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Hibiki Tachibana     PHONE: Petra Soroka starts saying something about Persephone, then switches tracks immediately. "Don't *say* that! What did I just say! Fucking hell, Tachibana, is this some fucking grudge for you?"

    The short answer is - yes, it is.

    It can't really just keep being her personal emotional hangup anymore, though.

...

    The location that the gang has been called to meet at today is certainly one kind of embodiment of a Watch safehouse. Visit your local desert wasteland planet, filled with old starship wreckage and what may or may not be high-tech precursor technology buried in the sands, and head out to a half-sunken hulk that even scavengers avoid for fear of being haunted. Fourty meters below the surface, inserting the right code at a sealed bulkhead will open it up, with the rusting metal of the vessel making way for what used to be its cargo bay.

    Which is now a maintained, stocked space you'd think would be on a still-able craft. Weapon storage for ordinance both big and small, secured network connections, simple arrangements and ample supplies for the stray operative in need, and more.

    All of it is here, although only one person seems to have made much use of any of it recently, given the slight mess that comes with existing somewhere for a period of time and a few terminals tuned into different reports. That would, of course, be--

    Hibiki, who's currently half-seated half-laying on an assortment of storage containers, jacket off and ostensibly thumbing through something on a tablet. Her free hand sifts through her hair, while tired-looking eyes drift over the screen. "...This sort of thing really doesn't suit me, huh..." And then towards the entryway, when she picks up on it opening. She puts what she's holding aside, and slides back down to the ground.

    "I'm no good at talking or speeches, and if you're here you should already know, so I'm just gonna say it simple. I want to take the Titanomachia down, after everything it and everything its made have caused. And I want to break the crappy ties the Watch has had with it, ever since Petra stole the Kana."

    Her eyes fall to the side, hands in her shorts pockets in lieu of her jacket. "...If that never happened, if I did something about her and that robot, or the ones who made it... if I didn't get caught up too... calling myself a crappy member barely scratches the surface. Xion, Haru..."

    A few seconds pass, and then Hibiki turns, walking towards a plus-sized viewscreen set into the steel walls to ensure it's functioning properly. "But I didn't bring anyone here just to hear me be a sadsack about things some people don't even know about. Even if you didn't know a thing about them, they're still a self-centered military setup that destroys entire cities and attacked my world... just for their own benefit."

    "...I can't do anything about it on my own, and everyone back home has their own hands full. So I made some calls, and not just to you. It'd be hard to learn much or make a plan without someone who knows how that place works."
Petra Soroka     The man on the screen is sitting in a cramped mech cockpit. Where the Kana had some open space behind the seat, like a car, the limited view that you can get from this machine shows the pilot's chair nestled in to a surrounding control console, wall directly behind it, and no room to stand up without opening the hatch that's presumably on top. He's wearing grey coveralls, plated with numbingly functional accoutrements for military wear. Ballistic vest, shoulder pads, sturdy gloves, glimpses of a skintight suit underneath; the grip of a gun is visible sticking out of the holster on his hip at the bottom of the screen.

    Kyrikos snaps a series of latches connecting the air-tight pilot's helmet to the neckline of the suit, pulling it off with a momentary puff of fog and setting it aside. The getup, taken in full, makes it look like he's prepared to fly his mech into space-- which he might be, since you can't see outside; the Kana entered space with no problem, after all. Beneath his helmet, Kyrikos looks to be about mid-thirties, hair cropped short with the sides shaved. Between the military-precise hair, his heavy eyebrows, and the passively dour look on his face, he looks like a deeply unfun person.

    But he's efficient, at least. The moment Hibiki gives him an opportunity to talk, he takes it. "Right. Well, correcting one assumption first, Miss Tachibana, is that the Watch has been working on the Titanomachia since long before Soroka. I've been aboard it for years, and there were years before me where my contacts worked out how to get me inside. Soroka was, at best, the last and least of the operation, and one whose involvement has been..."

    Moving on, though the beleaguered sigh tells a story that the rest of the Watch is well familiar with at this point. "Kyrikos. I was head engineer on the Ekanamsha S1, and Soroka was the means by which I took it out of the Titanomachia's hands. The S2, unfortunately, is a problem for all of us. Tell me what you've seen, or what Soroka's told you, so I know what I'm working with."

    Then Kyrikos squints, scanning the group of Elites as they arrive, and the thumping of unseen fingers drumming on metal comes through the mic. "And she's late, too. Are you kidding me?"
Corona Arclite And one of the arrivals through the entryway is one that looks right at home, both within the bunker and the scrap stewned desert it resides in. Corona ambles into the storage bay turned hideout with a casual stride, though that's just in appearance as those large fennec-like ears are twitching back and forth to take in the entire location.

Hibiki greets them, and gets a proper tilt of the hat in return. Then she sidles over to claim one of the other storage bins as a seat, foxtail draping over the side as she leans back against the old bulkhead wall. Briefly her attention turns to her arm device when it blips, auto-syncing itself to the Watch network within the bunker. Then up at the screen displaying Kyrikos to the metting.

Then back to Hibiki. A gloved hand is raised in a mild dismissive wave. "Don't ya go startin' down that. Past is the past. Ya learn from it, not bemoan it happenin'." She lifts one leg to partially cross the other and gets comfortable. You never know how long or short these sort of sessions are gonna be. "Let's focus on what's what and gettin' thin's back in order."

At which she quiets down, letting Kyrikos fill in his part of the matter.
Aidan Proudpick Watch Aidan and Adventure Aidan are notably different. Adventure Aidan revels in the joy of new thinks and applying his personal brand of thinking to a problem. Watch Aidan is much more subdued, partially out of gravity and the determination to do this job better than any Paladin, partially out of that nagging fear that he is way in over his head and he can't get back out. That means full kit, gun, buckler on his arm.

He takes a moment, outside, hiding in a spot so he can spread himself out on the ground, limbs in every direction, tail flat, and cool down from the heat.

FIVE MINUTES LATER.

Aidan sits, leaning forward, hands clasped, dexterous hands fidgeting idly, ears tilted forward. Aidan shakes his head. "A lot of things happen. Things we want to control," unification with the Empire first, "And things we need to control," Aidan's 80 year lotus dream trap, "Someone needs to take them down, and that's us. Besides, no one taught us the right way to be a Watchperson, right?"

