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Nathan Hall     Project Ahab is about to commence. Or, rather, it is about to have already commenced.

    Nathan was, and stays, in the library, of course. That's where he always is, and in a sense, where he always was. Psyber will have little difficulty, calling him elsewhere, or inviting him in person. Of course, he always did send him the invitation via text. Nathan's an easy guy to push around, so to speak, at least when it comes to Psyber. Though however Psyber intends to get Nathan out of the library and into whatever location he is needed at, there is one thing that needs to be dealt with. One small issue, which hasn't come up in a long while.

    Throughout the entire time, however Psyber will choose to get Nathan to where he needs to go, he will have to solve the issue of that rather persistant dog Psyber got, instructed to keep Nathan out of danger, intent -- pleading, in fact, in that canine way -- to keep Nathan back at the HoH library. Something about it seems particularly urgent now, in a disoriented way. In fact, it started trying to herd Nathan away from the door long before Psyber's first text arrive. But wherever Psyber intends to execute Project Ahab's final stage, it's going to be where Nathan heads now.
Guest Psyber 206 Washington St., Boston, MA 02109
Time: 7:14 PM

    When one fights a conceptual being, one picks a conceptual location. And while, to the average non-American Resident, this location might seem like little more than a tourist landmark, it also holds a specific meaning due to its staple point in history. An old-fashioned building amidst sleek, new skyscrapers.

    Those Elites he trusted were gathered here by dint of their involvement so far and their place in his plan. A simple message that his Project Ahab was going to be beginning soon. A beckoning they got to set up whatever they need beforehand and blend into the crowds as best they could before the actual plan got underway.

    Nathan, on the other hand, wasn't summoned until the exact time he was needed. The text message conversation kept simple, avoiding lying to Nathan and being truthful, while not direct, about his aim.

'206 Washington St. Meet me here in 30.'
'Well yeah the dog is upset, the city is a dangerous place.'
'Just leave the dog in the library and come meet me.'
'I need you here to finish a project.'
'Cool. I promise this is going to be worth it.'

    And it is... in front of a circle of cobblestones that Psyber stands, smoking a cigarette and with his jacket bundled around him as the first flurries of snow hit Boston for the year.

    It's when Nathan arrives that Psyber asks him a single question:

    "Do you know where this is, Nathan?"
Eleanor Lamb     Eleanor Lamb is here as well, on another corner of the Old State House. She's actually up on a roof, laying down, out of sight of the ground level. Those soft blue eyes are looking right up at the clouds as the snow falls on her face and her HoH bomber jacket. Something fitting about wearing that right now, if we're all being conceptual. Wrap yourself up in the armor that means the most to you in this situation.
    A stray thought crosses her mind though as she rolls slightly to peer down at the common for a moment, and then hides again. Something... Deja Vu?
Setsuko Kaminagi     There is no hiding Setsuko's presence. When she's here, the whole city knows. It would be pointless trying to conceal herself from Nathan, and waiting to enter the city the moment Psyber called for Nathan would just alert him to 'something big about to happen'. It's better, she judges, that she already be here, nearby, so that it looks as if she's there waiting for his arrival; this has the added bonus of actually being true, for the most part.

    She has chosen to simply stand nearby, leaning against the side of one of the more modern buildings, somewhere that she can see Psyber and Nathan, and be seen by them in turn. The perfect spot for a lookout; if this is the culmination of one of Psyber's projects that might invite trouble, naturally he'd have some sort of on-site backup. Sometimes the best way to be inconspicuous is to be conspicuous.
Riva Banari She doesn't know Nathan half as well as she'd like, and she likes him half as much as he des- no, wait, wrong script.

Riva DOES care about Nathan. Not only because of his own nature and situation that she can empathize with, and not just because he's basically inseperable from Psyber, who is a major figure in her life...

But because he's suffering. She wants to do something about it. To fix something, /anything/ to give him a better life. Time after time her attempts have been weak and without direction, and even now she's little more than a part in a greater plan of Psyber's.

But it's a part she'll play gladly. Atop the nearby hospital, Riva stands, looking down upon where they're gathering, her ponytail swaying in the chill air. She will intervene when it's time to do so. Everything is going to get put on the line.

