightenment. You've transcended beyond the power becoming a part of you, and into you entering the sort of 'cosmic space', for lack of a better word, where the power originates. It's revealed its deepest, blackest secrets to you, and opened a vista where you can glimpse the stage of enlightenment beyond this one, like stars in the sky --in sight but not yet in grasp. The number and brightness of the stars here is supposed to be how close you are to further enlightenment."


    The 'tabletop' then begins making a loud series of ratcheting clicks and glassy chimes, gradually rotating, reconfiguring, exposing new surfaces, rows of esoteric gems, raising small structures, and then turning the white of a single star into a whole orb of shining white all over again. "Then it goes back to white again, when you breach into a new level of enlightenment, where everything beforehand is mastered and internalize, and you're working on yourself anew. It takes raw power to reach a new stage, but also a different kind of control and mastery, and the input changes. You can have a ton of latent power, but be at a lower station to someone with less raw energy, due to having not yet refined yourself as far."
Lilian Rook     Lilian gestures to the exposed gems. "The jewel is the first station, representing where inner power is searched for and first discovered, dug out of the ground, the metaphorical dirt cleaned away, where it's appraised and polished, and you begin to have an idea of what's within yourself, and gaining access to that priceless core of power deep inside."

    After cycling through a full white to black sequence, the setup rotates and clicks again, going completely flat and exposing concentric surfaces of polished, glassy diamond. "The mirror is the second, where you can access your power at any time, but are working on gasping its full shape and dimensions, and coming to understand it and yourself. It's the station of self-reflection and understanding, polishing yourself and your skills until you know who you are and what your power is."

    More mechanical swiveling and reconfiguring follows the next white to black, where the edges raise, the center depresses, and the pillar narrows, like having hands on a bowl on a pedestal. "The station of the chalice is third, which is supposed to represent 'questing'. It's when you know what and who you are and the time at which you're supposed to go out seeking challenges and knowledge and new things, to achieve and to better yourself, bringing you up from humbler beginnings to greater experience and maturity."

    White chalice to silver chalice to gold chalice to crimson chalice to black chalice, and the table flattens again, slowly unfurling rings of silver blades around itself in sequence. "The station of the sword comes after that. This is where your 'questing' is over, and the only way to achieve further enlightenment is to take on a cause. An immutable purpose. An ironclad goal. You'll make no more progress with changing yourself until you change the world; yours is to go out and conquer, to defeat, to subjugate, to bleed, and to suffer. Not a lot of people reach this station at all."

    There though, Lilian finally stops at blindingly intense crimson, and can go no further, releasing the orb with a sigh, where it returns to grey mist and cylindrical shape. "After that comes the crown, and theoretically the throne and the tower. The crown is where you've supposedly achieved the pinnacle of human development, where you're no longer learning, but leading --pushing forward the boundaries of what is possible and inventing new aspects and dimensions to yourself. Few people ever get that far. If the mirror is learning a martial art, the chalice is taking it out into the world to fight and to master it, and the sword is crushing all the others to prove its perfection, the crown is where nothing less than inventing a brand new art is meaningful to you. People who go beyond grandmaster and into inventing new schools --it's about that rare"

    "The Throne is where you've transcended the humanity inherent in that power and become something that sits above humans. Most people don't even have the theoretical potential to do that. It's where the height of possible human achievement is internalized, and you're pushing what should be possible at all, defining the new 'impossible', leading the collective progress of human enlightenment into new eras and paradigms. Geniuses, basically. Teslas. Einsteins. Muramasas. Musashis. Arthurs. Heracles."

    "The Tower is almost theoretical. At that point someone is just totally divorced from all human experience and is more or less a god in the flesh. You'd have to be Jesus Christ or the Buddha to claim the enlightenment of the Tower. It's a once a century deal, at most. There's not much to say. Give it a whirl!"
Lilian Rook     Indeed, she didn't speak incorrectly when she said it's more nuanced than just jamming raw magical energy into it. The table soaks up mana/ki/psychic energy/pretty much anything very readily at the jewel stage, so long as you can bring it out. At the mirror stage, it starts only accepting power into increasingly fine and specific channels and patterns. At the chalice stage, it starts actively resisting you doing so and requires the ability to sense or figure out which will work. Anyone getting to the sword stage finds that it requires tremendous focus and zen-like clarity to do much of anything, and becomes extremely painful if slightly mishandled, capable of forcing hands off and ending it.

    Someone possibly getting to the crown stage finds the blades reorienting to indeed take a crown-like shape, exposing the gems of before along its sides, and they find that it no longer accepts energy at all, save for some completely unique, unusual, and uncommunicated pattern of manipulation that is obscenely obtuse and esoteric, and seemingly chosen differently to an individual, requiring nothing short of a stroke of genius or outright breathing that conceptual space. The throne is even more esoteric, taking on a tiered vertical appearance and flat out requiring so much raw brainpower and focus that no amount of 'talent' works. If someone were to get to the tower somehow, the whole thing rises up and lowers down in concentrical tiers to make for a tower of babel image, and begins slurping up utterly obscene quantities of energy while also shutting off with a flash of painful feedback the exact instant the delta of power shifts to even the slightest degree; one would need to be somehow actively exuding tremendous, dynamic power completely unconsciously.

    "Oh, usually these are calibrated to display personal 'alignments' as well, but given where you're all from, it's probably not going to be able to read whatever you're aimed at. It's all really esoteric imagery anyways. Professionals come along and interpret it like a doctor with a medical chart and all. It'll take a while before any of that applies to disciplines that don't exist around here." Lilian flips a couple of components and pokes the orb again, causing the interior to suddenly bloom into what looks like red and black flame or ink, before coalescing into a flickering black sword-shape stabbed through surprisingly intricate scarlet gearworks, buried in such a way as to obviously make any of the cogs turning impossible, seizing up the whole allegorical machine. It disappears when she walks away from it. "It's not very straightforward at all. It probably wouldn't show anything mostly, but who knows."

    That part is, as stated, incredibly inconsistent. There's a solid chance it just won't work for some people. Others might be able to call up manifestations of some particular element, meaningful runes or glyphs or symbology, emblematic icons or creatures, elaborate light shows, or really deeply symbolic displays or occult iconography that somehow corresponds to said 'enlightenment' or inner nature, but it's wildly inconsistent from person to person, and may just not function.
Gilgamesh      Gilgamesh's entertainment is no less than Lilian's own as people start realizing that, yes, he is *that* Gilgamesh, yes, *the* Gilgamesh, yes, *the real* Gilgamesh. When she tells him it's nearly a perfect score, he waves a hand in front of his face. "I don't claim to be perfect. I simply state a fact." But underneath that motion it's obvious that he's wondering what he *didn't* get perfect on. Probably letting his ribs get cracked. Stupidity. Stupidity! The King of Heroes, always trying to show off. If that cost him a perfect score, he'd be angry with himself for days. Indeed, as Lilian describes the next test, the King of Heroes' face is doing laps through the various stages of trying to figure out where he was imperfect. For somebody doing this just for his own amusement he's taking this /close to/ more personally than is probably wise. He listens to the explanation distantly, but, as is appropriate, steps forward to take the test first and show off once more.

     The King's hand snaps up to touch the orb. It doesn't even *go through* the rest of the stages - it jumps straight to black, a black full of shimmering, glistening, gleaming stars. The stars spill from the orb, swirling into a galaxy around the King. It's as if Gilgamesh is simply on the cusp of enlightenment at all times, as if he walks the world as Awake as a being can be.

     Or as if he can progress no further, because he is already a complete being.

     The stages jump rapidly, from orb to crown. It hovers on crown for a moment, as if simply acknowledging the King of Heroes for what he is, and then goes to Throne. The throne stands, black and shimmering and full of whirling galaxies. Gilgamesh's own Magic Circuits blaze red as he outputs power, and anyone measuring it will probably have a mild heart attack - he's effectively pouring Enuma Elish into a single point, because that's what he was asked to do. There's a very good chance the station he's using might need repair later.

     As for his alignment, it's consistent the entire time.

     It's an image of himself, perfectly formed from the stars, the galaxies, or the space between the stars and galaxies, depending on which stage he's at. It's *always* an image of himself.

     Gilgamesh's alignment is Gilgamesh.
Orchid      Being one of those who could be considered a magical null, Orchid wouldn't be one of those expected to perform this test, but she listens closely to Lilian the same. She is quiet, thinking, before she asks. "Is... is there an aspect of magic around the idea of perception?" She's trying to apply this idea to what she considers her own 'power' to see if it fits properly.
Yang Xiao Long     Yang steps up to the dias, placing her hand atop the orb. It begins to shift, from white to silver, gold to crimson, black to white again, cusping at the Crimson Chalice. The image that forms is a blood red bear, a towering monster that fills the entire room, its eys a deep black pit into a void beyond the world. As the young Huntress tries to push further, her Aura flares up, taking the shape of a pair of membanous wings, before it fizzles out with a sharp ozone smell and she staggers back from the dias, the image and chalice receding back to its resting state... "Still got a long way to go yet... But I'm pretty sure I'd have been a silver Mirror when I first joined Beacon. Signal trains us well before we progress on to the Academy.. plus, I've had a lot of real world experience to hone my Aura and Semblance."

    She takes the ceiling as a challenge, spurring herself on mentally.

    The imagry means little to nothing to the young Huntress, except "That looked like a Great Ursa... there was a Hunter Killer in Forever Fall a few months ago... really old Grimm that targets Hunters in the field exclusively. It was a Great Ursa, with dozens of old Weapons stuck in its thick hide."
Lilian Rook     Lilian doesn't appear to have quite understood the extent to which Gilgamesh is upset by what she said like a stereotypical angry Asian parent asking their kid where the last 1% went on their 99 final. "I'm still allowed to be impressed! These aren't really set up so that perfect scores *exist*. 100 is the least informative number; if they just scored it like a quiz that way, whoever passes a certain bar end up all put on the same level, instead of respecting how far beyond they can go." she comments instead.

    "That's the least informative question I've been asked in ages." she says to Orchid. "I mean, I could answer yes, but it'd be useless information, like saying there's 'an aspect of people that has to do with thoughts' or something."
Staren     And then comes... magic testing! Staren shrugs, and explains that even if he were in his original body, his mana pool is stunted by not training it earlier in life, and he has little practice using it outside of specific applications, so there probably wouldn't be much to see anyway.

    He simply stands by and watches the others test.

    ...Until someone says 'Oh well, that's what happens when you take shortcuts' In which case he retrieves the SIGHT OF THE INSPIRED from his bag, looking like a pair of night-black science goggles, and steps up to the platform and starts setting out inventory and tools around the orb and taking some things apart to build something out of the pieces and hook it up to the orb.

