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Lilian Rook LILIAN'S ROOM:
    The room beyond does indeed belong to Lilian. It is enormous. Hibiki and Miku's entire apartment could fit into a quarter of it. It has the distinct feeling of having originally been meant for a couple and baby, and had been given to the new child as a form of wishful parental spoiling.

     An enormous four poster bed with scarlet sheets and pillows dominates a quarter of the room, near the lengthy glass panorama and sliding door out to a seaside balcony. Another quarter is given to a walk-in closet that appears to be outrageously wide and deep even from the entrance, meant to have multiple people's belongings in it, now locked tight.

    Stacks of shelves, cabinets, and dressers fill another quadrant, including more than a hundred books, artsy little odds and ends, souvenirs of Multiversal travel, a large and fastidiously warded jewelry box, a transparent case filled with endless rows of awards, and a large and impressive cosmetics kit and even larger and more impressive mirror which, oddly, has seen noticeable scratching.

    The last quadrant is filled with a long desk and table set, with a personal computer little more than a keyboard and touchpad attached to a holographic emitter (the screensaver of which is an image Flamel will recognize from the book, and a separate tablet on the side, ostensibly both used at once. Various landscapes and group selfies are put up on the wall, many of the blonde and brunette Hibiki is familiar with, many of Paladins faces. A thick sketchbook is left on the surface, open to a gorgeously detailed 'stealth sketch' of Tamamo in bust.

    The wastebasket at the end only contains a shattered tablet stylus. Between cutesy souvenirs, tiny figurines, well-cared for potted flowers, and an old plush toy, the desk space is cluttered with arcane mandalas, mostly empty chemistry ampoules, and empty magazines for some futuristic weapon. There is a single small journal with a little brass lock on it.)]
Lilian Rook     Hibiki's scrounging around a room of this size could go on until midnight. The sheer amount of 'stuff' would make hiding a key a completely laughable affair, and losing it even either, and that's before considering the 'creative' use of ancient architecture like Lilian had clearly used as a young girl before, according to the library.

    Fortunately, even miraculously, it takes almost no effort at all. In a top drawer, between a tray of hw,archaic writing quills), assorted semi-random Multiversal esoteric small coinage, a photograph of an arrowhead from some museum, an unopened import chocolate bar manufactured god knows when, and a backpile of batteries, cables, hair ties, pins, notepads, and other things Hibiki should probably think far better of touching, a tiny brass key is buried right in the back corner)]. First try.

    It slides in easily, and clicks in that terribly auspicious way. The very first page is marked in agonizingly neat and compact handwriting, from a very small pen. The i-s are dotted with something like plus signs, but seem like they might have been something else. The entry 22 May 71 goes:

    "Dear Diary. I put a lot of thought about what to write in you. Cecilia said that it's like practice for keeping a journal, and that a journal is a tremendous help when you need to put thoughts into words. She says that it's not about recording and re-reading things, but about having to explain it to someone that sorts things out in your head. I'm supposed to speak to you like a friend, and tell you about what I'm thinking. She's very clever. There are so many thoughts in my head that I don't know how to say them. All the time. They drown out everything else sometimes. Explaining them to a book is easier than to a person, I think.

    So after thinking about it lots and lots, I've decided I'm not going to write anything in you. All the things I want to talk about are terrible. You're better off not knowing them. If you just stay empty and pretty, I can't ruin you. Nobody else will bother you. Not even Katrina.

    So whoever is reading this: Go to Hell"

    Four for four. At least this time the spell was originally set by a paranoid and angry twelve year old. A ten year gap in experience affords Hibiki's hands the mercy of melting more slowly, awash in some kind of silvery, intangible 'acid'. 'I know you're reading my mind' finally comes due. This room will probably be a nightmare to assess without expert help.
Lilian Rook KATRINA:
    "Look... I won't lie. I came here really pissed off. She said something to me, after she knocked me around. 'Know your place.'" He frowns, one hand pressed against the wall. His fingers curl halfway into a fist. "She's good at that, isn't she? At twisting the knife. But I don't wanna act on being pissed off with her because it's not gonna do nothing."

    "She said something else that really stuck with me, too. 'It's not a sin to want things to be okay. Happy people oughta hang onto being happy.' I want that Lilian back, and I'd do anything to get her back. So, please..."

    His voice wavers. "Help me."

    Katrina's face of perfectly faked polite surprise falls away instantly (seriously, why is everyone in this house so good at that?). The exhale she releases is one that had been building since the moment she arrived home, in Persephone's vision at the front hall. However, halfway through Candy explaining, it seems she's already stopped listening to him.

    He gets as far as talking about being beaten black and blue and someone being shot and 'thought we were friends' and instead hears the redhead moan under her breath in tense despair. "No . . . Not again . . ."

    He is promptly grabbed by the arm and firmly steered *away* from the direction she'd mysteriously appeared from, to which he'd originally been headed seeking that immense magical signature and the mysterious draft from below. Katrina talks over him as sweetly as is possible to be ignored like that. "Shh, shh. First, tell me where you're hurt. If you're on your feet like this, you're pretty lucky, but there has to be a reason she sent you to me instead of a hospital, right? There always is. Don't worry about it. Well, don't take it so hard at least. This used to happen before . . . years ago. Have you two been together long? She never told me anything about someone like you. Come on. Let's go to the infirmary and I'll see what I can do about it."
Lilian Rook THE ELDER ROWAN:
    Xion remains at the tree, laying across a risen root, foot rocking down across a branch, Starlight hanging perilously from the toe of her raised boot.

    After the stressful and damaging things she had been proximal to experiencing, and the ones she experienced herself, she had found a pleasing answer, without any 'but' attached.

    "I see, I see. So you do like her. In the way of trees. And the man? The man with the cane?" She wonders, staring up into the branches of the tree, to listen for the rustle.

    Xion's first and foremost impression from the elder rowan is an odd one. Asking it about Lilian, in the way she can, and in the way which a tree and exude these things, is that she reminds him of the first man more than anyone who has come after, which is a quality that carries positive resonance. It has no particular love of Matthew. It wasn't the first time it was uprooted, but by far the most disruptive. Rowan trees of this old and magical sort have it in their nature to look over and protect something. Here, there is only the lily plant and its younger sibling which it seems to feel value or satisfaction in.

THE LIBRARY:
    Staren stands, her grip on the cane tightening as she looks at it. Powerful magic, spells inscribed on it, useful artifact (RAW EMOTIONAL PAIN)

    Someone screams in rage as she turns and FLINGS it as hard as she can at a random wall. It takes her a moment to realize it was her.

    She looks back at Flamel again. "...What's Psychonauts protocol for both preserving these findings *and* our own mental well-being?"

    "You try to live a good life full of kindness and empathy! And you pray it'll keep up with the knowledge you get. That's pretty much all you can do, even as a psychic spy!" Flamel explains to Staren, on his way out. "That's all anyone can do, really." He gives a thumbs-up to Featherman Neo as well. "I sympathize with the curiosity! I'd have done the same thing. And man," His grin gets incredibly wide. "It would *not* have been worth it."

    "Let's retreat. We've learned enough to get somewhere." Featherman agrees with the others, and moves to follow. "I'll have to wait for Hibiki before I can fully leave, but, thank you for giving me the burst." He rubs his helmet as if he was rubbing his head.

    Staren throwing a sturdy wooden object across the room in an emotional outburst isn't great. One of the shelves cracks where the metal-shod tip hits it, and old books spill out in a heap, stirring not a spec of dust, but now sporting freshly bent pages and dented covers. Hoping nobody notices that may be a fool's errand.

    Worse, this has intensely displeased the ghost they're sharing the room with. The sense of amicable indifference to their intrusion, and even like-minded helpfulness for their pursuit of literature, evaporates in a second. The doors into the library slam shut, and are held fast by considerable invisible force. The fireplace goes out on its own, somehow plunging the room into instantaneous, lethally freezing cold. The sounds of dozens of footsteps rattling down the halls above them and just outside feels as if it's closing in. The night shift coming to investigate, or some such.
Lilian Rook CECILIA:
    "Sorry, but you can't threaten me that way, either," Dynamic Era replies, matter-of-factly. He's just a vague outline at the moment, but his voice is still clear. "If I didn't want to be known I wouldn't have introduced myself at all. I'm not inclined to follow your protocols, but if I don't do that much I'd be a miserable Kamen Rider. Even if I'm not one right now."

    Persephone had stared, for a moment, right through Cecilia, as if she'd come untethered from the world. When she blinks to reorient herself, her eyelashes glitter. A slow, deep breath escapes her that she didn't know she'd been holding.

    "It is unnatural," she finally says. Apart from her watering eyes, the look on her face is strangely one of gratitude. "But you handled it so, so well anyway. So much better than one person should have to. I had... something in my head, like she has. That thing-you-can't-remember, that she found when she was six. It took dozens of people to make sure I turned out right. And you've done so much, almost all alone. Thank you, Cecilia."

    She steps forward and offers Cecilia an armwarmer-padded hand, just to hold, and maybe squeeze. "You're not 'just' a maid. I'm absolutely sure you're the reason she can be a hero. You're the only one who made it easy for her to be good, for so so many years."

    Persephone's smile deepens to something sincere and soothing, rather than bittersweet. "This isn't about punishing her. Not at all. I think she might be scared that it is, too. But I want to help her be good again. I want to help her feel safe again, so she doesn't feel she has to wish for such terrible things. So she can go back to building herself up again; to getting better, bit by bit."

    Her smile drops back to bittersweet. A brief flinch passes across her face. She guiltily feels Cecilia's heart to be sure, but unhesitatingly answers: "Yeah. I think I know too."

    "Frankly, sir, I believe you now when you say that you two aren't friends." Cecilia replies to Haru with surprisingly vintage dry British sarcasm for the situation. "And frankly, I have perfectly enough being told what I can and cannot do as part of my job without also being told by presumptuous guests as well." The sarcastic part doesn't last. "There is nothing I would not do to make all of this go back to the way it was a month ago. Otherwise I'd be a rather miserable staff head."

    All she can really give Persephone is a pained smile in return. The best she can do. "Please, miss. I know it's rude to assume that you might know something of the other simply because you're both from other worlds, but if you have any means at all, I'd- - We'd both be forever grateful if you could keep the others away from that Kore woman when the time comes. There's no need for anyone else to be hurt. And I'm sure Lilian will regret it if that comes to pass. That girl claims she doesn't know the meaning of the word, but I know she just doesn't recognize it when she feels it. That woman may deserve it, but I'm certain the others don't."
Lilian Rook     Of course, since Persephone didn't introduce herself, mind-reading tells her that Cecilia is blissfully unaware she is speaking to 'the Kore woman' and assumes Persephone is a Paladin. Hearing her own last name spoken, she receives from Cecilia a hot flash of barely suppressed emotion eerily, and perhaps inevitably, similar to the way she'd reacted to Matthew on that day. It's something she'd been forced to relieve by the way Lilian came back from the Decompression Chamber.

    She is, at the same time, filled with anxiety for whoever else might be misguidedly, or even accidentally, in the way, and doesn't want Lilian to lose friends over it more than anything else. She doesn't have a clear idea of what will happen, but her deep experience tells her in her heart that Lilian is set on something truly extreme.

    "Oh, but as untoward as this is to say, please, you musn't stay much longer. And you musn't disturb anything. I'm afraid the master and lady of the house will be . . . far less patiently disposed towards this sort of intrusion than I am, when they return on the weekend." There's a fretful pause. "If you really do care about her, please, don't leave any trouble and see yourselves out swiftly. Before midnight at the very least."
Candy *She didn't hear a word after I told her what happened. She's done this before.*

     "My name's Candelario," he says quietly. With a wan smile, he adds, "I already been to the hospital, but don't let that stop you from leading me around, ah?" Candy can still manage to wrinkle his nose playfully at her.

