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Petra Soroka     Some of you were told the details about what's planned at Lobotomy Corporation today. Some of you weren't, and are just here to help Petra resolve the problems with the Titanomachia. Some of you are in the loop not because Petra told you anything, but because you coincidentally came up with an identical plan independently of her.

    Either way, what's waiting in the empty containment cell of Control Department, right nearby Angela's office, is the same: Petra, seated(?) in a goofy looking contraption, with Flamel and Angela along with her. She looks nervous and skittish, like a dog being handled at the vet, complete with glances towards Lilian for reassurance on everything she says. The device she's rigged up into is set up behind the yellow and black hazard line painted across the floor of the steel room, for convenience so that the rest of the Elites can filter comfortably into the cell, but it also places Petra exactly where an Abnormality would be.

    The cameras in the corners of the room are disconnected. The heavy steel door is propped open for now, but there's black cloth taped over the porthole window to completely prevent anyone looking in when it's closed. For some reason, Petra seems to have decided that a cell was the safest and most private place to be vulnerable like this, and that realization feels like you've encountered a psychohazard already.

    As people come in, Petra tries very hard to shift her demeanor from anxious to tiredly irritated, like this is just an annoyance she knows she needs to put up with for a good reason. She fails, but it's really obvious she's trying. In her imagination, she's modeling something like what Lilian's own perspective on this happening would be; she knows Flamel's put people inside Lilian's head before, and imagines every single detail of that event incorrectly. Even relying on a hypothetical Lilian helps steady her, though, and you all feel twitching pulses of neuropathic itch rolling off of her as she squeezes the armrests and tries to do a breathing exercise.

    "Parsons. Can you go over it again? Now that everyone's here." Exposition is a safe distraction from thinking about what comes next, and a distraction from people looking at her. Partway through, Petra has a realization of some kind spread across her face, and pulls out her phone, scrolling through to find something.

    It takes her a while, for anyone glancing at her during Flamel's briefing. She seems to be searching through multiple different places and coming up empty, occasionally looking privately stricken or queasy by whatever else she comes across. Finally, she puffs out a distressed-relieved gasp of air, and when Flamel's finished, she holds up the screen to show everyone, hand cupped protectively around it.

    On it is a picture of Petra-- not a professional, staged picture, but the kind you offhandedly snap when someone asks what you're up to right now. Presumably it's the only one she could find.-- with an iridescent glasslike mech sitting in the background, photo zoomed in to it as much as she can rather than to Petra herself. The Petra in the picture-- probably fifteen or sixteen, from a partial glimpse-- is nearly unrecognizable in demeanor; the first difference you see, whether you want to or not, is how much better taken care of her hair was back then. The mech is the same: clearly the same material as what went into the S2, but whole and humanoid. If the context wasn't transparently obvious, Persephone and Flamel might still be able to recognize the faintly orange lighting and offcolor vegetation. The picture is pulled up fullscreen in some kind of messaging app, but the messages themselves are covered.
Petra Soroka     "... This is what the Beauty of Ash looks-- used to look like. I don't know if, like, that matters, at all, but... obviously I don't want you snooping around in there more than you absolutely fucking have to, so if you see something like this, it's probably important." She pulls the phone away as quickly as she justifiably can, closing the message app and uninstalling it in a single smooth motion without even looking, trying not to direct anyone else's attention to it either.

    She shrugs, tense. "I don't fucking know. I don't know what it's going to look like in there or anything. I don't even think I'll..." She glances at Flamel for confirmation, "... be there, right? At all?"
Flamel Parsons     Flamel Parsons is dressed in what looks like incredibly heavy-duty hazmat gear, and bristling with sensors of all kinds. He looks like the government's investigating the site of a UFO crash, not like he's about to do some gentle psychiatric care. "Heya! My name's Flamel Parsons, I'm a special agent from the Psychonauts. I got called in to help!" He says cheerfully, waving one big-gloved hand. "Need a briefing, Petra? Sure thing. I've set things up and done a few test projections to the outskirts, buuuut at the depth we're looking for, we're going to be going in pretty blind! This mindscape... wow, it's a bunker built out of tanks made of blackboxes! I don't know how she built a mental defense this thick, but I'd love to learn someday!"

    "Now," He looks down to Petra. "You won't be there as you, since your psychic training never went to that topic. But, it's *your mind*, your intentions are gonna show up one way or another! It'll help us out a bit if you concentrate on helping us." He hands her... A tiny door? A little rectangle that looks like the front door of a spy agency from a television show, with a big fancy eye on its glass. "Wherever's most comfortable on your head, preferrably forehead, top of head, or back."

    As soon as she does it, the contraption lights up. Sparks and rattling and arcing lightning. Bright red lights, flashing with loud beeps. A halo of shimmering translucent locks surrounding Petra's skull. The whole contraption is an array of emitters pointed at where Petra's head is when she sits there, and already one or two shake themselves apart. The rest hold, as Flamel gets to work.

    He's... terribly bright and cheery, even while he tries to wipe sweat off his brow (halted, of course, by his hazmat gear). "So, for those unfamiliar with the astral projection process... We'll be entering the landscape of her mind. You'll retain psychic constructs associated with your equipment. Deep as we're going, you'll also probably suffer psychic wounds corresponding to damage you take! We're going to be--" There's a loud whine as another emitter overloads, this one sparking and fading. Flamel rushes over to where it just came apart.

    "If we're going to get to the psychic link to the Beauty of Ash, there's a good chance we're going to have to fight our way through its automated defenses. That is to say, we're probably going to have to fight the mental image of the Beauty of Ash, one way or another. And given that we're technically having to selectively *harm* Petra's mind to deal with this... her subconscious mental defenses will probably take its side. So get ready for that," He gestures at the phone, indicating the picture of the Beauty of Ash. "Besides all the other issues." He speaks in that totally cheery tone while struggling with the psychic breach. Key after key after lockpick after bolt-cutter all shatter on the halo of psychic barriers around Petra's head, though slowly, they're dispersing and opening.

    The door shudders open, revealing pure white light behind it. The contraption enters an unsteady, shaking equilibrium. Flamel lets out a breath, and steps back a bit. "Any last questions?"
Kale Hearthward Kale is Petra's...

... Well, okay. 'Friend' is probably too strong of a word. But he's here.

He was there for Lilian's event, too, albeit having stumbled upon it accidentally while trying to figure out what the Concord was up to. So this isn't *entirely* new for him, but - again, the first time he's here on purpose, and here to catch the whole thing instead of being caught up in it halfway. Also the first time there won't be some sort of catastrophic side effects, though looking at Flamel's equipment shaking itself apart he's no longer confident in that aspect.

"Question, should we be wearing... all of that?" he says, pointing at Flamel's overengineered gear.

"Other question, harm Petra's mind? What, like this is some sort of-"

He cuts himself off as the incredibly obvious lame joke hits him head on, stunning him momentarily as he processes it. It's terrible and he shouldn't say it. He feels like he might literally die if he says it out loud, either from embarrassment or someone may make an attempt on his life if he does.

"You know what, nevermind that."

Kale does a gear check. Psychic constructs... maybe they'll be stronger if he has a clear memory of his gear being intact and fully functional? It can't hurt.

"Okay, one *last* question. Is there any way we should act to keep the subconscious defenses off of us for as long as possible? Like, ways we can blend in?"
Angela Angela doesn't look nervous and skittish on the outside but rest assured, she is uneasy about this plan.... On the inside. She is endeavoring not to show Petra this on the outside because she knows this is already plenty awful for her and she doesn't want to add one iota of stress to what Petra's already undoubtedly going through.

she is also a little nervous because the last time she was taken to a 'mind space' she nearly shut down for good but this isn't some kind of collective unconsciousness midnight ride. Petra is still here.

And her third concern is Carmen but Control is as far from Extraction as the facility can be and if she avoids thinking about the third concern maybe Carmen won't notice. Keeping Carmen out of the loop later might be impossible but if Petra stops getting assassins sent after her, it is a risk she can accept.

Cameras mysteriously going off and being disconnected means she has to talk to the Manager but fortunately the Manager is also inclined for Petra to not be murdered and while Angela was vague on details--the Manager happens to be rather accustomed to her holding out information and he clears it so long as she gets back for the following day.

He's taking charge more, Angela thinks, exerting his authority more. This is a problem for future Angela but present Angela knows to be uneasy about that too.

She glances as Petra pulls out the phone then turns her head upon seeing that the messages are covered. It's private, she tells herself.

She takes a long look at Flamel. She's heard him over the band ages ago, long enough that the years (for Angela) are measured in centuries but this isn't what she expected to see.

Mostly what comes to mind about Flamel is that Persephone through him into space for some slight against Lilian. She doesn't forget, but some things are sure louder in her consciousness than others.

What is maybe most unusual is that she doesn't seem incredulous about what Flamel's presentation at all. Psychonauts? Sounds like a special kind of Agent. Some kind of Association that specializes in psychic treatment. Or antipsychic treatment? The door being placed on the forehead seems goofy but doesn't exactly clash with the sorts of aesthetics for strange technology that Angela herself has experienced and heard about.

Her expression grows concerned as an emitter explodes.

"Are you certain this man is the expert?" She asks. She doesn't know what Petra's head is like but her goal is freedom, not a less typical cell.

''Her subconscious mental defenses will probably take its side.''

Angela exhales slowly. Her expression shifts ever so slightly and it's as difficult to read as ever by looking but rest assured, this information is not something that makes Angela happy. She already hates feeling like she's violating Petra's privacy--even if it is at her request. Getting confirmation by neural processes that this is the case is not really helping.

"I would like to reiterate that we are to stay on task rather than getting curious. And I would like to ask, as non-Psychonaut, if there are any particular actions or behaviors we should avoid for Petra's sake--or our own. Any safety tips that Psychonauts would know that I, as a first time mind delver, would not."

She gives Kale a warning look but he cut himself off and that's better the average so she seems content to leave it at that.

She looks to Petra and says, "I'll do my best to keep everyone on task."

Now, to be clear, Angela is wearing her EGO Gear even now. Her EGO Gear looks like a straight jacket with the belt straps left hanging. She has a large hammer on her lap that looks like it has a giant folded and folded over again metal can as its head and is way heavy looking.

She honestly isn't sure how well EGO Gear will work in a mindscape as it also comes from a mindscape. Maybe that's why X let her go so easy. To get EGO Readings.
Kukuru Getting asked for help from Petra means something really serious is about to happen. That's why, even though she could feel giddy about it, she actually made sure to sleep early and get all her work done well ahead of time so she can show up at Lobotomy Corporation bright and early, even looking moderately awake for once when she arrives. She's wearing slimmed down version of her usual frilly white blouse and green skirt outfit, and she's still brought her usual array of snacks for anyone thatmight need a little pick me up before starting whatever's happening with Petra in The Contraption.

"He-llo, Angie! He-llo, Petra! He-llo, Flamel! I'm so glad you invited me todaaay~" Despite coming with a serious intent, she still announces herself with an almost giddy tone, then smacks her cheeks lightly and stomps once to resettle her brain as Flamel starts briefing everyone on the situation and Petra elaborates on the Beauty of Ash. She commits the image to memory as best she can, partially because knowing what the mech looks like could be rather important, and partially because she can't help but feel a little jump in her heart at seeing Petra with nice hair.

"If we're gonna hurt Petra's head while we're in there... Hmm. Can we fix any of what we hurt, too? Or..." Kukuru's concern is apparent in her tone as she shuffles around to hand out little snacks and drinks (shrimp jerky, apple fritters, and the good coconut juice boxes) while everyone's getting ready for the mind dive. "Would talking out loud while we're inside help? So Petra can hear us and stuff."
Hibiki Tachibana     Some of you are in the loop not because Petra told you anything, but because you coincidentally came up with an identical plan independently of her.

    Who would ever do something like that?

    Hibiki isn't particularly interested in bringing up that fact if Petra isn't, for several reasons - the important thing is that they're here now. Of course, 'being here now' comes with a mix of emotions, including the fact that this is taking place in a Lobotomy Corp containment unit, and the girl of the day is put up in a not dissimilar way to an Abnormality.

    Combined with the extremely unpleasant note that her and Petra's last conversation ended on rubbing up against the lingering feelings from Rita's return, her expression is best described as 'tentative'. It's hard to tell if it's more or less so on seeing the picture that Petra provides to all of them. "...Looks so different..." That could be to the Beauty of Ash versus its mangled form now, the Petra of then and the Petra of now, or both.