'So I made some calls, and not just to you.'

Aidan tries to look calm and professional and not like someone is about to dump his lunch on his head.

Thankfully, the screen gives him a distraction, eyes lit up, watching in silent but childlike awe as he sees even the limited view of the robot! So cool~~~.

'The S2, unfortunately, is a problem for all of us.'

One. Two, "Hold on, does that mean the kana, which killed a bunch of paladins in a blink, that there's another better one?"
Dysnomia     Dysnomia knew the way had been here before. It was one of the safehouses on her regular maintence ciruit, ever since she started to put in the work again. The wasteland, the ruined landscape of shattered old tech...

    It just felt right.

    "I didn't expect you to be the one to push this forward." Mia said, leaning against the opposite bulkhead, arms crossed, her gaze weighing. "But maybe I should have."

    After what the Titanomachia had done to her world, of course she'd want to do something about it.

    "I'm glad you've got the right idea. That frankenstein of a mech is what's designed to take punishment, so nobody human has to."

    "After...Repossessing the Kana, Hibiki and I slagged it. And I got a pretty good look at it on the way. I've seen less redundant life-support systems on starbases. And those weapons...Overengineered is a word, I guess, but it feels like too small of one."

    She paused, turning a questioning look to Hibiki, when Kyrikos' statement finally hit home. "Petra's going to be part of this?"
Father Berislav      The metal graveyard on this desert world is not wholly a place of sunken wrecks--at least, not today. Something gleaming and silver is on the horizon, steady and unhurried in its approach. Occasionally that gleam is interrupted, whether by the movement of sand on the wind, or by the fluttering of something nearby.

    As it grows nearer, 'something nearby' is more visible as 'something red.' Whether by sand or by the hard angles of forgotten technology which rise above it, this approaching figure is unburdened, seeming to glide across the dunes. The closer it grows, the more the soft whine of machinery and the steady thump-thump-thump of mechanical footfalls is heard.

    Wreckage half-buried in sand points accusingly upwards, cockpits and viewports endlessly staring across the wastes, broken by the coming of a silver, bipedal mech. Its hammer-shaped head rises above some number of these wrecks, coming to a halt before the Watchtower. There can be no mistaking that this thing is a weapon of war--intent lives and breathes in its shape, and in the way its red cloak brushes across something heavy and blunt.

    A black 'ribcage' of interlocking protective plates opens up, to reveal a cockpit bated in soft red light. As the mech's hand lifts upwards to lower its pilot gently to the ground, a brief gust of wind blows the cloak draped upon its right shoulder. Embroidered in gold, its name: ISAIAH 3:14.

    The pilot smooths his cassock, takes a breath, and enters, descending through disused corridors until the very much in-use cargo bay spreads out before him.

    "Hello, Hibiki," he says, nodding his head. "I came as quickly as I could. I'm happy to be of assistance, any way I can."

    Turning his attention to Kyrikos on the screen, "I'm sorry, but nearly everything I know about the Kana is second-hand. Petra and I have never spoken about it, and she never deployed it on any mission we were both part of."
Liza Grier     '...This sort of thing really doesn't suit me, huh...'

    "Yeah. Way too soft. You're always looking like you'd cry if you weren't too tired."

    Unfortunately for everyone, Liza Grier isn't a periphery personality in the Watch, existing at the fringes to cause problems for everyone like a plucky teen. She is, regrettably, one of the core legbreakers. That she'd showed up in her hardsuit is utterly unsurprising. That she has the helmet affixed between her shoulders by magnetic insert is only so that she can drop down on a handy crate, cross one ankle over her knee, dump the black and red toolbox she's carrying to the side, and get as far as she can with pounding back whatever godawful mixed 'beverage' is in that mini-thermos she has on hand. It almost smells more medicinal than alcoholic. Like an antiseptic martini.

    "You mean since you stole it." It isn't a question.

    '...If that never happened, if I did something about her and that robot, or the ones who made it... if I didn't get caught up too... '

    "Shut the fuck up Hibiki." The bluntness hits harder when Liza takes a second just to finish her drink, fingers up, counting down from five, and breathe before continuing. "You can't run it back now. You spent a whole year being that shitheel's biggest fan. You defended her from everyone else that would have cleaned it up. You ditched responsibility for it when she walked out. In the end, you only got your ass out of your seat to piss off the Paladins for no reason and no gain to the Watch."

    "You don't get to roll over and show your belly now. I don't give a shit how ashamed of it you are. Come to God on your own time; I don't feel the slightest bit bad for you." Liza drains the last of her drink, screws the cap on, and exhales breath that smells like syringe ACD.

    'Tell me what you've seen, or what Soroka's told you, so I know what I'm working with.'

    "For starters, she was the only one who agreed with me that we'd all be better off with her dead." Liza says, humourlessly. "Zero otherwise. Robust computer equipment, communicators, internally sealed-- you know all this already. She was unbelievably cagey about how her useless ass even stole it. Said something about how she left behind an old unit at the site to get it. And how stealing it is how she even got into the Watch at all."

    "The fact that there even is a mark two is because that shitty brat ran up a titanic debt with the faction, went cop-killer without a plan, tried suicide-by-Paladin, got caught, and then our own useless pet fucking millionaire with dipshit A and dipshit B pissed them off again to boot it back up. Everything she did with it is probably tightbeamed right back to your former bosses by now. Total breakdown of discipline. We had to change all the locks after. We practically just gave them operational secrets and tactical information for free."
Hibiki Tachibana     Corona's attempt at steering Hibiki towards a more productive mindset and Aidan's own comment get Hibiki pausing for a moment, before she nods. "...Yeah. I get what you're saying." Berislav is given a grateful nod for showing up as well, and Liza... she's not sure.

    And at Kyrikos' correction, she rubs at the back of her neck without much change in her current expression. "Sorry about that. It's easy to only think about how things have been going in our neck of the woods. Everything that happened over the last year ended up being... a lot."

    Brick's old mention of 'compromised' members sticks out in her mind, with her own face at the forefront.