     "We're not 'together,' you know. That's her and the pretty lady with the fancy words. Me and her, we're just... well." He doesn't try to break free or turn back--though neither does he intend to mislead her. "I wanna say 'friends.' But I'm not so sure, after what happened."

     "I'm worried about her. That's how come I came. Not 'cause she sent me, but 'cause there's something inside her that scares me, and I feel like she's not fighting it no more."
Flamel Parsons     "Oh, uh oh. I forgot this place is really haunted! Gah, that's cold..." Flamel's first impulse is to bring up a Shield. But no! The shield doesn't actually do anything, the cold's already around him. "Uhhh... Pyrokinesis!" He snaps a finger, starting to try to heat up just the bodies of those in the library. Crackling orange light around mental "arteries" indicates the damage he's suffered, but he's at least holding some of it off by competing with the cold using pyrokinesis!

    "Staren! I'll hold this side -- I'm gonna try to astrally project you at the house mind-fragments. Make a mess in short-term memory, and then flip the aggression offline!" He tensely thought-whispers at the action-scientist. "It'll at least give us a chance to get the door open! I'll improvise the rest..."

    If Staren consents, Flamel will plant a palm on the back of her head, blast an astral form out of her body, and try to send her into what passes for a mind for the mental fragments that haunt the home. "Remember, first short-term memory, then aggression! And watch out around the memory-aggression junctions...!" This is a surface-level projection, meaning no dense systems or massive environments ought to need lots of exploration, but there's still a risk that the haunting trauma can be found here too, in more dangerous forms.
Cantio With data of the overbearing parent's/sibling's micromanagement compiled and saved,  Cantio's actually got a pretty broad spread of where to investigate next. Although her fondness for Lilian hasn't increased in the slightest, having some more context for her behavior and upbringing does help put a lot of things into perspective.

"Still... Not any closer to finding anything that might work against whatever she's looking for." Cantio mutters to herself with barely hidden annoyance, more for herself than for whoever might actually be close enough to hear her talking to herself. "But where else could there be clues for that...?"

The library? No, Lilian wouldn't do it anywhere so easily visible, or then the missive would have already known what she was looking for. A lab? Possibly, but she hasn't seen anything resembling that out here. Her room?

... Actually, her room might be a good place to check that out. With little else in mind, Cantio takes a roundabout path to try and even find Lilian's room, mostly using the same logic she'd use to find her own room: Find the biggest hallway with the cleanest floors, find the largest door for the largest-looking bedroom, then check every other door besides that. With any luck, she might even run into Hibiki while she's still in there to provide some relief from the acid with the power of HEALING MAGIC and then getting her hands on that PERSONAL COMPUTER for even more snooping.
Hibiki Tachibana     It is indeed a small miracle that Hibiki finds it so quickly, and that fact isn't lost on her. She was expecting it to take a lot longer - though even when she does, she pauses to briefly look over the array of items it's placed with. She wouldn't dare touch them all directly, or put anything out of place. Lilian really does have far more keepsakes stored away in here than she ever would have thought...

    If she considered why the key to her diary was put away with a bunch of other especially old trinkets, maybe she'd have a better idea of what was about to happen. Instead, she takes the opportunity to get the diary open and push back the lingering sense of guilt to look over the first entry...with an increasingly worried frown on her face when she gets past the first paragraph.

    "All the things I want to--?" Her eyes narrow at the final sentence, only to immediately widen and drop the diary back down onto the desk surface on reflex with her hands starting to burn away. Today she's never been more happy than ever to have Hiromi's gift, even if it still stings and burns and her hand hasn't even finished fully healing from getting in here. "Agh, not again...!" Doing her best to shake off the intangible magic and clenching her teeth until its gone (and she once again tucks her damaged hands into her jacket sleeves so she doesn't have to look at them), she takes a few steps back.

    "...This room is too much. I need..." Help, as much as she doesn't want to admit it. There's a hiss through her teeth - when Cantio shows up. And she will honestly /gladly/ take that healing and be much more careful in her future snooping. Though at the moment, she's more curious on what exactly she came for. Just kind of shoulderhovering the other girl with a grimace. "...If you're going to touch anything, be careful. Do you even have any way to deal with magical traps or whatever these are, Cantio?"
Persephone Kore      "We'd both be forever grateful if you could keep the others away from that Kore woman when the time comes."

     A little breath hitches in Persephone's chest. Her eyes defocus; she is staring not at Cecilia but at something miles behind her. Because she knows my name, but not that my name belongs to me. Did I forget to introduce myself? What did I say? What did Lilian tell her? Misunderstandings never happen to me.

     Her Flamel-gifted tiara develops a few more cracks.

     Persephone comes back to the real world a few seconds late and shakes her head softly. "You want to protect her again, like you've done for so long," she says, masking her bewilderment with a bittersweet reassuring smile. "It must feel like everything's so big and confusing. But just by talking to us, you've already helped so much. I hope knowing that can give you some amount of peace."

     A little hesitation, and then she adds: "If it comes to that, I'll do whatever I can to keep anyone else from getting between them. I'd love for things to go back to the way they were a month ago, too."

     A month ago: Lilian and Persephone are sitting together on a park bench, in a forbidden arboretum on a sleepy space station. They talk and laugh and hold hands. Lilian shares a little of 'why she is the way she is'. Persephone tells her the stories of the carvings on the bench, and the stars outside the window. Selfishly, to Phony, it feels like the world is on track for a happy ending. And then it isn't anymore.

     "There won't be any trouble," Persephone promises Cecilia, before turning to look at the floating-ghostly Haru with a tired sympathetic smile. "You're not feeling well, are you? It's really okay if you need to sit this one out. That promise is for you, too: I'll make sure everyone's good." But she doesn't seriously expect him to take the offer, and so follows it up with: "Cecilia's right, you know. We shouldn't stay here for long. We've found out a lot already."

     Unless Cecilia has any particularly arresting parting words, Persephone intends to go check out the courtyard before they need to leave. If nothing interesting is back there, though, she'll likely be drawn towards the gathering in Lilian's room in short order, pulled to a kouhai in distress like a moth to flame.
Staren     Staren's handling of the cursed cane does not go well.

> Oops! That feels deathly cold.

    Staren *would* feel bad for damaging books, and want to fix them and make sure they're okay. She *would* be concerned that maybe now Lilian will know she was here and come after her. But she has more pressing concerns. The protection spells on her coat are overwhelmed; She cries out in discomfort, but has ways to deal with this, at least for herself: After finding the door stuck fast, she warps on her armor -- the sciencey one with the labcoat, holo-scarf, and bubble helmet -- and then she can start solving the problem of the others.

    Pyrokinesis is a good idea! Staren warps in an obviously techno-wizard doohickey, which projects a shimmering bubble-field, large enough for twice as many people to move about in close quarters, which is *supposed* to resist cold but is overwhelmed -- still, it should warm the area by several degrees, and every little bit helps, right?

    Of course, Staren was still exposed to seconds of *lethal freezing* and is uncomfortable and numb inside the armor until it can warm her up enough. So it's convenient that Flamel offers a solution that escapes that! "Yeah! Uh, here, does this make it easier on you?"

    Possibly to Flamel's surprise, Staren 'projects' to the astral plane on her own (and her body just drops to the floor in an uncomfortable position, whoops) but Flamel can tell... this is far off from the projection of a properly-trained practitioner. Her spirit appears (to him) ghostly-white and has a vague semblance of her 'default outfit'. Without his intervention, she is psychically blind/deaf and probably can't sense the physical world too clearly either. It's a mess!

    Astral-Staren looks around uncertainly, like someone in the dark looking for any light, until Flamel realigns her or whatever. "What does short-term memory *look* like?!" she asks, before she's flung into GHOST MIND.

    It's probably like if Psychonauts had its own version of Mario Sunshine's bonus levels and Hat in Time's rifts, huh? Flamel's assistance equips her spirit with spiritual gear -- go-to devices and techniques are pulled from nowhere or summoned much like she would in the physical world, but she can't actually get prototypes sent in -- and she does her best to follow Flamel's instructions.

    Staren's mind (heh) is, at least, so engrossed in accomplishing her objectives in the ghost-mindscape, that her worries about Lilian and the physical world are set aside. She doesn't try to fight all opposition, hurriedly searching the area (her shoes' high jump and hoverskate functions and her vambrace's grapple help with that) for short term memory and then damaging it with direct weapon fire or explosives, only taking potshots at pursuit or fully engaging guardians she can't go around.

    Once short term memory is takenc are of, Staren assumes that 'aggression' is anything that wants to fight, which she mostly takes on with the vambrace-guns, much like a platform shooter character.

    She frankly has no idea what happens if she takes too much 'damage' in here, or, for that matter, how tough her astral form *is*. Hopefully she won't find out!

    Also she has no idea how to leave. Presumably Flamel will pull her back out once the mission is complete...
Lilian Rook     When Candy quickly disabuses Katrina of the notion of being anywhere in Tamamo's orbit, he can hear her say "Oh thank god." in a tone of voice too half-assed to be a whisper. "That would have been a mess. I'm glad to hear she's still sticking with just one." That isn't sarcastic or playful. It's a relief. Then, it takes her some processing time to figure out what to do next.

    "It . . . happens. With her. It's just . . . It's her way." Katrina awkwardly attempts not to explain in the slightest, but, strangely, to try and buffer up Candy's feelings of worry, and if he wants to stretch a little, make him feel better about perceived inadequacy. It's pep talk. "I'm really sorry. It hasn't been this way in . . . gosh, five years at least. It's probably not your fault. No, it's definitely not your fault. It never is." She sighs. "And here I swore over and over again that it'd be the last time I did this." The way she rubs her face, right then and there, somehow betrays to Candy that this woman is not a couple of years older than Lilian. Not twenty-something. Not close

    "I'm sorry. It's not my place to talk about it. I just get in the zone, you know? It's habit. For a moment I was on night call with an emergency patient again. You know how it is? But if you weren't sent here, then you can't be here. You have to leave right away." Indeed it seems she is steering him back towards the front door. "She'll know you've been here. She always knows. Everything she cares about, she finds out somehow, some way. And mother and father will be furious if they know a stranger wandered in here." Katrina doesn't use their first names. "How did you even get here? Please, just tell me. I don't want to have to find out the hard way. You seem nice, and you're cute too. And . . . I don't know what a Dream Lord is, but I know more than I want to about bad dreams. Please just leave it at that." A beat. "And don't talk to her right after she comes back. She *hates* people seeing her scars."

    Persephone, incidentally, searching for the courtyard, will end up right where Candy and Katrina met a little while ago. The corner she came around from, however, only seems to lead to a low traffic hallway between wings of the house, split down the middle in a cross intersection. It seems like there should be a few doors along the way, but it's just wallpaper, gas lamps, and some stands. It's entirely inconsistent with the floor plan from outside. It's That Kind of spooky house. Unless she wants to engage that mystery right now, she'll find Lilian's room easily by Hibiki's directions.
Lilian Rook     Cantio's room-finding logic is spot on, even without directions, albeit every floor is rather obnoxiously clean. The fact that there's over a dozen permanent staff living here for five people, only one of which seems to stay here regularly is rather egregious, come to think of it. From the files she'd looked at, their combined salaries are well over a million credits, but Matthew won't let any of them go, which must surely be nice for them if nothing else.

    Unlike Matthew however, Lilian was born after the invention of the lightbulb, never mind computer, and so her PC is significantly less 'I bought Norton premium' to get into. There are limits to what she can access, based on how paranoid Lilian might have felt about it. The emitter in the desk brings up sleek little curved panorama of screens, but the center desktop is a photograph of a lake somewhere surrounded by mountains, taken on a particularly gorgeous day, with Tamamo in a bikini filling left foreground, and Strawberry Princess in a sarong a little further off trying her awkward best to smile also. A pile of social media and finance apps open at startup, but unfortunately don't have their passwords saved and run on 2FA, which she won't get without Lilian's smart device.