There is no progress without sacrifice.
Mizuki     Mizuki arrives shortly after Psyber, taking her place toward the back of the group. She's here in the interest of returning Psyber's small favor of saving her life some time ago, but she does not profess to have some grand, emotive attachment to the objective of that favor. No -- yet nevertheless, she's fairly determined today to see this through. To be useful, however awkwardly she may be. She should like to have a hand in one 'simple' act of goodness, one binary moral decision, one unquestionable 'good' so rarely tenable for her; she rather likes the sound of rescuing the general of the Union and a dear friend of her friends from a horrible demon who would otherwise consume and destroy far more, giving nothing of their own to Creation in the process. The extrication of a 'good' person from their predicament and the simultaneous destruction of a parasite.

    Yes, all the moral tokens are in order. All is well.

    Mizuki keeps her arms folded neatly behind her back, eyes studying Nathan's deeply, too deeply. She has done nothing to obfuscate her aura, meaning that it would be easy enough for Nathan to glean intent from her if only by sharing her gaze for a brief few seconds. Rather a good thing, then, that they're putting the plan into motion now: the demon must be adept enough in conversations of the human kind by now to be able to know what the intensity behind her irises means, and then the resonant energy swirling around her besides. Why does that energy exist at all if she doesn't care, you ask? Well, that's a bit of a tricky one. Perhaps we can say that in this case she's the hunter, some sort of cosmological constable set upon the mission of eliminating pathogenic conceptual entities. There really are too many of those self-absorbed varieties. Nowhere near enough that want to help humanity somehow.

    Mizuki gives quick, even furtive glances to Riva, Psyber, and Kimiko while she waits. The one to hit the switch, as it were, will be Psyber. And she shall be glad of the spectacle.
Priscilla     Psyber's question is an apt one. Priscilla can read the street signs by now but she has no clue where this is, and has been waiting for some time for someone to inevitably explain the street's vague feeling of historical significance, stood out in the middle of modern Boston that it is. Unhidden, her presence by now is more than a little difficult to disguise; though not nearly on the same scale as Setsuko, it has prompted her to attend in the time tested, and coincidentally first way she had met Nathan; invisible. The added benefit is that it allows her to first-respond more easily than the demigoddess and Eleanor, though perhaps less productively than Kimiko already on hand. She's picked a good place where pedestrians doesn't seem to wander through, for one reason or another.
Nathan Hall     Elsewhere, and elsewhen, Nathan manages to get around the dog, taking great pains not to hurt them when he tries to close the door on them, and seemingly unreactive to their urgent whining. He almost falls over in surprise to see the dog on the other side of the door again. Didn't he just deal with this?

    He arrives, walking as always. He's probably taken the bus here. He's a bit bundled up for winter, now that some snow's begun. For some reason he seems... Sick. Psyber will recall it. The sickness that he seemed to suffer from during Psyber's own betrayal. A subtle crackle of energy, a palpable posture of nausea. Despite it all, he keeps a composed, stoic posture. He keeps adjusting his glasses, but he has yet to notice the tiny hairline fracture slipping into his vision on the right lens. Or, no, that's not right. The lens is already fully cracked, near completely shattered. And yet, Nathan doesn't seem to notice.

    Something is terribly wrong. Somethign was terribly wrong. Something will be terribly wrong.

    He answers almost automatically. "Psyber. Two oh six Washington Street?" He stops for a moment, blinking a few times as he runs things through his memory. Didn't he already answer this? As he does, it's no drain on his mind to look to the people here. "The old state house. Site of the Boston Massacre." He says, matter of factly. "Ignited the revolutionary war in the american colonies, or at least contributed to its spark." He looks to Setsuko. Her sense for battle is tingling, but it's not an ancient war waged here. Her trans-temporal sense for conflict is detecting... A shape. If the battles she detects in most situations are ripples from a dropped stone, the battle she's detecting now is... Something else. There's a crater in time, a piece of the world ahead of this present where a massive being has impacted things, shattering them. She can feel herself somewhere in that shape.

    The shape of a snake, crossed with a wasp, bearing seven masks. It surges above the surface, it surged above the surface, it will surge above the surface.