    ...Just like back with Lilian, they're probably going to see all sorts of things, kept locked away in Petra's impenetrable psyche.

    What's going to be on the other side of all of this? A solution to their problems with the Titanomachia's awful use of Petra's machine, hopefully yes, but with Petra herself...

    "I'll remember it," she ends up saying as Petra smoothly gets rid of that messaging app entirely, hands slowly sliding in her jacket pockets. "...And I won't go shoving my face anywhere I shouldn't. Don't worry about that." Let's hope not, for everyone's sakes. Hibiki tries, and trie to think of something to say towards Petra-- reassurance? Something else?

    ...But ultimately, she's not sure what. Other than, leaning against the wall in a corner of the containment unit, a quiet 'Sorry' near-inaudible as some of the others run through their questions.

    And afterwards, more level towards Flamel in the middle of all of his technical difficulties, "...Is it gonna stay stable? All your machinery looks like it's pushing itself as hard as it can already." Even though she says that, it's with less worry than someone should probably have - when the door opens, she's already pushing off the wall to get ready to move.

    "But besides that... no. I'm set."
Lilian Rook     Ah yes. The Contraption. The Contraption made by Flamel Parsons. The Contraption that Flamel Parsons uses to get into the heads of horrible girls who need help. That Contraption. The Contraption that definitely helps and makes girls happier and healthier. The Flamel Parsons Contraption.

    Lilian literally never even saw the original, so she assumes this is exactly what it looked like and is visibly restraining the urge to hit it with a bat at each and every second. If Petra wants reassurance, she's looking for it in a bad place. Lilian would love to spit on this thing. It's bad enough that Petra's unbearable fucking vibe causes her to scratch at her arms, temporarily confused about whether this is before or after she experienced having them treated. The realization notches her expression further towards disgust.

    Glancing around the room uncomfortably, trying to keep occupied, her eyes catch on the phone, and the picture briefly steals her breath and blanks her face. The disgust is replaced with nauseous bitterness when she tears her gaze away. "Better than knowing absolutely nothing." she says. "Like the usual sorts. Stumbling around blindly and hoping it falls into their laps without the slightest urge to ask a question."

    'I don't know how she built a mental defense this thick, but I'd love to learn someday!'

    "By being appropriately ashamed." Lilian whispers harshly under her breath. "You said something to that effect last time, didn't you Parsons?" she then says at proper conversational volume. "I hope you aren't planning a return trip to the moon so soon." Wait what does that even mea--

    'there's a good chance we're going to have to fight our way through its automated defenses.'

    Lilian passingly examines her bandages, over the sound of an exploding emitter. "Oh, perfect." she says, dripping with so much sarcasm it'd be easy to think that she didn't already know that.

    'And given that we're technically having to selectively *harm* Petra's mind to deal with this... her subconscious mental defenses will probably take its side.'

    "I take it back. I wish I could study that too."

    Lilian has no desire to say a single extra word before taking her third-ever hop through one of those psychic doors on the spot.
Persephone Kore      When was the last time I tried, really on purpose, to break a bond? Was it trying to give Lily-R a home away from her parents? But that isn't much of a bond. And I still didn't even manage to break it.

     Ahahaha. Am I, maybe, kind of an amateur at this?

     Persephone's arrival is gentler than anyone's used to. The fabric of the universe palpably skews towards her the second she steps through the warpgate, and her aura of emotional warmth blanketing everything like a color-filter spills through it even before that, and any sensors Flamel has on him chitter and beep, but it's all a bit muted.

     Even her clacky heels approaching don't have the same sharp bite.

     "Oh, he likes you," Phony says as she slips around the door. The warm, relaxed fry of her voice isn't less so- only reserved. "Or he's intrigued by you, which is the same thing." She gives Petra the smile of your cheek-pinching aunt doing her very best to be tolerable. The way she holds her hips and arm passively invites a hug. As if.

     The Beauty of Ash. It really is beautiful. But I shouldn't say that, should I? Instead, maybe something like: "Awwww. I see why your heart's still attached to it." The longing in her eyes for a world where you could've stayed, and her hand cupping her cheek, tell a truer story than her voice does.

     She looks down at Angela, while the others talk, and takes her hand to hold and squeeze. Did she see how nervous she is? Or did she only guess? "I've never 'damaged' anyone before. But at least I can be moral support, right?"

     "Any last questions?"
     Persephone's dark-painted nails tap against her lower lip. From anyone else, the way she looks at her while talking to him might feel slighting. From Persephone, it can only seem more attentive. "Out here, is she going to feel any pain?"
Father Berislav For some reason, Petra seems to have decided that a cell was the safest and most private place to be vulnerable like this, and that realization feels like you've encountered a psychohazard already.

    Oh, Petra... Berislav sighs, when the realization comes to him.

...obviously I don't want you snooping around in there more than you absolutely fucking have to, so if you see something like this, it's probably important.

    "Of course." The priest nods. "We'll be brisk and respectful." If there were any other way to do this, he'd have been the first to suggest it--after all, even dealing with this subject matter at all is deeply private.

    Berislav's handshake for Flamel is firm. A little too firm. "Father Waters Berislav. It's nice to meet you, Mr. Parsons." He makes a tight-lipped frown, when the contraptions make their noise--they don't sound like good noises, but rather like they're encountering a fight.

And given that we're technically having to selectively *harm* Petra's mind to deal with this... her subconscious mental defenses will probably take its side. So get ready for that.
Any last questions?

    "I'm as ready as I can be," says Berislav. "You're the expert in these matters. I trust if anything else comes up along the way, you'll keep us apprised."
Flamel Parsons     Flamel answers some of the questions so far while he manages the Device. The Machine. The Construction.

    "Question, should we be wearing... all of that?"

    "Hmmm... well, probably not! I have spares if you *want* them. This is just how I defend myself. You should defend yourself whatever way fits you."

    "Is there any way we should act to keep the subconscious defenses off of us for as long as possible? Like, ways we can blend in?"

    "We're already doing that!" Flamel's broad smile can be barely seen through the opaque hazmat visor. "I'm spoofing us as a series of idle low-profile visualizations of hypothetical outcomes of media, some kind of fiction? Blending in will be pretty intuitive when you get in, but it won't always be possible!"

    "And I would like to ask, as non-Psychonaut, if there are any particular actions or behaviors we should avoid for Petra's sake--or our own. Any safety tips that Psychonauts would know that I, as a first time mind delver, would not."

    "Actions or behaviors... hmmm... if you see an opportunity to make an unnatural change to 'override' someone's mind for the sake of your personal convenience, don't take it. It can cascade even in a strong mind! Your goal should always be 'remove obstacles to the mind's natural health and recovery'. In our case, we're already taking a lot of risks, hurting a healthy process just to cut out its symptomatic effec! And for safety tips... Nothing in a mental landscape is less dangerous than the mind knows it is. Whatever Petra knows to be afraid of, you should too!"

    "If we're gonna hurt Petra's head while we're in there... Hmm. Can we fix any of what we hurt, too? Would talking out loud while we're inside help?"

    "No guarantees one way or another. The mind wants to become healthier, and it'll do it unless someone or something stops it or hurts it. But we need to cut this particular piece out for her safety. It might be possible to enable better healing at the borders of the damage site, though... As for talking out loud, if you can concentrate really hard you should be able to speak in the real world a bit. And Petra might be able to hear it! But, not always that reliable."

    "...Is it gonna stay stable? All your machinery looks like it's pushing itself as hard as it can already."

    "Well, if Petra re-establishes her defenses... it'll probably overload and it might light on fire. But, it's past the defenses, so, it's only a problem if she suddenly decides to eject us! ...Probably? Hmmm. Hey, Angela, can you make sure nobody turns on any microwaves in this department? Hahaha, no, no, it'll be fine."

    "I hope you aren't planning a return trip to the moon so soon."

    "Hahaha, nope! I feel really intense fear and anxiety thinking about ever doing that again! I think I permanently can't rationally form a plan that risks it ever again. Just how things are now!"

    "Out here, is she going to feel any pain?"

    "From what I'm doing? Not a pinch! She'll be zoned out a bit, it'll be like when you wander into the kitchen and stare at the fridge without knowing what you're doing!"
Petra Soroka     Petra has always been of the opinion that psychiatric care done to her *should* involve armor, given how much damage it tends to do to people. Differently from her ideal scenario, though, she's not *also* wearing armor, and rather than locking blades in a convoluted but intense clash of emotions, she's sitting in a sort of dentist-like chair in a cell, feeling like she's about to be dissected. Putting on her EGO armor would be silly, even if its mental resilience is trivial compared to what she already has, so she's wearing her stitched-up bomber instead, tugging at the sleeves like it's a security blanket.

"It'll help us out a bit if you concentrate on helping us."

    That line, more than the act of taking the little door, spikes Petra's nerves. Drawing a direct connection between her thoughts and intentions and the actual events inside of the mindscape-- *Petra's* mindscape-- is uncomfortably close to having her mind read, and also reminds her that the reality is probably way more invasive than that. Stress leaks out as bitter sarcasm.

    "Sure. I'll do my best to avoid thinking about how much this all fucking sucks and I hate it, so I don't accidentally blow you up inside my head." She blinks, then rubs at her eye with the palm of her hand, effortfully squashing down the sarcasm. "Er-- it *is* better than being killed. I'll try to focus on that part."

"If we're gonna hurt Petra's head while we're in there... Hmm. Can we fix any of what we hurt, too? Or..."

    "Don't. Don't fuck around. Don't try to 'fix' anything." Petra gives a grateful-- and a bit wide-eyed with stress-- glance to Angela for keeping people on task. "You don't *want* to go poking around and I don't *want* you to. Just-- it's literally just a mission. There's one specific thing that needs to be done and that's literally it."

"By being appropriately ashamed."

    Lilian being distressed and angry is almost the reassurance that Petra is looking for, actually. A second voice who won't talk about 'fixing' anything, recognizing how fucked up this all is; and most importantly, and least justifiably, the reassurance that this is a shitty experience Lilian had that Petra is soon going to share.

    That line does make her wince, though.

"Awwww. I see why your heart's still attached to it."

    Petra squirms and avoids Persphone's eyes as much as she can. Avoiding acknowledging her seems to be the closest thing to 'civility' she can manage under these conditions, and the attempt to manage that is... distantly heartwarming, at least.
Petra Soroka     After stepping through the glowing portal into Petra's mind, the sudden silence left by the absence of the machinery is jarring. Equally jarring is the apparent lack of environment: the portal opens into a murky grey-black plain without anything immediately of note. There's no visible source for it, but every step and movement you take has a slight twinge-snap of resistance, like a forest path crossed over by hundreds and hundreds of thin twigs from branches, but it doesn't lessen no matter how many times you cross over the same spot.

    As everyone looks around, a deep booming explosion rattles your teeth, and even though it sounds distant, following the sound to the source is right nearby. On a dirty plastic folding table is a head-sized glass orb, currently fully obscured within by swirling grey particles. The ash gradually settles, making the connection to a snowglobe, on a miniature suburban neighborhood cloaked in grey and pocked with craters. Tiny tangles of barbed wire block the streets between toothpick-thin turrets, and at the center of the setting is a comparatively large tower topped with a rotating turret, identical to the Kana's with the barrel mirrored four ways. At the top of *that*, looking down at it from above, is a little hatch, like the one used to enter the Kana.

    The Kana-tower fires again, just as the ash becomes still again, and the explosion is as deafening up close as if it was the full-sized thing. The longer you stay in this intermediary-seeming open area, the more that the catching-pricking sensation of moving around intensifies, starting to feel like it's burrowing through your skin without touching your clothes before snapping. It feels like-- if you left this snowglobe behind-- you could wander around and look for something else, like a level select; she must have too many psychohazards to even contain in one place. It also feels like you might not survive the exploration, so Flamel must've dropped you near this one on purpose.
Petra Soroka     Trying to pull the snowglobe up from the table, to inspect it or flip it over, isn't possible. Rather than feeling like it's glued or otherwise adhered to the table, it feels like fighting against muscle fiber, with slight give at the start before it contracts and pulls it back to the table. Once everyone's gathered around it, the next explosion inside the globe wipes their vision to black, and is still echoing when they open their eyes again to find themselves on the streets in the now full-size suburban wartorn hellscape.