    Lilian's disgusting number of social media followers probably isn't all that interesting to Cantio, nor her mostly boring search history of low-fi study music or endless amounts of dry research. The fact that a lightly encrypted archive is full of only digital artwork, ostensibly done on that tablet, is odd, as is perhaps the fact that 'video games' have only graced this computer for the first time mere months ago. The only readable email is unread notification popups, mostly being awkwardly worried letters from 'Sabrina' and 'Eleanor' left for her, 'student/alumni award' notifications, and classmates whining and begging for allocation of school resources through her. Navigating through saved artwork and photographs and incomprehensible postmodern memes, and way, way too much porn, gets Cantio to 'the highest level of security she can reasonably crack with her level of expertise' before it seems Lilian actually paid out big bucks for real professional cybersecurity on an encrypted cloud partition.

    Matthew's paranoid bullshit was definitely right. The vast majority of Lilian's personal wealth is from Multiversal investment now cracking the hundreds of billions threshold. Even while she's away, trading on an algorithm is making her a thousand credits a second. The last major activity is a massive investment in a 'mahou veteran and family relief fund Lilian set up in her own name in Strawberry Princess' world, which is non-profitable, and something to do with a vibranium GDF contract codenamed Cipher of Swords, which is.

    It also contains a daily, weekly, and monthly timetable wherein Lilian has everything scheduled out to an utterly insane degree. Outrageously detailed timelines go through two different sets of courses on a full time schedule, the limit of non-injurious physical conditioning and 'cultivation exercises', study periods, research periods, 'spellcraft development', peak trade hours, leisure blocks, outings, Paladins work time and mission blocks, and endless, endless, *endless* amounts of training, training, training, *training*, broken up by meals handled by staff and 20 minute sleeping periods, as well as constant reminders for taking meds. Lilian has three weeks cut out just written as Scáthach. On closer inspection though, the schedule must be ciphered in some way. Each day would be a 52 hour schedule otherwise.
Lilian Rook     Lastly, there's a heavily secured partition that has been recently heavily updated, saved to removable media, pulled, and partially wiped. Unnervingly, each folder is named after people Lilian has met, and from what Cantio can glean, they each contain obsessively and meticulously detailed dossiers on all major Elites Lilian knows, including those who are strictly only involved in single worlds. Worse still, all of the Concord and Watch files, save notable exclusions of Xion and Rita appear to hint at extensively detailed 'neutralization' procedures planned well in advance. Just in case. Probably. It's the kind of game 'Dark Staren' would talk, but which here is being confidently, quease-inducingly walked. Persephone's file has been just recently created, and is the most recently and extensively edited by far.
Candy      'Just one' draws a giggle from Candy, even though Katrina hadn't meant for it to be playful. Perhaps -because- she hadn't. The pep talk seems to help--though not for the reasons she might expect.

*It don't make me feel no better to know she's had trouble with this thing for so long. But it's real sweet of you, to say stuff like that anyway.*

     When she starts to steer him back towards the front door, his smile fades a little.

*Limey's gonna think I came here to hurt her. And what's fucked up is that I did, at first. I owe it to this girl. The truth. Maybe she can tell Lilian, or... tell Cecilia.*

     "Hey, I didn't say I wasn't sent here," he says. "Just that it wasn't her. I got an invitation--but whoever it was didn't wanna talk to me past getting me through the front door. 'May we never meet,' they said. Didn't give no name. But whoever it is, they're worried about her, too."

     He stops, showing his first resistance to being ushered, so that he can turn, face Katrina, and flip an errant lock of hair back into place with a flick of his wrist. "'Course, if you still wanna try the hard way, I wouldn't mind. Since I'm so cute and all."

     No, he didn't stop just to hit on her more. It's clear that he has something important to say, and needed a moment to compose his thoughts. "Look, ah... I dunno how close you and her are. But it don't matter how bad she beats me, as long as I can still stand up. It's not... about me, or how I feel. It seems to me like she's had too many people in her life that made it all about them, and how they felt, and whatever bullshit goes on up here," he says, pointing at his head, "That makes people afraid of a kid." He holds up a hand, as if to pre-emptively, simply by the gesture and his expression, assure Katrina that he knows Lilian wasn't a normal child. It simply doesn't matter to him--you love and trust your children and that's the way it should be.

     "You don't have to make me feel better about what happened. Even though it hurt. You can't just give up on somebody that's good 'cause they hurt you when they were hurting. I know you said to leave it alone, but please..." He reaches into his longcoat and procures the disturbing drawings, handing them over. "I need to know about this. Need to know if it's a place we can bury, or a thing we can get rid of, or otherwise how to get it away from her. Because whatever this is, it don't look like something she deserves to have after her."
Lilian Rook     Flamel using the words 'house' and 'memory' together is actually very apt. This place is not only tremendously magical, but very old. Multiples of the oldest houses to be found in America for sure. Generations of strongly magical people have lived and died here and left their impressions, and the library is especially the work of many caring and long-sighted hands. It's a rich psychometric tapestry equivalent to an entire VR world.

    So Astral Staren is able to see this area in its prime. Warmly lit, filled with cozy nooks and half-finished studies, and the cheerful tromp of feet and turn of pages. She can see the ghost before he was a ghost, half-bald and advanced in age, but like a Santa Claus without the beard, indulging in retirement in a housecoat as old-fashioned maids predating even Cecilia bring him afternoon tea with his effusive thanks. Two groups of children are occupied in reading time, probably set aside for their parents to go out. A young man crams furiously for his midterms on the middle level. A lady in a closed off corner absorbs a romance novel two feet from her face. A couple arm in arm peruse the shelves for some particularly specific volume. A black cat winds around Astral Staren's legs, rubbing up for attention. The woman who must have been Alison's mother strikes up an animated conversation with the ghost as she brings in a tome that he lights up to see; a new addition.

    And one by one, those faces disappear. A ghostly shade of the old man can only watch as they wink out of existence. Nooks left empty. Papers left unfinished. Books never fully read. A couple never married. Children never grown. Each time, one of the lamps goes out, until Staren is left in a pitch black room, with the sound of horrid, alien chittering.

    The presence that remains attached to this collection has never actually beheld an Antegent, simply because he passed away too early, but the psychic manifestation, vague and shifting and sleep paralysis shadow demon-y as it is, is recognizable sheerly by the aura of distant fear and sadness and resentment seeped into it. A psychic amalgam of 'the thing that ruined this library' must certainly be the 'aggression' Staren is looking for, because it immediately attacks her with dozens of constantly flowing and shifting shadowy claws and hooks and fangs and stingers and things that nebulously represent the abstract idea of a terrible monster.

    In the dark library, a tiny Lilian sits in a corner with the ghost, just a single reading light on, oblivious to the horror that shares the room with them. The small glow of her continued interest in these old books is a lifeline to the haunting presence, and the only place in the room that isn't freezing. Her coexistence and indifference with the thing that darkens the room and attacks Staren is something perceived by the presence. To it, and maybe to the house's spirits generally, Lilian and Antegent are one and the same association.
Cantio "For sure. I mean, it's Lilian's place, so I'm not too surprised there was something like /that/ in her own room." Cantio gestures at Hibiki's hand as she gets the healing power of vague magic light pumped in there. "Magical traps.... Hmm. I mean, if it's just straightforward injuries, you're... Pretty much looking at it."

Cantio laughs lightly, although it's in that sort of 'oh this will suck' sort of way. "Anything more than that, though? Still a work in progress, but I'm feeling pretty good about it get... Eventually getting somewhere further!" She continues with a hopeful tone in her voice, checking over Hibiki's hand once more before turning her attention back to the computer.

Indeed, poking through Lilian's computer is already proving to be a treasure trove of information. She's thorough in digging around in whatever isn't secured, largely trying to avid triggering 2FA by not even going near passwords and the like. At least with Matthew's computer, the chance of triggering something like that could just be explained away as someone in the house snooping around. In this case, Cantio's fairly confident that Lilian might find her fingerprints sooner than later if she was to be tipped off about this. Best to play it safe for now.

As expected, not all of it is necessarily useful, and some of it makes Cantio feel just a bit guilty or incredibly dirty looking at. "Whoa... So that's what she's been..." It doesn't stop her from doing just that for longer than she probably should be, although she does pause for a moment to turn to Hibiki.  "O-oh! Uh. You probably shouldn't be seeing some of these things."

She won't stop Hibiki from looking at all, but at least she's pretending to be responsible for that one sentence before continuing to dig. The investments give her some ideas on where to try and funnel some more passive income out of herself, but the real paydirt comes when Cantio finds the timetable. The sheer amount of training included in there is concerning, but she's not Lilian's personal doctor, and her real concern comes when she sees the name Scáthach.

"Do you recognize that name?" She asks Hibiki while wiggling the mouse over the same name, bringing up her hand to her earpiece to repeat the same question to the others in this area. It's only after that that she notices the impossible number of hours on this schedule. "That's... Wait. That's not right. Unless..."

Things are starting to click together. Her ability to see what Cantio had done so long ago. Her anger over what was possibly supposed to be something unique and special. Her sheer focus on finding out where Cantio had gotten that power from. "... She must know BB, then. If that's why she was so angry, then she must be..."

Without further elaboration, Cantio continues digging and finds that secured partition with the kill plans for so many people. Morbid curiosity compels her to look for her own entry, of course, but Persephone's file also gets some special attention. She also searches for BB's name as well, just to see if her theory might have some weight to it.
Flamel Parsons     Flamel has been hearing a *lot* about what's going on, and picking up some readings by proxy with Staren. While he keeps the temperature going, he can't join Staren herself, but he can monitor her. And monitor her he does... He's able to get a good reading on what's going on, and figure out a way to get around it.

    "You hate Lilian as part of that amalgamated other, part of the Antegent... what if I..." He racks his own brain trying to come up with something. What is something Flamel can produce, something which dehumanizes Lilian, treats her as an absolute object and distant other to be opposed or manipulated, that Flamel can use as an alignment-changing mechanism?

    An idea! That is, his idea is to synthesize an idea. Specifically, an idea about what to do with Lilian. A searing orange lightbulb is suddenly blipped into existence near Staren's hands, about the size of a heavy weapons slug, or a large power cell for a high-power energy weapon. This idea thrums with pure dehumanizing energies, designed to align with the aggression's. Whatever idea Flamel just came up with, it's *incredibly* disrespectful to Lilian's personal boundaries and autonomy! "Hit it with this! It might flip sides and stop pointing at us, and deactivate!" He calls out, in echoing mental audio.
Hibiki Tachibana     Hibiki gives a dry chuckle back as she makes sure her hands won't be a pain to use. And hopefully that they won't eat critica damage again in the near future. "...For what it's worth, I believe in you. I guess if anything looks dangerous, let me just be the one to touch it first. Anyway, let's see here..."

    Hibiki hadn't really thought of trying to get into the computer yet - because honestly, she couldn't even break a basic password lock without finding it written down somewhere. But with Cantio on the case, she has access to a source of information that'll probably be more enlightening than the diary. Maybe too enlightening, with some of the things on here. Hovering over the other girl's shoulder, she isn't very interested in money and investments and those sort of numbers she can't understand so much as the more personal things she can glean - while going along with Cantio absolving herself of responsibility with a, "Probably not. But I gave up on caring about that when I broke into her room."

    The timetable gets a long, long squint out of her, for multiple reasons. "Scáthach...no, I don't think so," she answers with a frown. "You remember the letter that led us here? It mentioned she's seeking something in herself, and if she finds it...I guess that's what she's doing now." She lets out a heavy breath.

    "I don't know who 'BB' is, but...this schedule doesn't make any sense, does it? You'd have to fit more than...two entire days...into one..." There's a deep furrow on her brow, but she can't pin down how that's actually possible just yet. And because of that, she leans in a bit more to glance towards Cantio. "...Do you know something about how she's able to do that, Cantio? If you do...please, tell me."