    Kimiko is regarded, was regarded, will be regarded. She's had nothing but good relations with Nathan, at least as far as Nathan knows. Eleanor... Things have been more rocky with. Good thing she's out of sight, was out of sight, will be out of sight. Was Mizuki always there? For some reason, it took more time than it should have taken him to notice her. Nathan doesn't think much of the spread of individuals so far, and less of Riva, who's nearby, unseen. But there are others here, both within the view of the camera of sorts, and outside. He had to look right through Priscilla. Which is a convenient thing; Priscilla looks right through him, in her own way. The ability to see the being has faded from her eye. But the being itself is timeless. As far as the Causality Demon itself is concerned, Priscilla is, in fact, still looking at it in the Kiln, still able to see it just after Kalameet's death. It's just a matter of it surfacing into this space again. Like Setsuko, she can only see it in one relevant way. Where Setsuko can see it in time, Priscilla can see it in space. It's murky, unclear. It's not emerging yet. But with every moment, it goes further and further.

    Something is terribly wrong. Something was terribly wrong. Something will be terribly wrong.

    As it approaches, or is drawn in by the future event, or whatever may be happening, Nathan's posture seems increasingly sick. More pale. More strained. More like his myriad powers are about to gush out like the result of some nauseous fit. The librarian, as always, seems entirely focused on helping, entirely focused on how he can assist. He tilts his head, seeming to prompt Psyber for direction on how to help. Mizuki can feel the sensation incoming. Times pages are ripped just ahead, torn to shreds by something far beyond them.

    There is something, indescribable, that is, was, and will be terribly, terribly wrong.
Guest Psyber     In this timeline... it will play out differently. Psyber nods his head to Nathan, "Yeah. I was here, you know. When it happened. They asked me where the marker for where the first body fell should go when they made the memorial," Psyber muses it over, thinking the situation through.

    He and Nathan have always trusted eachother. For a moment, he considers, "Nathan I..." He thinks over the conversations they've had. BUt more... than that, he gets a feeling. And while his instinct is to come clean to Nathan at the last minute, some Higher Power tells him that when he did so/if he does so, it will just repeat a battle that has already been fought.

    He feels something reassure him that he, at least in one timeline, didn't betray his best friend tonight. And that will give him the strength to... THIS Psyber to do what must be done.

    "I'm sorry."

    Psyber throws back his coat and draws Memento, "I'm tired of the hunt. I've cornered my prey. It ends tonight," He grips the knife in his hand. Nothing he's said to Nathan is a lie, but it's meant to portray something. Psyber is deliberately not telling Nathan what is going on, but not lying to him. A skill Elliana and Nathan taught him to be quite adept at.

    He throws the knife in a single smooth motion. A glittering chain of blessed silver connects the hilt of the blade to a cuff on his wrist. It aims to sail right into Nathan's heart and yet... on the moment before impact, he shouts, "MIZUKI NOW! DISJOINT IT TO THE CONCEPTUAL PLANE!"

    "Everyone get ready! We're going hot!"
Mizuki     As if in perfect synchronization, like the second note of a flowing melody, Mizuki holds her left hand aloft when Psyber lunges toward Nathan. Just before his cue is given, she has already summoned Aelinos into her hand and clasped her fingers around its hilt, pointing it toward Nathan. The two metallic helices that make up its blade unfurl in much the same way as a blossom open when a flower blooms, yet the prongs unnaturally twist to keep themselves forward-facing. Where usually Aelinos has no need to play this role, it is acting today more as a wand than a sword: a focus for her magic. Sway over times, dreams, all human perception -- today that's applied for a distinctly inhuman purpose. And that can only be accomplished with her fullest concentration, nothing less.

    Reality around her form begins to destabilize. A warbling, twisted aura like an air tainted by radioactivity or intense heat swirls around her before, like a cloud of smog, it's utterly swallowed by her blade. The newly formed prongs at either end of the sword then translate the entire field of destabilization not around, but inside of Nathan -- something of her own essence to occupy the conceptual space inside Nathan and to force the entity out of the same area. All the abstract force aims to push it forward, toward Psyber. It would be something of a disaster if the force was applied in the wrong direction.

    She does not wait to analyze the success of this endeavor before she begins her own second phase, either: in her right hand, she has already begun to form a condensed, monochromatic ball of temporal energy. She looses the thing once it has grown a certain diameter so that it encapsulates the region just in front of - but not around - Nathan. As it expands, a fiery red rim forms at its extreme edges. This is meant to serve as the creature's cage for the duration of the fight, and it's meant to keep it within a strict space where it cannot simply flee back inside of Nathan or his timeline. All her initial contributions made, she can only wait. Will this work? Ah, if only the general knew how much faith he were investing in a complete stranger.