Tell me what you've seen, or what Soroka's told you, so I know what I'm working with.
Hold on, does that mean the kana, which killed a bunch of paladins in a blink, that there's another better one?

    "...As far as the S2 goes, at least to what I know, it's only been seen it in person once. It looks like the S1 mashed together with... Petra's old machine." Her face scrunches up a bit, recalling old words. "...Her 'psychic mech'. I don't know exactly how it works. I just know that they weaponized it, and now its main cannon isn't just destructive, it--"

    She struggles to find the right words. "...I don't know. Like it turns people inside out. And the ones that can't handle it..." She goes silent for a few seconds. "...There was nobody alive in the craters of glass I saw it leave behind. Everything else was fine, covered in the stuff. But no people."

And she's late, too. Are you kidding me?
Petra's going to be part of this?

    "She's not late." Hibiki both answers Kyrikos and Dysnomia at the same time. Her hands adjust in her pockets. It's the former of them, through the screen, that she looks at while speaking, with pursed lips and a mix of several different emotions on her face. An expression that very quickly deteriorates into teeth digging into her lower lip and white-knuckled fists after a few seconds.

    Because of Liza's barrage of statements directed her way, of course. "You--" It's obvious what's coming. She's going to fly off the handle, again, and start something right in the middle of the meeting. Doing it during her /own/ meeting will be a new one, but there's a first time for everything.

    But, without continuing, her tensed-up shoulders sag down, as does her head. The building storm simmers back down. "...You're right. About all of that. I don't want pity for it in the first place. What's done is done, and the fact is, I'm still here and have to deal with that."

    Furrowing her brow, she turns her head up to look back at Liza directly. "I've had enough running away from a year and then some of my own crap. Whatever you think about me, I'm just here to finally start cleaning up the mess, mine and hers - so let's find the way to do that."

    Other than some choking up, she mostly holds her voice steady - and afterwards, Hibiki looks back to Kyrikos. "...So no. Petra's not coming."
Corona Arclite Corona Arclite tilts her head a bit, flicks an ear. Liza unloaded that verbal shotgun with both barrels... but it was things that probably needed to be said. Maybe not so harshly, but it is what it is, that's a merc that doesn't hold back in a fight or when she's got something to say.

The rest of her attention is on Hibiki and the potential response. She's got a few tarbaby grenades handy if they need to subdue a situation... but fortunately that situation doesn't come as other than some strong fuming Hibiki accepts the accousting, and reaffirms that she's done running from the problem.

It might not of been noticed that she had tensed up, but Corona reclines back against the bulkhead again. Not relaxing by a long shot now, but it's at least settled back into a proper composure.

"Rawht, gettin' this mess cleaned up." The restraint measure isn't needed yet, so instead she pulls a snack bar from one of the various belt pouches instead and starts to unwrap it. "Reckon we're gonna have to pull out all the stops and lotta big guns fer that." She takes a bite out of the bar. Looks to be some manner of granola bar. With bits of dried fruit and apparently small insects amalgamated in it, fitting to a omnivorous vulpine's diet. Then waggles the bitten bar in general at the gathering, taking a moment to chew and swallow before speaking again. "But iffen we're gonna plan anythin', we need some ideas to plan 'round."
Petra Soroka "... the Kana, which killed a bunch of paladins in a blink,"
"After...Repossessing the Kana, Hibiki and I slagged it."

    Kyrikos's stern demeanor stays steady for another few seconds, taking that in, and then he slowly lowers his head and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Jesus God Almighty," After a long string of muttered swears, he straightens up again, back to being all business. Mostly business. "Apparently we've all got some catching up to do."

"Everything she did with it is probably tightbeamed right back to your former bosses by now."

    Liza's arrival, and explanation, is what makes emotion actually start showing on his face. Anger, alarm, and even a little embarrassment, crawling up his neck in mottled red and carved into pursed lips. "Right. I appreciate the thorough report, Miss Grier, though I'm not too fucking happy about the contents. Soroka's arrested, then? Dead?"

    Kyrikos exhales heavily through his nose, concealing the recentering sigh in all ways except for the falling of his chest and flickering of his eyes. "For those unaware, the Titanomachia is an isolationist, strongly xenophobic mobile military state. The city itself is contained within a massive, functional war machine, with its industry fully geared towards producing more of the same. There is, by design, no way in or out, for anyone but mech pilots, out of fear of outside contaminants."

    An affirming nod towards Dysnomia, "Rather, that everything 'outside' is a potential contaminant. There isn't a single person inside the city who's set foot outside, and everything we eat, breathe, and drink is recycled inside. Much like a spacecraft."

    "That dogmatic rigor, on top of the advanced and overwhelming military force they're capable of producing, is why no large-scale operation has been made on the city yet. My role was simply to interfere with production of the Ekanamsha, the pinnacle of their military R&D. A military and... somewhat spiritual project, whose completion would singlehandedly escalate the Titanomachia's threat to the sector." As Kyrikos rattles off the lore dump in clipped, efficient tones, the light from his own screen glints in his eyes as they flicker away, conspicuously avoiding one particular part of the story.

"...Her 'psychic mech'."

    Kyrikos levels his eyes dubiously at Hibiki, visibly trying to process what that means. "... On the day Soroka acquired the S1, the survey team sent out after it came back with a different machine. I was one of the engineers looking at it for some time, but we couldn't make heads or tails of it, and any efforts to take it apart had it piece itself back together. After around eight months of that, it broke all at once. It was Soroka's?"

"...There was nobody alive in the craters of glass I saw it leave behind."

    "Craters of glass. Well, it's sure the same fucking machine, then. And with the data from a year of use of the S1..." Kyrikos mutters to himself, scratching at his cheek. "So whatever that 'psychic mech' was, it touched up the S2's weapons. What about the rest? The primary purpose of the Ekanamsha is, excuse the mouthful, interplanar portal generation. Travel between dimensions. How was it *moving*?"
Dysnomia     How unlike you. Mia mused, as Hibiki just accepted it, deescalated. What got you so turned around?

    Maybe it was for the best. She was pretty sure that Hibiki wouldn't survive that many bullets shot into her head. "In the meantime, we have a walking city to break."