    Trailing off after with a grimace, Hibiki keeps down a swallow as the partition starts being sifted through. The two exclusions don't miss her at all, and they're not ones she's surprised to see missing. But seeing that /everyone/ else she can think of has one here, and that she herself is going to be in the 'extensive neutralization plans' section...there's a cold sweat building up. "...And while you're at it...can you pull up mine too?"
Persephone Kore      Persephone glances around the uncomfortably eerie intersection with slightly pursed lips. It definitely feels as though there's something to be learned here; some obscure pixel-hunt thing she could uncover if only she Adventure Game Protagonisted hard enough.

     Unfortunately, that's a class she doesn't have enough INT to qualify for. After a few uneasy moments, she shrugs her shoulders and keeps walking, stopping only to wave and smile at any ghosts she happens to run into. Aren't they precious?

     By intention or happenstance, she ends up at Lilian's room instead of her intended destination, casually opening the door and walking in on Cantio and Hibiki without so much as a knock. (Well, they are all trespassing anyway.) "Hey," she says casually, just as highly inappropriate things are flashing across the computer screen. "What are you two up to in here?"

     Though she takes a brief glance at the four-poster bed, Persephone turns her psychometry on three other things first: the expended magazines for a futuristic firearm, the scratches on the mirror, and the cracked stylus. Those are the most worrying, aren't they? It's important to know what's wrong with her as much as what's right.

     In between rounds of psychometry-ing, she glances over at the dresser, notices Lilian's bottles of mysterious medications, gives a satisfied nod as if another missing piece is slotting into an already-solved puzzle, and casually opens a bottle to put two of the pills under her tongue like it's nothing before putting the bottle back and resuming her examinations.
Lilian Rook     Persephone's previous scans of Cecilia's reactions to mentioning things about what makes Lilian special go as such: Cecilia does not know what Lilian's power is, but she is aware of so many holes in her memory that she is reasonably certain Lilian has erased the knowledge multiple times. However, because none of the holes border any kind of harm, Cecilia believes this to be benevolent, and has never mentioned it. What she does have is sixteen years of living around it, being scared of it, learning how to deal with it, and then coming to accept it as normal. There is no direct information, but almost two decades of memorized facts, trivia, strategies and tricks, for child-rearing and otherwise, for dealing with the unknown factor.

    Cecilia believes that Lilian makes things happen by wanting them. She knows that this can't create things, because small Lilian used to steal things. She is fairly sure it can destroy them however. She conceives of it not as make things come into being, but as make things happen. These aren't just tangible events, but also intangible changes as well. Cecilia has seen Lilian make things move since she was six years old, but later on, she recalls things like Lilian knowing the contents of a book without reading it, Lilian acquiring things that were hidden or locked down, causing complicated things to assemble themselves or difficult spell preparation to be finished.
Lilian Rook     She remembers that Lilian used to be impatient but would never skip through anything tedious just for the sake of boredom, and that also a lot more timid and skittish, and would make scary things unhappen. Movies pausing themselves, objects held threateningly disappearing, and so on. She also knows that these things do not have to be possible, but merely have to have been possible at some point. Likewise, she first became nervous about it when she learned that other children Lilian hated would become horribly injured as she wished. However, none of these events have ever been random or undirected.

    Cecilia's experience getting used to it involves a lot of fine adjustments. She expects Lilian will act as if she already knew something would happen, and that strange events are more likely to occur early in the day and least likely later on. There used to be a sense of deja vu or instinctive uncanny quality associated with it, but since that day the signs have disappeared.

    She also knows from her brief forays into paranoia that if Lilian doesn't know about and has no reason to examine something, it will almost never be affected, but that otherwise she can get to anything she wants. She is aware that the further away something is, the less likely Lilian will touch it, and that range is a strong indicator of influence, but is not technically absolute. She doesn't know what Lilian's current range is anymore. When she was six, it used to not ever leave the room.

    From her experience, it's nearly impossible to tell if an item has simply been disturbed if it hasn't left its original place; she believes that Lilian can make things happen non-manually, and that anti-magic is irrelevant. Most cases Lilian has done thing have been extremely subtle, but she still remembers occasions where catastrophic damage far in excess of what Lilian could actually manage have occurred.

    Very importantly, she knows that less complex things happen when Lilian is stressed, and there is something like a flexible bandwidth limit of things 'just happening' back to back. And also, Cecilia believes that what Lilian does is a skill and not a spell, and that she can do it poorly or excellently, sloppily or carefully as one would expect from the conditions of a 'skilled attempt', and that mishandling it causes some kind of feedback associated with the thing she decided happened/happens. 'Done well', she can go through the rain without getting wet, but 'done poorly', she's downloaded a book and gotten exhausted. Mostly, it seems she uses it nearly exclusively for efficiency and not convenience.

    Cecilia is sure that Lilian could wish someone dead if she tried, but that she never would, until perhaps now. Her personal zen is that worrying about whether Lilian did or didn't do something is pointless. It is too omnipresent, constant, unprovable, and harmless to her personally. If she would rather not Lilian do something, she handles it by simply giving her no knowledge of it or compelling reason to do so.

    Lilian responds beyond poorly to accusations that something was her fault; something her parents did very frequently. Lastly, for reasons unknown, Lilian used to panic whenever Cecilia zoned off, tuned out, stopped moving, or things got too quiet, and still has a habit of testingly prodding her. Cecilia assumes it has something to do with isolation or fear of abandonment, but does think it's strange how viscerally she would react.
Cantio Of course Persephone comes in as they're looking at THAT content. "Eh? Oh, hey Phony! We're just looking at-" Oh god the porn is on the screen. Alt-tab, immediately! "N-nothing! Just... Snooping around. Normally! At... Uh." Quick. What did Cantio alt-tab to? Why did she open two of these folders?! What kind of position is that? ... Is that something she could try one day? Is that something Lilian's already tried with Tamamo?

After fighting down the intense awkwardness and just outright closing the offending windows, Cantio explains what they've found regarding the IMPOSSIBLE TIMETABLES and KILL FOLDERS, then turns to Hibiki.

"BB is..." Cantio starts, then stops for a moment. "I'm not really sure how to describe her, actually. She's... Hm. I'd say 'like my sister', but that won't really narrow things down at all. Er... She's a little over the top, acts on whims more than pure logic, and I think she's from the moon or something. But beyond that, she's got a good heart, and she pulled me out of some pretty dark places a while back. Twice, even. And..."

Cantio coughs into her hand briefly, as if stopping herself again. There's a faint blush on her cheeks, but she doesn't go into that even though Persephone can probably notice her thinking about how BB took her first...?

"... She gave me power a while back. It's not completely gone now, but it's... Different from before. Like it's mine rather than something I was borrowing from her." Cantio eventually realizes she's not being too clear there, then elaborates. "For a while, I was able to do a bunch of different things at the same time concurrently. I.. Mostly used it for catching up on sleep and getting all my paperwork done at the same time so I'd have no real down time during the day. Or making lunch and not having to miss a second of a concert. That sort of stuff." She laughs, then turns back to that timetable. "For Lilian to be able to do that, though... She must know BB, because she got really angry when..."

There's a long pause as Cantio recalls a still-sore memory. "... When she found out I could do that during a mission together. She wanted to know where it came from, and I think that's why. If she's got this obsession with BB, then of course she'd be angry finding out someone like /me/ got her... Blessing, I guess?"

Cantio also makes sure to pull up Hibiki's kill plan when requested. Out of respect for her privacy, though, she turns away from the screen and waits until Hibiki's done reading before putting her hands back on the wheel. It's what friends would do!
Staren     On the bright side, the astral library (for lack of a better concise term) is less of a puzzle than expected. On the less-bright side, 'aggression' is a *boss fight*. Staren is leaping around the room, one arm firing those little comet-like projectors of plasma as she grapples across the room to cling to a dark bookshelf, then kicks off and grapples to another one, et cetera, trying to stay ahead of the monster. She flinches and grunts in pain as attacks hit her despite her efforts, breaking holes in her forcefield and tearing at her coat.

    In moments, Staren realizes she's seen this before, though not with eyes. This isn't just a monster. This is the Other. This is Them. This is ####

    How do you FIGHT that? Staren calls for help, but as Flamel responds she's already got her own Brilliant Idea, and latches onto it with the self-conviction of every person who fancies herself exceedingly 'clever'. She pockets Flamel's idea for backup.

    Focusing intently, Staren lets one of those tentacles hit her, and then tries to GRAB it with her left hand. The vambrace on that arm has been replaced by proper armor; a brass-colored segmented gauntlet, vaguely techno-wizardly with wires running along the back of the arm and each finger and a gem set into the wrist. It represents Technology, how knowledge and understanding can be used to protect oneself and allow handling of dangers invisible to the naive and unenlightened mind; like a nuclear scientist using a shielded suit to handle deadly isotopes.

    If that works, she manifests a vibro-sword in her right hand and tries to chop a piece of the tentacle off! She's improvising here, but the idea she's focusing on is that not only does knowledge and understanding make the mysterious unknown Other into something that can be handled and fought -- but that once brought under the purview of Science, that very same Other can be understood and exploited and turned against other hazards in turn!

    If it works, maybe the tentacle turns into a magitech spear or a sort of ammo/fuel she can use to turn the idea's power against itself!

    And if it doesn't work and overconfidence hasn't screwed Staren over too badly to fight back already, Staren replaces the vibrosword with the JA-12 "One Man Army" laser sniper rifle, loads Flamel's idea in like an e-clip, and fires 3-pulse laser bursts wildly at the thing as it attacks her, desperately hoping it tames the beast before it finishes her!
Xion Xion is not, herself, well-attuned to trees. Another Kai-recolor of her ilk would be the one who could bring joy to the junior Rowan tree. Tree joy is difficult to measure, to grasp.

"Tree joy is a freedom to remain. Space to take up, and resources in abundance. A tree will grow and grow and grow unless it is frustrated in some way, cut into a new shape or competed against." Xion speaks, eyes closed, sitting up on the branch. Her left hand strokes the knotted curl of exposed tree-nerve, before patting meaninglessly.

Starlight drops a ways to the ground and plants itself, tooth-down, in the earth.

"A forest is a community of trees, spreading the reach of a family as the light is rich and plentiful. Where the sun favors, trees flourish in places that can lift them up, tall and strong."

Sliding off the root herself, Xion lands in the soil next to the roots, and peers around for the white lily for a moment, before smiling gently. Summoning a tan apron and tying it loosely at the small of her back, she carries on, resolutely summoning a shovel into her hand and starting to turn the earth near the roots, working more with diligence than any special skill.

"It's difficult to live when the light above you gutters and fades. To thrive, when only a candle's light finds you. When the roots are cut, and the forest thins to a single tree, that's hard, isn't it?"

Xion huffs, swiping an arm across her brow and heaving a large bag of fertilizer out from 'behind' her, the top of the sack sliced open and dirtied with a top-quarter gone. Upending the bag half over her arm, she begins shuffling out the sack of Tree Food around the available earth-woven roots, moving back over with a shovel after to bury the soil a layer beneath the ground.

"Even if you're struggling to live in the dark world around you, it's lonely being the only thing reaching for the sun."

Next, some seed packets come out, with bright purple and blue flowers on the bags, that are scattered all about a range away from the roots, haplessly given to random chance. Surely, some will wash away, be picked at by birds, or taken by groundskeepers.

But hydrangea are resilient things and show their most brilliant colors in acidic soil - a trait shared by the Rowan tree.

"Alright. Thanks for answering my questions." Xion offers to: A tree, and collects her scattered gardening tool belongings, stopping at the planted length of Starlight.

For a moment, space bends around her, and like a perspective trick photo, Xion reaches up and plucks with un-stretched fingers a single barry from the topmost branch of the tree, red and bitter, from all the way near the top, where an unseasonal berry on a branch hangs.

She plucks it, and, space resuming its normal course, pops the single berry in her mouth to chew.

ELSEWHERE: SOMEONE ELSE ALSO EATS A THING, UNRELATEDLY.