    That would be 'incredibly worrying', though, right? So perhaps this is for the best.
Setsuko Kaminagi     It's a grim business. A painful thing. A very significant part of Setsuko's mind cringes at the thought of drawing out the Causality Demon this way. Betrayal, betrayal of a close ally, someone she respects. The same kind of betrayal that set her clan, her /world/ on the path that led it to the place it is today. An act she has been raised to loathe. But it has to be done, to save Nathan. They have no other way to pull it out of its metaphorical den, no other options for getting it where (when) they can hit it. And her battlesense is screaming at her, the approach of an entity that moves in ways she cannot comprehend but nevertheless feels. It will work. It will be drawn forth.

    So as the half-angel moves in, Setsuko leans away from the wall and reaches up to take hold of Zanjintou, already starting to draw the weapon from its sheath. Letting her aura begin to roil forth is almost a relief; keeping a lid on it fills the demigod with a distracting, almost unbearable pressure. But now, it's time.
Kimiko Shinobu     All warfare is deception, but deception is not betrayal. There is no expectation of honesty in battle, therefore, there is no betrayal when honesty is not rendered. Honor can be maintained regardless. No promises are broken, implicit or otherwise.

    This is not warfare. This is trickery of one's friend, comrade, and commander. This is a business that fills Kimiko with unease from beginning to end, no matter the necessity she sees for it. She is here because she has placed her trust in others, and they have not strayed so far that she need pull them back. That they should play, even in this limited respect, into the plans of the enemy fills her with a sense of quiet loathing that she directs primarily at herself. Only by confirming her hatred of what she does can she maintain that she has not strayed too far, herself.

    But there is business to accomplish, and she will not let vague misgivings affect the plan. If this must be done, she will not let it go to waste. From her place at Setsuko's side, she sets her body into motion in the same instant. The mere girl is gone. The knight takes her place, moving more quickly than that armor should allow.
Riva Banari Spacetime crackles and warps as Psyber makes his move. Riva is already leaping to action, Anima surging behind her as she propells herself off of the building in an augmented, superhuman leap. She has no idea she's already done this before.

But something else does. Something else that hums and twists inside her on a level at the edge of consciousness, perhaps attempting to tell her something.

But she has no room to listen at the moment, as she falls towards where the beast should be manifesting, her two-handed, anchor-like hammer leading the descent as she intends to land right on the demon and interpose herself once more between the demon and Nathan.

Of course, if the assumptios go awry this could get exceptionally messy. But that's how these things work.
Nathan Hall     Blood of a sort drips, dripped, will drip down the length of the dagger plunged deep inside flesh. The stunned librarian could do very little to resist. In fact, he could do very little to even comprehend what was happening until it was too late. But it's not his blood. In this one moment, those watching -- the multitudinous timeline array that composes them -- get a chance to view something very terrible. From the chest of Nathan Hall, where that blade would have impacted, they can see a screaming tree of timelines branching out, their cover torn to shreds by Mizuki, a hidden process exposed by her work. Librarian after Librarian after Librarian reaching out, climbing over each other in a disjointed temporal mess.

    The creature that emerges from Nathan's midsection blasts out at full size. The tremendous snake-wasp, adorned with the multitude of different limbs and wings, and covered by those seven horrible masks, rips through time, snapping into the trunk of the potential futures that arise from this event.

    The array is varied and dangerous. A vast number of potential Nathans who could have been, a wide number of betrayal-traumatized librarians who sought out more and more varied powers. Already built on so many past betrayals, the timeline is refined, turned into something incredibly delicious. But as was said: This isn't Nathan's blood. Mizuki revealed the creature just in time for Psyber's blade to plunge into its massive eye. He'll be able to ride this... Possibly. Potentially. It remains yet unclear.

    Time is collapsing, was collapsing, and will begin to collapse within the boundaries of this space. Forced onto his back by the massive eruption of time from his body, Nathan slams into the ground with a face of bitter sorrow, arms over his chest as if to stem the tide of a bleeding that does not occur physically. Psyber, on the other hand, is drawn by his chain, should he choose to hold onto it. The blade is lodged deep in the flesh of the massive eye. Is it possible for him to hold onto the creature and its array of horrid human and avian limbs as it surges up into a fractured future?