    Kicked up from the blast from the Kana, flakes of ash float through the air, thick enough to choke. Worse, it feels like inhaling fiberglass, with miniscule lacerations sliced through your trachea and in your lungs, prickling on your skin. Prickling under your skin, too-- of course there'd be no escaping from her aura here, and any attempts to telepathically communicate with each other are blocked entirely by pain and static.

    The neighborhood around you is practically in ruins. A wide stroad, with unshaded sidewalk on either side of it, lawn after lawn of identical houses side by side, stretching further into the mindscape-- identical, that is, besides the blast marks. One in three houses are reduced to grey-brown rubble, occasionally on fire. More are damaged in some way or another, by explosions, or seemingly just ran through by tanks that don't seem to be around anymore. Piles of concrete blocks make fortifications blocking your path forwards, with guns poking out of them.

    The Kana-tower in the distance has legs, when magnified to full size; blunt, blocky legs in an immobile squat to loom over the town. When not toyified in miniature, the massive fourfold cannonfire from the Kana isn't the only bombardment raining down on the town, with gunfire and explosions dropping indiscriminately across *everything*, not just targeting the Elites. It does *also* target the Elites, though: the turret sheltered behind a mess of concrete and barbed wire in the center of the street whirs in your direction and sprays gunfire at you for the simple fact of moving.

    The siding of one of the houses bursts open, with a series of horse-sized ratbots, like derivations of Petra's little Pence, roll out, followed by... Petra, wearing bright red and yellow as eyecatching blocks of primary colors, with welder's goggles on her forehead and a remote in her hand. She raises her eyebrows at you while the ratbots blast at concrete with various oversized weapons and laser cannons, then calls out, sounding surprisingly unbothered. "Oh, hey! You should all get inside, I think."

    A moment later, she's wiped away by fire and smoke from a missile dropped out of the ash-clouded sky, and all the ratbots go still. Looking around again-- there's Petras *everywhere*, all different. A Petra with metallic purple hair sits in a windowsill strumming on a ukulele before being shot in the side of the head and collapsing. A Petra wearing an oil-stained tank top with a green jumpsuit tied around her waist sits on the wreckage of a car, talking to a Petra putting on a hardsuit helmet. A Petra in Concord colors over her t-shirt has rigged up a series of propane stoves to grill for the others, humming to herself while she does.

    There's more, tucked away in any corner you look. Most of them tucked away in craters-- sprawled, broken Petras in various accessories litter the bottoms of blasted holes in asphalt, and there's one with wooden beaded bracelets slumped against a wall, hair matted and rust brown with blood.
Flamel Parsons     Flamel brings the group in. A slow process, a detachment from the body, a gradual tug of an elongated astral self into the shining white light found behind the tiny door as it opens...

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1r0FdnDZSRBZPLVffa5Grye3bPqDMf94_/view

    "Wow, this is... huh, shame you said? She's not comfortable visualizing something, it looks like her natural visualization got limited. I haven't seen anything like this since the sensory isolation case..." Then, BOOM! He follows. "Woah! Okay, let's go see what that is..."

    "I don't know what this is." Flamel mutters, leaning over the table. He scrutinizes it intensely. When another boom goes off, he yelps and falls on his ass, before laughing about it. "Woah! She's got a lot going on. We're looking at a sub-collective-unconscious situation. How much is she keeping under the surface here, exactly...?" He gestures everyone over. "C'mon! I don't think it's a good idea to wander much, this looks like the right way."

    Once they're all in...

    "Hey! Oh, thanks for the advice!" Flamel calls out, waving brightly to a Petra who is instantly annihilated. He's a little paler, somehow visible through the opaque visor, when she's gone. Frozen still, he turns just his head to the others. "Alright! So, that's an example of the mind actively helping guide us towards safety. We should *get cover now*, actually." He emits a few nervous laughs, which are almost comedically cut off by him vanishing completely into invisibility as he rushes for cover or concealment in craters and bombed-out zero-family ex-houses. Probably whichever ones the others do. He'll have a proper idea of what to do next in a minute...
Kale Hearthward > "I hope you aren't planning a return trip to the moon so soon."

Kale immediately stands up straight and throws her a questioning look, before realizing that Lilian is talking about something else.

He returns to a more relaxed ready stance - and there's an immediate, almost identical reaction when Persephone makes herself known.

> Hey, Angela, can you make sure nobody turns on any microwaves in this department?

Rufus Shinra, watching boring training videos in another room, has a sudden urge to get up and to go make popcorn.
... Though instead of using prebagged microwaveable kernels, he uses an air popper, because he has *taste*.

---

"I wasn't expecting a warzone already..."

Kale frowns slightly. He sounds different, like he's talking with two different... not voices, exactly. Intonations?

He's distracted entirely from that by the other new developments - the cloud of ash that makes it impossible to breathe. "Gah - should have expected that Soroka's mindscape would be suffocating." He tries to clear his throat - to no avail, given how saturated the ash is. It's even getting on his skin, slicing underneath the thin layer of feathers in a distinctly non-ashy way. What even is this stuff?

"Of all the missions to not have Tamamo on..." Kale mutters as he grabs some spare cloth from a pocket and does what he can to turn it into a makeshift filter mask. Maybe Flamel's hazmat suit was a good idea after all.

Oh, hey, there's a Petra. A friendly Petra, even! Good. And then she's wiped out. Not good. Actually, a reminder that the battlefield isn't just strictly metaphorical here - active shelling is going on, and Flamel's warning about 'psychic wounds' echoes in Kale's mind.

With what fresh air he can get, Kale goes to throw up some cover by way of an angled wind wall, though it's meant as a temporary measure till everyone can get under proper cover.

"Hey - maybe you should try to get away from here?" he comments to the grilling Petra. "Or look more concerned? You're acting like this is just how it is every day."
Father Berislav      Inside the portal, Berislav blinks in mild confusion. "Did it work?" Surely not, right? Surely, this grey-black plain is some sort of transitional area, and not--

    Berislav takes a step; feels the passive resistance to his movement. Not just to the movement of his foot, but even in the way he reached up to remove his glasses and hang them upon his clerical collar. "Ah. I see." It worked. This is Petra. "Never mind."

    On to the snowglobe, then--or rather, to the deafening boom which sounds every so often, and grows only louder the closer he approaches. He circles around the table, his silver eyes studying it from every angle. He is taken by surprise, when the next explosion places him -inside- it.

    Inside, in the choking, stinging, ash-filled air. Berislav is given to a fit of coughing, before retrieving a small blister pack of some unlabeled medication, and hurriedly ingesting a small, spherical pill. Amidst the sound of shelling, he wheels around faster than his unimposing stature ought to imply he should be able to, a streak of orange painted in the air as his hand pulls a powerful plastic explosive from his mind's recreation of 'subspace.'

You should all get inside, I think.

    LCD numbers count down, before the force and alarming speed of his throw splats olive-drab adhesive against the turret's fortifications. The timer ticks down to zero, and another explosion among many violently blooms, a kind specifically used for heavily fortified positions.

    Berislav is a black blur with a little trail of silver at the neck. His sprint is inhumanly graceful, impossibly so, given it's made in that cassock. He clears the remnants of a picket fence almost like an afterthought, his feet gracing the ash-dusted lawn for only a moment before he's horizontal, crashing through a window. Broken glass scarcely scratches him, even when he lands, tucks and rolls inside the house.
Kukuru Persephone's arrival has Kukuru spinning on her heels to practically scurry right over and unceremoniously latch onto Phony from the side. "Phony! Oh, we couldn't ask for better moral support." She chimes in with a high-pitched throat noise that sounds like she's just letting all the tension in her body out...

For a few seconds before smacking herself in the cheeks again to refocus herself on the task at hand. Flamel's explanation about how vital it is to sever the connection between Petra and the Beauty of Ash helps Kukuru center herself, although knowing that Petra might still be able hear them outside of the contraption helps to keep Kukuru from psyching herself out too much before anything actually happens.

"Sure. I'll do my best to avoid thinking about how much this all fucking sucks and I hate it, so I don't accidentally blow you up inside my head."

"Okay. I'll make sure we don't stray from what we gotta do. And... I'll try and keep you updated, too, however that's gonna work." Kukuru affirms to Petra and Angela with a slow nod, lower lip quivering for just a moment at Angea's Capital D. Nevertheless, she goes as far as cracking her knuckles in attempt to look like she's really focused and ready to clamp down on anyone who even thinks about straying! She's not one to normally crack her knuckles, though, so she does it a bit too hard, and her jaw tightens like she's trying not to show that it hurt more than expected.

That fades in time, though, and Kukuru still looks and sounds confident while murmuring to herself like she's trying to commit more things to memory. "No unnatural changes unless it's for Petra's natural recovery, and to take out that one link. Gotta be careful, gotta be gentle..."

A lot of the other questions and answers go over her head. Subconscious defenses? Blending in as media? Return trips? It's not for a lack of trying that she doesn't quite understand, but Kukuru is... She's trying her best.

Heading into Petra's mind through the portal seems broken to Kukuru at first. She's not sure what a mindscape is actually supposed to look like, but seeing a lack of much of anything is certainly not what she was expecting. Her promise to Petra means she's staring straight ahead, though, committing herself to only focusing on...

She's not sure what to actually look for aside from the mech in that picture, actually. The explosion is a clue, though, along with being a generally frightening thing that has her immediately getting her healing nanites going (if they came with her at all) while following Flamel's cue to find cover.

"That's guiding us towards...? Oh! I get it." Kukuru calls out from within the relative safety of a crater, projecting her voice a bit afterwards. "Thank you, Petra dear! It's scary, but I know you're trying to help!" She calls out with a reassuring lilt in her voice, then yelps at another explosion forcing her to scramble away and find some dead ratbots to take cover behind instead.

Then Kukuru sees the Petra in the Concord shirt. She really wants to go over there. There's so many questions she wants to ask, but... No. She has to focus. Does teleportation work? Kukuru's going to try teleporting to stay with the group, and to also try and funnel anyone straggling or straying off back towards the group/the window Berislav indicates.
Angela Angela catches Petra's look and gives her an affirming nod and then a second nod to Kukuru, though this one comes along with a Stare as she says, "Stick to the mission, Kukuru. If Petra wants us to go in again," Which she wouldn't. "She could just ask us. Nothing more than necessary as per our goal. Or I'll be Disappointed."

It's a capital D Disappointed too and Angela seems to think this is the most severe punishment she can inflict on Kukuru which, to be fair, is tailor made for her. The punishment for Rufus would be different (likely involving Tiphereth B's Crusher which needs a new purpose). Angela hasn't figured out how to keep Rufus alive through that but fortunately she does not have to worry about that today and has time to think about it. Something the Manager won't see and thus can't complain about.

Persephone holding her hand helps. As does the conversation over the band. She doesn't quite smile but she does say, "I appreciate that you came even if you could only come as yourself." She tells her.

Her eyes slant towards Berislav, lingerng for a moment.

Lilian's presence seems to soothe the rest of it over. Lilian has never failed her as far as she is concerned and that means Petra is in the best possible hands. She'll surely help with keeping the group on task.

''Hey Angela, can you make sure nobody turns any microwave on?''

"There should not be any microwaves in Control." Angela says. "Though we are a power company that draws out emotional and mental energy and turns it into a liquid that can be refined into a power source." Angela says. "Unfortunately I cannot shut down these systems."

Thankfully Training is also not in Control!

And then... THE DOOR!!!

Angela arrives (likely with her EGO Gear still attached). She spends about a second in orderr to not pay attention to her surroundings and focus at her hardest. And then at normal volume she says, "Petra, can you hear us?"

And then she opens her eyes and sees the Kana. She startles a bit. Especially when explosions happen.

Flamel shouts to go to cover and Angela elects to follow the expert (also because if he does something kooky, she has a hammer with which to hit him in the head which is not throwing him into the moon but FEELS like it could be helpful in such a circumstance).

Then she sees a ratbot. Big ratbots. Horseratbots. Angela thinks they look pretty cute but she definitely doesn't say that.

...Why is she dressed like Eggman, she thinks before following Flamel in.

Angela sees Ukelele Petra. She smiles a little. That's charming and--

She sees Ukelele Petra's head burst open in slow motion. "..."

Angela closes her eyes again. THen she peeks open one eye and sees a crater of dead Petras.

Right, she thinks, killing versions of yourself is normal. You do it too.

Angela gives Flamel a nod, determined to stick with him further when he...vanishes.

"...Yes," She says to Petratnik. "Let us--." Her head turns and she realizes that while she was looking at Ukelele Petra, THAT Petra also got obliterated.