Pulling Starlight from the ground, Xion taps the ROUNDED, FLAT TIP to her left thumb, where a pinprick of blood appears, that she lets dribble over a root meaningfully.

"And for your berry, too."

Swinging ker keyblade over her shoulder to rest against casually there, the niorette zones out for a few moments, and then turns to look up at the house.

"It'd be a lot easier if this were water metaphors. I'm a lot better at those."
Lilian Rook     Katrina doesn't like Candy's answer about why he's here. She especially doesn't like how. It's plain as day on her face. It seems she's much less likely to bother to veil these things than her younger sister, even if she's capable of doing so nearly as well. Three guesses about what raises a household full of expert liars with sterling poker faces under stress.

    "Have you considered even for a moment that you might have been sent here by an enemy of the family? Someone using you to cause a disruption? To gain information? Even just to send a message? No name, no signature, and a vague motive anyone would like. That's way too fishy." she says, briefly sounding like her sister, though she lacks the extra refined edge to her enunciation.

    Her priorities change when Candy produces the reproductions. Oddly, the first thing Katrina snaps at him, alarmingly seriously, is "Don't touch Cecilia's things. Don't lay a finger on that woman at all. She's done enough already. Been through enough. I'll have the sisters here in three seconds flat if you do." Exhaling away some of that defensiveness, she does come back to the actual topic, though.

    "I don't know what it is." she admits, with a note of bleak hopelessness creeping into her voice. "She started having those dreams when she turned six. They ruined everything for a while. Kept Cecilia up all night. We took her to a child therapist, but they got nothing from it. She could be on enough sleeping medication to kill a roebuck and she'd still wake up yelling about something. It stopped once she managed, somehow, to sneak into the Reliquary, and get at that old sword. I don't know how. Personally, I think Aoibheil let her. Maybe even helped. But she got glued to it. She'd sleep with it like a teddy bear. Even talk to it. But we all looked the other way because we finally got some peace out of it."

    "Bryce still doesn't like it. He thinks that old thing is unhealthy. Something about it having too much hate." Katrina sighs, but points to the dark and fiery figure. "But she used to say that it kept that thing away. She said it made her feel safe. I suppose it's no surprise she took after Aoibheil and that knight fantasy in the end."

    A sad grimace touches Katrina's lips. "I wish she wouldn't. Not that I think it's bad of her; actually, there isn't anything more noble. I was there in the mud when the Immunes were the only thing keeping things together, after all. But this family has had enough to do with those things. She was born too late to be scared of them, scarred by them, like everyone else, but that makes it worse when it comes to people. I wish she'd have less to do with them and not more."
Hibiki Tachibana     "Eh? Persephone..." Hibiki, in time with Cantio, looks back. Fortunately, she wasn't looking too deep at all the no-no stuff at that moment, and the distraction is enough that she didn't delve further. "We're, uh..." Her own awkwardness isn't from Lilian's tastes being up on screen, but rather because she's still holding onto some lingering guilt from barging into the place and reminded she shouldn't be by both of the traps. "...trying to find out more about Lilian."

    She doesn't really know why she's taking some of Lilian's medicine, and she's not going to ask either, turning to Cantio with a raised eyebrow. "That's...a lot," she mentions on the subject of BB. "But it sounds like she's your friend...a good one. Power..." Her head tilts the more the other girl explains. She looks like she's only half-there in thought as they both turn back towards the screen. "...Yeah. I could see her getting mad because you got a power like hers."

    Is that what Lilian could do? Do multiple things at the same time? The ability to even do that isn't something she can entirely wrap her head around being possible. "Is something like that why I could never touch her...?" She's just wondering out loud at this point, but it's not hard to tell she's fixated on it and Cantio's own words, and also thinking about this BB person.

    She won't find anything out just going over things in her head though. She never does. "...Thanks, Cantio." She gets an appreciative nod (that will go unseen) when she turns away, and glances back to the computer to read as quick as she can before they continue together.
Persephone Kore      Persephone leans against the dresser casually, taking another short break from her psychometry to give the two younger girls a reassuring smile. With a little nod towards the screen: "I've got just as good at home. Focus on the mission for now, okay, Cantio?" It's followed by a dreadfully sweet tittering laugh.

     Getting back to business: "I knew she had plans for 'dealing with' me," she admits with a surprisingly small amount of discomfort. "She mentioned it in a Paladins report, and I read the Paladins stuff from I4's mind. But I didn't know she had them for anybody else. That's kind of scary, isn't it? Feeling like you have to be prepared for things as awful as that..." She shakes her head.

     "I'm not sure the schedule is really impossible, though. She can do things without really doing them, right? Even reading a book or training her body. From what Cecilia said, maybe she really is doing 52 hours' worth of things in a day."

     Hibiki, who's closer to her, gets a squeeze on the shoulder and a moment of heartfelt eye contact. "Hey. We're here to help her, aren't we? As long as we succeed in doing that... I think later, she'll forgive us for intruding a little." That's what Persephone's trying to tell herself, anyway; even if it's not true, she believes it enough to make it convincing.

     "Why you could never touch her..." Persephone straightens back up, her expression shifting from a warm smile to something more thoughtfully neutral. "That power works mostly the same as my telekinesis. She can do some things I can't, and I can do some things she can't, but they come from the same place, and you can think of them the same way."

     "Do you remember when we fought? That last punch you threw at the Queen in Veils' leg, and how it should've hit, but didn't, because I decided not to let it? She can do things just by wanting them, too. If she knows you're trying to hurt her, she can just choose not to let you." A little pause as something new seems to occur to her. "And I guess she could read your mind to tell when you're about to, too, like I do."
Candy      "Whoever it was knew exactly how to get here, so I sure hope it wasn't somebody with a bone to pick," admits Candy. He opens his mouth to add something, only to be taken aback by Katrina's sudden, vehement reproach at the sight of the pictures.

*The sword is what keeps her safe from that thing.*

     Now, the picture of Lilian with Cecilia, while her parents fell to their deaths, makes even more sense. "Safety, ah?" he muses quietly. So that's where everyone is. Why there are so many ghosts here.

     He clears his throat. "Me and Lilian, we're pretty different, but there's some things we have in common. I learned the hard way that she's good at finding things out," he says, pulling his collar down to show a lingering bruise from the beating she gave him.

     "Just like I am. Those drawings are fakes. Copies, understand? Wherever the real ones are supposed to be, they're still there." He reaches up and tiredly rubs his face. "I also found out what a good person Cecilia is. Messing with her... my friend, that's the last thing on my mind right now."

     "There was something else she said. Maybe you can shed some light on it..." Maybe it will click into place with what she's told him so far. The desire for safety from that thing, the knight fantasy, the hate.

     "'It really is that easy. He was right.'" He pauses. It's difficult for him to say this--to recount something that hurt to hear. "...'I can't believe I spent so much time slowing down for you people.'" Candy swallows, and for a moment he can't look Katrina in the eye.

     "Does that... mean anything to you? Does it give you any idea where she went or why? Or... what I oughta do, once she gets back?" He shakes his head. "Aside from not talking to her. God dammit. I..."

*I hate this. I wanted to come here and teach you a lesson. Instead I'm trying to help you. I actually feel bad about what I said. You no good, piece of shit limey. You make everything so hard.*

     "She said I couldn't reach her. That none of us ever could. Why does she say things like that?"
Lilian Rook     Persephone enters as Cantio is being a little shit and leaving things open too long. It's something involving maids and complicated ropes and honestly that alone would knock a psychotherapist flat on his ass in student debt validation at this point.

    Stylus:
...

    A sharp, plastic crack rebounded off the walls like a gunshot. Lilian's eyes slowly lowered to the stylus clenched in her hand. Snapped clean in half between her index finger and thumb. The upper portion rested limply in the crook of her hand, like a dead animal with a broken neck. The sight of her own white-knuckled grip disgusted her, and so she flicked the remains into the wastebasket past the length of the desk.

...

The door gently clicked shut.

    Magazines: Lilian sits amidst a hovering swarm of holographic windows, filled with schematics, mathematics, bodycam footage on loop, and detailed half-written self-authored documents. The state of her body alone is enough to place the time as likely just before leaving, even without her sleepless, deranged ranting permeating everything like a swear-filled mantra. Unwrapped packaging litters the desk between jars of powders and solvents and a burner running in the background.

    The magazines are already loaded, but Lilian is in the process of extricating the rounds one at a time by hand from the ramp springs. Laying different sizes of ammunition out on the table, she carefully unscrews varying tips and cartridges and hand-tools them back together one at a time, engraving and rune-blessing each one, and then reordering them into separate magazines that she has marked with different coloured tape. Before she transfers each individualized round, she makes sure to write something on the side. The therapeutic exercise of literally engraving the name of the intended recipient on each bullet. They aren't all for Persephone; only the red magazines are hers.
Lilian Rook     Mirror: A girl with neck-length black hair and bright green eyes sits in front of the currently massively oversized mirror, marveling at her new dress. Alison hovers behind her, looking distinctly uncomfortable and slightly lost, but awkwardly smiling in the way of someone who believes they've done something correctly. "This used to be mine. But since you'll be needing it now, I'd like you to have it." she says to Lilian. She is received with a hug she doesn't know what to do with.

    A taller young girl with shoulder-length black hair and bright green eyes sits in front of the oversized mirror. Cecilia stands behind her. The two share warm chatter over the subject of Lilian discovering her first foundation, giggling at the little swatches the doting maid draws with her brush. "Are you excited? Your debut is this year. Think of all the other children you'll be able to meet!"

    A girl with back-length black hair and bright green eyes sits in front of the mirror. Cecilia stands behind her, brushing her hair in the early morning, but Lilian is busy gingerly applying stinging antiseptic to a bloody bruise that'd broken the skin on her forehead. "I'm sure he didn't mean to." says Cecilia. "Please think about it. School is in an hour. He wouldn't want to send his own daughter off looking like that. It was an accident." Lilian attempts a queasy smile, then glimpses herself in the mirror abruptly stops. "What is it?" Cecilia asks, noticing the disappearance of expression. Lilian replies. "Alison said that if I keep smiling to myself like that then the boys are going to think I'm a slut." Cecilia sighs "That's ridiculous." Lilian replies "She said she didn't put all that work into raising a little whore." "Lilian, just smiling doesn't mean anything to people. You should smile as much as possible, I think. It makes you look-" "Like a nasty little pervert." "Please stop." "Her words." "If you keep repeating them, you'll forget they were." "Well, I'm kicking the habit anyways. The last time I did over dinner she threw the-" "Yes, I was there. Please, let's talk about something else."

    Lilian sits in front of the mirror. She looks incredibly ill, staring at herself in the middle of the night and trying to figure out how to cover it up. A gentle knock comes at her door. Cecilia excuses herself in, balancing a tray of evidently home-made tea and sweets with expert quiet. "Is that- Cecilia you shouldn't have." "Nonsense. I'm the chief of staff. I can do whatever I please like this." The head maid gets halfway to the dresser, then coming within five feet of Lilian, acts as if she's suddenly been tased, falling to the floor in a fit of agony. A shattered cup shard flies right past Lilian's face and scores the mirror, but she doesn't even notice, rushing to Cecilia immediately. "No no no Matthew told you not to! You're not supposed to- Not while I'm grounded! I told you he'd do this! Please get up!"