    "...There is ONE thing about the Kana I never quite got. It's an engine of war, but that's not what it was BUILT for. It's too...Enduring for that."

    "I don't just mean 'it's got a lot of armor' or 'it's tough to put down.' People don't build war mechs like that for a REASON."

    She leaned forward. "That thing could fly on the surface of a STAR, and the cockpit would still be a comfortable room temperature. The Kana has a weapons system that's a doozy, but it was designed to survive in extremophile enviorments that make a battlefield look like a cakewalk."

    "What's that got to do with portals...?" Dysnomia shook her head, sighing. "You know, it WAS moving oddly. It was like it was completely ignoring the warpgate system, trying to get where it needed to go just by flying around the superplanet. No shortcuts. And definitely no portals."
Aidan Proudpick Aidan mouths 'Damn' as the Father makes his entrance. He has a robot?! So cool.

The squirrel's ears turn before his head turns around, "Turned inside out?" He's seen people shot, and a few other things, but that does shake him. "I might be able to use the Aegis to make it slide off, but I'd hate ta try." He thinks about it, looking at his buckler. But, he hardly knows much about the science of what his own weapon does. Really, it doesn't adhere to science as far as he knows.

Aidan snaps around to Liza Grier, immediately standing up, pushing himself up to his feet, chest puffed up, ready to interject. "Hey! That's not fair!" Hibiki confesses to the parts of it that are in fact true, making Aidan look over at her concerned, then back to Liza. A brief flash of worry, then a set face of doubling down. "A lot of things happened from the Paladins side too. And this time, we are going to do it right. Support each other." Aidan then nods and sits back down. He tries to show composure, but his tail is basically vibrating behind him.

The squirrel does his best to hone back in on the conversation, turning around. "You can't get something from nothing. Uh, I mean, unless you are using magical stuff. What I mean is, they have to get more water and air eventually, right? Every once in a while. Food too. If we can sabotage the water system, then we can force them to open up and go get some."

Eagerness rises up in his voice. Something he knows something about!!!
Father Berislav The fact that there even is a mark two is because...

    Berislav frowns, then sighs. "I wish things had turned out differently. In many respects." He's silent, for a moment after.

...So no. Petra's not coming.

    "I see," says the priest, after a weighty, pointed look at Hibiki. "Perhaps that's for the best, all things considered--and it's not as if Kyrikos here can't help us. Very resourceful of you, Hibiki."

    His attention returns to the screen, as he shifts slightly in place. "Kyrikos--that wouldn't be Greek, would it? 'Of the Lord?'-- I think that should give you an idea of 'what you're working with.'" He offers a pleasant, courteous smile.

Jesus God Almighty.

    The smile is slightly apologetic, given that for his own part, that's 'virtually nothing.'

...the Titanomachia is an isolationist, strongly xenophobic mobile military state...

    Berislav's hands tighten, ever so slightly, against one another, and the smile fades quickly from his face. "That is... very concerning," he says. "But we won't allow the sector to fall victim to their would-be war of extermination."

    "We aren't here only to reassure ourselves. So, if you would, tell me more about these entry points. Liza and I happen to be pilots ourselves. Is there a chance we could use that to our advantage, and form a breach for the others?"
Liza Grier     'You--'

    "Yeah?"
    Liza sounds like she's been annoyed by a petty interruption, but the way her hand is resting on her far side suggests she'd already put it on her sidearm while Hibiki was still busy processing.
    "Gonna make it easy for me? Gonna dodge responsibility again?"

    '...You're right. About all of that. I don't want pity for it in the first place.'

    Liza's eyebrow raises by a millimeter. "That's a first."

    'I'm just here to finally start cleaning up the mess, mine and hers - so let's find the way to do that.'

    She looks a little longer. A little harder. A fingertip is thoughtfully tapping against something; the measured clack of hardsuit against metal.

    "You're all still scared of her. She's still some kind of special to you, isn't she? For all the shit you let her do, you've let her get untouchable in your mind."

    'Right. I appreciate the thorough report, Miss Grier, though I'm not too fucking happy about the contents. Soroka's arrested, then? Dead?'

    "No use trying to make it sound good. You're a contact, not a shareholder." Liza says. "Neither. Independent agent now. Running around having the time of her life. New friends, new job, new smug sense of satisfaction; had her bullshit scraped out with a melon baller and filled up with someone else's worldview to make her half-functional. Honestly she's doing better than in the Watch." Tap. Tap. Tap.

    "Not surprising given the change of company. Rita was the only one who was any good for her here. The friends she keeps now are a couple of psychos who're just in denial about which team they want to be on." says Liza.

    'The city itself is contained within a massive, functional war machine'

    "Nice of them to put it all in one place." she says. "Just like good old Nanotrasen. A station raid with gravity, but tougher. And no cut corners."

    'There is, by design, no way in or out, for anyone but mech pilots, out of fear of outside contaminants.'

    "Solved." Liza glances at Berislav, then back. "At least two."

    'Much like a spacecraft.'

    Liza somehow manages to stare blankly in a way that feels like a nod.

    'After around eight months of that, it broke all at once.'

    That, finally, is what makes the light come on behind Liza's eyes. The look of comprehension in the contours of her face is bright in the way way of a fever. The glint of red mania is enough to see that whatever is coming next is going to be important, and not be good.

    "Eight months lines up with her trying suicide by cop. When the Paladins-- no, I guess it was some off the record black bag shit. But one of them got her good. Two of them; the synth that borged her up after must have done it. She disappeared for a whole month, and it broke down; and it came back online when she was back to normal. So--"

    '"A lot of things happened from the Paladins side too.'

    "It's their job to be wrong." Liza says, rough and husky. "They have one or two loose cannons that know better, and they're the ones that got rid of Petra and roughed up Hibiki for fucking up. What's your point?"

    'And this time, we are going to do it right. Support each other.'

    "Supporting each other in making stupid calls is what went wrong last time. That 'support' got an asset we should have burned months ago into Aegis Astray just to blow our opsec and cause this entire fucking problem. This isn't a social club. You people have been forgetting that. Slacking off in the margins until there's something juicy to talk about."
Liza Grier     'It's too...Enduring for that.'