    Staren doesn't follow the path. He's definitely up to the chalice and most of the way through it, but... even if he can still raise his personal power by change, he HAS devoted himself to an ideal and is already working on changing the world, and even discovering new possibilities never seen before... Maybe it flickers between stages or just gives a weird result or something?
Aranea Highwind     "Low-class? Yeah, guess it would be. No, it's strictly business. Nobody'll hire a mercenary without the proper creds, so I'm working on that. Throwing darts on the proverbial world map and racking up the licenses and permits. Besides, I work security against supernatural threats. Need to keep up to date on the latest monsters," Aranea says to Gilgamesh, matter-of-factly, before adding: "I'd rather head out for a night into town for amusement."

    Her head turns back to Arthur, and she shakes her head. "I just jump around. Not a time mage. Must be a handy kit though." The matter of Arthur's Strife Deck is met with a brief, incredulous look, before she finally asks: "Sorry, repeat that in English?"

    Then to Staren: "Staren. Orchid. Gotcha."
    Seems... colder, suddenly?
    Something about their appearance.

    Round two is a convenient excuse to get back up and excuse herself away from those two. "Well, see you on the other side of this one."

    Spiritual measurement. Huh.
    Not really something she prepared for.

    She's no mage, no expert of her own magic. She's got some manner of potential, maybe a hint of magical lineage in her blood, but it's narrowly focused into "doing dragoon things" and not "understanding the depths of her power". With her spear held idly by, the readings seem higher, the spear under the cover of magitek evidently an artifact that resonates with her especially well.

    Clearing the Jewel stage isn't hard. Getting past Mirror is a problem, and largely where she blocks.

    Though in terms of raw power, she does seem to have something or another on her that's providing ample raw juice. It's just not refined in the way the test measures. She's the rough equivalent to demi-god who still doesn't know she's one and therefore, doesn't properly harness what might or might not be there.

    Or something along those lines.

    Elemental alignent, if that's measured, would trivially read lightning and wind, though. But as for personal alignment, it's murky.

    She comes out of that test entirely unsurprised she didn't shoot up across the scale, because she would never have described herself as especially spiritual. She just rocket spears things dead. It tends to work.
Maya Maya does quite well all things considered and it's quite a good workout. With the loss of the old Unions holo training unit's she's had to make due with other methods at least until the Concord opens up its own units based on the unions and confederates tech. Or so she suspects at least still this one was very high end she found and seem quite pleased with this. Maya has some idea about Arthur and that doe get her a bit of a grin on her face he really comes far from the high schooler trying to not /die/.

Now comes to the next part after she's had a moment to listen to what Lilian has to say, as this is important.

She'll move to set her hand on the object and then she starts to focus blue fire bleeds out of her body and surround her as she channels her hair dances a bit as she goes on all the way as she focuses she goes through each station all the way up to sword where it turns black, there;s a moment as Maya seems to focus more trying to push her way through or is it for show she's holding back just a bit? Maya at this point seems to have reached her limit though Arthur or Staren might suspect Maya may be holding back.

She'll step away to let the next person do their thing and fall back into the crowd.
Orchid      Orchid chuckles. "Fair answer. I'm finding that these esoteric ideas manage to fit into my robot brain more easily than I expected. I think I know what I would be thinking were I trying to focus my 'power'." She watches the others take the test. Where would she wind up, were she capable of taking this test? She has a guess, but it is only that.
Septette Arcubielle      This is a test designed to measure the fine, esoteric qualities of the human psyche and emotional maturation- which usually means that Septette is either going to completely flunk or score as unnaturally perfect. She can't even read captchas, for crying out loud. "I'll give it my best shot," she says cheerfully, and cracks her knuckles. Or pretends to crack them, and makes the appropriate noise with her mouth. Synovial fluid is for squishies!

     The little killbot approaches her orb with curiosity and apparent caution, circling around it and eyeing it carefully. Even before she extends a hand to it, her Jewel is flickering various shades and intensities of white, as are a few other jewels nearby- her magical power isn't contained or focused internally, but perpetually sloughing off of her like an arcane Chernobyl. With sufficiently fine instruments, it'd be noticeable from orbit.

     As her clawed hand nears the Jewel, it shifts through the colors before erupting into a Mirror on contact. It freezes there for a moment or two: her precise mathematical manipulation of her thaumic output 'sweeps' across the band of possible outputs, turning the tumblers on what the Mirror wants to hear. White magical circles trace themselves in the air near her, their patterns shifting almost like spirographs under the modulating output. Finally, she cracks the code, and the Mirror blitzes through its colors before hesitantly unfolding into the Chalice.

     The Chalice foils her attempts at brute-forcing a solution for a good few seconds before she resorts to something else. The purple glow of her eyes expands into a suffusing radiance, and tiny sigils akin to the outward circles materialize on her irises, allowing her to visualize the inner magical workings of the Chalice like a puzzle. Her accelerated consciousness crunches it before it can respond to her analysis, forcing her way through to the Sword. "Tremendous clarity" and "zen-like focus" are already essentially inherent in her nature, and the Sword stage lasts for only a second before reorienting itself into the Crown.

     The Crown takes far longer for her to solve- "longer" subjectively, as she's dealing in sufficient mental speeds that the external difference is wholly negligible, but its arcane structure has by now become obtuse enough to require quite a lot of analysis and guesswork. Finally, it unfolds into the Throne... which doesn't seem to like her.

     Septette narrows her eyes and pushes the Throne into its starry form like she's picking a magical lock. It starts to ripple and shift just a little bit- but stutters, oscillating violently between its default state and the very first inklings of a further transformation. She stands there at a stalemate with the damnable device for a few moments, her shawl fluttering in the air currents produced by the arcane tension and sparks of purple-green thaumic energy crackling in the recesses of her ribcage... and then the Throne shoves her back, physically knocking her hands off of it with a metallic clang.

     Arcubielle takes a step back, rubbing at her wrist with her fingers while her eyes fade to a more normal luminescence. "I don't think it appreciated that. ... What're you getting at over there, Staren?"
Arthur Lowell     Arthur heads on in. Already, as he looks at this, he's worried. The more he hears and the more he sees, the more he worries. Because something that objectively measures his enlightenment poses... A unique problem. One that he's anxious about working with. "Can we, like, are we..." He starts, gritting his teeth awkwardly, then shuts his eyes tight and sort of sort of sighs.

    "This is gonna be some horseshit." He declares.

    Arthur gets into it, placing his hand on the orb. It gets to about the bullshit one might expect of Arthur, and is his "alignment" display of sorts, which is marked: ALIGNMENT ABSTRACTION. He sighs, shoving his eyes to one side and tapping one foot. "Fine, fine, yes, fine, whatever." He mutters, trying to wave the bars and numbers along to go faster. He seems to have absolutely no interest whatsoever in looking at his own statistics, zipping through the vast displays as fast as he can. But the displays themselves are no doubt of /substantial/ interest.

    First off: The Jewel is one where all five stages display quite full bars in neat rows on his ALIGNMENT ABSTRACT. Arthur has long since overcome his inherent discomfort with magely power, and has become a Mage, capital-M, taking its nature into himself without issue and knowing its secrets. It's why the Mirror's concentric surfaces display a wheel of five different levels, each color brimming. "Shut up, shut up, seriously. Shut the fuck up." He mutters, to seemingly nobody at all, or perhaps to himself. The ALIGNMENT ABSTRACTION has taken an eight-sided look, though only five colors are present, of course. His minigame hasn't returned. Rather, it seems more like something that he can't really control interactions with, like the nature of the measurements is locked onto his videogame physics and it's speaking to his nature in a way that he's not very good at shutting out.

    "Hhhhh." He grits his teeth and shoves his thumb and forefinger around the bridge of his nose and just sort of rubs it when he works on the chalice. His ALIGNMENT ABSTRACTION has now grown convoluted; his massive backlog of Completed Quests opens up, and an esoteric cursor parses through it. It splits along seams like a great transforming machine, revealing submenus and exotic gamified apparatuses that are selected and confirmed by a high-speed cursor. "Fuck off. Fuck off, seriously, just fuck off."

    It doesn't stop at the chalice. The sword provokes something that might be kind of unnerving to observe. The menus and displays of the ALIGNMENT ABSTRACTION are unfolding to so much detail that they're turning into a sort of weird fractal tree. Strange sub-menus, obscure game mechanic displays, branched grids of labeled systems covered in esoteric terminology, all stop looking like UIs from a game upgrade system and start looking more like exotic, symbolic scripture, or some kind of ancient alchemical display. Arthur seems to be as focused as it needs him to be, but still somehow hateful of the process; his Health Vial spikes occasionally as bits and pieces of his qualifications are found lacking. He only barely makes it to black.
Arthur Lowell     When he hits the crown, the fractal tree turns towards a big eight-pronged crown-shaped whorl, a vast construct of information that looks like the most mind-bending thousand-angle super-puzzle of an interface, the nightmare fever-dream of a game designer channeling the will of secret gods. It starts flickering towards white, while the ALIGNMENT ABSTRACT begins to bend into a four-dimensional hypercrown menu. Arthur, around that moment, seems to finish up whatever fight with game abstractions he was mentally having. "No, fuck that, no. Fuck that right to hell." He says, pulling his hand away. "Not for a fucking test, you fucking jackass, you want to expire right here?" He mutters to someone who doesn't seem to be any of the other people here. He shuts his eyes tight and shakes his head to clear it. "Whuh! WEIRD SHIT, dawg. Got some CRAZY-ASS PUZZLES up in that bitch! RAD AS HELL. Can't figure DICK out on some'a this, s'all NERD SHIT." He jerks a thumb to Staren trying to hotwire the orb, as if that backs up his point. He laughs briefly to Septette. "Yeah, this motherfucker got that JUDGMENT, huh? Fucked up."
Lilian Rook     If Lilian was surprised by the sit-in on the physical, this time is actually just stupid. She hasn't been overtly mean to Staren so far, but she does roll her eyes at the result of having picked a robot body to cheese past his being a scrawny nerd, only to run into the roadblock of now having to do something that requires he not be a robot, and from *there* continuing to cobble together mechanical solutions to juice the sensor itself. "I wonder how long you're going to keep that up." she chides, but mostly leaves it alone. These things sort themselves out. Orchid seems to fill out the other rock bottom of the absurd gap that happens, shortly adjoined by Aranea seemingly requiring 'mechanical' assistance, but making the station glow like an emergency flare while still not getting beyond the Mirror.

    Yang sits about where she'd expect, from what she knows of her, but somehow makes a giant totem bear happen, which Lilian doesn't seem to know what to make of. Then, Maya just overturns a bathtub of magical power into it and still achieves the Black Sword, Septette somehow goes all the way to the Throne despite being a robot, and Gilgamesh is . . . Gilgamesh. "Christ. I should have expected, but . . . wow. That's the first time I've ever even seen the Throne, only for two at once? Gilgamesh just pushed-- no, it just *jumped* there --and what did you even do?" she asks Septette second. "It looks like you 'solved' your way through it'."