She is not a soldier though so she jogs (she isn't confident in running right now) towards the window Berislav picked out and awkwardly aims to pull herself in as well.
Persephone Kore      'Don't try to fix anything'. Oh. So that's the hard part.

     The omnipresent snapping-twig resistance in the between-place leaves Persephone with childish wonder. She feels the invisible force out with her fingers: the minimum it takes to not 'break' them, the maximum you can push before they do.

     Then she strokes them with her fingertips, just at the limit. As if the abstract sensation were something she could touch back too. Even if I can't 'fix', can I show care?

     She notices the glass orb a little late. There's barely time to lean over it wonderingly before-

     ----

     Persephone, who fails to have a concept that she should defend herself, develops several bullet-holes. But that's a less acute concern to her than watching (a) Petra get vaporized. "Oh. She was sweet," Phony says with soft longing, while stepping forward to look after where the smoke has blown.

     The ukulele music catches her ear over the gunfire next. Persephone's face lights up with the chance to show kindness: she steps back and looks upward, waving. "I love your h--" And she's shot, and a dribble of ordinary blood spatters down to mix with Persephone's off-red on her upturned face.

     The smile fades. "They aren't real, are they, Flamel." She knows that to be true. But I still hate it. Why are you doing this to yourself, Petra?

     All of the ones you're killing look happier than the one who lived. I don't get it at all.

     Heedless of the danger, Persephone crouches in the street next to the Petra with a wood-bead bracelet. Her fingers check for a pulse in the wrist, first. "You all should go climb the tower. There was a hatch at the top. I'll catch up," Phony says. Something else is more important.

     She shuts her eyes. A mental construct doesn't really have 'history' to read, but it has intent, and maybe that's close enough for a glimpse.

     Why are you the way that you are? That is, beautiful. And dead.
Hibiki Tachibana     With the door open, there's a fleeting tug in the heart.

    And it's shoved down. Breaking a bond with something someone loves will be unpleasant enough without anything else seeping in.

    Don't try to fix anything. I won't shove my face anywhere I shouldn't. She said...

    "...Be back soon." Some of the reassurance Hibiki meant to have moments ago seeps in quietly, as they dive into the mind.

    Inside, is... she'd think about how every movement comes with something pushing back, how the entire place is so much muted emptiness, and maybe something about how she's not as shocked as she should be, if the ability to think wasn't momentarily destroyed by the abrupt explosion.

    Hurrying over towards the thing responsible, she joins Flamel in leaning over the table, peering into the globe. "Sub-collective-unconscious...?" She barely knows what a normal collective unconscious is. Rather than being focused too hard on the answer, she purses her lips and narrows her eyes.

    "That's... the Kana?" The exclamation sounds both surprised and sort of reticent, as if she's not happy to come to that realization - mostly because she isn't. Right as the dip in her gut peaks, though, there's another deafening boom.

    ...

    And then they're in. On the destroyed streets, under the pall of ash, enough to make Hibiki instinctively draw her collar up to avoid inhaling it even if that does nothing to prevent the constant sensation budding beneath her skin. "Ugh-- this place... why is it like this...?" That's as far as she gets before the assault forces her to start moving. It's only natural the sound of Petra's voice would get her attention.

    Why is she dressed like Egg-- "Petra!"

    And an instant later, she's gone in the wake of the explosion. Hibiki's face blanches on the spot, and she does the very dangerous thing of slowing to a stop.

    A look to the side has another one going down unceremoniously. Another, and several who were talking idly in the middle of this hell-like warzone are gone. And more and more and more-- corpses. Everywhere.

    They're projections of the mind. Obviously. But seeing it, she thinks she's going to be sick.

    Half in a daze, she hurries after the cover of buildings with (most of) the others before she gets blown up herself, fishing out her pendant from beneath her collar in the process. She doesn't activate it yet, only clutching on tightly before her back comes to press hard into a wall beside Flamel. It takes her some time to get her breathing in order.

    Flamel Parsons makes an instantly-engaged noise. "What's the Kana?" Looks like he wasn't around for that part of things!

    "...A war machine that she took... when she left the Beauty of Ash behind. From the same people who... have it now." The words come between slow heaves. "It's been involved in-- ...a lot of hurt. A lot. She lived out of it... when she was first an Elite."

    She looks up at the shell of the building they're hiding in. "...But I don't think it was ever a replacement for a real home."
Lilian Rook     'Can we fix any of what we hurt, too?'

    "If you can't fix it out here then you can't fix it in there." Lilian snaps, half-truthfully. "How hard is it for you people to grasp? You can't just say the right sequence of things and make someone better."

    Persephone suddenly being here takes her off guard. Knowing Petra's sheer aversion to her makes their copresence seem somehow heretical; even from the moment she first hears her heels in the halls. That presence is as soothing as it ever is, even if Lilian's arms still itch at the wrists. The person it belongs to is a deep reassurance; a much-needed balm to Lilian's morale. The fact that these two will have to touch so closely, though . . .

    There's no mistaking the misgiving look at that Lilian gives Petra the moment she drifts away from Phony. It's not too dissimilar from looks she's gotten herself, though she does not realize it. Her eyes say nothing less than 'don't you dare taint her'.

<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "It will. Be nice to be on the same side, I mean. Persephone."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "It just . . . is a little bit difficult."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, ". . . No. Ignore me."
<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Worrying about you is illegal. I remember."

    §I don't know if you could call that one, Persephone. I think I just invented those bonds to justify not leaving. I was scared, and guilty, and ashamed of wanting to leave, but really I just couldn't make myself believe that there was anything better. Perhaps it was nothing more than inertia.§

    She can 'talk' about that, at least, by leaning on Persephone's shoulder for just a moment.

    'I think I permanently can't rationally form a plan that risks it ever again. Just how things are now!'

    "Wait-- Flamel? That's a very heavy thing to be saying all of a sudden. Are you alright?" There's only time for one lingering look of dawning worry; certainly not enough time for Lilian to actually figure out what that feeling is.

    And besides. She isn't much thinking of that when inside.

    Each and every step flexing and cracking underneath her puts Lilian into a totally different mindstate. Without realizing it, her weight subtly shifts to her toes, and her footsteps naturally fall slower, distributing it less suddenly. The explosion doesn't cause her to clutch her ears and shrink down as anyone normally should; Lilian freezes in mid-stride, grits her teeth, and closes her eyes for long, breathless seconds. She moves towards the table slower than she had in the first place. Laying just the tips of her painted fingernails on the glass is the best she can do. The second boom is a formality.

    "Haha . . . Why couldn't Exis have shown up here instead of then?"

    That unsteady exclamation seems to be the only way Lilian can process what she's seeing. Her foggy gaze roams around the street, looking for anything at all to latch onto, but suburbia is an alien place to her mind anyways, and sees nothing reassuringly familiar. Craters and rubble and death are things she walks more closely to instead; no matter how horrible, she at least knows them, from old cities and towns dead before she was born. She still ends up staggering down the street, inexorably forward, solely because it is a street, and you go forward down streets; if you stop, you stand out, right?

    The ash in the air is her turn to want to retch up, covering her mouth to very little effect and swallowing down the taste of blood. The hideous itch of her own skin, clinging to her like a prickling, filthy irritant, is something she pays staggeringly little mind to, though. She stopped scratching her arms once it got worse. Like her skin being this bad all over made it more like something she's used to.
Lilian Rook     Being shot at is practically a relief. The sharp prickle of danger stands out even here, amongst the buzzing of everything else. Night Mist doesn't appear quite right, but it's more than good enough for Lilian to fend away a sudden hail of bullets with quick and cautious motions-- even in her curret state, she'd un-learned the fear of guns by now, so her psychic manifestation sees no issue. The reassuring feel of else-iron in her hand and the invigorating shock reverberating down her arm brings her to.

    'Oh, hey! You should all get inside, I think.'

    "Is that actually going to help?" Lilian replies, mistakenly. She doesn't even need to cast her gaze around the rubble for emphasis, though she does. "At the risk of getting a useful answer, why aren't you?"

    Somehow, of all possibilities in this constellation of Elites, Lilian has the worst reaction to deadkilledfake Petra.

    She freezes up on the spot, trying to process what'd actually happened. Then she starts scanning her surroundings, once, twice, then turning fully around, to see where the helpful Petra has gone. Her eyes unwaveringly avoid the dead toomotionless ratbots, skimming over them without seeing, with all the expertise of nothing. You're imagining it. Following the notes of a Ukelele lets her find heart-lurching relief at the sight of a completely different Petra-- but one she can at least believe is the same-- and that itself turns to a wet gag when that one slumps over like a blood-soaked doll. A noise is strangled under both hands over her face, down to an incoherently sickly creak.

    Lilian shuts her eyes, crouches down to her heels, and runs her fingers up over her face and into her hair. Despite the obvious danger of street level, she remains there, in front of a crater, willing herself not to open an eye, not to look into it, over and over and over again with each repetitious breath. Her fingernails curl into her skin; one comes away with a bead of blood on it.

    Lilian's hand catches on Persephone. Reaching out blind, she'd managed to grab her leg. Still with her eyes closed, Lilian wobbles as she stands, using Phony as a guiding post, and only then stops to wonder where her sword went when she stopped thinking about it.

    'They aren't real, are they, Flamel.'

    "They aren't. Obviously they arent'." Lilian whispers, knowing it's true, and hoping it is at the same time. "The real one is in a chair in a gloomy cell that stinks of bleach. But this is . . . still . . ." She takes in a deep, queasy breath. "Disgusting? It's fucking disgusting. I knew it'd be foul, but not this sort of . . ."

    Lilian is presently completely useless.
Flamel Parsons     It takes a little while on the radio. Parsons is careful these days, after all, when it comes to the brains of girls such as these. Don't worry about it Lilian! It's all fine! That's Parsons' sentiment, anyway. But eventually he settles on the plan. He re-appears behind a shattered suburban wall. "Okay!" He says, peeking up and pointing at the top of the terrifying turret. Hibiki, Berislav, Angela, and so on, they're all giving him what he needs to know! "We need to get up there! We should be able to find a link into her homuncular-vehicular history complex-- that is, it'll get us a way closer to the Ash!"

    He gestures at the figments around them, nodding to Persephone. "Yeah! These are Petra's internal mental images. They're sort of figments of imagination. We're looking at the froth of her thinking and ideas, not whole selves." Then he looks to Lilian, wincing a bit. "Hey... we're seeing her on a bad day, you know? When you're a psychonaut, you don't go into minds that are doing really well for the same reason EMTs don't show up for healthy people. Just think... someday, this will be so much better, after she gets to be the person she wants to become!" He smiles, full of truly unbreakable optimism.

    "Let's get to that thing." He flickers into invisibility again. He's trying to creep towards it, letting the others figure out the plans about drawing or forcing the Kana closer. He's storing some Confusion payloads for when things might get more heated, though...
Petra Soroka     When Phony presses up against the limit of that sensation of catching and cracking, the act of petting alone is enough to snap it into ephemeral psychic snags tugging at her skin. Pulling back a little bit more gently, to give her fingers 'room' to move, tweaking the 'shape' of her stroke along the lines of least resistance, slowing the speed, incrementally reduces the 'amount' of breakage by fractions with each adjustment. It's a constant race against the increasing tenseness and pressure of the sensation, only giving her a few seconds where any given 'technique' works without breaking anything before she has to adjust it, but it's possible. Not that there's any response.

"Or look more concerned? You're acting like this is just how it is every day."

    "Mmm?" Grilling!Petra looks up at Kale as if she was totally blind to his presence until he speaks up. Even before consciously registering who he is, she's scooping up a hot dog off the grill into a bun, offering it up to him.

    "Oh, Kale! Nice to see youu..." Her face droops, looking at the hotdog in her hand. "Wait, aren't you a vegetarian? Shit. I don't know if I have anything for... of course it's like this every day. There's difficult stuff happening all the time, you know? I can't just sit down and give up about it. And I especially can't stop trying to help my family just because it's difficult."

"Is that actually going to help?"

    Eggman!Petra puts up a finger to hold her response, ducking down to scrape up some metal scrap knocked loose from one of the ratbots where it was hit by gunfire. "Can't waste parts! Anyways, Dame Commander, getting inside's not going to keep you safe from the Kana, but it'll at least--"

'Why are you the way that you are?'