    Pills: Phony can't make heads or tails of the markings, being in written Irish Gaelic, but they have the feel of body modification drugs, and are something like putting her tongue on a sickly sweet battery. It's brand new, with no real history. Just lingering words repeated while taken. "You're afraid of your own choices, but you're not afraid of what's going to happen when you get there?"
"You don't think I'll pass?"
"Hah! If half of what I know is true, she'll figure out what you are in an instant!"
Lilian Rook     Cantio and Hibiki's snooping hits a dead end pretty quickly. The actual specifics of the dossier files are beyond her level to hack, and as glimpsed before, have been copied, pulled, wiped, and taken with her. In the worst case, that means she intends to study them, wherever she went. Most of what's left to glean from it is 'threat assessment'. Hibiki may have mixed feelings about being a 'low priority' and 'minimum threat' target, with a 'mere' three, small action folders, all classified 'minimum force'. Cantio is listed as 'high priority' but also 'low threat' and has several entries dedicated, some new ones to do with the Bugster issue, the worst labeled 'lethal force; field retirement'. BB has one too, 'low priority' and 'high threat', mostly listed as 'inconclusive' and notes about obnoxious immortality. Persephone is by far the most over-expansive. At one point it was 'low priority' and 'no danger', but has since been revised to 'first priority' and 'maximum threat' with a 'maximum force' slew of folders added right after the episode in the Decompression Chamber by date.

    As far as it may concern anyone, Candy appears under, 'moderate priority' - 'moderate threat' - 'inconclusive', Xion doesn't have an entry, Flamel barely has one, Haru appears as 'major priority' - 'moderate threat' - 'more data', Staren appears as 'moderate priority' and hurtfully 'joke', and Benjamin Horne has since been locked and put on cold storage as 'low priority' - 'non-threat' - 'inapplicable' - 'already resolved'.
Lilian Rook     In the realm of Jungian bullshit, triple burst MD stats have no sway. However, hacking into the Antegent-amalgam with a knowledge-aspected weapon severs the tentacle in such a way that it 'bleeds' glowing book pages, exsanguinating its sleep paralysis nightmare shape of its shadowy substance to be converted into the categorized and comfortable that Belongs In This Library. Being shot with Flamel's special attack: Psycho Lightbulb, results, very strangely, in the aggression response being tranquilized. It reminds him of an addiction or narcissism psychohazard, fed and satiated for the time being by his casual dehumanization of Lilian.

    However, the tiny Lilian in the glow-lit corner is defended from the backsplash by the ghostly presence. Though Lilian is a tainted name and presence in this household, the ghosts in this house all seem to possess immense sentimental attachment to her; moreso than the living. It could be said that Lilian is part of all of their 'unfinished business' now.

    For the meantime, this does finally free them from Gay Baby Nerd Jail and into the house proper to bother someone else.
Cantio "I-I am focused! It was just..." Cantio can't win here. She just slumps slightly and tries to purge all thoughts of horny out of her mind. Still, to think that THAT's what Lilian's into...

BACK TO BUSINESS, DAMMIT. "I'm not too surprised, either. If I was more..." She struggles to think up a more polite way of saying 'fucked up'. "... Troubled, I might have done the same in another universe. Or I might have been the irresponsible one. Er. Lazy! Um. Carefree!"

Cantio's really flubbing her ability to talk today. At least talking about BB puts her mind back on track.

"She is. I mean, we haven't met too often, but the few times we did..." Cantio slouches back in the seat slightly, letting her eyes rest for a moment. "... She really helped me a lot. If nothing else, I owe it to BB to make sure Lilian doesn't hurt her, too. I mean, with the message we got, this Scathach thing might be a..."

What did Staren call them? "A mythological... Something or another? Maybe a demon, even, if the person that sent the message was so afraid of what Lilian was looking for." There's not enough context to work with just yet, so she'll have to backburner that idea until after finding some more clues first.

Alas, digging into all those dossiers does't get her as far as she'd hoped for. There's an initial inflation of her ego when she sees 'high priority' listed with her name, but scoffs when she sees 'low threat' right next to that. "Oh, come on. That's just not..." She sighs, then shakes her head. "Well, she'll be in for a surprise if she tries anything again." She mutters with an irritated huff, but there is another brief ego boost when she sees herself justifying lethal force and field retirement.

It's kind of morbid to think about, though, so she wills herself away from thinking too long about that. BB's entry also gets some curious looks, but only to the extent that she can see anything at all. Persephone's wildly varying levels of stuff does have her squinting, though, as she pokes through all those things just to see the sheer quantity of them.

"She really doesn't like you, Phony. It's... Kind of weird how much she's focused in on you. Are you gonna be okay?" She looks back over at Persephone for a moment, then gets her drone to record what little info is there on all these names (just in case) before finally getting up from the computer finally. The lack of accessible data means her search has to continue elsewhere, especially if she's going to find any further clues about Scathach.

"I think that's about as much as I can get from the computer.. Were either of you able to pick up on anything that might lead us to what Lilian's working on?" Cantio asks, scratching her cheek after a moment. "I'm... Er. Out of ideas right now."
Lilian Rook     Xion, for reasons unapparent, gets the feeling that her scattered seeds are liable to do very well here. It feels like the hand that tends this garden might know very well, or rather, intuit somehow, why these are here. Making friends with a tree is odd, but then nobody would blink at it with a tree this old and important if someone just went and tied a Japanese shimenawa around it, so maybe that's cultural bias.

    The famous pentagram is right there on the berry. Blood for 'blood' and a silent understanding, even if not a contract, is sealed. Xion feels as if she could go places she isn't supposed to now. Not that a door is unbarred --she'd key it open anyways-- but that some spaces unavailable are now within sight. The rowan knows and does more than anyone but Lilian realizes.
Flamel Parsons     "It's letting the door re-open... I'll pull you out!" Flamel calls out in the mindspace. He yanks Staren back, and meanwhile in the real world, he's been holding Staren by the scruff psychically! Very literally, a large, transparent white hand is gripping Staren and hoisting her out of view of the door! There were night-shift investigators a while back...

    He's holding her up telekinetically, and holding himself up with another such hand gripping the rafters of the library! The minute she's out... He presses his index finger to his lips. A silent "shhh". Pressing an index finger to his temple, he projects himself down, now that the heat is less lethal... He's going to make sure nobody's blocking the door, or rather, to invade the minds of the mundane sorts who make up that night shift.

    His plan? Well, simply wipe the memory of hearing the noise, make them forget why they came into this room, and cause them to urgently remember other tasks they were supposed to be doing. You would be surprised to know how often psychic shenanigans are responsible when you go into a room and forget why you were going in there! You will also forget this info by tomorrow, because of that.

    In any case, this will hopefully clear the way for Flamel and Staren to drop down and start making their escape with the knowledge!
Staren     Staren feels IMMENSELY PROUD of pulling off this feat! Seriously chuffed! Like she followed in the footsteps of some great inventor.

    It may not even occur to her that rather than any personal feat of skill, her attempt at an ess emm are tee 'smart' plan may have simply been recognized as marking her as someone who obviously belongs around books.

    "Haha, I did it! It worked!" Staren cheers, though as it's bleeding and not fully disabled she also tranqs it. "Your thing worked too." She adds, taking a moment to bask in the comfortable feeling of Belongs In This Library before she has to return to whatever troubles are going on in the outside world.

    It's letting the door re-open... "Wait, I was trapped in here?!" Staren shouts back at Flamel's locationless voice before she's yanked back to the material plane. "Oh, right..." her lips mutter, now that there's someone behind them to mutter again. She'll just hang out and relax for several seconds while her brain finishes context switching.

    Stealth. Options? ...Flamel is handling it. She pays half-attention to watching him while mentally marking the guards 'solved' and reviewing the situation. It *is* time to go. She might be able to find more records, but it's unclear whether she can take any more psychic toll, even if the mini-adventure just now has left her feeling a bit revitalized from putting AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA out of her mind for a moment... aaand it's back. She slumps in Flamel's telekinetic hand, and mouths the words 'get out of here.'

    Okay. She reviews the return route on her automap, double-checking for any obvious hazards, and makes a note to grab some of the rare herbs on the way out through the garden like some sort of murder hobo goblin who can lay claim to anything lying around because she's an adventurer and this is a dungeon. Her presence has already become impossible to hide and she's already pissed off the house, after all.

    And after all: Any time spent thinking about rare herbs' uses in medicinal magic is time not spent thinking about Lilian trying to kill Staren's family when she gets back!
Lilian Rook     "Don't you understand why that's suspicious? Now of all times is when the scariest person in the house isn't around. Of course this would be the perfect time to make move." Katrina replies to Candy, but moves on quickly, her ire ameliorated somewhat by Candy's fast-talking explanation.

    And then it takes her a lot of thinking before she can continue. It doesn't seem as if she's struggling to guess what those words could possibly mean. It seems to Candy as if Lilian's sister knows that perfectly well, and is already operating on struggling with the meaning within the meaning. Uncomfortably.

    "Lilian has something that . . . humans aren't supposed to. Not 'prohibited' or 'implausible', but . . . they shouldn't. All of us have our own interpretation of the family magic, but Lilian's is . . . mother and father think they know more about it than they really do. I know my magic, and their magic, and Bryce's magic, and that is more like what I saw in all the blood and mud than any of them."

    "It's something very special. And very scary. And it does things to her head. Not . . . it's not a psychohazard, but something unavoidable as long as you're human. And she knows there's much more that she could be doing with it. That code . . . you know how important it is to her right? But the 'rules' about how you should use gifts are the most.. But please try to think about it for a moment."

    Katrina's expression grows hard and desperate. "Do you have any idea how hard it is for a girl who has to be perfect, who has to always win, who can't feel safe for a moment, to not do everything in her power? Can you imagine how much strength that must take? I know there's more, right there, within reach, that she's not reaching for on purpose, even while she can't stand imperfection. And I know that Gerart wants her to reach her full potential, and to be able to grow up and not need just those rules anymore, but . . ."

    "I'm sorry, but it's true. I can't reach her either. That girl lives in her own world. And something lately made her decide it was worth it to use the rest of her power. She's gone to Skye. To Dún Scáith. She's become disillusioned with her role models, I know it. The one she wants to see now is Scáthach; the immortal who trained Cú Chulainn. The way she learned to fight, who she learned from, is partly in the oldest Celtic style from the old family's heritage. Up until now she was content to train 'academically', but if she's gone there, I expect she wants Scáthach to do what she's legendary for; to train that power into a weapon. For us, it'll be three weeks, but for her, it'll be months of intense training, cut off from everyone else; even her girlfriend. That's how serious this is."

    "I'm worried, but . . . I can't go there. I'm no warrior, and I was born on English soil."
Hibiki Tachibana     Hibiki meets Persephone's eyes when she comes closer, eliciting a surprised blink...and then a nod, in agreement with getting Lilian's forgiveness for all the intrusion. She hopes. Really, she's just telling herself that too. Her lips purse tight not long after that as she glances off to the side, recalling them throwing hands back then. "...If she knows...and it's not like I can stop her from reading my mind either. Hmn..."

    They're definitely going to fight again. Is there something she can do to get around that? ...That'll have to wait. Her attention goes back to the screen while listening to Cantio and glossing things over, especially her own entry - where she's caught between emotions seeing herself rated so low. It's not a shock that Lilian rates her as an opponent so lowly, but at the same time, reading it just like that is...

    "...Benjamin Horne..." Her eyes narrow at that entry when she stops ruminating on that, which mostly confirms something she already knew but once again didn't particularly want to read firsthand. There's a heavy exhale at Persephone's entry following that, leading to Hibiki glancing back at her.

    "...If she does get the kind of power she's searching for...Persephone..." She trails off after Cantio's own concerns, but it's not hard to tell even without reading her - she's worried about her safety. A lot. Even as impossible to beat as Persephone seemed back then, Lilian is equally as much of a massive barrier in her mind.

    Taking a step away and resting back lightly against a wall, she sighs yet again and shakes her head. "...I think we need to find out more about this Scáthach person somehow or another. Or...whatever they're like in this world," she adds on, after a moment of thought. "I don't think we'll find anything about that digging around in her room though. I came in here to learn more about her and...well, I think I've gotten a decent bit of that..." Hibiki idly rubs at one of her wrists, for more than obvious reasons.

    "...Maybe the ones who visited the library might've picked something up? What do you think, Persephone?"
Xion Looking up, at the rustling branches, and then down, at her blood-beading thumb, Xion spends a moment sucking at her thumb and letting her hair flutter in a breeze felt by the branches of the rowan and the noirette equally.