    Despite Arthur's display being the most absurdly convoluted, even more so than his physical, all of her attention appears to be on his apparent distress, and the fact that he seems to have aborted it prematurely. Lilian's eyes narrow just a fraction after he cuts off after going so far as the Crown so easily, but stays true to her own words, and merely asks if he's quite alright. That, and "I really am some kind of talent scout, huh?"
Lilian Rook     After all that fancy and esoteric nonsense, what you're lead to next is shockingly mundane. It actually feels weird. Offputting, even. Lilian splits off again, and you're all taken to individual rooms, where you're literally sat at a desk, and at first given papers to fill out with a pen. It looks basically like a written exam, save that it asks odd, open ended, yet strangely particular questions.

    The written material concerns itself with personal questions first, largely revolving around describing oneself and their experiences, then gets into sort of abstract 'ink blot'-esque interpretations of metaphors, thought exercises, parables, and koans, a few of which are probably familiar to some (the Original Face, a version of the Trolley Problem, the Ship of Theseus, and things like that). It eventually culminates in asking for what amount to fifteen minute 'essays' on three major questions, regarding 'the nature of power and the responsibilities of those who have it', 'the nature of human beings, what defines a person/consciousness, and what the purpose of 'people' is', and 'what is right in the universe and what is wrong in the universe', all with vague moral undertones, but not really being about ethics.

    The second half is equally mundane, but with a sort of uncanny element to it. Each person, after having their papers finished, has a trio of people brought into a room with them. Qualified examiners, no doubt. They're different for each person, but there are always three, and they appear to have a certain pattern to them.

    The trio of judges begin an interview. As in, like a job interview, almost. Questions where they're looking for correct answers, and closely scrutinizing how well, how promptly, how sincerely (or convincingly), how consistently, and how coherently they're answered. For a while, they're basically all the same questions as the written portion, with some twists and alternative takes that might disguise them as a different question with a different answer. Soon, they cease being 'answer the question', and become actual debates, where you're supposed to argue and defend an outcome.
Lilian Rook     After a while, the roles of the three become more and more obvious. One is always assigned to be hostile and critical, attacking the validity of answers, skewering professed ideals, and doing their best to rattle and shoot down everything one says.

    One never objects to much of what you say at all. They're always accepting, seemingly interested in or impressed by your answers. They repeat your conclusions for verification, asking 'if they've got it right', but always subtly off what you're trying to get at. They provide 'outs' whenever you seem stressed, or offer slightly different worded alternatives to your points that are immediately accepted by all three, despite not quite being what you're insisting on.

    One challenges every answer with a question. They meticulously record everything you say, and then constantly refer back to it, throwing your own words in your face, citing your own scripture to argue against you, and demanding that you justify everything with proofs, throwing out endless examples and hypothetical cases that they then put through elaborate and confusing hoops that track back around into the answers you've given, slowly becoming more and more of a spiderweb of the volume of 'things you've said' obviously increases as the interview continues.

    There is one more trick to it too, though few will figure it out. One is always, mentally, fairly mundane. One is always on guard against manipulative efforts and passively resilient to glamours, compulsions, and the like. One is always especially trained to be practically immune to all forms of non-verbal suggestion and command, and to veil their thoughts from being read. This is intentional. There is always a weak link, always an anchor, and always a middle ground. They *expect* magic, psychic ability, or other unfair advantages to be leveraged here, secretly and without saying so. It's the second layer of the process that is revealed to someone who tries to 'cheat'. Cheating is, in fact, almost the whole point.
Yang Xiao Long     Yang turns out to be strictly average, maybe even below average in the case of mental gymnastics. Her answers are short, direct, sometimes missing the point entirely and sometimes striking it dead on. Yang is not one for obfuscation or misdirection, meaning she'd probably be useless against a creature that can easily misdirect her perceptions.

    Though the interview segment shows she has at least some latent ability to read people she interacts with. Picking up cues and clues from bodylanguage and physical tells everyone has, reading them and collating them without really thinking about it. She grabs onto the gimmick, but still doesn't seem all that good at the intricacies of the gymnastics involved. She is stubborn on her points and isn't easily swayed from her convictions though.
Gilgamesh      Gilgamesh's eyes stray towards Septette. Well. That was interesting. He'd have to get to know her better. Lilian's statement that there is no such thing as a perfect score puts him in a much better mood, combined with something else, and by the time he's sitting at the desk he's much more comfortable and pleased with himself. He hadn't expected to get the Tower, anyway. Whoever Buddha and Jesus were, they were obviously Divine Spirits. Maybe Ereshkigal or Ishtar could do that, but he knew his place. He was the Wedge of Heaven, not its lord. And he wouldn't want to be king of the gods, anyway. Messy things. Awful things. Leave that to others.

     Gilgamesh produces a golden quill pen. Someone looking closely might recognize it as a metallic feather. Someone looking closer and endowed with knowledge of mythology would probably see that it's a Stymphalides feather, or from a bird that is much like it.

     The King sets it down on the paper. It stands up on its own and starts writing. He, being who he is, kicks his feet back and closes his eyes, letting the pen do all the work while he relaxes. He even produces a goblet of that incredibly sweet-smelling wine of the gods, sipping it lazily as the quill scribbles furiously.

     The history section reads like the actual Epic; it even starts with *Surpassing All Other Kings* as the first words, following up with things that are not in the Epic - his birth as the child of the goddess Ninsun, how he was designed on a cellular level as a complete life-form before he was placed in the womb, his adventures as a child (it's going to make great reading for somebody, although Gilgamesh was apparently a pretty...*active*...kid), and then he just sort of trails off to explore others. His thought processes are firmly inhuman, displaying leaps of logic and morality than humans simply couldn't make - the Trolley Problem has a laundry list of qualifiers beside it, including if they're one of a small number of people, if they're Babylonian, if they're part of a Kingdom he actively rules, et cetera, and exactly how many lives he's willing to trade for each level. The numbers get...high.

     The Ship of Theseus problem gets handwaved away. He doesn't care about such things. If a thing is broken and repaired it's the same object unless the act of breaking it somehow rendered it unable to function or dirtied it in some vague metaphysical way, in which case it's not and thus worthless.

     His essays are...extensive.

     The nature of power and responsibility is just ten pages (the pen writes very fast) of discussion on what it means to be higher than human beings and what it means to lead them, on how extensive humankind's need for someone like Gilgamesh is, and how he is responsible to his own code and morality and laws, with the word of the King being a necessary component of rule and also being necessarily honest and without contradiction.
Gilgamesh      The nature of humans is...unpleasant, for about ten pages, before it ends on a surprisingly high note. Gilgamesh describes that humans were made to do the jobs the gods wouldn't do, to be janitors built out of mud, to do all the work no one in their right minds ever would. He talks about how humans are inherently worthless creatures crawling in the mud, little more than beasts and mongrels and filthy dogs. Then it climbs up into what makes a *true* human, what makes a person have *value*, the excellence and striving for it that is the mark of the true human spirit, and finishes with describing humankind as the race that should one day rule all things in Heaven and Earth, all the stars in the sky, and all the things beyond them, but with the bleak acceptance that they probably won't.

     The right/wrong essay is two sentences.

     'The King is right.'
     'The King determines what is wrong.'

     Yeah.

     Gilgamesh is led into the interview room, and his oratory skill *really* takes off. He keeps up with every twist, every turn, every lapse. He's completely consistent, inhumanly so, walking a straight line to cut through every turn and twist and curveball thrown at him by the judges. In debates he stands. He's forceful, projecting, with all the arrogance and majesty one would expect of a King, giving speeches more than debating because debating is *beneath* him. You don't *debate* Gilgamesh; you *listen* to Gilgamesh and then defend *your* point.

     He's not *using* any cheating. He doesn't need to cheat. He's the King. The King doesn't need to cheat to state his case. Any attempts to turn his words back on him are met with illustrative and well-thought-out examples. Any attempts to press hypotheticals are turned around to hypotheticals for the judges. After a while, the King starts actively trying to take control of the whole interview, examining the judges as much as they're examining him. It's probably uncanny, sitting in a room with a golden god, with a golden soul, with a literal legend who is proving every bit the creature the stories claim. Surpassing All Other Kings is clearly not just for show.

     That said, it's also unsettling. More than unsettling. His morality is strictly humanocentric, but it's also Gilgamesh-centric. He doesn't go back on his word, he doesn't lie, but this also means he's perfectly willing to sacrifice thousands, millions, of human lives. Indeed he thinks they probably *should* be sacrificed. Humanity is much too comfortable. He presses the judges on this issue *extensively*, on how humans have grown comfortable and weak in most of the countries of Multi-Vars, on how modernity has rotted them away. He illustrates the judges' own world as an example of what he wants, what he wants to see - people suffering, but that suffering making them strong. There's an air of approval to the whole thing, but it's hard-won, and the judges have to *work* for it.
Orchid      Next trial! Orchid may follow up later with Aranea about that funny look, but for now she's doing the paper test.

     And on the subject of funny looks, she gives the paper a funny look at those first few questions. She pauses long, considering, and nods.

     Orchid writes her story, of how she became who she is now. She gives a brief description of the Maverick Uprising, and her own part in it, a reploid built to stop her own kind. She tells in much greater detail about the attack on the Maverick Hunter headquarters, how afraid she was, what she saw happen to people she knew, her friends. She writes of how one of those friends, infected with a virus, betrayed another, and all she could do was watch. She bares her soul, and describes why she asked for a transfer to s different specialization, and how her time in the multiverse has been changing her. What it meant to go against her purpose, to kill a human to keep them from killing others.

     In the second part of the test, it goes poorly for Orchid at first, as her own conflict about the killing is such a large attack vector... But she starts pushing back, picking up the true test, and starts grilling the judges on their own inconsistencies, the bad faith in their own positions. No, Orchid isn't an orator like Gilgamesh, but she is solid in the fact that she wants to help people, even if the means is not always clear.
Staren     Staren is frustrated after going that far and not getting a clear answer, and getting the impression that this isn't seen as a valid way of completing the test. He collects up his things and moves on, though.

    Time for the written exam.

    He's never encountered Original Face before. He'd be annoyed if he recognized it as Zen, but as it is he thinks for a moment and then writes 'I have resting bitch face so probably an angry-looking face'. The trolley problem is answered utilitarianly but with a note that the real world is never so clean-cut and there's usually a way to jump the tracks. Theseus depends on the question you're trying to answer -- a ship made of new parts may need to be treated differently, you're still you even if doctors have to keep in mind that you're old, etc. A 'person' is a mind with certain psychological properties shared by most people in the multiverse but not something you can give a simple answer to -- a lot of people are more or less different, and there's no hard line but those who can't coexist with everyone else. Right and wrong are concepts in the minds of people, not physical properties of the universe, so what's wrong with the universe is everything we disagree with.

    Anyone who's known Staren for awhile or debated philosophy with him can imagine how the next part goes. He's firm in his convictions, says that since right and wrong come from the mind any other source is just wrong and no, you can't objectively prove it that's silly. Mercy over justice, it's all about the future, if people dying is bad then cheating death is good.