    "It's a closed ecosystem. Corporations do that when they can. Not surprising that these guys would." says Liza. "They make it so you never have to go outside, never have to touch grass, never have to see what a competitor has to offer; they keep you in a terrarium that's half NDAs and red tape and legal servitude, and half convenience and a lack of excuse to bail. That's the point. A feature complete world of Brand, where you can live and die only in one corp's halls and buying one corp's shit." she says. "I guess 'nation', in this case. But it's not like it matters. Guns and money; there's no difference; they come out to the same amount of violence."

    'Is there a chance we could use that to our advantage, and form a breach for the others?'

    Liza shifts her attention back to Kyrikos on the screen. "Anything helps. Infil and exfil points. Local topo. BPs. Personnel flow. Patrol tables. Whatever you've got ahead of time, I can work out an entry and exit plan, alternate routes, stress points, killboxes; whatever. Something that big, and military issue, is gonna take more than one bomb."
Hibiki Tachibana     For all the shit you let her do, you've let her get untouchable in your mind.

    There's no immediate comment to this, but the little shift she makes definitely shows it was certainly heard.

    Very resourceful of you, Hibiki.

    "I just started doing what I should have done a long time ago. It's not that impressive." The 'but thanks' she'd usually append to the end of that sort of statement never comes, eyes falling only a bit lower while still watching the screen.

    The full explanation of the Titanomachia's inner workings seems to both not surprise Hibiki at all, and also unsettle her a little in equal measure. It's both what one should probably expect from the sort of place that operates the way they do, even justifying her talk of them 'not seeing people as people'-- while also reinforcing in her mind that, yes, there are living beings responsible for making it all happen.

    What Sougo told her before rings in her head again. She really has just gotten used to seeing them through the lense of the machines they've created, and nothing else. It makes some of the suggestions less than palatable to her, but she'll let Kyrikos give his own input.

    On the day Soroka acquired the S1, the survey team sent out after it came back with a different machine.

    The frown on Hibiki's face doubles in intensity. Why, exactly, is hard to gauge.

    After around eight months of that, it broke all at once. It was Soroka's?

    And then that leads to open surprise. "Eight months after? If she joined right after getting the S1, wouldn't that be..." She trails off to do some piecing together in her head, sifting through the blur of mostly bad events over the course of a year. Her mouth falls slightly open. "...Near the end of when Petra was in jail? That's when it 'broke'?"

    The primary purpose of the Ekanamsha is, excuse the mouthful, interplanar portal generation. Travel between dimensions. How was it *moving*?

    Remembering that day isn't pleasant for a dozen reasons, but Hibiki follows up after Dysnomia's explanation. "...Like she said, yeah. I can send you some of the footage later. But it was barreling through everything in its way, ignoring Warpgates even when it was way more inconvenient, and it was cracking and reforming every move it made. There weren't any portals at all, other than..."

    Her expression hardens after a moment of trailing off. "...Solomon's Cane. Something it was trying to steal from my world... that can take monsters out from another dimension. The S2 didn't get away with it - it ended up getting blasted /to/ that dimension, but--" Even she can put a two and two like that together.

    And then, to add onto all the other questions being asked, Hibiki's head turns back up a little too quickly, words coming a little too fast. "How much do you know about a 'Project Typhon', Kyrikos? There was a transmission-- something about retrieval being possible if they made more progress on it. And what can we do to stop it?"
Petra Soroka "If we can sabotage the water system, then we can force them to open up and go get some."

    Kyrikos watches Aidan get worked up, calm down, then get worked up again, with a grimly neutral expression. He doesn't say it, but the look in his eyes impatiently conveys, 'are you done yet?' He breaks his stare to look down at the controls of the mech, below the screen, adjusting something while responding.

    "It's smart. And it's also the first thing anyone thinks of. If you'd seen any of the Ekanamsha's workings, you'd know how much engineering and armor goes into maintaining those systems. Miss Dysnomia might be able to show you; I don't have schematics available. Not only would you need to get to them, get through the defenses around them, and sabotage enough redundancies to actually affect the city as a whole, you'd have the mech army itself to deal with. Drones, autonomous walkers, piloted ones. The Ekanamsha S2, which could doom the operation alone. If it was going to be a simple sabotage, it would've been done already."

"Kyrikos--that wouldn't be Greek, would it?"

    "Linguistically, sure. Culturally, couldn't tell you. Certainly isn't anymore." Kyrikos seems to take the question more as a tactical one, rather than a cordial inquiry. He directs his attention back to the controls, and the screen jitters with, presumably, an impact to or near his mech. "Don't even know if they came from an Earth-like pre-Unification. Whatever it used to be, what they show off on mosaics and teach in schools feels more like fascists jerking off Rome than actual history."

    Implicitly, that probably means it isn't his real name.

"We aren't here only to reassure ourselves. So, if you would, tell me more about these entry points."
"Something that big, and military issue, is gonna take more than one bomb."

    The return to this particular topic seems to both calm and agitate Kyrikos. Calming him, in the sense that this is his element, the question his voice and demeanor were made for, and in a sense, what the last few years have been building to, for him. Agitating him, too, for that same latter reason. He types something into the keyboard below the screen-- presumably, there's no clack of physical keys, so he's likely typing on a screen-- and a blurry, incomplete, rough schematic of the Titanomachia itself appears in the corner of the screen.

    "If we're finally moving the big guns on the Titanomachia," It's hard to tell exactly what part of his phrasing, or body language, conveys it, some weight put on words when his gaze is in one particular direction, but it feels like by 'big guns', he means just Liza and Berislav. "Then I'll send Miss Grier this. Product of a few years of gathering structural data, hoping someone would put it to use eventually. Signal dampening around the city itself means there's no comms in or out, so this'll probably be it until the operation itself."

    He runs a hand over the top of his head, and the way it sticks makes it suddenly obvious that he's sweating. "Sending it'll put me on a bit of a timer, too. But the completion of the S2 pushed the timetable up for all of us."

"Neither. Independent agent now. Running around having the time of her life."