Then she looks left, and looks right. "Oh, I can? Are you sure? Well..."

Xion bows... to a tree. As her head dips, she unlimbers the key off her shoulder and searches with her eyes for details that hang past branches and vision and dreams.

"Thanks." She adds, after a moment's contemplation, she 'finds' her target, mentally checking through all the pathways and corridors she understood and felt.

Then, with a spin that doesn't end in a step, she disappears.

To her, she just turns around, and then, she is there, losing dimensions in one space and gaining them in another.

Before the Reliquary.

Outside the structure, the bearer of the Keyblade dismisses the oversized and cartoonish length of chromed silver, and just walks forward. Now, she feels... Expected.

And, perhaps, a little anxious. Walking the path of someone who did not bear a blade before was something she had never personally done.

She was born with hers.
Candy      "I get it."

    Candy closes his eyes and sighs, burying his face in his forearm as he leans against the wall.

*It's no wonder all this fucked up shit is happening.*

    "You don't have to be sorry. It just -is.- You know? It's like being sorry for the wind, or the sun. Fuck, I wish I was as good with the words as she is." His fingers drum across the wall, and he takes a breath.

    "I know what it was that made her decide that. Lemme paint you the picture, ah?"

    He manages to push off of the wall, and for lack of anything better to do with them, he stuffs them into the pockets of his coat. "Somebody who's gotta be perfect meets somebody who's always told she is. Somebody who's gotta win all the time meets somebody who always seems to. Somebody who's never safe meets somebody who always was. -That's- the person she was trying to hurt, when she shot my friend."

    "And -that- person is one of the most kind, loving, generous people I've ever met. But Lilian, she does not see that. She only sees somebody who can beat her. That person..." Candy shakes his head. "Is the kind of person that would scare the shit out of you, if they were not as kind and loving."

    His eyes grow more intense, as he angles his head towards Katrina. He has to make sure she really understands what he says next. "Some people, they are afraid of me. They use special words to talk about me, like terrorist or dynamiter."

    "But if there is a special word for this person, I have not heard it," he says gravely. "I don't know if there even is one. This is the kind of person that words can't do justice. This is the kind of person that makes you wonder how much you really know about 'human.' This person holds back, too. But Lilian, and this person, swinging as hard as they can at each other, you listen to me."

    "That is something -everyone- ought to be afraid of." Candy lets that sink in. "So whatever you and Cecilia can do to start making Lilian feel like maybe she doesn't have to win all the time, like maybe she can be safe, you better be ready to do it when she gets back."

*That's the blade I need. Not a gun. Not a bomb. Not something to make her feel even less safe. She was half-right, when she said that none of us could reach her. That's only true as long as we keep thinking of it like an ass-beating will fix it. Lilian... I'm sorry.*

    Candy's right hand retreats from the warmth of his coat pocket. He hands the compass to Katrina. "This will help you see how you're doing. Right now, it only points to one place. But if you play your cards right, it should point to at least one more."
Persephone Kore      The stylus snaps.
     The bullets are named.
     The mirror reflects an injured girl.

    

     At least your parents did one thing right, even if they were horrible in every other way. I'm not strong enough to hate anyone, but for them, I'm getting pretty close. What your father did to Cecilia, right in front of you... she was so brave to stand up to him back then.

     You think you're ready to want that awful thing; to wish me out of existence. But are you really? It's such a hard thing to grasp and make real. ... That's all it comes down to between us, isn't it? Whoever wants it more. But I could never want this at all. I still don't. I hope you don't either.

     "No," Persephone answers Cantio, for one of the few times in her life. She sounds thoughtful and solemn, though maybe not grave. "Nobody is going to be okay." She turns her gaze from the mirror to smile at her friend; a little forlorn, a little bittersweet.

     "But I'll be the least not-okay of anyone, haha. I can promise that. If I can't do it, nobody can. So worrying about me is still completely, utterly illegal! I won't have it at all. I'll either carry everyone perfectly and make it all alright, or I won't, and either way I shouldn't be the one you worry about."

     She walks over towards the computer and casually, in passing, messes up Hibiki's hair (more than it usually is). Leaning on her casual mind-reading, she answers the magical girl's unspoken worries: "It isn't about safety, Hibiki. Or about being strong. 'Strength' doesn't matter for something like this. We both make things happen just by wanting them, right? So it's about the worlds we both want to create. How we'll shape the future together, if we act on each other with our gravity."

     "Even with everything that's happened, I want to help her to wish for a good world. If she's strong enough to do that even while she's hurting, then everything else will turn out okay, no matter what. That's what I think."

     The mention of the library makes her perk up abruptly, sparking her out of that line of rumination. "Oh!! Right. The others. The other people who are here. Ahahaha. Yeah, we should ask them!"
Cantio Cantio blinks slowly, then touches a finger to her ear piece. After a moment, she sputters, clears her throat, then glances back at Hibiki and BB briefly before whispering into it. She seems rather flustered for some reason.

It gets steadily worse over time. She keeps glancing over at Persephone with a vaguely accusing sort of look, but doesn't outright say anything out loud to that effect.

Thankfully, Hibiki's there to keep her focused! Kind of. The name 'Benjamin Horne' just gets a clueless look from Cantio, evidently something that she's just had no eyes on whatsoever. As she tries to recall where she's heard that name before (and failing from never doing that once), she looks back over at Persephone in surprise when she actually answers in the negative.

"That's... Surprising, coming from you. This is... This goes a lot deeper than just what we're seeing today, doesn't it?" Cantio asks, although she already knows the answer. She runs a hand through her hair to try and refocus herself, then laughs lightly at being told that worrying about Phony is illegal.

"Oh, Phony... It won't be the first time I've done something against the law somewhere, and it definitely won't be the last!" She laughs, sounding rather proud of her off-the-cuff crack before recalling that Hibiki's very there and has been very present for several her past lawbreaking enterprises.

Cantio clears her throat again. Awkward. At least there's some more thinking to do about what it is Persephone is looking for in helping Lilian out! It even has Cantio looking confused. "Can she? Wish for a good world, I mean. To be honest..."

"It's because of everything that's happened that I don't know if that's possible." Her mind is starting to turn towards darker thoughts, and it's evident even on her face. "I mean, maybe I don't... No, I definitely don't have the same experiences with her that you two might have."

Getting belittled more times than she can even actively recall at this moment. Getting kicked in the face, screamed at for using BB's powers. Those fragments of data indicating Cantio as someone necessitating death or retirement. Even if there was an ego boost earlier, it's just making her more sour now. "I've never seen her care about anything more than what ends up helping her or her personal circle. Should we really be worrying so much about helping her rather than preparing for whatever she's doing?"

She goes quiet for several uncomfortable moments after that, then claps her hands together and forces an awkward smile with a chipper tone after that. "Sorry! So... Um. Yeah! The library sounds like a good idea. That'd be the easiest place to find... Well, anything she might have already seen about that Scathach person. With any luck, the other might have already uncovered plenty of information on them already to get us started in the right direction."
Lilian Rook     Flamel and Staren are able to make their Great Escape with no particular issue should they wish. Because Candy averted the alarm (though it's still unclear what exactly it would do), and because Persephone handled Cecilia so well, there is no further imminent threat, nor time pressure beyond the vague one they'd come here with. The greatest remaining danger from the ill-advised outburst is whether Cecilia will be able to patch it up before the lord or lady notice and aggravate things further by blaming Lilian for it.

    On the way out to meet them, Persephone exiting the bedroom hall is now primed to notice something under the rug down the middle of the hardwood that escaped notice until she'd seen their kin in that vision. A tiny runic script carved into the covered wood.

    A one-sided screaming match too many lead to this. Nobody but Lilian knows about it.

"Where do you *get off* thinking you can pull that?!"
"But you said it was fine when I--"
"I don't give a *shit* what happens with Extras, but you respect *me* and what *I* want, do you get that?"
"I really didn't--"
"Stow it. I've already made up my mind. Two weeks."
"What?! But I really didn't!"
"Three weeks."

"How many times has this been now? When are you going to learn, Lilian?"
"Cecilia even told you! I didn't have anything to do with it!"
"Oh so I suppose it just *magically* disappeared?"
"You just misplaced it! I'm sure I can find it even!"
"So you think you can just bring it from wherever you hid it and get out of trouble? Do you take me for an idiot?"
"No! I'm trying tell you--"
"That it's *my* fault somehow, yes? I don't recall raising a selfish little egocentric bitch like this. Well, if you still won't admit to it, you know what you get."

"You wouldn't happen to know anything about why something would break like that, now would you?"
"No. I was at school. You can even ask."
"That doesn't mean anything."
"Yes it does."
"Are you *still* talking back?"
"No."
"You're a terrible liar. It's perfectly obvious, and yet you still keep on with this. Why bother? Anyone can see that if no other explanation makes sense, who else's fault could it be?"
". . ."
"Sulking now are we? Well that's just as well. A month."

    A teenaged Lilian carves these around the house as soon as she's learned them. Runes of dreams and shadows. Words that adorn gates and hallowed places to know the intentions of those who trespass. A child's dream to know exactly what their parents are thinking before they've even reached their door. Preemptive defense.

    If Staren wants to go all the way out rather than share in meeting up, she can see something from the windows before even going out into the garden: The sun has fully set, and the grounds outside are shrouded in pale moonlight. With it, the standing stone visible from this angle effervesces with pale light. Beyond it, a tall, hovering shadow in the woods, a dress like sable and eyes like distant stars, watching with dire intent.
Staren     As Staren noted earlier, this place is HAUNTED in every possible sense of the word. As Team Psychic Investigators makes their escape, Staren is constantly looking over her shoulder, or stopping to double-take because it looked like they were being followed. It's nerve-wracking! At least she's almost out of the house and then will *never have to be here again*...

    She *triple* takes as, out of habit, she now starts to look *away* from the Ominous Hovering Shadow before realizing that wait, she actually saw something this time! "Uhh, Flamel? Phony?" Staren stops and points out the window at the distant figure. "Are either of you up to checking that? I would but I don't know if I should."

    Sensible caution manages to hold off curiousity for a whole four seconds before Staren checks anyway if the thing has a mind and if so tries to read it.
Hibiki Tachibana     Cantio gets a Weird Look and another headtilt out of Hibiki, who has absolutely no idea what she seems so embarrassed about. She might have, if things different take a different tact before terribly long, leading to her looking almost surprised at Persephone's response to her--and the hair-ruffling, which she lets happen and doesn't actually make any effort to tidy back up after.

    "About the future you'll shape together..." Hibiki repeats, before lowering her head...and then looking back up, with a small smile. "...I'm glad you do. I want to believe she can do that. And...I want to help her find it in herself to do it too, if I can."

    Cantio raises her own point though. It removes the smile from Hibiki's face to a more neutral and even tense one, reading Cantio's expression and not needing to think very hard to know where it might be going. After all, she's been on the receiving end of plenty of awful, awful things from Lilian Rook herself. All her frustration over how bad she /wants/ to hate her hasn't gone unforgotten.

    "...We'll have to do both," she murmurs quietly, though it's hard to tell if it's in reply to Cantio or just thinking out loud. "I know she has it in her. But that doesn't mean a thing...if we're not able to stop her." Finding so many things she'd have never expected in this room, so simple and normal as they are, has helped make her sure of the first thing.

    Then she realizes she should also stop being downer mode when Cantio attempts to, and straightens up a bit to glance between her and Persephone. "...Alright. It's settled then. Let's ask everyone who's already been there, and maybe do some looking around ourselves. Even if all the books in here /are/ cursed, you won't get anywhere without taking a few risks."