    Staren does not truck with people changing his words and will pick apart the differences in the meanings changed for hours.

    He's happy to check words with the second judge -- if they can actually catch him in a contradiction he says 'You know, you have a point' and re-evaluates his position. Morality can't have a hard proof, though. And he'll gladly discuss hypotheticals, though after a point he starts asking 'Are you really sure you want to spend time on this? You're getting pretty absurd. But IN that situation, I'd say...'

    It never occurs to him to even try to cheat or read minds, even if he could. Hell, he can't read body language and facial expressions much of the time.
Aranea Highwind     ... a written exam?
    Was she entirely too on the nose with the campus remark?

    Aranea sits, glancing at the paperwork. Not her favorite task in the world, though one she's versed in by necessity.

    Her accounts are factual. Straightforward. Short, typically, and simple. Direct. The trolley problem is answered with a mercenary's viewpoint - which side is paying to be saved.

    Power is to be used to look out for yourself, because others won't.
    Humans are defined by what they want that they don't already have.
    Wrong and right are a matter of who's asking and who's answering.

    When the judges question her, Aranea answers quickly - frankly - promptly and sincerely, always. She's not close-minded about her answers, but typically solid in her beliefs. Once she figures out one of the three is always attacking back, that's the one she puts the most emphasis on trumping whenever possible.

    There's no cheating or manipulation. Her physical language is always in-tune with her words. If cheating is the point, she won't score high - she's too direct for that, as much of a spear verbally as she is physically.
Maya With the magic test over Maya seems pleased at her results and will head on to the next? The written exam? She's back in school she takes it well. Maya's tale is an interesting one, family killed in a proxy war by the most powerful noble houses of another nation using her home city-state as a battleground later framed for arms smuggling which lead her into dealing with a conspiracy of heretics of her world's primary religious sects, her multiversal one are quite long she has a lot of experience with major scale crisis on various worlds.

On the thought exercises there she does do shockingly well even if there's sense of self-loathing at the call she'd have to make with the trolly problem.

Then comes the nature of power her answer go into depth about her thoughts on how vast levels of it corrupt people if it gets control of them. The human beings?? Is pretty cut and dry to her which comes down is the soul human or not? The one on power? Power is needed but also dangerous as it corrupts being unwilling to let go of power when the need for it is done, is the real problem with it Maya finds. The craving the hoarding of it, that's the issue. As for people? To find a place in the world and seek to be happy.

Now comes the next part, Maya actually catches on to the judges natures, she'll answer questions, with ones o her own, she does not lose her cool. Maya keeps constant with her own answers on the test and she will endure it. She survives it though and is glad when it's over, sadly Maya has no powers to mess with peoples minds in that way.

When finished Maya sighs a bit noting.

"That was like last meeting with the Chosen's houses lords."
Septette Arcubielle      The written portion goes by exceptionally quickly for Septette, if for no other reason than that she handwrites like a fax machine. Words in lavender ink flow from her quill pen in a pragmatically simple printed font. "The escape from Theseus's paradox lies in the unreality of the order human cognition imposes on the world. We can account for all of the atoms; every splinter of wood. The error is not with the universe, but with the mental shortcuts you take in simplistically describing it."

     The nature of power is "the degree to which one's intentions are a predictively causative influence on the future", and its responsibility is "none in itself, but by my utility function, to preserve the existence and wellbeing of sapient entities". Her description of the nature of sapience and humanity references several obtuse measures of metacognition and introspective self-referentiality in a Strange Loops sense, and she seems to think their purpose is to pursue their own fulfillment- ideally through mutualistically helping to fulfill others.

     Her sense of right and wrong is incredibly tightly defined, as the judges find out. She can describe her own utility function to an excruciating point of precision, down to the decimal points of life-costs with mechanical glibness. She concedes that her axiomatic values are essentially arbitrary, as all axiomatic values must be, but holds to them without budging an inch nonetheless.

     No mind-manipulation tricks here, but she can read the judges well enough, and even plays with them a bit: at one point she deliberately throws them a subtly flawed argument, takes their criticism in stride, pretends to think about it, and quite reasonably concedes their point before revising it with their critique in mind.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur Lowell seems good! He even shows off an assortment of stats, displaying how his Health Vial and Aspect are still nearish the high side! Cool, that doesn't actually answer the question, but cool. He does a double thumbs-up and a grinning wink too! Nice. Definitely everything is fine and nothing is bad. Mostly because he can't /stomach/ the idea of showing the least bit vulnerability around Lilian, who he still has to hassle a lot.

    Arthur's responses on the next tests are a little wonky. After the wonkiness of the crown, several of his responses seem like deliberately bullheaded or stupid bullshit. He is /very/ intentionally distancing himself from any intellectual voice to his approach, though at least the experience description seems mostly focused on his adventures in Sburb (with goofy little illustrations, even!) so he's on topic. By the time he reaches the last questions, though, Arthur has sort of stopped stressing out quite so much, and can be convinced to handle things a little less bullheadedly. His approach to this is straightforward.

    The nature of power is a nature of respect. As you gain power, you distance yourself more and more from the people who are going to be affected most by that power, and the more and more you suffer less consequences for inappropriate use of that power. Accumulated power, he says, is therefore an expiration date; the more you have, the closer you are to disconnecting entirely from responsibility.

    As for the nature of humans, Arthur is surprisingly terse; he thinks that consciousness doesn't really have an objective measure, and that you have to focus on keeping a subjective measure of who qualifies as human or conscious that works well with your context and with the others around you who you already know for sure are conscious. The purpose, he says, is...

    He has drawn a small, fully functional menu. When one presses buttons on it with their fingers, its display works perfectly, though it still remains just drawn on paper. It is the interface for a high score table of people who have been alive, presumably the top ten people who were the best at being alive. Only their initials are displayed. AAA is still somehow at the top. If this induces an encroaching existential fear in the proctor, that might be an accident.

    Arthur's response to the interview is, uhhhh... Hmm. When he's face to face with people, he can't really keep from forcing himself away from seeming intellectual. But, to his credit, his beliefs are strong, he just chooses to represent and justify them with the worst ideas possible. The antagonistic interviewer gets a good taste of Arthur's old Xbox Live habits, the nuances of which are best left unspoken. The curious one runs into more trouble than one wouild expect, as Arthur insists, in several cases, on /not being right/, or at least not being considered to have an intelligent position. Yet, somehow, he winds up constantly rising to the challenger's bait with just barely under-threshold answers, like he'll only barely fail to seem intelligent for any question, regardless of how high-minded it may be.

    All three of them have their own separate displayed social bars, which seem to measure some abstract depiction of Arthur's conflict with them. The mundane one's bar is clear, the resilient one's is only based on his expression, and the trained one has a bar that basically doesn't mean anything accurate; it shows off the limits of Arthur's interface as the limits of Arthur's own perception, rather than linking directly to reality. Arthur hardly seems aware of the measurements, himself.
Lilian Rook     Whether or not Gilgamesh tries to cheat is sort of irrelevant. When you're in a room with the glorious radiance of the King, it's natural that things go off the boring course. In his case, he finds a young man of vaguely middle-eastern descent eventually just failing to challenge him, more or less nodding along enthusiastically and agreeing with everything he says. A man of enough years to have grey hairs and a sun-leathered face treats with him suspiciously, taking long pauses to second guess and assess his own thoughts before venturing words. A stern-looking, bronze-skinned, dark-haired lady in glasses glides through without batting an eye, grilling him like the others. The spectrum of resistance to the King's glory is present, and measured.

    Of course they're all very eager to hear and read what he has to say by now, after what he'd done in the previous two tests. They're clearly trying harder than they usually do, getting into the occasion and sweating it out to the end, pushing as far as they can with their considerable experience with this particular tests, as well as words and social maneuvering in general. By the end, the woman actually shakes his hand and tells him it was a pleasure, and that they hope to see more of him in the future.

    The other rooms go considerably easier on Yang for obviously being a teen who is still in school. Going off what they've seen so far, they let her know they're impressed by her run in the gym, and are pleased to find out that she can use her Aura well enough to get exactly where she should be in the second test despite not being from here. They take on a different tack when grilling Orchid though; her essay appears to be in order, but they really want to poke and prod at what a robot has to say, like they're putting some form of convoluted second order Turing test into it as well.

    Despite the fact that, by the end, one of Aranea's judges remarks that she sees only what is in front of her and takes things at their face, the three of them are overall pleased by her unhesitating conviction, her consistency of character, and quite probably her extremely mercenary attitude, uncomplicated by soft spots and the typical weaknesses people develop in ordinary lives. Maya's opinions on how power corrupts aren't the Wrong answer, but they're clearly the answer that the proctors like least. It seems she 'passes', but she definitely gets the feeling they're keeping an eye on her, despite her overall high-ish scores.

    Septette, despite writing like an enlightened benevolent sociopath AI overlord, conversely seems to meet with some amount of approval. Some of it might just being so ridiculously open with herself in something that no doubt usually involves a lot of obfuscation and misdirection, but they seem to like what she has to say as well. The proctors also aren't exactly dull-witted --especially the obligatory senior-most and most mentally defended, and the debates eventually devolve into them arguing back and forth with Septette while the other two fall behind.

    Arthur only gets the Excalibur_Face.png and eye rolling for a short while. About halfway through, the lead judge seems to clue into the fact that he's not actually a dipshit kid so much as he's doing this on purpose, and the whole tone of the debate shifts course from there, in a way that he can almost palpably feel in the air in the room, while the youngest mostly seems a little lost. It's also the oldest that seems vaguely horrified by the initials AAA in a difficult to place sort of way.
Lilian Rook     Staren's proctors get to experience the mythical Staren Hour for themselves. Considering they're doing it on purpose, it's not quite the same experience, but phew boy if he isn't the last one out by a considerable margin and if everyone in the room doesn't sort of look like they'd rather go home by the end.

    Lilian appears to have been doing the equivalent of playing with her smartphone in the hall, fiddling with an AR display projected by a wearable computer unit in her choker, congratulates everyone on their test, and then gives them a thin smile that's starkly at odds with the hesitant look in her eyes, like someone wishing their friend luck as they enter a contest that they both know they aren't going to win. "Just remember, you can leave at any time." is what she has to say about the upcoming test.
Lilian Rook     Since it'd be pointless to try and grill people on academia and arcane knowledge regarding a world they're not actually from, as well as the aforementioned 'they're going on combat position criteria and they already have accessible information about how well they beat things up', two tests are skipped and they go up another many floors to what is termed with the dreaded name of 'mental resilience'.

    This too is a sealed chamber sort of deal, but they're pretty small, private, and dimly lit. You have to go into them individually, rather than being able to share one in turns. Each one is connected to an intercom system, where a calm and soothing-voiced professional on the other end tells them that the process is very simple: you sit in the middle of the room, and every so often they'll ask you if you want to continue the test. If you say yes, they clear the stage and start you on the next. If you say no, they cross off the stage you're on. You don't get points for finishing a stage but declining to go to the next. There are seven stages in total. Good luck.