    His frown deepens, but he doesn't comment on that immediately. It's clearly something that bothers him, in the way his neck turns red against the collar of the pilot suit.
Petra Soroka "She disappeared for a whole month, and it broke down; and it came back online when she was back to normal."
"If she joined right after getting the S1, wouldn't that be..."

    Kyrikos's first priority, even after hearing that, is to correct, tapping a finger heavily on the arm of the seat. "Not right after getting the S1. She contacted me when she joined up proper, about a month later."

    Then he sits up straighter, leaning in to the screen with a furrowed expression. "So that machine, half the S2, is connected to Soroka somehow? Even when she's not piloting it? If it's psychic..." He makes a disbelieving noise, shaking his head. "Who knows if I can apply anything I know to this kind of bullshit. I work with real metal mechs, not that kind of woo. Connected to her mental well-being, maybe?"

"What's that got to do with portals...?"

    Kyrikos finally returns to Dysnomia's question, the earlier dismissal and subsequent reconsideration when it became relevant feeling a *little* condescending. Maybe it's just for efficiency, and it's easy to brush it off that way. "No operation on the base itself is going to work out unless the S2 is dealt with. Besides its cannon, and near-indestructability, the main threat it's *meant* to pose is teleportation. Project Typhon. The ability to project the entire Titanomachia into another dimension."

    He drums his fingers on his arm, seemingly annoyed by the distraction from operation-talk to explain another piece of lore. "Ostensibly, there's a cultural mythos of 'leaving the multiverse'. Going home. The whole multiverse is alien to them. In practice, all it'll be used for is dropping the city on wherever its next target is. Warpgates, multiversal travel, freaks them out, which is our only real saving grace, here."

    "The Ekanamsha is that in miniature. Developing interplanar tech, teleporting wherever it needs to be, punching its way into new worlds and dimensions to blow the fuck up. If they managed to find a way to warp something away, then they're probably close, thanks to that fucking 'psychic mech'. The Baryonic Inversion Cannon of the first Ekanamsha was an attempted prototype I developed. Meant to fail. This one isn't."

    Kyrikos sighs, closes his eyes, and visibly looks tired for the first time that he isn't concealing. Then he opens them back up and stares directly at the group, grimly serious. "Soroka is a defector. An asset that should've been burnt, and now has absolutely no culpability to the Watch. Our biggest barrier to developing an operation to take out the Titanomachia is the Ekanamsha S2, which is, by some means or another, connected to her well-being. The solution is clear to me."

    "Kill Petra Soroka, and our path to ending the Titanomachia is clear."
Aidan Proudpick "I know it's not a social club, but... Okay, look, how we treat each other IS important, especially for people who have gone through a lot of pain! It's just something we can pay attention to in the future." Aidan folds his arms, realizing how silly it sounds in this context, childish even, but he stands his ground. "We can do that AND stop people like this. We don't have to be friends, just. Not be crazy people to each other."

Aidan grimaces at Kyrikos. "I'm not saying ruin the whole system!" He shakes his head, taking in what Kyrikos' is saying, not yet deflating. "Okay," he's turning focus again, now actually walking back and forth, tail twitching back and forth. "We can get through this. There has to be a way to poke a hole in them."

Aidan stops cold, his tail sticking straight up behind him, "No! Never!" He turns around, "I wouldn't kill a random person for this, and we can't kill someone who has suffered this much for trying to stop them. She's about as prickly as a porcupine, but that's too far. There has to be another way. I didn't join to sacrifice people, I joined to be a sacrifice for them."

He starts moving around again, "We can get the paladins- No, we'd have to get them to kill a bunch of people to join in. There has to be a way in. There has to be a weakness!"
Corona Arclite "And there's the other dung pile hittin' the fan in this shit show." Corona mutters as she sits up a moment. "Better at dealin' with 'real' machines myself," the foxgirl agress with Kyrikos. That's the problem she came to help solve. Sounds like it's going to take a little work to get to that matter though.

Idly she draws one of her gunslinger sidearms, flicking open the cylinder. Goes about loading it... Though when one looks close enough they might notice the bullets are made out of some manner of crystalline rather than typical metal and gunpowder, that glow faintly as they're slid into place. Then she gives the cylinder a spin, and then slaps it down to lock back into place.

"But Ah've dealt with enough weird shit to adapt."

She thumbs the safety to make sure its on, then gives the gun a twirl around her finger before holstering it again.

Then folding her hands behind her head and leaning back against the bulkhead once more. Neither a confirmation or an objection to the 'kill Petra' notion. By the sound of it there's more than enough people here more than willing to. "Iffen she tries to interfer cuz of her connection, well, then the final option might be the only one we got."

She doesn't have anything personal towards Petra. Just her internalized anxiety concerned with the complications her being bond to the S2.
Dysnomia     Dysnomia bristled at Kyrikos' slight. Was it a slight? It lurked in the deep waters of plausible deniability, and she knew what his answer would be if she raised a stink about it.

    And what it would make her look like.

    Even if he hadn't really answered her question.

    "Integrating psychic tech with others isn't as complicated as it sounds," shrugged the psychic engineer who spent her life cutting her teeth on that tech. "Especially jury-rigged without understanding how it all fits together."

    But then she felt the mood begin to shift. The moment he mentioned murdering Petra, the whole bunker came alive with tension. Dysnomia leaned back, letting it all wash over her.

    Largely indifferent to Petra Soraka as an individual, Mia let the others around her react, assessing the mood. "Just cause she's a free agent doesn't mean she doesn't have connections." She said, finally. "Somehow, girl's got some powerful elites at her back outside the Watch."

    She tap-tap-tapped at her collar, frowning. "Some inside it, still. Somehow. It's not as clean as walking into her apartment and cutting her throat. She's employed by a prominent member of the Concord, got some kind of messed up...THING with the Paladin who took her in in the first place, and stars knows who else."

    Dysnomia knew who else. She wondered how Rita would be reacting to this, if she were here. Biting on the corner of her lip, she decided, Not well.
Liza Grier     'Okay, look, how we treat each other IS important, especially for people who have gone through a lot of pain!'

    "Have you?"