    While Persephone holds the (still, cold) wrist of the downed Petra, and Berislav detonates the turret to finally cut off the gunfire, the ash in the air has finally begun to settle into a blanket across suburbia. The air clears up enough to get glimpses of the glass-arched ceiling of the snow globe, and the reminder that they're still actually 'inside' of that is a reminder of something else, too. The clunk-whirr of the Kana reloading is audible even on the other side of the neighborhood, and it's only a few seconds later that the tower fires again, wiping away the lesser munitions in a flash of white light and tinnitus-ringing.

    When the echoes of the explosion fade, ash fills the air again, swirling in superheated eddies like ethereal knives. The impact wasn't close-- which suggests that the Kana isn't targeted on them, either-- but the shockwave from the blast is enough to brace against on its own.

    The beaded!Petra slumps over if Phony doesn't catch her. Looking into her 'history' is a strangely hollow experience: she didn't properly 'exist' until just now, when observed, and so analysing her is sort of like using a very small lens to peek at the greater structure. Beaded!Petra-- Valerie, Phony immediately intuits as a connection-- Valerie!Petra is a shade of an imprint that a former best friend left on her, expanded and roughly colored in to form a 'person' based wholly on that influence.

    She's dead, because-- murky arguments and garbled shouting. The lack of psychic presence of this visualization of Petra, alongside that awful, awful prickling, means there's no way to get a clear picture just from this. Valerie simultaneously represents 'a home' and 'a failure to be home', which is what the argument is about, in the broad strokes Phony can catch, about belonging. Valerie says something desperate to try to get Petra to stay; her reaction convinces both of them she shouldn't.-- because the side of her head is blown out.
Petra Soroka     "Oh, hey, Flamel!" Once Flamel re-visibles, another-- Petra, of course-- voice calls out to him, its source quickly following out the window to clamber across the gap between houses. She's wearing a fairly similar getup to Flamel from the neck down, though lighter and more suited to hopping around and adventuring, with heavy duty goggles and a respirator on her face.

    She grips the top of the window frame to swing inside, dusting ash off herself but only successfully smearing it around. "Are you here as backup? I've been trying to work out this psychohazard for a bit, but, you know... it's not fucking most wanted for nothing, right?"

    She pulls up her goggles and takes a look around, tapping her gloved fingers against each other in thought. "Right. So how many of my bottled messages got out? You know about the anti-cathexis and everything? No?" Still totally absorbed in her own tutelory world, Psychonauts!Petra keeps rambling on with only the briefest check-ins with Flamel keeping up, talking like anything she's saying makes sense. "Okay. So of course, that tower's a construct of the memory of the Kana, but it's a type of emotional-metaphorical association than a literal memory, reinterpreted through her own metanarrative neural processing pathways to demonstrate its intended effect on her 'arc' in this microtized sub-collective-unconscious. Right?"

    *That* 'right?' is actually a question expecting an answer, stare lingering on Flamel in an uncharacteristically non-hostile way. This was his first time meeting the *real* Petra, but for some reason, *this* one seems to view him as a mentor of some kind. She's also equipped with Psychonauts gear, spouting Psychonauts terminology....
Kale Hearthward > "Oh, Kale! Nice to see youu..."

Kale's expectations on his treatment in Petra's mind are exceeded? She really does tolerate him that much? Huh.

> Wait, aren't you a vegetarian?

Kale is no longer a vegan *or* a vegetarian! He does, however, option-select into complaining about there being no vegan/vegetarian options when it gives him some leverage or he feels like being a dick. (This is not one of those times.)

"I'm pretty sure the vegetarianism thing doesn't matter here," says Kale, taking the hot dog. He could use a snack... Wait, are there fairy realm rules in effect here? Should he eat it? If he eats a hot dog, does he have to stay forever or-

No, wait, there's a more suitable metaphor here, given who else is in the party.

If he eats one hot dog, does he have to return here one month out of every year? Or do the hot dog and bun count as separate items, like how the pomegranate seeds were counted separately from the fruit?

> I can't just sit down and give up about it. And I especially can't stop trying to help my family just because it's difficult.

"But are you really helping if you're just sitting here cooking and-"

Kale pauses. Is there really anything mental constructs can do about the mindscape scenery they're part of? Or is there anything *Petra* could do or have done about the Kana?

"No, nevermind. You keep it up."

The ash fades... for now. Kale goes to bite into the hotdog, forgets he's still got his makeshift mask on, and then takes it off just in time for the new wave of ash from the next round of artillery to flare up so he has to get it back on instead of eating his pomegranate-metaphor hot dog. Life is pain.

Father Berislav is planning something. Kale goes to make sure he's available for assistance there, setting up zone defense in case any more shots come their way.
Flamel Parsons     "*Wow* she conceptualizes people fast." Flamel says, regarding Psychonautra with wide eyes behind that hazmat visor. What should be done with this...? Well, her mental image of the psychonauts ought to be one that's, at the very least, probably rather open about information. "We'll work on the vocabulary, but you've got the right idea, I'm aiming for the Kana to see if I can figure out that arc and follow it towards the Beauty of Ash."

    Anti-cathexis? It's not clear if that isn't real terminology in Flamel's understanding of things, or if it's not possible for it to be here, but he does need to know the lay of the land. And it's better to smooth over and push past anything that seems unreal in a space that is, itself, fully unreal. "Trust me, I've gotten plenty of messages about a major psychohazard!" Is what he settles on. "Good to finally get to a fellow agent of a vague yet menacing government agency out here. Info I've got on-hand is pointing at the area surrounding the Beauty of Ash being our biggest point of interest to keep the mind safe. At least, that seems like what the mind is guiding me towards."

    As if in explanation to the others (because it is, in fact, explanation to the others, and subtly explaining why he's collaborating with this false-psychonaut) Flamel speaks up again: "A troubled mind can still recognize and facilitate some aid, especially a psychic's. She's probably still out there concentrating on helping us. And there's a good chance that there's really dangerous psychohazards in here, so we need to know a lay of the land. Someone... working in here for a while, should know a lot better than us new arrivals!"

    He turns back to Psychonautra properly, doing a funny little psychonaut handshake (it involves two fingers on one temple, so he makes due with the hazmat visor's temple-area). "We'll get the situation solved together!"

    He has, perhaps not-so-conspicuously, avoided saying anything confirming he'll go after any psychohazards here. And his posture, isn't it just a little oddly uncomfortable? Unfortunately, he's here on business to remove something healthy, and before this is done that might mean *collaborating* with a dangerous psychohazard rather than fighting one.

    Gotta go get to the Kana. Gotta get through that hatch. Ideally using Psychonautra's guidance, if he can secure it.
Kukuru "If you can't fix it out here then you can't fix it in there." "How hard is it for you people to grasp? You can't just say the right sequence of things and make someone better."

Although Kukuru knows that already, it still stings to hear Lilian say that out loud, and to know that there's no actual answer to that that Kukuru would believe herself. It's just something she has to actually do and make up for past transgressions, instead of trying to think of the magic words to... To...

Even that's approaching this from the wrong angle. The thoughts linger, too, as Kukuru sees more things in her periphery while trying not to. She doesn't want to break her promise, but she can't not see all those Petras dying as... A defense mechanism? Guidance? It's terrible to see, and she promised Petra and Angela and Lilian that she wouldn't get sidetracked, and the mere act of moving by the window instead of doing anything for them keeps punching her straight in the heart.

<J-IC-Scene> Hibiki Tachibana after a few more heavy breaths, "...Kukuru. ...How close to it could you teleport someone?"
<J-IC-Scene> Angela says, "I did not mean with her powers exactly. But understood."
<J-IC-Scene> Persephone Kore breathes deep. "Give me a second, then. I'll help."
<J-IC-Scene> Kukuru says, "To...? Oh. Oh, there's a lot of... I can get us on top of it, but we could fall off."
<J-IC-Scene> Angela wouldn't be an AI that can lie to Persephone because it'd be mean. "I'm sorry."
<J-IC-Scene> Father Berislav says, "I'll catch anyone who does, if that happens at all."
<J-IC-Scene> Angela says, "I am not--relatively speaking--very mobile. May I ask for your assistance when the moment comes, Kukuru?"
<J-IC-Scene> Kale Hearthward says, "How much do you weigh?"
<J-IC-Scene> Kukuru says, "Thanks, Beri. And of course, Angie. I'm staying focused, so... Don't worry. We'll get up there."

A plan comes together, and Kukuru gets a brief reprieve from looking at Petra dying again and again. Instead, she leans out the window to get a better look at the Kana-tower, and that's all she needs to get started. Pushing her hands against the wall next to the window, an inky cloud opens up against it and widens, far enough that three or four people could go through it at a time comfortably. It leads to the top of the Kana-tower, wavering visibly as Kukuru struggles to keep herself focused on just the clouds and just on moving everyone safely.

She could just go right over to start healing them.  They're right there. She can't go there, because she doesn't want to hurt Petra more than she's hurting herself. Seeing and hearing some of the Petras speaking tells her that, despite what Angela and Petra and Lilian had said, some of them are still being spoken to. Aren't they worried about seeing things Petra didn't want them to see?

They probably understand more than Kukuru does, and she knows that much already. Still, why can't I care for them, too?
Petra Soroka "Petra, can you hear us?"

Meanwhile, outside the mindscape...

    Petra stares blankly at the floor. Apparently, trying to project your voice outwards from her mind is also categorized as 'telepathy' when it comes to what her aura smothers. It's probably no surprise, to anyone paying attention to her psychic minutiae, that Petra's aura is as impassible to psychic communication *out* as it is to psychic communication directed inwards.

    So she doesn't hear anything. Angela gets an extra dose of glass splinters burrowing into flesh that she doesn't have, prickling painfully until she stops trying to project.

'don't you dare taint her'
"I don't want people brushing their heart up against mine and coming away with cuts and splinters and blaming me for it."

    Petra is busy thinking about this, in the hazy fugue she's left in.
Persephone Kore      Oh. I see. It isn't that you killed her. It's that, when you had that argument, she lost the chance to be born.

     I don't know if that makes me feel worse.

     Persephone lets go of the stillborn to hold onto the living, and helps Lilian up body-to-body. I want to take that bracelet, anything to keep the memory, but it doesn't belong to me. One arm loops around your shoulders in a short side-hug, and then she bends down to slip the other behind your knees, and--

     Ahaha. You're usually the one holding others like this, aren't you, Lily-R? But you needed it. I hope you don't mind the blood." Its two colors shift on her face with the radiant smile. A little gets on Lilian with the forehead-touch.

     <J-IC-Scene> Angela says, "...Well, the thought I had was Persephone perhaps could move it closer? But I know that is ... not ideal."
     ...
     <J-IC-Scene> Persephone Kore breathes deep. "Give me a second, then. I'll help."

     The part about 'luring' eludes her, at least for now. But she can think of one way to help. Bits and chunks of broken houses float up and form a long floating series of platforms, like a staircase towards the Kana. Some parts might take bold jumps, but when it comes under fire, pieces of it swivel up as cover and walls against the Kana. They carry bits and pieces of important things as they rise, too: the bloodstained ukulele, some defunct rat-bots, maybe an extra grill.

     I'm not supposed to mess with important things in here. But these aren't important. Even if they should be. Petra, "could you put a little more weight in them, just for me? I know they were torn away from you. And I know you're making sense of how and why," Persephone says, looking past Lilian-in-her-arms towards the Kana. "But I'd like it if they held up for a moment longer, just for us."

     She takes the first few steps onto floating floors, ruined bits of wall, what might have been a roof. Slow but steady progress; someone else will reach the Kana's hatch first. But it's a path.

     "I don't think I can be disgusted with someone's heart," she says to Lilian, with a tender look downwards at her princess-carried passenger. "She's in a lot of pain, isn't she? And she's trying to work her way through it, even so. Doesn't that make you want to hold her closer?"
Angela Angela isn't being too helpful either in the moment. She has never been on an actual battlefield before and fighting a little at Lobotomy Corp is quite different than what she's seeing here. She hasn't forgotten about the hammer in her hand exactly and she knows how to use it but right now her mind is screaming at her to get out of the battlefield. It is quite different, she thinks, than running out into the battlefield herself. She covers her head and ears with her arms like she intends to act as her own buckles for the straightjacket she's wearing. Her body doesn't shake, but it is actually terrifying being here in a way that simply being murdered doesn't for her. The way those explosions play out so loudly, so slowly. The gunfire whizzing by in intense slow motion but moving too quickly for her reflexes to adapt and avoid.