    Why this setup exists as it does becomes really obvious really fast. Though there's nothing really in the room except a single chair to sit in and a door that locks ominously from the outside, you're immediately aware of the presence of Something Else in there with you. That something isn't visible. Isn't tangible. Isn't human. But it wants you to stop the test.

    At first, it's the mental equivalent of 'asking nicely'. A gentle mental presence pokes and nudges to call it off and just leave right now. It isn't very powerful, but it is faint enough to be somewhat subtle, pushing and prodding to answer no when the instructor asks five minutes later. Not too bad. A totally mundane person would immediately answer negative and then go 'wait why did I stop?' a second later, but it's not too bad.

    The stage after that is much more subtle. Insidious, even. For the most part, it feels like a break. Did they say there'd be breaks between? What bubbles to mind is much like a normal set of intrusive thoughts, coming in out of sheer boredom of sitting in a chair for five minutes before anything happens. This is sort of dumb. What's the point of this? Does this actually matter? It can't affect the grade that much. Wouldn't bailing out early be convenient because then you'd never be put up against something mentally stressful? The later stages are probably going to be horrific. The physical was exhausting too. Just come back fresh. Plus it's not really fair to do this right after that incredibly vexing interview. For most, it's like there's nothing in the room at all. It's their own rationalization. Bargaining. The mental ability to justify a 'cheat day' or weasel out of a commitment.

    It comes back in force after that. A lot of force. Whoever answers positive a second time is immediately blasted by hard, oppressive mental force, just straight up attempting to forcefully jack the words from your mouth. The feeling of the Other is strong now, trying to get in, take over, straining your force of will to an exhausting, headache-inducing degree. It's done playing nice, and forcing you to fight it --to push past it, and really sweat and work for it.
Lilian Rook     If one can answer positive a third time and subject themselves to worse, the stage after that begins inducing not just thoughts, but vivid visual, auditory, and tactical hallucinations. It stops being about control, and becomes all about making sure you never want to spend a second in that room ever again. For ten solid minutes, the presence does everything it can to shock, to horrify, to terrorize, to confuse and beguile, to bully or tempt you, into leaving. Nothing is off limits.

    It brutalizes your senses with all the sensations of the things that make you want to cringe, recoil, panic, or flee. It's not above jump scares, nor horrible sensations like worms under the skin, a razor dragged over the eyes, terrible ear-splitting screaming, or sights and smells of horrible violence and gore, but more common and subtle are the parts where the Other plays smart. There are situations where the Other takes the shape of some horrible thing in the room, switches off the lights, shorts the intercom, and then the thing that is your exact nightmare informs you that the test has gone wrong, it fakes the sounds of the instructors banging on the door to try and get in, and moves in to kill or disfigure you.

    There are situations where it instead judges that other deceptions are in order, and instead mutes the comms to hurriedly share a tale of how it's trapped there, how you've been rused, how the others are all gone already and what the supervisors are really going to do to you with this fake 'test' --how they're going to implant things into your mind in the next stage and you must get out.

    There are even situations where it takes on something entirely pleasant. Relaxing. Dreamlike. Euphoric. Addictive. To those it judges can't be intimidated, or have their doubts preyed upon, it provides the Butterfly Dream, where everything is absolutely wonderful and the time just flies, until you're prompted to answer whether you want to ditch this and move back on to the horrible things, and the temptation to answer 'just five more minutes' is completely overwhelming.

    Hell, it isn't above taking the form of an obnoxious little kid screaming and making insanely annoying noises over and over again in the corner for ten minutes solid if that's what it takes.

    If one is foolhardy enough to keep going, the presence dispenses with all indirect methods and issues a Command. It fills the room like the blow of a hammer and Demands that you give up. It doesn't struggle and wrestle with you and try to take control; overwhelming, irresistible, dominating power, fit to make one feel like a tiny, irrelevant nobody, woefully out of their depth and insane for ever coming here, makes it an Order, a couple of steps short of receiving a vision from God in its overwhelming splendor, intensity, and implicit wrath and promise of Consequences.
Lilian Rook     Someone who can overwhelm even *that* is then plunged into total darkness. Total silence. Total numbness. Complete, floating sensory deprivation. Worse. You can't feel your own heartbeat. You can't tell your orientation. You can't even tell if your eyes are open or closed, no matter how fast you blink. You could be pinching your cheek and not even know. You could have in fact have fallen out of the chair and hurt yourself, or someone could have broken in and stabbed you, and you wouldn't even know. Anyone or anything could be doing anything imaginable in this state of total, complete, utter vulnerability. Even the crazy hallucinations the human brain is supposed to experience in times like these, to preserve some vague proximity of sanity, don't come. All sense of time vanishes too. Have they already asked for the answer? Saying yes doesn't do anything. For all you know, you might be dead. Like this forever. Forever.

    What finally breaks it is being asked one more time, and this time they triple ask you to make certain you're absolutely sure, forcing you to repeat a full statement of consent before doing it. If someone *somehow* got that far, and *still* wants to go, what they're subjected to is a full sixty seconds of full experience hallucinations which defy description, defy understanding, and defy common sense. Not only the five senses, but additional special senses, and senses you never even knew existed, are overwhelmed by the unfathomable, ineffably alien, and utterly incompatible with the experiential paradigm of the mortal mind.

    There's no subtlety or urging to it anymore. There's no more yes or no to answer. It's basically just torture at that point, of the most bizarre and incomprehensible kind. It hurts. It's terrifying. It makes thoughts run in a million directions that don't make any senses. It makes one's pulse feel fit to explode out their mouth. It's roiling, inchoate madness, so vivid and intense that if someone doesn't quit before sixty seconds elapse, it ends automatically for their own safety.

    You get a towel, snacks, and free beverages after, though. That's nice. They also check your blood pressure and pupil response to make sure nobody had an aneurysm or something. Lilian assures everyone that she hates this one the most too.
Gilgamesh      The King returns the handshake and says that he will of course be back, it's some of the most entertainment he's had in weeks. By the time he walks out he's in a *thoroughly* good mood, and he cheerfully expresses as much to the people waiting with him, Lilian, Yang, Aranea, Septette, Staren, Arthur, and Orchid included. When Lilian wishes them good luck, the King's face takes an odd turn.

     "I always have good luck."

     This is true. His luck is A-rank. He has the luck of forty men.

     Gilgamesh enters the dim room and sits down, producing a goblet of divine wine immediately. It's not for him. It's for the other presence. He sets it on a table that spontaneously appears in front of him, along with a golden pitcher of the stuff. Along with that is a golden armchair. His own chair is replaced by a golden throne, which he leans back in. He doesn't treat it like a test. He treats it like an offering. The asking nicely gets a sneer and a scoff, and a gesture at the wine.

     Then the next stage. Gilgamesh knows his own thoughts. He knows his own body intimately. He dismisses them out of hand, casually telling them out loud that, yes, he wants to keep going, don't bother with this, skip to the worst stage. He doesn't have any interest in playing around and he is perfectly capable of blowing the place to Kingdom Come if he wants.

     It doesn't agree. It tries to force his words, and this gets the King's eyes to flare red and a burst of swords come slitting into the room. No one is allowed to speak for the King. Try it again, he warns audibly, and there will be Consequences.

     Then comes his nightmare.

     It's such a subtle thing, at first. It's just...the world. But slowly, bit by bit, it crawls on. And nothing changes. Men sitting around in cubicles. Women waiting for something exciting to happen to them. On, and on, and on, and on, the onrush of time continues, until finally, at last, there's nothing left, no one left. Just maggots, bones, and dust. And the King watches as the last man dies, not gloriously, not screaming, not even memorably - just wasting away of loneliness and old age, with not a single accomplishment to his name. The species, stripped of all value. All the accomplishments, all the achievements, wasted.

     Then a second image. It's Enkidu, dying. It's the Epic of Gilgamesh, playing out before him. He already knows this. But to face it again, to see it again, to hear it again, is just agonizing. He's forced to watch as they triumph over Ishtar, that moment of exultation, and then the breaking of his heart as Enkidu crumbles to clay. He's forced to watch a lonely man wander the desert for years, seeking an immortality he will never have. He's forced to watch the snake consume his achievement, and his return to a broken Uruk, all collapsed, all gone. Not his nightmare. His future.

     The King produces a goblet of wine. He's silent at the question the first time, taking a large gulp. Then he says that he will continue.
Gilgamesh      The force tries to Command him and give him an Order and call him tiny and irrelevant.

     He laughs. He tells it to go back to the nightmare. He is Gilgamesh, King of All That Is. Any attempt to tell him he Isn't is easily disproven. And then there's the rain of swords again, and another Warning. Don't do that again if you value your own existence. I have something here than can kill even fear.

     He's plunged into complete darkness. This is fine. The King knows that as long as his mind exists, so does he. He can tell the difference between life and death. He knows what life is. He just sits there the entire time, no matter how long it goes, until he is asked if he wishes to continue.

     Yes.

     Yes.

     Yes, I, Gilgamesh, King of Heroes, consent.

     And then he's exposed to pain. It's sheer, mind-numbing, hellacious pain. Gilgamesh is superhuman, but even he can't just walk this off. Sixty seconds pass, and when he emerges, the King has the proud look on his face as to be expected. He turns down the towel, the snacks, and the beverages as a magical scarf swirls out of nowhere to clean him of its own accord, and a veritable buffet table simply falls out of the air for everyone to enjoy. When you drink with the King, you drink in luxury.

     The King avoids answering any questions. His blood pressure and pupil responses are well beyond human norms, so who can even say if he's suffering? If something's wrong? He doesn't seem like it, but then, how could you ever tell with a demigod?
Staren     "Oh geeze, they made you all wait for me? Sorry, but my examiners were being /idiots./" Staren explains when he sees everyone else in the hall.

    And next is the Waiting Test.

    Or so it seems at first. Ironically, if the Other had taken that angle -- convincing him that the test was a test to see at what point you realize you're being had and to just get out of there -- he probably would have said no at the first stage.

    Instead he's having all these thoughts in the context of giving up because it's not THAT big a deal, and if he was that dismissive of these tests he wouldn't be here today in the first place. Even if he realizes what's going on, he'll only want to fight it.

    Stage three is an ordeal, but Staren is stubborn. Temporarily disabling his speakers and playing videogames in his head to provide distractions, although he probably doesn't do WELL at the games.

    When stage four begins, he almost immediately stands up and says "Alright, I'm done." Firmly, without a trace of fear. He's not rattled by the initial hallucinations -- it's all stuff he COULD stand, for some amount of time -- but he's not going to psychologically torture himself for a test.

    He can't enjoy the drinks. If others who made it longer discuss their tests, he looks increasingly worried at what people were subjected to.