    Liza's eyes slide over from the monitor just for that. "What you all should have taken away from her was that romanticizing 'going through it' just leads to people trying to make pain to get a little dose of meaning; a little hit of respect and satisfaction." She doesn't blink for an unnervingly long time. "None of you have ever known what to do for someone in pain; you just like the feeling of being part of the cast. Petra should have been a wakeup call to stop jerking off to trauma, not to double the stroke."

    'Project Typhon.'

    Liza subtly rolls her eyes.

    'I'll send Miss Grier this. Product of a few years of gathering structural data, hoping someone would put it to use eventually. Signal dampening around the city itself means there's no comms in or out, so this'll probably be it until the operation itself.'

    "Thanks." Liza says, and for a single, random instant, she sounds completely sincere about it. One syllable of genuine warmth in the midst of the vortex of tired bitterness, turned neutral again by the time she leans over her PDA, eyes roving up and down the screen at the incoming data. "It's hard work being a traitor. I hope you know I appreciate it. This'll go to good use, so try being alive in a few months so I can thank you for it right."

    'Soroka is a defector. An asset that should've been burnt, and now has absolutely no culpability to the Watch.'

    "Yeah." says Liza. "People keep forgetting that."

    'Our biggest barrier to developing an operation to take out the Titanomachia is the Ekanamsha S2, which is, by some means or another, connected to her well-being. The solution is clear to me.'

    "Glad we have adults in the room."

    'Kill Petra Soroka, and our path to ending the Titanomachia is clear.'

    "Saddest words of tongue and pen."
    Liza sighs, detaching her helmet from the maglock and pulling it back down over her head. The neck seal hiss-clicks, and the optics flash.
    "Liza Grier was right again."

    'I didn't join to sacrifice people, I joined to be a sacrifice for them.'

    "She hates you, you stupid fuck." The harsh, crackling affect of the helmet vocalizer makes it so much worse. The unblinking stare and lurid glow of optic lights in the dingy hold makes it somehow worse than that. "She doesn't like you. She doesn't respect you. She deleted your number and dumped you. She'd kill you for less, and she'd call you a hollow, mindless animal while she does it. Get it through your fucking skull. She hated you all the whole time she was here, and chose to be our enemy on purpose."

    "If you want to sacrifice yourself for someone like that, then here's your chance. Right now. Put your neck under my fucking boot and I'll make sure that she knows you died for her before I pull the trigger. She'll love it."
Father Berislav Whatever it used to be, what they show off on mosaics and teach in schools feels more like fascists jerking off Rome than actual history.

    "Given what else you and Hibiki have said about them, I'm hardly surprised to hear it," says Berislav flatly.

    When the flickering schematic appears on the screen, Berislav studies it intently, his grey eyes narrowed in thought, darting to and fro. "I don't see a reason not to," he says, on the topic of his own and Liza's involvement. "So thank you for sending it to her. We'll make the very most of it--we don't want that timer running out on you."

Kill Petra Soroka, and our path to ending the Titanomachia is clear.

    "Is it?" asks the priest. "She has friends in the Concord. And the Paladins, if I'm to understand correctly. To say nothing of the -litany- of others, that particular flaw should be obvious to anyone familiar with them. We would be inviting personal retaliation."

Liza Grier was right again.

    Berislav sighs sharply. "Respectfully, Liza, you weren't."

She hated you all the whole time she was here, and chose to be our enemy on purpose.

    "She isn't even twenty years old. You're talking about her as if she's lived the same life of theft and murder the leaders of that ship-city have. I'm not going to sacrifice a human being whose life has just begun, just to cut down an animal that's lived too long."

    Berislav takes a measuring breath.

    "Kyrikos," he says, with renewed, purpose-driven neutrality. "You mentioned that psychic mechs aren't your specialty. Thank you, for your honesty. If you don't know the names of anyone who specializes in 'that type of woo,' then I'll do some looking myself. I'll be quick."

    "In return, I'd consider it a personal favor if no one acted on Kyrikos' supposition," he says, lending extra weight to the word with a slight raise of his brow, "Before a second opinion is had."
Hibiki Tachibana     Kill Petra Soroka, and our path to ending the Titanomachia is clear.

    Her breath catches, jaw just barely slack. For a whole second, there's not a single move out of her. And then--

    "...No way. That option isn't even on the table."

    Compared to her downcast murmuring and general attitude, the reply that Hibiki gives is sudden, clear, and probably the steadiest thing she's said all day. She seems somewhat surprised at herself for a split second-- and then, whether it's because she realized how advocating for Petra Soroka's life will sound to more than one person here, or she's just not willing to stop herself, her expression hardens as she continues.

    "As if one of the most motivated Elites in the sector needed /more/ excuse to really tear into the Watch if she wanted to. Like Aegis Astray wasn't enough, we'd have to add assassinating her associate to the list, too."

    She'd normally pause to think about what word even properly describes the relationship those two have, but 'associate' what ends up filling the gap while not pausing. "And there'd be /more/ than a few Concord members who'd make life hell, too. We'd be making more problems than we're solving."

    "...Because that's exactly what she does, you know? To become 'half functional', she 'fills herself up with someone else's worldview'--"

    "--And to do that, she tangles herself up in everyone else's lives, gets involved, gets people to care, makes herself impossible to yank out without it hurting someone or something even when she's making it worse, /exactly/ like goddamn shrapnel!" Her voice raises, but it's not anger at anyone here. Not even Liza of all people.

    It's almost uncharacteristically focused, perhaps a bit manic, even when it lowers back down. "I don't give a crap about making excuses for her, and I sure as hell know she's not untouchable. But she's done the same thing she did here, so it'd never be that simple-- and I'm not gonna put someone up for death just to make things easier, even /if/ they deserve it a hundred times over."

    "And it'd be the same for anyone else. She's not special. That's not what I joined the /goddamn/ Watch for. She's where I started forgetting why I did, and I'm not gonna let her /keep/ screwing me and everything else I care about here up even when she's gone."

    After a heavy inhale and exhale, she looks back towards Berislav. "I know I can help you with at least one. Probably... even the best one." And then, to Kyrikos on the screen. "We'll get that 'second opinion'. And as long as we know everything you do from your end, we'll make it work."