At least they seem to be on task, Angela thinks, so maybe she won't actually have to do that much which is ideal since if she has to actually do work that means something has gone wrong and someone else isn't doing their job.

She is distracted by another Petra approaching Flamel. It takes her longer to realizes this time. Petranaut? Petranaut feels right.

Angela pushes up to her feet trying to slink towards Petra. She's nigh-indestructable but that--

--isn't stopping her arms from itching terribly. Angela scrapes one arm across the other. A metallic screech can be heard. She actually didn't think that qualified as telepathic communication because it was using her mouth.

Angela quietly makes a vow to herself that she will one day take and master power into herself that is hers to control rather than simply borrowed from other sources. She's made this vow before but she reminds herself about it all the same.

Angela makes her way towards Kukuru, figuring proximity will help. Her eyes flit around as she slowly approaches her. She doesn't know exactly what Persephone intends to do but she's confident it would work. WIth Persephone's assistance, she figures this shouldn't be too difficult. Just difficult...emotionally!

But Angela is used to that. "Kukuru, Persephone is building a path. I am ready."

Saying that she is ready helps make it real. The lost arguments of being born, Angela understands it intellectually but it is still difficult to see.

Has Petra gotten into her heart that much? It shouldn't be affecting her at all, she knows this is normal, but it still is. Maybe that's just life.
Father Berislav We need to get up there! We should be able to find a link into her homuncular-vehicular history complex-- that is, it'll get us a way closer to the Ash!

    Berislav rolls, to place himself flush with the nearest wall, and peek out the window. Persephone is... here, but distracted. Focused on something else.

<J-IC-Scene> Persephone Kore breathes deep. "Give me a second, then. I'll help."

    "Very well," he answers Flamel and Persephone both, after a moment's thought. "Mr. Hearthward, if you could render your barriers where you may, I'll manuever into the gaps and make a barrier of myself. If 'barriers' should be too strenuous, there's no need to overextend yourself--redirect, instead, and I'll adjust." It'll be an unusual adjustment--fighting aggressively, but not at all with the usual intent.

Just think... someday, this will be so much better, after she gets to be the person she wants to become!

    Berislav sighs, but not without allowing himself a small smile. "Someday," he says. "Thank you, Mr. Parsons. You... aren't what I expected."

    Another explosion overpowers the moment of refuge in optimism, a sobering gust of hot ash bursting through the shattered window, staining the priest's cassock ss he braces for impact. Rubble shaken loose from the ceiling falls, his body twisting sideways to meet it, for some reason.

    It ends up crashing against his index fingers as they fold expertly, his knuckles racing forward to strike the rubble into powder. Loose particulate drywall and wood rain down upon him, as he closes his eyes to keep them clear. A cough--whatever irritant-suppressing measures he'd taken earlier apparently have their limits.

to demonstrate its intended effect on her 'arc' in this microtized sub-collective-unconscious.

    Of course. It all leads back to one of the first interactions they had, doesn't it? Talk of stained glass, and how it's beautiful, for the stain, for being artfully, meticulously shattered.

    "I see," says the priest, nodding and rising to a squat from the floor, his back against the sturdiest bit of intact wall he can find. "The Kana--that machine, with its insulated cockpit, separates its pilot from the outside world, protecting her from being touched by it, but not quite protecting her from harm, per se. With every crack of its cannons, another potential Petra is gone, and another strike is made at the heart of a world she feels just as deserving of harm for its hollow, banal existence."

    He pauses. "The beauty of ash is found in what may be built from ashes."

    "If there's anything more we should know, Petra," he asks of the Psychonaut!Petra. "Please let us know over the radio." He assumes that she has one because it would make sense for the idea of 'a Petra who is an experienced operative in Flamel's line of work' to have one.

     "One distraction, on its way." He rises, breaks into a sprint across the room. From the outside, there is a brilliant flash of orange before a towering, gleaming silver humanoid shape bursts through the wall of the house, shedding shingles, support beam fragments, drywall and facade like some kind of animal emerging from an egg. Isaiah's vertically-oriented red eyes, set within its hammer-shaped head, gleam with quiet purpose.
Father Berislav      A single missile, slender and unadorned, flies from a compartment in the robot's unadorned shoulder, as its red cloak rustles with the speed of its sudden takeoff. Mid-stride, a skeletal silver hand finds the butt of a big-frame revolver, nearly as long as most of the people here are tall. The compartment from which it's pulled clicks back into place on the robot's thigh, as the missile screams towards the Kana.

     It explodes overhead in a fantastic plume of fire; about as unsubtle a warning shot as there could be. Isaiah leaps nimbly over a crater, its free hand catching the roof of a bombed-out house on its descent, fingers scraping gouges in the copy-pasted shingles as they help the robot vault and clear the roof on its way down. It lands, on about the second or third platform from Persephone, debris flying off in a little wake as Isaiah slides to a halt. An expertly placed elbow propels the robot into the air, high enough to demand response from the Kana even after the warning shot.
Lilian Rook     'Ahaha. You're usually the one holding others like this, aren't you, Lily-R? But you needed it. I hope you don't mind the blood.'

    Nomally far too proud for something like this, Lilian only half-reluctantly secures her arms around Phony. It's easier to see, in the dreamscape, where her scar is still discoloured from Nihil, fading as it is. The breath she lets out is uneasy, but not too tight. "I'll make a special exception." she says. "After all, you selfishly wanted to be 'my lodestar', didn't you? And I'd hate to deny selfishness." She tries to force a smile. "Your blood is better than Petra's. Yours is how it's supposed to be. I don't want to be reminded of Petra's."

    Going past, Lilian does, at least, catch a little.

    'Are you here as backup? I've been trying to work out this psychohazard for a bit, but, you know... it's not fucking most wanted for nothing, right?'

    Somehow, though she never actually heard them, Lilian recalls words that once sounded somewhat similar.

    'What on earth could max the capacity on an IG-type psychohazard double-refined out of so many deaths? What the fuck is that thing?!'

    The recollection makes her want to retch. It's still better than dead Petras, though. That bolsters her a little extra.

    '--but it's a type of emotional-metaphorical association than a literal memory, reinterpreted through her own metanarrative neural processing pathways to demonstrate--'

    Stranded while waiting for Persephone's work to complete, Lilian gives into the temptation to engage. "It's all her hopes and dreams of that hideous machine obliterating every last trace of the banal, empty thing that was 'Petra'. Yeah. It's not hard to follow." Lilian laughs humourlessly. Her tone wobbles on the edge of stability. "I'm sort of pissed off. That thing still has this much real easte? If it's about destroying all the shitty nothing Petras that could have been, it should be a giant version of me, shouldn't it?" Lilian glances out a window. Her eye level is too high to see much on the asphalt.

    "Maybe she just couldn't imagine this sort of violence from me, though. Despite what happened."

    'I don't think I can be disgusted with someone's heart'

    "It's not her heart. Maybe just partly. I know what it represents and all, it's just what it looks like on the surface."

    'She's in a lot of pain, isn't she? And she's trying to work her way through it, even so. Doesn't that make you want to hold her closer?'

    "Yeah. But I shouldn't." says Lilian. "Or maybe I should, but I think it should have been anyone else but me." She remains content to be carried up the staircase, to the tower, but seems to be gathering her resolve to step off. "It isn't safe for her to get so close. She isn't as real as you are. I have the most reason of anyone to hate her, and I still think I do. I just don't want to abandon her." Lilian says. Her tone shifts nauseatingly self-conscious.

    "But I can't even stand looking at 'how it could have gone, so, so easily'. Right? I think I really did get further from the place I don't want to be, over these years, but it always feels like I can see the edge from Petra."

    "God I hate that fucking machine. I can't wait to tear it up."
Hibiki Tachibana     Just think... someday, this will be so much better, after she gets to be the person she wants to become!

    "...I don't know if it's as simple as that for her, Flamel... the 'person she wants to become'..." Someone who fills themselves up with others the way she does, someone who can't help but leave shards of shrapnel wherever she goes, who left her 'home'... what would that kind of person even look like?

    Thinking about that, in this subscape of Petra's of all different sorts dying left or right, feels distinctly sour.

    "...But the thought is pretty nice, isn't it?" There's a deep and slightly shuddering breath in. 'Like this every day'. If she lets all of this get to her, make her legs stop moving, she was never fit to do anything to try to help Petra in the first place. Doing what they came here to do, separating that connection...

    Will it be a step towards a future where this doesn't have to happen?

    "...Kukuru." A little bit of radio chatter later, and there's an idea. Once the portal is opened up for them, Hibiki pushes up from where she's slightly slid down the wall, and-- hesitates, before putting a hand on her shoulder. There's been some mixed feelings involving her, but right now, they both have some awfully similar thoughts. "Hey. ...We're gonna do our part to help her, too. That's why we're here. Don't forget, okay?"

    They're as much for herself as they are for Kukuru. "...Even if it's hard. Seeing all the 'could have beens' vanish, because of that thing. ...I'll be glad if it's ever gone from here for good."

    ...But that, unfortunately, can't be brute forced. One thing at a time. They have a problem they already came here to handle.
Persephone Kore      "No. These are the parts she might have liked to keep," Persephone says. "They're all colorful and happy, aren't they? Each molded by a person she never got to know enough." She manages a smile even while a distantly-exploding missile sidelights her face in sunset-orange, and the blastwave sways her dangle earrings. She looks at Isaiah fondly, and her widening smile says 'good job!'.

     "And it's not about real estate. The Kana isn't even killing them at all, I think. It's only making sense of the fact that they died. A nice, big, simple cause to simplify a messy effect. A symbol of the whole uncaring world."

     Her arms hoist Lilian up with the momentum of climbing another 'step', and she kisses the top of her head. "You couldn't be that. I bet the Petra based on you is really nice."
Lilian Rook     'The Kana isn't even killing them at all, I think. It's only making sense of the fact that they died.'

    "I'd love to believe that, Phony." says Lilian. "I think I do a little bit. Maybe it's the inexorable spiral towards the Kana."

    'You couldn't be that. I bet the Petra based on you is really nice.'

    Lilian laughs drily. "I'd love to believe that too. I imagine she's just more stable."
Kukuru Although Kukuru's concentration is wavering already thanks to feeling kind of awful from what she can't/shouldn't be doing, she still has enough mental processing available to hear Angela and soften slightly in that proximity. "Hm? Oh! Of course, Angie. Here, lemme get you.. Up!"

And with that portal shaking even more, Kukuru squats briefly as she gets ready to scoop Angela up in the classic princess-carry. It's almost enough to make her forget that she's not allowed to show her own care for the parts of Petra that she really would like to, even if they've already died some time ago.

Almost. It's not quite enough to nullify the ache, but being able to help someone she cares about with following Persephone's platforms further up does quite a bit to dull the pain. "You okay, Angie? want me to go a little slower, or... Oh. Do you wanna go faster?"

She's not fast, but she can jump pretty well.

"Hey. ...We're gonna do our part to help her, too. That's why we're here. Don't forget, okay?" "...Even if it's hard. Seeing all the 'could have beens' vanish, because of that thing. ...I'll be glad if it's ever gone from here for good."

"I... I really want to. But.. We've gotta focus, Hibiki." The ache comes right back, although Kukuru can at least manage a pained smile at her in return. "It's like Lili said. If we can't help her outside, then we couldn't do it here. But... That's why we gotta try harder to care for her out there, right? Even if the could-haves..."

Kukuru remembers the one in the Concord shirt. She didn't see that Petra die, but... "They can always come back. We just can't... Hmm. No, shouldn't be see it here."
Petra Soroka "But are you really helping if you're just sitting here cooking and-"

    Grilling!Petra squints at Kale as if she doesn't even understand the question. "... Obviously? Eating's really important for morale, you know, and in these kinds of situations, it's, like..." Her fumbling justification is cut off by a drumroll of gunfire coming from a turret that was knocked far enough by the shockwave to get an entirely new sightline to the grill setup.

    Grilling!Petra yips in alarm, and with her hand occupied (by grilling implements) she hooks her foot through the top of one of the propane cans and kick-flings it as hard as she can at the turret, where it explodes and engulfs it in fire. Losing one of the four stoves means the pan on top starts to tilt, and she seems to be alarmed by this just as much as she was by the gunfire. She'd be too slow to dip down and catch it before it hits the ground, so instead-- a black cloud sparkling with little bits of pearl unfurls beneath it, matched by one above Petra's head, and the pan falls through to teleport above her.