    And he looks at the door where the others come in. Septette will be okay, right? She won't have turn off anything that she forgets to turn back on after, right?
Aranea Highwind     The awful gauntlet of progressively harsher mind control doesn't seem too bad at first. Certainly not what was warned about. You don't usually say 'you can leave anytime you want' for something as mild as a voice gently nudging you to give up for five minutes.

    It's annoying, certainly, but Aranea is doing this to expand her potential range of contracts by a world. A world is a lot. It's usually worth some hassle. This has a clear end goal and benefit, and it's worth sticking through to the end.

    And so the first stage barely registers.
    And the second stage barely registers.
    The third starts to wear her out.

    But Aranea deals with it strategically. She roots herself in her seat. Grips her spear, tries to shut off every voice, every sound. Picture herself on the battlefield, jumping from point A to point B with not a care in the world besides how hard she's going to land.

    Three down.

    And four is the limit.

    Between invasive images, jumpy animatronics, and entirely too much blood and too many screams, she reaches the same conclusion as Staren in about exactly as much time. This a test, and four deep is going to be plenty enough to get some kind of passing grade. Probably.

    Nothing she cares about is sufficiently at stake to put up with this shit. "I'm out. That's enough. Kudos on the nightmare fuel, but this stopped being fun ten minutes ago."
Staren     Staren meets Aranea's gaze when they both come out of the test at the same time, but he doesn't say anything.

    Later, Gilgamesh emerges. Staren asks if they just kept up the shocking images and the pain. Gilgamesh says he was tortured.

    Staren wonders what could torture him more than the future that has already befallen mankind, but doesn't ask.
Septette Arcubielle      Septette accepts Lilian's foreboding well-wishes with some degree of hesitation, squares her shoulders bravely, ensures that her shawl is settled, and goes into the Horrible Room. She takes her seat, folds her hands tightly in her lap, takes a deep breath, and... waits.

     And waits.

     And waits a little bit more.

     "Yes, I'd like to continue," she says for the first time, folding an origami flower out of one of the pages of her pocket-journal. It's a very nice flower. Some sort of orchid.

     "Go ahead," she says for the third time, adjusting the hydraulics in her left arm and meditatively sharpening her claws. One of them has a little scratch on it. She's going to need to get that buffed out.

     "I'm absolutely sure I'm ready for the next phase," she intones dryly, searching the room inch by inch for some kind of hidden compartment or trapdoor or Candid Camera. That's the test, right? That's gotta be the test. She's going to find the papered-over dumbwaiter with a stupid prize in it any minute now.

     "I am super-duper definitely absolutely ready," she says for the final time, sitting on the floor with her legs crossed and her chin in her hands. Her quill pens, journal, Warp Wire, and handful of spare parts are assembled into an elaborate tower. She lackadaisically pokes at it with a finger. It falls over. This tiny act of destruction fails to adequately titillate her.

     Sixty seconds later, the door opens and Septette walks out. She's painted her "nails".

     "Holy shit you guys look awful," she says under her 'breath' as she scoops up a goblet of wine and takes a sip. Then, in a slightly more concerned tone: "Everybody okay?"
Staren     Finally the one Staren's been waiting for emerges. "Septette. Do you have any functions of your body or psyche disabled that weren't disabled before the test? If so, what and why." He asks, firmly.
Gilgamesh      The wine is literally the alcohol of the gods. Its taste is far beyond what any human could craft. Gil is just sort of sipping it lightly, staring off into space. When Septette asks if he's okay, he says, "I am the King. I am always perfect." It's another terse non-answer, but he's Gilgamesh, it's probably hard to really get in his head, right? He's probably fine.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur gets into that chamber and sits down. He waits. He waits. And then he's asked if he wants to continue. And of course, the usual thing for Arthur happens: a menu pops up.

         [YES]
        >[NO]

    He almost speaks up, but then he smiles in a way that seems to realize something. His cursor shifts up and he agrees to continue. The second time, he starts playing on his phone and otherwise getting distracted. There's a LOT of fertile ground in his brain for rationalization, but it's hard to get him to back down from a fight, which this clearly is. Oddly though, every so often he'll look up from his phone and notice that the cursor's been pushed to "no" instead of "yes".

         [YES]
        >[NO]

    It happens several times, and he has to consciously make sure that it's set to "yes" next time. Then comes the next test. A forceful effort to enforce an answer of no comes with an active, persistent effort to move to and select "no", and his mental struggle is clearly shown alongside the persisting effort to move the cursor back to "yes". He holds his mouth shut physically. He jams multiple fingers into his mouth to hold his tongue. It's pretty intense.

    Stage four. Hope those walls are reinforced, because what Arthur does involves not just visible "fighting" of creatures that seem great and terrible, but also repeated uses of his portal abilities, trying to dump something out that has joined the room with him. He seems more and more sick, disoriented, and nauseous, and keeps constantly trying to remove something from the room and send it somewhere else, a hallucinated substance that he can't deal with and which warps his ability to fight. His menu has changed as well:

        ^...
         [NO]
         [NO]
         [NO]
        >[NO]
         [NO]
         [NO]
         [NO]
        v...

    He's much more vulnerable to euphoric approaches, but sadly, he's still technically below the age of thirty and so all of his euphoria realms involve being fucking dead. After a time, his cursor seems to scroll to finally finding a "yes" to select.

    Then comes the Command. His willpower is absurd, high-intensity and pushed to a limit to wrestle with this. Several times it gets to "NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!" But he staves it off, swearing at the Other, shouting, but seemingly not emotionally vulnerable to divine mandate, for whatever reason. Still, though, the menu persists, but is in a more bleak state:
        >[NO]

    When the request comes in, he spends several minutes trying to say "yes", but seems to frankly lack to vocabulary. Stage 4 took too much out of him, so much that he couldn't get quite through Stage 5; from the beginning, it was a doomed issue. He's gotta say no, it's the only option.

    He swaggers into the post-test room, looking confident, cocksure, ready to shout some stupid bullshit again. He opens his mouth and immediately rushes to one of the trash cans to stress-vomit, then sort of collapse on his side near it.

    What a cool kid.
Yang Xiao Long     Yang's a stubborn girl. Brash, impulsive, impatient at times. Reckless.

    She sits in the room, listening to that presence speak. She ignores it, and answers to continue.

    Then the subtle prodding begins. Yang almost succumbs... but a core of stubbornness makes her say 'Continue' a second time. Then the presence tries to force her hand, and she rails back against it, standing and igniting her Aura in a show of defiance. Her jaw clenches tightly, and only relaxes enough to force out "Yes." when asked, her hands clenching tightly into fists, so tight in fact that a little blood trickles from where her nails pierce the flesh of her palms.

    When the Other begins to cause hallucinations, Yang rails back again, striking back at the images that try to cause her harm. Pain is a common sensation for those training to become Hunters and the threat of death is ever looming. Again she answers Yes.

    The Command, however, is far too much for the young Huntress to withstand. She cows, falling to her knees and screams to be released when the question comes... the door opens to find the blonde collapsed in the middle of the room, clutching at her head with her face obscured by the thick curtain of her blonde hair... when brought out, tears stain her face, but a wild, almost animalistic glaze covers her eyes, which stay a vivid red for several minutes after she's brought out and seated to relax and calm after the ordeal.

    Eventually, red gives way to lilac once more, and after a few shakey breathes, she jokes. "Surprised I didn't turn into a Schnee after that." going on to explain 'Schnee family all have white hair.'
Orchid      The Maverick Uprising, and the Maverick Virus, created great pressures to create robot minds that were harder and harder to subvert by outside forces. While these efforts failed to stop the Virus completely, they made great progress. As a result, Orchid is aware of what is and isn't her voice in her head.

     So about a minute in, Orchid knows what is going on. The previous test told Orchid that cheating is a legitimate response to these tests, so she begins to shut herself down, in a sense.

     Orchid's eyes close, her higher brain function ceases, and her mind dwindles to but a speck.

     A tiny mote of light.

     Just one star in a constellation of minds, no different from the galaxy of over a hundred minds, a hundred sentient things, Orchid's drones, that are aware of 'self' and 'other'.

     And now, in her meditative state, all of these motes of mind are the same. Any stimulus, to any of the minds, is met with a response of "INVALID INPUT" or "UNAUTHORIZED COMMAND"

     The only thing that Orchid will respond to are the judges asking her if she is ready to continue. She will briefly emerge from her trance, state that she is ready, and sink back into it.

     She walks out of the room after the 7th test, still waking up. "Mmmm. Wine? Wine seems good," she murgles, still booting up some of her language drivers.
Septette Arcubielle      "I turned off the hydromuscular circulation to my left upper arm so I could do some diagnostic testing on it," the little killbot answers blithely. "It's been acting kind of funny since Tuesday, but I figured out what the hitch was." Then Arthur barfs, and she wordlessly offers him a napkin. Poor dude.
Maya Maya is quite aware the proctors will keep an eye on her that's fine, she accepts that feelings and it would make them smart to do so in the end. Still she doesn't seem put off by them it was getting but that was part of their jobs really. When it comes to her issues of power? She's fully well seen what letting what she was born with, getting to her head, can do. It nearly causes another in his fervour to wipe out all life on the planet she hails from.

She can only guess that the proctors are getting Staren hour from how long it takes. Given their looks when they get out it almost confirms it for her.

Maya now will find herself shuttled into a room she's informed she can get out whenever she likes to.

She keeps that in mind, level one is fine she doesn't even seem bothered by it at all she shakes her head

"I will not."

The idea to leave is battled out of her head. She notes as the ideas get into it.

"I will not leave."

The Thir one is now fighting it's painful she does well enough to fight her way through it.

"I am not leaving."

The nightmares come next there's the feeling of worms Maya fight through that and the presence changes its tactics.

Maya has a vision it's of the children she helped raise after all their parents were killed by the nation on her world called the Chosen. Tori dead in a back alley from a deal gone bad, because Maya didn't ride him hard enough to clean up his act, Mouse and Tomoe dead after not being quite quick enough to pick up on a predator that had snuck into the city and it goes on for every last one of the dozen or so children she helped raise and it goes deeper now a voice she has not heard in nearly twenty years echos in her head.

"You are just like I am. Yet you deny your nature Maya. You do not embrace what you are...what your birthright is."

Maya is pushing hard here it's hard it's hard oh so very hard and that's just level four.

Maya makes it to level flight and the hell gets worse the mental assault just starts to rip into her very hard.

"You have got soft, what happened to the Junker who slaughtered my entire third division for their crimes in Anakra little garbage eater? You do not claim what you should and leave your lessers to act in your place."

"Shut up you are not him... you are not Doskais."

She endures thing on to the next level and she will find now the pain is huge it's overwhelming almost and she's beaten down again and again that she seems to be getting a vision from the fates that she is nothing just another garbage eater, right? It's torture it's intense and Maya finally at the one of the mental assault on the fifth phase calls out she's had enough.