    Without really thinking about it, she rubs at her wrist again. She's going to eat those words.
Lilian Rook     "There are a lot of things that aren't necessarily my fault, but I wish they hadn't happened anyways." Katrina sighs. She continues to have the most uncommon attitude out of this whole household of cloak and dagger magic aristocrats. "But there was a lot I could have done better. And maybe we wouldn't be here if I did. Even if it's everyone's fault, even if it's someone else's more than mine, I'm sorry I didn't do my part. The type of hurt I deal with is easier to fix than this.

    She does listen to him, but there's a pervasive feeling that she doesn't quite get it. It might be his words, or the fact that what he's describing is in of itself fundamentally absurd. Maybe words can't convey it at all, or at least not convincingly. "Terrorist, huh. We had a few of those in the family, a while back. But the way Lilian prefers people to be afraid of her is different."

    A tense attempt at a laugh doesn't diffuse any of her worry. "Someone who can 'beat' that? I can't imagine it. Or I suppose, if it existed, there's no way a person like that could be as kind as you think. If someone like that, with that much power, really existed, they'd hate the way everyone else is too. It's impossible to be that scary and not be frustrated with us. The stress of handling our fragile little lives with care . . . it's bad enough when I'm doing critical care. I can't imagine that being every hour of every day. Can you?

    "Even when you care about them, or maybe especially when, people who refuse care, who 'do their own research', who make your life difficult, who're demanding and tell you what they're owed, all from a position of total vulnerability laid out on a bed, only protected by *your* own oath . . . Even the kindest medtechs struggle with that. And the more power you have, the more you *could* do if you just gave in and indulged, the harder it is to resist."

    Katrina takes the compass with much reluctant scanning. Understandable, after Candy had called himself 'dynamiter'. "I don't know what I can do for her. I haven't been a great sister. Everything I tried just backfired. Whenever I thought I was helping . . . Well, I'm sure at least Cecilia might think of something. But, I don't think this ends when you persuade her. Lilian is the type that . . . this won't end until she's felt with her own hands that she doesn't have to go any further."
Lilian Rook     Staren does more ill-advised mind reading.

    The Sister of the Sable Woods awaits her Sisters of the Onyx Shores and the Raven Stones. Once they are three, she will descend upon the mortal creatures within who fall outside the old pact and rend them skin from sinew from bone and hang them from the elder tree to honour Dannan. It has been long since she slaked her sword with mortal blood. The winterborn girl earned the right to bear the abhorrent sword by their trial, but the pitiable creatures cowering within have no such chance. Even though this house stands upon it, these lands were theirs long before and even the coming and going of the Elder Knight Aodhan and the Uncanny Knight Aoibheil did not change her right to butcher the false-god vermin that might disgrace it. The odd, random Elsewhere Monster is merely a challenge; there is no opportunity to ply her cruelty, and a creature of the Winter Court like she and her sisters demand it. She will taste mortal tears once again this night

    Yeah, bad idea.
Flamel Parsons     It's time to get the fuck out.

    Flamel has a head full of the psychohazard equivalent of plaster casts of ten-meter-long clawed footprints, and he intends to keep himself and his info safe. Don't mind the jangling glass around that compartment... Spilled lightbulbs?

    That sound clatters oddly in the telepathy-space around Flamel as he surges out the front door, poofs into invisibility, and makes his escape. "Come on, come on!" He's shouting over brainwaves to the others. "Night's falling, and I don't like the look of that! I know where I'm not wanted, and I'm *extra* not wanted here, by the kinds of UPEs that I'm not rated for!!"
Persephone Kore      As they leave the bedroom, Persephone says softly: "I want to be angry at her too, you know." It's hard to say if she's talking to Hibiki or to Cantio. "You saw the file. She's done a lot to hurt me, and I didn't deserve any of it. It'd be fair to hurt her back, right? ... And maybe I want to feel that way. But I don't, really. I can't make myself. I just want things to be okay again."

     "Our experiences are more alike than you think they are. ... Even if mine aren't quite as bad. Maybe it's selfish and unfair of me to look for this solution; I know I can't forgive her for you. But if it's as bad as I think it is, that might be the only solution we have."

     "If I were determined to hurt people, how would you stop me? The easiest way would just be to make me not want it anymore, right?"

     Two things interrupt her leisurely walk to the library. The first is the sigil under the rug. Persephone bends down and scrutinizes the overlookable spot, touching it with her fingers like a tracker discovering faint footprints.

     'I want to know what they're thinking.' It's such a clear and simple wish. I'm surprised, almost, that you didn't develop Type Red. But maybe that was never in your framework, like Black was never in mine. ... But you grew other ways not to be hurt, didn't you? I'm sorry you ever held a wish that desperate in your heart.

     She straightens up and keeps walking, briefly quickening her pace to keep up with the two short girls in the lead. Then the second thing halts her. Staren recommends she look out a window. And she does.

     Oh. You're a friend, aren't you? But a friend to someone else, not us.

     Her lips purse in distinct concern. A gentle telekinetic force tugs on Cantio and Hibiki, halting them in their tracks and pulling them back towards her. She points out the window. "I think we should go," Persephone says. She's never had a tone of urgency in her life, but she certainly sounds firm.

     If no better route presents itself, she simply walks out the front door, past the elder tree, and keeps walking with a glance back over her shoulder.
Candy      "Nope," answers Candy with ease. "I can't imagine that at all."

     "But I think, after talking to you... I don't have to. You're right, you know. That it don't end just cause I 'persuade' her. I don't think she's -gonna- be persuaded. Not with who she is. Especially not after the past few days."

     "But I'll tell you what you can do," he says confidently. "You can stick up for her, here, when 'mother and father' start in on whatever bullshit they like to do. It's not about persuading her, ah? It's about making this place a home. Somewhere she can be safe and loved. Maybe you talk to Cecilia, get some pointers from her."

     "Me, I will..." He sighs. "Find some way to make it up to her, 'cause I have a feeling Mexican soil is as good as English soil for whoever runs that place she's gone off to," he says, weakly smiling, pausing... "...and it wasn't just her that said fucked up things, last time we talked," he then admits, guiltily looking away.

     "I gotta take off. Listen, ah... thank you. Very much." He presses something else into her hands. It's a little folded piece of paper with a warpgate address and directions. "When everything calms down around here, maybe you make an unannounced visit to my place? Fair's fair." Candy wrinkles his nose at her.

     Then he's simply gone.
Staren     Staren is too tired to speak her warning with appropriate gravitas, but she lets the others know what's up: <"Okay, mystic eldritch hoodoo badspirit is watching us from the woods and wants to rend the flesh from our bones and all that. Everyone prep your anti-supernatural shit."> She's not trying to downsell it, just emotionally exhausted. <"...An' she's waiting for her two sisters before she comes in here, so we better get moving.">

    Staren is reflexively considering how to fight spirits. After various varieties of obvious gun and attack spell, Staren's mind is getting lost in the weeds of half-remembered bits of magical warding ritual to try to improvise, when Phony points out it might not *be* a fight. Right.

    Fly as the Eagle, Staren mouths the words while holding her fingers to her chest, more out of habit to help focus magic the right way to activate the spell built into her armor than any sort of necessity. She flies off after Persephone.
Lilian Rook     And just like that, Xion enters a Hallowed Place where the others were unsuccessful in finding all this time. The place her Corridor takes her is exactly placed with the tremendous magical power emanating from beneath the ground. The character of the cold basement draft changes all throughout the house as she enters, even for those (as of yet) unawares. With her talents, and especially by the way she gets around, it's instantly clear just why: This land is already somewhere between the terraformed world on the 'surface' and the non-contemporaneous Otherworld beneath it, but on its barest fringes, closely mapped the land that was in the real world, like a memory. The two great magic beacons within are layered hw,deeper down), tunneling into places more secret and magic, accessed only through the sympathetic paths and by following those who already know where it is.

    Xion stands at the bottom of a too-tall staircase wrought in dark stone, under an arch that leads into a shockingly large, circular chamber, its floor defined by an immense and expertly carved pattern of interlocking solar and lunar orbits and eclipses. It is straightforwardly split with paths to the east and west, right and left from the entry, and one that leads a little further down, into a smaller sub-sanctum by the looks of it. The circular walls between are set with sealed doors, each marked only in ancient Ogham and with pictographs. One door is open, giving her a glimpse of an empty sword stand beneath a window that somehow shows a sliver of midnight moonlight and an old, old, very very old bloodstained altar.

    The other three of its size are shut; something to do with a wand, a horn, and a suit of armour. The sides appear to be dedicated to repositories of ancient and secret knowledge, unsuitable for even the branch families to access. This is a place that doesn't just select for true descendants, but true disciples. She knows this, unconsciously, the moment she arrives. The Elder Rowan is something approaching a fraction of Great Ancestor Aodhan's authority, and holds governance over barriers and boundaries. The door into this place is hers to open or close as she sees fit, for now.

    The air crackles with magic by its very nature, like the sense of awe and spiritual connection engendered by the aesthetics of a well-made church or temple, turned into something tangibly mystical, despite the underground darkness. However, rather than reverence for god, it tingles with restless violence, and a sense of long-awaited purpose.
Lilian Rook     She is also not alone. A single woman occupied the far center. Unusually tall, raven-haired unbound, clad in a green cloak over a short-sleeved black dress, fastened with fine leather and bright gold, one could probably call her 'fair' were it not for the criss-crossing scars on her hands, arms, neck, and face, three above the chin alone, over her nose, around her jaw, and cheek to forehead on the opposite side, as if she'd simply started running out of room. Her eyes are piercingly green. Her hands are folded over the pommel of Killer in the Night Mist, point down on the ground before her. If Xion really, really squints, she realizes she can just slightly see through her. She is staring at a ghost beyond orders of magnitude stronger than anything from the halls and empty rooms above.

    "Speak thy piece and begone. For a disciple of the sword true, who comes bearing sheathed blade, I will heed the old codes. But no other house may be present in the Shadow of the First of Four and the Swordsman of the End. Sheathed-blade child, what is thy desire that begs thee so direly to lower thy head?"

    It is the exact, accent-perfect, incomprehensibly old Gaelic dialect Lilian switches over to when stressed or distracted, or speaking words of magical authority.
Xion The trick to walking without looking is knowing where you're going.
The trick to walking without knowing is to have faith your feet will find the road.

Xion didn't travel the staircase, but she had walked it dozens of times.

Step. She is in Hollow Bastion.
    Step. She is in Castle Oblivion.
        Step. She is in Twilight Town.
            Step.

The staircases like it all are the same. The same angle, the same incline, the same air, the same path. Only the carpet changes, and the things on the wall, or the way one walks it, up or down.

The path to the central chamber was just a handful of paces farther.

Two steps away. She is at the clocktower, and past it, a great desolation, a graveyard of swords.

One step away. She is at the Gate, a step before a great thrumming power.

She steps, ignoring paths to left or right, and approaches the scars-in-the-shape-of-a-woman. She does not smile, but a cautious hope - genuine, if small - glimmers just at the wavering corner of her otherwise resolved blues.

'What is thy desire that begs thee so direly to lower thy head?'

Xion opens her mouth, closes it, swallows, and then speaks as clearly as she can, laying her right hand over her chest as she does. "Love."

She continues with a fistful of her top squeezed tight in her hand. Her other hangs balld at her side. "I want to save her. Lilian. I thought she was the one who I couldn't read, so I could be Xion to her, and be the hero of her heart too. I thought I was so smart, and wise, to give her distance. That she would ask me, 'Xion, let me take care of this myself'."

She hangs her head. Her arms go slack. The light goes out in her tone.

"I don't need to touch a heart to hear it. The sounds it makes. It's just an easy way. A convenient way. I can just listen to people, and know that they need help."

Her chin comes up, and fat tears run down her face. She doesn't waver in stance, but her shoulders quake. "Her heart is... it's screaming for me to come save it, and I thought I was s-so smart giving her space, and... and time."

She draws in, inhaling and swallowing and making something of it, and then deliberately unclenches her arms and draws them together, before her, and bows down at the waist to a floor-facing angle.

"Please tell me how to save her. The disciple everyone wants to see succeed."