    She still needs to catch it, though, and that means touching the hot pan with her hand. She whines in pain and flinches away, and the pan falls to the ground with a clang. "Fuck. Ow. Ow ow ow. Still not used to that."

    Operating entirely on instinct, with Kukuru not even in view from where she is, Grilling!Petra-- Kukuru!Petra?-- snaps her face up to the room where Kukuru's opening the portal and makes a little surprised noise. Kale is left behind, as a bigger cloud opens up beneath her feet and she falls through to appear right beside Kukuru, taking a few staggering steps into a... hug? "Hi! Ku-ku-ru! What's up, you look really sad?"

"We'll work on the vocabulary, but you've got the right idea, I'm aiming for the Kana to see if I can figure out that arc and follow it towards the Beauty of Ash."

    "Ehhh, yeah, vocab's hard when there's a bunch of disagreeing vocab lists in my head." Psychonautra readily accepts the criticism, though whether that's from her half-formedness or just her general attitude isn't totally clear. She falls in with the group, joining the decisionmaking huddle with surprisingly little hesitation, despite what her own... perspective on this all must be.

"With every crack of its cannons, another potential Petra is gone, and another strike is made at the heart of a world she feels just as deserving of harm for its hollow, banal existence."
"It's all her hopes and dreams of that hideous machine obliterating every last trace of the banal, empty thing that was 'Petra'. Yeah. It's not hard to follow."

    "Mhmmm. Berislav's right, Lilian's right. But that's what I meant, about the layers." Psychonautra even pulls out a whiteboard from who-knows-where in her equipment bags on her suit, drawing a couple lines on the board to demonstrate it to the group.

    "Of course it's bombarding everything up here," Gesturing at the rough sketch of the houses on the top layer, "But that's sort of not its target, right? It's the mental equivalent of, like... scratching an itch you can never reach, you know? Trying to blast a hole straight through the frontal lobe to get to the lower psyche."

    "Everything up *here*," She circles the houses, again, "Is just symptoms for what she really wants wiped out, down *here*." Circling the empty space below the houses, then glancing at Flamel. "Flamel definitely knows better than me, so he's probably right about this. Using the homuncular-vehicular associative bridge between the layers of her psyche, to get to the deeper psychic roots."
Petra Soroka "If it's about destroying all the shitty nothing Petras that could have been, it should be a giant version of me, shouldn't it?"

    "Oh, haha, I don't think anyone would want to see what *that* looks like in her head, that would be a totally different psychohazard for--" Psychonautra squints and rubs at her forehead, cutting off mid-sentence. "Oh, hold on, I'm getting totally conflicting information about what my believed reality should be. What's with the difference between 'me' and 'her'?"

    With her respirator pulled down for her helpful monologues, Psychonautra gnaws on her knuckle in a familiar gesture of deep thought, her eyes slowly sliding to Phony. "Now, I was kind of thinking you guys were all psychonarrative constructs in the mindscape to help me work through this all, but now I'm kind of... that doesn't make sense at all with Phony and Lilian here." She nods, her tone chipper again, despite her words. "Alright! I guess *I'm* the psychonarrative construct meant to help *you*! Sure felt real there for a second, haha, but not compared to you two. Guess I'll die when you're all done here, so I better make it count!"

"One distraction, on its way."

    Jumpsuit!Petra looks up at the orange tear in the sky, hopping up from her perch where she'd been lounging. She hurriedly lifts open the two-car garage of a zero-family ruin of a home, then walks out in what's clearly a modified minivan with a turret strapped to the top and legs built in place of wheels to make something that's... mostly a tank. It whirrs to life and takes into the air, hovering near the Isaiah, but not too near to overlap targeting zones.

    "Hey, Father! I don't know if you'll be able to distract the Kana that way, but if you want some help drawing fire from the rest, we can split up and --"

    The shell from the Kana's next cannonfire rips through the makeshift mech without even slowing down enough to explode on impact. It continues far past, slamming into the ground far away from the platform path and the group inside the housing, and the explosion is still sensory overload. Between Kale's barriers and the Isaiah's visibility, though, a lot of the ash kicked into the air and the more minor gunfire can be aimed carefully away from the path as it's built.

    Phony's telekinesis rips off a roof, flooding the second floor of the 3.5bed 2.5bath house with grey-filtered light. Inside is another Petra, muzzled and pinned to the wall with a massive web of leather belts, and it looks like she's just been kidnapped by the horniest serial killer alive until you notice that the belts are identical to the ones on Angela's EGO.

    She works her jaw and squirms a bit to wipe away the drool leaking through her muzzle, then looks up at Angela, incapable of waving. "Hi! Don't worry, I'm working on it. I've just got another sixty nine thousand, nine hundred ninety nine more years like this until I understand how you feel, Ange, so I'll catch --" Not *all* of the turretfire can be baited away.
Kale Hearthward > "... Obviously? Eating's really important for morale, you know, and in these kinds of situations, it's, like..."

Kale pauses. "... Yeah, that's true, though. Sorry. I guess I was just thinking about-"

The turret erupts. "Look out!"

And then Grilltra is gone.

After getting the barriers set up, Kale notices her hanging out with Kukuru and connects the dots. "... Oh."

And then he connects the dots further to the one that looked like Eggman. And there's one with the Psychonauts organization's aesthetic. "Ohhh."

With the ash being blocked from the group's path, Kale has more fresh air to work with now, and can up his game from mere windwall barriers to more energetic and dynamic airflows, pushing the projectiles and the resulting air pollution away from the group much more actively.

"Yeah - are you okay Kukuru? I know it's rough seeing all this... but I have a feeling this might get worse before it gets better."

Kale tries to think of something to add. Something for Kukuru to look forward to? "Maybe we can have a little party once all this is done with."
Flamel Parsons     "...I don't know if it's as simple as that for her, Flamel... the 'person she wants to become'..."

    "Hey, our job isn't judging, it's helping! Sometimes, a person's best self is kind of weird and uncomfortable to look at. Our job is helping actualization happen, not guiding what actualization is!" Flamel says, wagging a finger in a way that seems more teacherly than condescending. He's gotta express somehow, in this hazmat gear! As for Psychonautra...

    "Who is and isn't a construct really never matters. The only thing that matters is working together to help the mind! I remember being a construct too, you know." Flamel speaks confidently! Somehow his words resonate with honesty? Given that he is, himself, actually an artificial construct in the real world. "Alright, so we're pulling our way down the layers using the Kana, because it's trying to make the connections down there already... that's perfect. Perfect! So the connection should be there, *or* it'll have the data I need to get a new snowglobe... Maybe another snowglobe in there itself!" His nods are rapid and exaggerated. If you didn't know better, you'd assume he's trying to emote better through the hazmat suit! No, he's just like that.

    Speaking of which. "Hey, someone hold this for me please? It's an unhealthy urge to be disruptive in the middle of girl-suffering." He plants a palm on his head, and rips out... a very vivid psychological construct, what looks like a mental image of Flamel jumping out of Petra's head with Psychonautra under one arm. He packs it down, and down, and down, into an ultra-dense, shuddering sphere... And then plants a little curled shape on it. It looks like a question mark now! "When we're trying to get inside the Kana, someone pull the pin and toss this to help stun it, the irrationality should work wond--"

    BOOM. A massive rush of light and sound overloads him. "AUGH!!" He shouts, stumbling, then jerks back into focus. He pounds his palm against his head, and two other such question marks fall out of his skull if anyone wants them. "We better get in there, this incoming fire is getting intense!" He vanishes into invisibility, making his break for the Kana, trusting that the others and their plan to distract, tear apart, and otherwise get the hatch open. He's got one of those confusion grenades in-hand to try to stun the thing too, and his levitation kicks in to help him navigate acrobatically up to the top of the thing!
Lilian Rook     'Oh, haha, I don't think anyone would want to see what *that* looks like in her head, that would be a totally different psychohazard'

    "Yeah. Actually." Lilian replies in fried monotone. "Good thing."

    'that doesn't make sense at all with Phony and Lilian here.'

    "Beg pardon? Why not?"

    'Guess I'll die when you're all done here, so I better make it count!'

    Lilian breathes in sharply through her teeth. There is no room in her brain for existentialist horror like that right now. Or ever.

    'Inside is another Petra, muzzled and pinned to the wall with a massive web of leather'

    Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope. Whatever they're doing at Lobotomy Corporation can stay out of Lilian's eyeballs.

    "Phony . . . Thank you. I think I can walk now."
Father Berislav Hey, Father! I don't know if you'll be able to distract the Kana that way, but if you want some help drawing fire from the rest, we can split up and --

    Bathed in the gentle red glow of Isaiah's cockpit, Berislav's grimace is made more severe, for the way the light emphasizes the shadows on his face. Perhaps Persephone is right. Perhaps these are Petras who are already gone, and this violence is simply making sense of the very real violence of the world. That doesn't make it easier to see.

    "...Thank you, Petra. I'll adjust my approach, then."

Perhaps attempting to interfere with this narrative, or pretending to, convincingly, is enough to draw fire?

    Isaiah lands, from its leap, as another Petra-that-could-have-been strikes the ground. Berislav's foot depresses an accelerator, his arm working a control stick set on some kind of track that encircles the right side of the cockpit, beneath a spread of screens displaying the ashen snowglobe's landscape.

    Still advancing aggressively up Persephone's platforms, gaining on the Kana, the mech's right arm, holding that big frame revolver, swings outwards as if throwing a right hook, its thumb pulling the hammer half-back, index twisting the cylinder in one smooth motion. It happens so quickly that one might miss the thumb, pulling the hammer back the rest of the way, a split second before the apex of the swing.

    The trigger pull is heavy; the thunderous report of the handcannon approaching the noise of the Kana more closely than a 'sidearm' should. A tongue of flame spits from the muzzle as the bullet leaves, rocketing on an impossible rightwards parabola headed for the Kana's nearest cannon. The bullet is not simply 'a bullet,' else the mech's fingers wouldn't have gone for that chamber, specifically.

    Rather, on impact, be it with the Kana or with a countermeasure, the brightly yellow-tiped projectile explodes violently, an internal firing pin igniting and dispersing an incendiary mixture. Berislav is, rather than firing on the cockpit, attempting to interfere with the Kana's ability to fire, by melting portions of its cannons, one at a time.

     One more of those chambered, at present. A reload would be risky, but--

    Isaiah's arm is held straight out, the trigger pulled a second time, aimed at the same cannon. I don't need to overwhelm. I only need to present as something that can't be ignored.
Angela Angela's reaction to Petrangela is more heartbreaking. Despite everything, despite everything, DESPITE EVERYTHING Angela doesn't want anyone to suffer through what she had to suffer. Her stonecold expression finally breaks upon seeing her, her hands raising to her mouth like she's afraid she might call out. "You already understand me plenty..." She says, pain in every word. She doesn't understand why she cares, she doesn't understand why it hurts. Isn't this WHAT she should be expecting from everyone, from the world, from anyone who might one day call her villain and judge her?

But sometimes she sees me better than myself. I am not good at looking at the mirror. When I look into the mirror... I see someone else looking back at me. It doesn't feel right. It isn't right. She doesn't have a mirror in her office. She is so fucking beautiful and yet it's still WRONG. She didn't cut her hair before because she thought she looked better that way aesthetically, it felt more right, it felt more different than what she wanted to look like--she looked different from HER. She looked like someone who could be a herself.

She hasn't been born yet. Her gaze turns to Persephone and Lilian instinctively. Look at how they support each other, look at how they tease. It's so real to Aurora that she can't touch it.

She forgets to even protest at being carried.

Focus on the job. Your connection to the Petra that matters is ironclad. Turret fire slowly destroys Petrangela. It's not fair. It's not fair that she has to see this. It's not fair to Petra, specifically, that they all have to see this. She feels like a voyeur.

It's so she can live. Angela tells herself, not for the first time. That is more important than you. It's like when Lilian needed help. Destroy your everything and do the job that matters. Petra is the one who matters.

Angela's expression calms itself with measured effort. She can do this. She just needs to kill that version of her one more time.

Maybe Petra knows Angela better than she thinks she does.

"Do not let it get to you, Kukuru. We are near the target point." Telling Kukuru this helps her do this.

"...Is the outside world usually this loud?" She thinks to ask, a moment later.
Hibiki Tachibana     Sometimes, a person's best self is kind of weird and uncomfortable to look at. Our job is helping actualization happen, not guiding what actualization is!