SHe's looking rather ragged and breathing and looking haunted like she just saw a ghost and one she really didn't want to ever see again. She will take the food and twoel and put them to good use.
Staren     "I see." Staren looks at Septette suspiciously. "Whatever kind of mental self-diagnostics you use to measure your psychiatric health, you should probably run them soon. I know you're made to stand up to stuff, but I'm pretty sure that test was designed to do psychological damage to people..." he glances around at everyone else except Aranea, "...and I'm kind of concerned that so many of you stubbornly pressed on into it."
Gilgamesh      "I am the King," Gilgamesh repeats to Staren, "I did it because I am the King. I am the example to which all others should hold themselves. Should strive to reach."

     He takes another long drink.

     "And when I come back to do this again, which I inevitably will, I will do it all over again, and subject myself to all of it, knowing what is coming. Because I am the King. Because it is my responsibility."

     Because he is too proud to ever give up.
Arthur Lowell     Arthur sort of fumbles for the napkin. Which is, honestly, not a good thing to do considering Septette's /knife hands/, but presumably her reflexes are good enough to not impale his fingers on her knives. He answers Staren while not moving most of his body, just that one arm, gesturing. "I ain't gonna BACK DOWN from a FIGHT, homie, and that's just a REAL GODDAMN TRUE FACT. Even if I LOSE. ESPECIALLY if I LOSE. Even if it's a MIND FIGHT."
Orchid      Orchid shakes her head, now hearing Staren's words. "Hmm? Not a bad idea. But I didn't press through it." She chuckles briefly. "I don't know if they expected how capable my drones are, how much mind they have."
Yang Xiao Long     Yang shrugs at Staren. "I'm too dumb to know any better." she remarks off-handedly, nursing a cup of water as he rebalances herself. She's not suffered anything physically from the encounter, but seems pretty rattled on a psyche level. "I guess even the Unstoppable have something that can put a blocker on them..." she jokes hollowly.
Staren     Staren nods to Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is the one he's /least/ surprised to see pushing on through the full test (Septette doesn't count, of course she did), and he's two-thirds god. He'll probably be fine.

    Staren nods a little more somberly to Arthur (second least surprised). But he sat through billions of years of waiting for a universe to grow, so he'll probably be fine too.

    He gives Orchid a curious look. "You didn't? But you didn't come out until the end, what did you do?"
Gilgamesh      "All humans have a breaking point," Gilgamesh says to Yang quietly, "It's nothing to be ashamed of."

     That's...oddly comforting, from him.

     "It is a privilege you have as a human being. The right to walk away when things are too much."

     Unspoken, implicitly, is the idea that it is one that he lacks as a King.
Septette Arcubielle      "You're acting kind of intense, Stare-bear." Septette is in the middle of slurping some wine when she learns exactly why that is. 'Psychological damage'. The slurp continues for a long second as she slides her eyes over the faces of everyone present. Fffffuck. Was this whole thing leading up to making everybody here a Manchurian candidate? Are they going to mob her if they find out she's not One Of Them?

     The odds are, admittedly, miniscule. But she subtly adjusts her stance to optimize around a Spontaneous All-Versus-One scenario, just in case.

     "Haha, yeah, it was absolutely brutal. They... they got me pretty good, Staren. Whew." The rhetorical sweatdrop is almost visible.
Staren     Staren narrows his eyes. Septette is lying.

    And if HE can tell she's lying, it's an embarassingly bad performance, and Septette WANTS him to have seen an embarassingly bad performance of her lying. What mental state would require Septette to act in such a way? He can't wrap his brain around it, but eventually concludes that it at least means she doesn't want to talk about it right now.
Orchid      Orchid chuckles at Staren's question. "Going in there triggered my anti-virus system's alarms, so I ducked. I shut my mind off." She now takes a glass of the King's wine, taking a long sip, swirling it around her mouth, before swallowing it. "I became a drone, until the right words were said. Too simple to be affected, one among many."
Staren     Yang gets a concerned look -- but she didn't press through the full test, so Staren figures she gave in when she got overwhelmed and probably isn't TOO damaged. Rough stuff happens to elites all the time, after all.

    He nods at Orchid's explanation. It's cheating, but he doesn't say as much. Presumably the examiners recognized what she did, because people here clearly aren't idiots.

    ...Except for those guys from the last test. Who didn't /completely/ act like idiots, but... hmm.
Arthur Lowell     "Staren's alwayyyyys intense." Arthur mutters, a little punch-drunk from the mental battle. He staggers over to the tables and gets some of Gil's refreshments. But he tracks down whatever Gilgamesh has that fits his style. The First and Prime Cheetohs. The Potato Chip from when they were grown, sparkling and pre-salted, in engraved golden chambers. A Mountain Dew that was made from actual dew on mountains. There's gotta be some gamer fuel in here.
Lilian Rook     Nobody asks anyone what they saw or felt. It's up for debate whether they're even curious. Even as a first-timer, it'd be obvious that nobody remotely smart would tell even professionals exactly how to get to them in the worst way, especially what nebulously passes for 'the government'. After doing this a bazillion times a year as a job, the desire to know probably wears off.

    When Gilgamesh finishes, he leaves the room to a vague, suggestive idea that something has given him some kind of a respectful apology, like a personal tailor apologizing to an especially rich and important customer for a delay on their order.

    There's no particular ill-will towards Staren and Aranea for nope-ing out when they do. Indeed, that might be part of the point; the test doesn't just measure what people can tolerate theoretically, but when they'll actively elect Not To Do So. This --their evaluation of when it's worth it and when to disengage rather than getting sucked in-- is just as informative as knowing how it affects them. The people who really brute force it and get fucked up for it, like Yang and Arthur, get plenty of casual clinical care afterwards to make sure they're still good to go.

    Septette's test is mostly people consulting behind the tinted screen to make sure it's actually working. This results in one of the single digit times in actual history that someone walks out with a legitimate perfect score. Someone asks her if she's done this before, while someone else actually just asks if she was built for this specifically.

    Orchid automatically fails because she turned herself off. It's considered 'effectively rendered unconscious' and 'unsuitable for conditions of psychological stress'. She technically got through it, but by turning her brain off and doing nothing, which is, understandably, completely useless on a battlefield.

    Also, Lilian acts subtly less mean and snobbish towards Staren after he comes out, for whatever reason.
Lilian Rook     The last one was called 'Externalized Arcana'. This was a very vague term. It turns out that's because it's the most freeform and personally interpreted by far. This is where they're finally lead outside to the field exercises. The plots are myriad, and apparently heavily 'personalized', designed for hundreds of broad classes of abilities to be tested. Some are basically firing ranges, fitted with swathes of targets of varying sizes and durability for battle magic. Others are impenetrable clusterfucks where one has to find various, increasingly subtle objects with special senses, avoiding traps along the way. Some are what can only be described in the engineering sense as 'torture tests', where defensive powers have to take someone through being hit with mounting and varied degrees of deadly magic and live ordnance. Others are surprisingly simple and low-key, being just personal meetings to try and read minds off of trained pros, do complicated tasks like intricate knots or copper wire tests with telekinesis, or try and perform tasks from thousands of feet away. Some involve bent space to try and navigate with transit powers, there are obstacle courses hovering in the air for flight training, and even enclosed areas full of sensors, traps, and guardian summons to sneak through with stealth powers.

    It easily represents many decades of getting to know all the magical disciplines, arcane bloodlines, inexplicable powers, and even weird artifacts or pseudo-technology that emerge throughout history and have survived to the present day. You're encouraged to take on literally every single one you think you can reasonably manage. You're discouraged only from ones you have no business trying (remote manipulation with no means to do so, for instance) because low scores are actually negatives, but 'doing well' is as much a matter of breadth as well as height, looking for versatility as well as raw capability.

    Lilian is-- NOT testing today, because she already did it last time, and she's still kind of mentally toasted from gross overuse of combat time stop from the other night.

    After completing your first or second, the individual proctors assigned to each plot begin recommending new ones, with increasing amounts of specificity. Slowly grasping some idea of your general portfolio, they're all remarkably quick on the uptake, and begin giving more and more helpful directions around the expansive fields to try and raise your score, and narrow your classification, as much as possible.
Lilian Rook     Lilian had vaguely mentioned something to the effect before, but the final scores everyone gets come on a fancy black/platinum ID card, with the general photo, age, sex, height, etc. data on it, as well as title (if any), affiliation, and rank with said affiliations. The reverse side is where all the info is inlaid in seemingly crystalline etching, only revealed at a specific angle, where each test is tracked with the same flowery measurements as the second test was. Obscene physical performance might sit somewhere in the Throne region, while a horrible job in the interview might only be somewhere in the Jewel colour band. It also comes with the stamp of Immune Auxiliary, and up to two Archetypes loosely defining their general ability orientation without actually disclosing all their special abilities, setting their talents out at a glance, but not giving away unnecessary information.

    They're, as said long before, the same categories used as threat classification for the Antegent: Delusion, Messenger, Intruder, Supplicant, Convergence, Cipher, Encroachment, Immaculate, Adversary, Catastrophe, Dominion, Architect, Extinguisher, save that they're arranged with a bit more grammar and slightly less ominous overtones (it's weird to call a person a delusion, after all, but someone with illusion and combat powers might be a delusive adversary). Likewise, rather than categorized as a theoretical threat to humanity, they're re-stated in the final handbook in terms of how the powerset approaches problems. It's obvious enough that a psychic mind reader could earn the designation Cipher, and then Dominion on top if they're a technopath or mind-controller too. Most skilled brawlers will rate an Adversary designation unless it's secondary compared to the bulk of their more impressive powers, which isn't a bad thing considering they've technically gotten the job description of 'punch horrid monsters'. For the person who took them here, that puts the 'Immaculate Extinguisher' part of her Immunes title and intro into some kind of context at least.

    Then they get to hang out in on the very top floor, where the tip of the dome is exposed to the sky and plenty of windows let in a wonderful breeze. It's an atrium of sorts, specifically designed as a relaxation area, with its own indoor park and waterfall with many free-roaming birds and small animals, complete with shops to peddle incredibly expensive drinks and snacks and sugary desserts at people to reward themselves for a hard day's work, and even gift shop fare which ranges from genuinely really high quality oddities that are halfway there to brag about having suffered through a full cert as much as they are impressive, to stylized ornaments, jewelry, fixtures, even keychains, of the various combinations of seven stations and five stages, and thirteen archetypes, all the way to 'I got to stage X of the fortitude of mind and all I got was this lousy t-shirt' items, going from numbers 3 to 7.
Staren     And now the final set of tests, which just seems to be... whatever? Staren asks if there's any tests specifically FOR finding unusual uses for tools or artifacts he hasn't previously encountered, but he can certainly do decently in tests of shooting, flying, searching (with drones) and even taking hits (although he makes sure to do that one LAST, and also watches if Septette takes it, concernedly if it gets extreme enough and asking if she would like any help with repairs after.)