    Her fist clenches at her side. "...I'll make sure of it. That's what I'm here to do. Thanks for the help, Kyrikos."
Aidan Proudpick "I know she hates me!" Aidan rounds on Liza again. "I know that! I know she's crazy! She's so broken she needs someone else just to prop her up!" He gesticulates with both hands, grasping them. "I'm not someone who needs her approval. She's suffered and I'm not going to go in and support her. Feeling something when you notice other people are suffering from something doesn't mean I want to be in her weird inner circle. It means I'm a person! And she's a person!" Aidan sets his jaw. "I'm not going to stand in the way of a bullet for her, but I am going to say we can do better than this."

Aidan stops his shouting as Berislav and Hibiki tune in as well, letting them speak more eloquently. He nods towards Hibiki, a swelling in his chest, "We'll figure something out. Because that's what we do." A feeling he hasn't felt since the day he reached out to the Watch.
Petra Soroka "Thanks. It's hard work being a traitor."

    Kyrikos's face cracks in a flat smile through the tension. It's hard to tell if it's performative, or if he's just bad at the expression. "I'm loyal to what matters. That's what I tell myself, anyway."

"I wouldn't kill a random person for this, and we can't kill someone who has suffered this much for trying to stop them."

    Kyrikos's eyebrow raising at Aidan feels like the counterweight to a massive force pushing down on him; disbelieving disappointment. "Is Soroka, a former fellow Watchman, who used a cutting-edge military weapon to murder a handful of unrelated people, after torching her relationship with the Watch and causing massive security breaches, who now runs around consequence free after enabling leaps of developments in the Titanomachia's war project, a 'random person'?"

    "Second to me, she's the most involved person in the Titanomachia's affairs. And above even me, she's helped them, purposefully or through utter, mind-boggling stupidity. I don't even want to know what makes you say that she's 'suffered' for trying to stop them" His voice lowers, rumbling with anger. "She was a temporary solution from the start. A foot to blindly step on the gas and take that machine away from its proper pilots after I lobotomized the AI. The fact that she turned around and plowed it into the crowd makes her a liability more than her use as an asset ever could've been. The fact that she left the Watch even more than that."

    His shoulders sag and he leans back in his chair, eyes closed and talking more distantly. "If I'd had Miss Grier or Berislav's contacts from the start, then I'd never have involved her. Stupid girl."

"She's employed by a prominent member of the Concord, got some kind of messed up...THING with the Paladin who took her in in the first place, and stars knows who else."

    "Damn it. She's got some kind of protection deal? With not one, but two other factions? What kind of information could she be feeding them that'd possibly make her worth it?" Kyrikos runs his hand across his head again-- he almost looks *more* stressed about this, than he did about the plans to assault the Titanomachia.

    "Still. Unless she's under personal guard in the heart of Aegis Astray itself, she's an easier target than the S2. Not to mention how much of a vulnerability she apparently is, as a defector with her lips on both the Concord and Paladins' ears. 'Random person' my ass-- it seems like she's comfortably shacked up with everyone except us!"

"We would be inviting personal retaliation."

    "Christ. What was it that Miss Grier said earlier? You all treat her as 'untouchable in your minds'?" Kyrikos hasn't looked down at the mech controls since suggesting killing Petra. He's fully tense, glaring at the Elites with his heavy eyebrows low, expression passively angry without any particular explosion threatening to come through.

    "How could she have possibly built up such a positive repution that hordes of Elites would come to her defense? You're telling me that you can't figure out how to kill one teenaged girl? She's a murderer, for Christ's sake, and a right unpleasant brat on top of it, who could possibly miss her so much that they'd justify letting the S2 mow down a thousand more actual civilians!"

    "She's not the child of goddamned Omelas. She's not some noble, innocent, untouchable goddamn sacrifice. Tell me you don't want to, sure, the Watch takes all kinds. Tell me you can't? I trust your ability to take down the machine she enables a thousand times less."
Petra Soroka "If you don't know the names of anyone who specializes in 'that type of woo,' then I'll do some looking myself."

    Kyrikos sets his jaw, clearly unhappy with Berislav bringing up 'not his speciality' again, as a way to seemingly win an argument. "Quick or not doesn't change anything for me. It costs a lot of resources and goodwill to get out of the city's radio suppression. I won't be able to for another few months after this one, so whatever conclusion you come to, I don't get a say in it besides today. I'd rather like to come to a conclusion now, and plan accordingly in preparations at my post."

    He falls quiet for few seconds, jaw moving like he's chewing. When he continues, he's a little quieter, blue screen-light casting shadows on his face when his head tilts slightly. "I'm an engineer. Not a pilot. I wouldn't ever leave the city, playing by my post properly. Obviously makes being a traitor a touch more difficult, that way." He steadies his voice, looking across each of the Elites in turn. "I had to kill a pilot just to get the chance for this conversation. The hope's always that each one will be more lives saved in the future, but I can't say I do the math carefully every time. This time, it's clear."

"Glad we have adults in the room."

    "Likewise, Miss Grier."

    "Petra Soroka has, through mishandling of three mechs, resulted in the near-completion of one of the most monstrous weapons I've ever known. She hates the Watch and is nestled into the loving fucking arms of the Concord and Paladins. And the rest of you are all crawling over each other to be the third faction at her goddamn feet. She's not your fucking daughter or your friend. She's not a civilian. She threw herself into a world where killing and being killed is the norm."

"--And to do that, she tangles herself up in everyone else's lives, gets involved, gets people to care, makes herself impossible to yank out without it hurting someone or something even when she's making it worse, /exactly/ like goddamn shrapnel!"

    Kyrikos remains silently watching Hibiki throughout her whole monologue, and then, crushingly, just shakes his head and mutters. "Kids."

    He finally reaches back down at the mech controls, and lurches a bit in his seat as his mech starts moving again. Kyrikos looks up at Liza, an unspoken thread of weariness between them. "That's what I have to share, and the arguments I have to make. Taking down the Titanomachia for good, no matter what, is an operation I'll be fully in support of. My advice is to destroy the Ekanamsha S2 beforehand, or you'll be doomed before even starting. There's only one weak point I see, holding all of that up."

    "We're counting on you." And then he shuts the screen off.