    "...Weird and uncomfortable..." Hibiki repeats, as the memory of Exigent Serenity biting into Petra's neck and Petra's subsequent reaction comes unbidden back to her thoughts. An equally unbidden slight flush to her face is pushed away with a rapid shake of her head to re-center herself and actually process Flamel's words.

    "--Yeah. I get what you're trying to say. Even if I'm not sure if I like it sometimes."

    If we can't help her outside, then we couldn't do it here. But... That's why we gotta try harder to care for her out there, right?

    "Lilian's right, as usual..." Hibiki says with a slight glance away, while the person in question is away on street level and not here - and she sounds like she means it. Caring for Petra out there, though... "...Don't worry. I feel the same way. I told her I'd say focused, so... I will. Let's--"

    Grilling!Petra shows up in an extremely Kukuru way, with an extremely Kukuru speech tic, and besides the surprise at getting teleported on, the sudden connection with her and food hits instantly and briefly knocks the wind out of Hibiki's sails. The Eggman-esque Petra, a lot of the others, and now this...

    Suddenly, she becomes aware of the very real possibility there's an imprint based on her somewhere around here. And if there is, she's not sure she wants to see it or not.

    This is also followed by Flamel doing whatever that was. "Girl... suffering? Uh..." There's a glance down at the question marks. After the obvious confusion, her brow furrows. "...I don't really get it, but these'll make it easier to make this work, right? Okay. Let's go. This isn't gonna get any easier." She reaches down and takes one, then turns back to Kukuru. "Counting on you, okay? I'm gonna help the others run interference!"

    And then she's off, ahead of the others. Cladding herself in Symphogear - her heart - is easy in a place like this. Through the shelled-out roads, focusing ahead rather than on what's around her, and scarf beating behind her on a path that'll lead straight for the imposing tower, representing something she hates so much herself. But it's not about her today.

    "Alright...!" It's about getting all of them to that hatch, which is why she gets a running start while rearing back her free hand, piston priming back - so that when she jumps up and spins around, the punch behind her into the air as the machinery slams back in acts as a boost of instant force that recoils her up into the air like a bullet, up towards the Kanatower's higher levels.

    It also gives her a whole lot of momentum for whirling around and chucking Flamel's irrationality up at it. She actually forgot to pull the pin, in the moment.

    But the throw is hard enough that it'll probably 'blow up' anyway.
Persephone Kore      Persephone somehow spares an arm from carrying Lilian to wave down at the Angela!Petra in straps. Then she presses her lips together in a distantly unpleasant expression.

     "You know," she says, to Lilian or maybe no-one, "it doesn't usually bug me, when things-that-only-look-like-people get hurt. Because I can see hearts, right? A fake person is like... a doll without a head. When Flamel showed us his place, the soldier-Flamels didn't bug me."

     "But I already can't feel Petra's heart. Maybe that's why it gets to me. Does it get to you, too?"

     "Phony . . . Thank you. I think I can walk now."
     "Okayyy, okay!" Persephone's laughing, just a little, as she sets Lilian down on a piece of crumbling foundation. She jerks Psychonautra over with just a thought, too, and then a tiled floor and bathtub come up horizontally to protect the three of them from the bright flash, because I don't want either of you hurt!

     She offers Lilian one arm-warmer-clad hand, and Psychonautra her other, and makes her way up the floating path protected by Kale and Berislav.

     "I'm not sure what you mean about us. But nobody's as real as they ought to be," she says to the respirator-wearing girl, with a little star-twinkling wink. "Not even me. Normal people are at the whims of physics. And you're at the whims of... this. It's kind of awful, isn't it? They're both so unfair."

     Her hand squeezes Psychonautra's as they approach the top together. "I could give you a gift to let you stick around, if you really have a will to. But even if you don't, or can't, take it:"

     She turns to look at the girl beside her, and the moment is brilliantly warm. Persephone's eyes are, maybe, just a little misty from something besides the smoke. "You'll survive in my heart too. It's big enough to hold you. And I promise it's sweeter in there; and even if you're only a story, I can talk to stories. Okay?"
Kukuru <J-IC-Scene> Angela pretends she expected the princess carry. "Good work, Kukuru."
That's quite the  nice jolt for Kukuru's heart, and not in the painful way. "You're welcome! Ah, but we've still got so much left to do... But count on me, okay? I won't let you or Lili or Petra down."

Feeling her second wind, Kukuru starts hopping, but it doesn't last quite as long as she had hoped. As much as she's been trying to not let herself get too worked up over not being permitted to go near any of the many Petras out of fear of causing more problems, she wasn't counting on one of them coming to her. Worse still, the one that comes to her...

Is far more affectionate than the Petra she knows outside of this mind world. It's jarring enough Kukuru outright freezes up from the dopamine hit of Petra being as affectionate as Kukuru usually is, and the unstable portal she created outright fizzles out of existence with her focus already split so precariously between carrying Angela on one side and Grilltra hugging her on the other side. "Eh? Oh, he-llo, Petr..."

"Don't. Don't fuck around. Don't try to 'fix' anything."
"What's up, you look really sad?"

It's so unfair. It's so unfair. This sucks so much. Why does she have to get hurt like this? Why can't I care for her like Phony and Lili can? She already knows the answer to the last one, but the rest isn't fitting into place. No, I know what it is. She can't even answer Grilltra at first, feeling her eyes starting to water and her arms starting to ache as she's about to think herself into an even deeper hole.

Luckily, Kukuru isn't left to think herself into a deeper hole. Kale asks about her, and gives her something more pleasant to think about for later. Hibiki comes by to remind Kukuru that she still has so many people counting on her not to lose focus. Angela, still held carefully in her arms, reminds Kukuru of the importance of their task, and that they've almost reached their target.

"I... Mmn. I'm not really doing okay, no." Kukuru finally answers, adjusting her hold on Angela and Grilltra so she can start jumping with both of them in tow without dropping either of them. "I wish I could be better, and... More of what everyone should have, without needing me to ask what they want. Better than now, but... That's just for now. I'll be okay. I'll get better, like I always do."

She looks right at Angela, tilting her head in to just rub her face against that EGO armor. Part of it is for clearing her tears, and part of it is just plain affection, to try and give Angela some kind of reassurance after that reaction to Petrangela. "Lean on me, even if it's for stuff you can already handle yourself. Okay?"

Kukuru just needs to keep reminding herself of these things so she doesn't fall back into that mental hole again.
Angela "...Perhaps better is an erroneous concept," Angela tells Kukuru but she isn't looking at hern She is staring at Persephone. It isn't hate or love exactly, unfortunately. "Maybe one should only aim to become more of themselves."

She lets Kukuru rub her face in. She pats her on the head, absently, like one might a pet or a crying child.

"I am fine," Angela says, refusing to take her eyes off of Phony. "As someone who isn't even herself yet, it is to be expected that I cannot stop this. I have warned Petra of my limitations. One day I will do what is necessary for me, Kukuru, and you will cry and cry but I won't be moved by tears. Not at that point."
Petra Soroka "Beg pardon? Why not?"

    Noticebly similarly to Flamel-- either because Petra's psyche lacks the second-order interpretative familiarity with him to create more Petra-authentic Flamel-filtered behaviors, or because she's actually just like this in this temporarily realized hypothetical-- Psychonautra's responses stay cheery as she explains her deductive reasoning to Lilian.

    "Well, you know, obviously things in here are a bit less real and a bit more metaphorical than things outside. That's not less *important*, but it's sort of like the compression of saving a file; there's only so much that a brain can model, and *other* brains are really far outside that! So a narrative representation of a person has to be limited to those simpler behaviors, you know?"

    "So you see, like, Kale?" She continues her habit of gesturing-- Petra does it too, the real one, but she's got so much less opportunity to tutorialize people-- and waves her hand at Kale. "Easy to model, can imagine the kinds of things he does just with a subconscious mirror neuron process. Kukuru? Same thing, she's got easy, predictable outwards behaviors. Maybe there's some internal stuff lost in the process, but it's all just about perception anyways, right?"

    "So then when it comes to *you* two, I've got to think about whether my own brain's even got enough processing power to run a simulation of you this well, much less on top of everything else. And I mean, I don't have my tools on me, but I thiiink I can eyeball how much my psyche is dwarfed in comparison, haha!"

"Hey, someone hold this for me please? It's an unhealthy urge to be disruptive in the middle of girl-suffering."

    Psychonautra automatically reaches out her hands, recognizing a Task she could complete, and then pulls back before Flamel can drop the confusion grenade in them. "Oops! I shouldn't hold that. It'd make me get all existential, and we need confusion to stun it way more than we need existentialism to slow it down."

"I could give you a gift to let you stick around, if you really have a will to. But even if you don't, or can't, take it:"

    "Woah--!" Psychonautra gets yanked out of the collapsing building and shielded from the blast when she was already cringing in preparation for it, pulling her goggles back down to cover her eyes midair. "Wow! See what I mean? No way that's anything but the real deal, no how."

    "Er..." Actually considering the offer now, Psychonautra's tone wobbles, voice filtered through the respirator and the choking ash. "But I, uh... you sure about that? I'm sort of just a temporary accessory to help guide you through her mind so you can take care of that psychohazard. I'd start feeling guilty about all the people I apparently-only-imagined not-saving if I was a distinct 'people' apart from the mindscape and was actually worth moral consideration. Makes the job-that-I-only-hypothetically-have complicated, you know."

    "I... Mmn. I'm not really doing okay, no."

    Grilltra yelps when she's grabbed and carried along for the ride, but very quickly settles into it comfortably, in a way Petra could never. "Hmm... yeah, I thought so. Sorry, Kukuru." Apparently the affectation on her name was just for fun.

    "You're right, though. It's just for now. I don't think you're really that far off from it being better for you, I think? Asking how to help is fine if you just do it, after. People can't expect you to be helpful *and* smart! And you know I'm not smart at all either, ahaha. So I'd fail too."
Petra Soroka     There's still so many Petras around, both alive and dead. Hibiki gets her answer when she blasts herself upwards, in a glimpse that could be blurred into peripheral vision if the thought wasn't so pressing on her mind that she's unconsciously looking for her own imprinted Petra.

    Heart hairpins-- not dual colored, here-- framing either side of her face, bandages on her cheeks, nose, and arms to patch up small wounds accumulated from roughhousing, and dried blood painting the left side of her face and all down her neck and shoulder. It looks like one of the collapsing buildings got her; not even anything direct.

    Still, between her and Kale stunning the Kana-tower, the gradual rotation of its quad-barreled turrel grinds to a stuttering halt, in time for Berislav to hit two shots, right in the same place. The weakened metal glows white-hot as the turret swivels to face Berislav, though even with one barrel commanded, the other three quarters of the neighborhood have to deal with the cannon as usual

    Those three don't have any Elites in them, though! Unless you count potentially dozens of Petras, but they're not real. The next time the Kana whirr-clunks as preparation to fire, the barrel is aimed right at Berislav, and the force of firing rips the weakened metal apart, sending the shell wildly off-course to explode somewhere near one of the squatting legs of the tower. A geyser of heated air blossoms up from the impact point, laced with clouds of cutting ash, but even if the Isaiah and Hibiki have to endure it, the platform path doesn't, because of Kale's work.

    The top of the Kana-tower is a plateau with the hatch closed in the center, rotating slowly to point the turrets around to get full coverage of the neighborhood. The one place they *can't* aim, is right here; so besides the occasional small-arms fire from ambitious turrets and the stinging ash, there's not much threat all the way up here. So this is when the last Petra decides to make her appearance.

    Hopping up the telekinetically floating bridge-pieces as Persephone assembles them, balancing impossibly as they move, is a Petra with a pearlescent white wristband on her arm. When a salvo of bullets sprays up from a grounded turret, she flickers to a different chunk of debris entirely, untouched. She hops the rest of the way up, taking a few steps directly vertically up the side of the Kana, to join Persephone and Lilian and all the rest around the hatch.

    "Hey Phony? Lily-R?" It makes sense that a psychic construct of Phony!Petra wouldn't have the context for how the real Petra used that nickname, but the tenor of her voice when she says it is dramatically different. "Do you need a sec? Er-- a nicer one, I mean. I know it sucks here."

    She hovers anxiously near Lilian, silently fretting by the expression on her face. "Sorry. I want to help. Is there anything I can do? Besides, um, not die. I'm already not planning on doing that."