    In the end he decides that the T-shirts are disrespectful to the tests but might get a keychain and a piece of jewelry or something -- a potential conversation starter if he ever returns to this world.

    Also if one of the T-shirts doubles back with 'I went for my Immune Support certification and all I got was this lousy T-shirt' and then in small type '(and also my certification)' he might get that.
Yang Xiao Long     Yang, after recovering from that mental clusterfuck, deploys her Weapon again and steps up to the first area, with the firing range. She uses it to vent some frustrastion, empowering the slugs in the chambers with her Aura, triggering the Dust within to create explosions, cause blooms of sharp ice, set some of the targets ablaze and electrify others, depending on the Dust slug involved. She does relate the basics of how the ammo works, but no the minutea.

    After that, she heads toward the 'torture trap', using her Aura and an innate sense of surroundings and incoming threats via her Aura to track and deflect or absorb incoming shots,, deflecting bullets off the large strike plates on her gauntlets, while magic bolts are intercepted with counter-fire with those same Dust munitions.

    Yang's a straightforward warrior, so ends up with a pretty standard 'Adversary' marker. She's handy in a fight, pretty tough against direct damage and can dish out a LOT of damage in return, but keep her away from cognitohazards, she's not really hardened against those.

    "About what I figured, I guess, send me in and I'll wipe out a target. I'm the heavy hitter of Team RWBY, after all."
Gilgamesh      Gilgamesh acknowledges the apology with a subtle nod on his way out.

     The field exercises, then, are much more his speed. He is quite casual about blowing his way through all of them, and his familiarity with magical artifacts is second to none. A few times he actually produces the artifact in question from the Gate of Babylon and defeats the test with his own, high-Mystery version. Torture tests are met with shields that rival Rho Aias. Firing ranges are demolished in single instants by storms of artifact weaponry, any one of which could be the anchor for countless stories. Any test he isn't suited for he simply demolishes his way through. He ties intricate knots of copper with weapons fired from the Gate of Babylon so precisely it's hard to even keep track of. He flies on storms of weapons, simply walking along them as he goes. He uses his knowledge of humanity to guess thoughts with frightening accuracy. He's showing off as much as he can because not only does he enjoy doing it, he feels it's important for him to get a perfect score in everything. He is the King. There's nothing he shouldn't be able to do.

     By the end of it, he's issued his card. It's black and platinum, and he immediately changes it to gold and platinum with the use of some device or another because he simply dislikes black. His photograph is perfect, his age is listed as 20-something with a slash and 7000 following it to prove that he is indeed the real Gilgamesh, and his tests all read in the Throne. He's rated as an Architect Dominion, which seems to suit him perfectly fine.

     Gilgamesh buys one of everything. He also buys a shirt, a keychain, and a Third Souveneir Of Choice for Aranea, Yang, Lilian, Maya, Septette, Arthur, and Orchid, because he is Gilgamesh and of course he does.

     Staren can buy his own. His robot body just isn't pretty enough.
Orchid      As she considers the results, Orchid nods. "Fair. I don't think I would have done that if I hadn't known it was a test. Maybe next year." Of course, now that she knows what may be coming, she may wind up preparing for the test differently. But soon she is with the others in the Externalized Arcana test.

     Orchid is going to skip the 'firepower' test, in favor of using her drones to demonstrate how quickly she can find things; the original purpose of the drones was in Search and Rescue scenarios, where finding survivors quickly is a priority, and careless movement can cost lives. A more specialized test has her tracking dozens of targets in a flock of hundreds, the 'three card Monty' writ large, each time using her many eyes to make sense of chaos.

     Strangely enough, Orchid takes part in one of the torture tests, using the barriers she can project from her hands to do... surprisingly well for such a small frame, able to deflect and absorb a lot of punishment before calling it quits... and taking a second test, where she uses her drones to give her awareness of her surroundings enough to dance through saw-blades without trouble.

     The remote manipulation Orchid can do with her drones again, shooting one down range like a fastball, sending two more to watch over the first. The tiny size of the drones lets her perform infiltration while she waves at the camera watching the entrance.

     As a last go, Orchid uses her rocket surfboard again on some of the simpler flying trials. She's not the fastest, but she is very nimble, able to turn on a dime.

     So once she gets her card and gets to the giftshop, Orchid graciously accepts Gilgamesh's gifts, which will include an intricate sculpture, a paper-weight, that when touched spins different parts in different directions.

     "A Cipher-Intruder, I guess that works," Orchid says, studying the card.
Aranea Highwind     Stretching one's legs after that hellish room, even if Gilgamesh's refreshments had eased the itch a fair bit, isn't unwelcome. And it's certainly much more up Aranea's alley than mental and spiritual tests.

    She first elects for a standard combat course. Surging from opponent to opponent, the red magitek particles of her spear the only thing distinctly visible when she gets moving, she makes from target to target like a red streak, landing precise, rapid strikes meant to disable immediatly. She quickly graduates to an obstacle course - using jumps and the thrusters on that spear in equal parts to get from obstacle to obstacle and cross a finish line as quickly as possible.

    A flyer course is suggested to her, a mess of flying targets with no platforms to stand on. She gets through by zipping from target to target, never needing to land, instead bouncing off destroyed targets or relying on that spear to regain some momentum in the air.

    She makes a detour by tactical challenges, where she has to solve obnoxious puzzles where the objective is to win in a single round by using varied troops' specialties and effects to their best.

    She ends with a one on one test of skill, where brute strength and speed are less useful than her mastery of the spear in close quarters, and surprise gushes of red lightning from it at opportune moments. No, there's something else too.

    Likely, only Gilgamesh of those gathered would notice what happened when Aranea's spear briefly ejected magitek components to reveal a blood red blade underneath the technology, and that blade jutted straight for the foe's heart, with devastating effect.

    When she collects her card, she's likely classified as an Adversary Extinguisher, if only for that last stunt. She assuredly did better in physical tests than mental ones, by a fair margin.

    The spear gone, Aranea stretches her arms behind her head when she regroups with the others, and graciously accepts dumb souvenirs offered by the King, because free stuff is free stuff.

    "Well, call me glad we don't have to do that again for another year. Must be some awful threats to warrant this elaborate a screening and training facility. Sounds like work opportunities to me, at least."
Arthur Lowell     It won't take Arthur that long to get through a psychological recovery minigame. He always gets back on his feet. Here he is: Arthur Lowell, the master of portals, geometry, and direct combat. His powers are diverse, potent, and he's only interested in showing the ones that will match to his fieldwork. His fieldwork is quite focused on direct combat, but he makes a point of showing off the abilities he often uses in his adventures as well. Portals are fired all about, and he makes agile use of them. Gravity fields are projected, highly resistant against damage. He turns entire areas upside down, with the right warning. He links doors to doors that they weren't linked to before.

    He brings to the area his Punchcard Alchemy equipment, which is insane levels of strange. It doesn't require a full explanation or demonstration to get the idea that whatever he's able to do with this esoteric system might just not even fall effectively into a categorization system. Lucky Arthur, they have something for stuff that can't be categorized. Arthur is likely to categorize as an Encroaching Architect, though he keeps asking when he gets to get the Adversary part.

    He never gets to have the Adversary part.

    When he gets the card, there's, yes, more videogamey bullshit. ARTHUR LOWELL has gained another ECHELADDER RUNG REWARD! A big high-tech box covered in runes and sporting the Immunes symbol falls out of the sky from seemingly nowhere, popping open to reveal four IMMUNES EVENT COSMETICS, which are reconfigurations of his God Tier robes. A quick poke at some of them gets him a nice field-agent sort of look, with a fancy broom-holster.

    He also acquires the shirt. He seems pretty appreciative! "Oh hey, THANKS HOMIE!" There's a good teeth-gleaming grin and a point, until he starts kind of seeing what happened with the others and processing it in his brain. He squints, like he's trying to solve a puzzle. There is literally a small tile-moving minigame projected near him, the representation of his efforts to solve something.

    "Oh /god damn it/." Arthur swears, about five minutes later.
Maya Maya does not talk about what she saw there it's for the best and she sees once everyone is finished up and she's glad that exam is over, now comes the next and last part or so Maya is aware this should be a good way to blow off some steam after that last one. Maya seems ready to deal with things here. She takes a look and ops to focus on the shooting and damage related courses and she will end up going quite hard here.

Maya will do exceptionally well on the marksman tests and when it comes to magical use she'll really unload sometime using magic or other times her rifle to carve a path of destruction through the damage tests.

Given how on the ball the people giving the test are they might notice her rifle does not ever seem to be reloading bullets and might even pick up some parts are /alive/.

Maya even gets into some calling magic bringing down the Elemental Lords of her world. Maya also does show she can do some decent protection and support as well but all and all she does quite well on this part and she doesn't seem to even be tired from the amount of magic she was flinging about and in the end she comes out with a pretty good rating and a Convergence/Catastrophe rating.

Maya blinks once at Gil she's not angry just surprised she caught his interest she will accept his gifts the third item she picks is a bit of jewelry of all thing which seems almost Sumerian in its styling.

"Humm this reminds me of something I saw in the ruins of my world's Babylon..."
Septette Arcubielle      Septette has, in fact, Done That before. She's very tempted to tell the researchers that in the unearthly language she stole from the race of eldritch hell-fish she helped drive to extinction, but she refrains. "It was one of the primary design goals," she says instead, still just a tad wary of the personnel. At least nobody's going all ONE OF US, which adds another zero to the front of the likelihood of that particular subversion eventuality.

     The magic test shows off some of her creativity, though Septette doesn't play her full hand here. She sticks to demonstrations of her core powers, and the more obviously-inferrable secondary applications of them: creating walls of ice and lakes of fire, blasting targets at long range with lightning-bolts and shards that explode in hissing steam and cutting frost, and showing considerable mobility by laying down slick sheets of ice and gliding across them at high speeds with the aid of directed flame-jets.

     The peculiar 'decoding' ability that lets her analyze standing enchantments ties it all together as a mechanistic-mathematical arcane tradition, with an almost Newtonian aesthetic: very simple fundamental techniques, but you can do everything with them that you'd logically expect to be able to, and at a fair degree of precision.

     The durability test almost seems superfluous. She takes it anyway, but her magic barely helps- the ice walls she conjures up are vastly less durable than the body they're "protecting". And then she gets the card!

     SEPTETTE ARCUBIELLE
     IMMACULATE ADVERSARY
     Sex F
     Height 152cm
     Weight 1427kg

     ... Seems about right. The ratings range from TOWER (on Mental Fortitude, naturally) to CROWN (on Externalized Arcana), but largely cluster around THRONE. Apparently the things she had lined up nicely with what they were looking for- the Antegents are eldritch existential threats, so some degree of overlap in necessary qualifications makes sense.

     She accepts Gil's souvenir offerings graciously, though as she puts on the t-shirt, several pointy bits of her skeletal torso immediately pierce through or the fabric and make her look like some kind of porcupine. ... Distressed clothes are in this year, right?