    Like elsewhere, elsewhen, or rather, elsehow, events are ceasing to happen in a coherently linear way. From what his soul can tell, Psyber also will strike, has striked, and is striking the Causality Demon in another temporal context, having fought off its first attack. One assumes it will ignore him, as it did before, until reacting with temporal violence against him.
Guest Psyber     Psyber will, indeed, be taken along for a ride so to speak. As the one harpooning the 'whale', his goal is to keep a tight grip and prevent it from getting away. So when the creature tries to escape from him, or pull away and take him with it, Psyber heaves downward, bracing his feet against the ground, "CAN'T HOLD IT FOR LONG. GO NOW!"

    Because of how this one has formed, in this timeline Psyber is restricted in the actions he can take without releasing his grasp on it. And he has no intention of doing that. So all of his present effort is set into keeping this thing from escaping before they can put the screws to it. And if he doesn't have the ability to restrain it, he's at least going to come along for the ride until he finds a place, or a when, or a how to take it down.

    But for now, he has to rely on others to handle the parts he can't.
Setsuko Kaminagi     Time ceases to make linear sense.

    Once or twice, Setsuko has experienced something... vaguely like this. A Witch of Mitakihara, perhaps. The lairs of the Causality Demon's... underlings? Thralls? Whatever they were. But none of it was nearly on this level. Setsuko's human mind cannot make sense of it. She cannot follow the threads of was-is-will. Mortal senses fall short of this.

    But divine ones do not.

    Boiling with bright blue, godly power, the swordswoman moves in stark defiance of the disrupted flow of time. Instinct leads the way. Instinct points her towards her foe when the word 'towards' shouldn't even make sense anymore. Zanjintou gleams, blue energy flows down the weapon. In another time and another place, the demigod acted (will act) to preserve Nathan Hall's existence. She summoned (will summon) forth the full form of Zanjintou, and struck (will strike) at the Demon's maw to prevent it from consuming him. Here, Nathan is on the ground, and the Demon is in full manifestation. Here, she can attack it with her full might, with intent not to protect, but to destroy.

    The half of Setsuko that was once a god, knows how to fight even in this place where past and future are polite suggestions. It knows how to move, how to aim, how to reach the target which it has named its foe. And that's all she needs, because she already has the 'what'. Up comes the peerless katana blade, horizontal, cutting edge upward, held right at eye level. Setsuko's fingers move down the side of the blade and back up, setting all the divinity wrapped around it into a rapid spin. Compressing it down. Forming a tightly-packed, sharp-tipped bolt of blue-white energy, singing with barely-contained might.

    "DENKOUSEKKA!"

    If the Demon is especially vulnerable to the type of power Setsuko wields, then her Denkousekka attack should prove even more potent than usual against it. Her power suffuses her blade, it's true - but this is that power itself, striking out in a refined, controlled form.
Eleanor Lamb     Eleanor can feel, has felt, will feel the emergence of The Demon, the death of time and space, of cause and effect, of reality itself. This place is but a shard of her life. A place that could have been, will have been, was before.

    Well. No time likt the past, present or future, after all. She huffs, and rolls up to her butt, dangling her legs off the side of the Old State House. Those soft blue eyes are... just looking up into one of the masks of the beast. Thing. She has the vague sensations of people fighting or slaying this beast but... There's a thrill inside of her. A burgenoning upwelling of excitement.

    She's never actually met something from Outside before.

    "So you're here, finally. Not just your puppets or your spyglasses or your little periscopes up from the Edge of What Is." She dusts at her jacket, and looks up at the Thing. "I bet the fact that there /is/ a today and it's happening /now/ is a little bit jarring to you."

    That's right. She's going to give the Monster a Session.
Mizuki     Aelinos winds back into its proper, usual shape. Mizuki's blade arm lowers as all her senses fight to refocuses themselves. This... it's been a very, very long time since she's felt anything like this. Or perhaps she never actually has felt a sensation like this? True, she lives in a truly conceptual space and there was a time when the physical foundation to which her world was initially anchored was every bit as undefined and broken as whatever realm this entity typically looms within. The difference here, though, is that a more 'conventional' reality is also present. Two different expressions of reality are attempting to project themselves upon her at once, and if she's being quite honest, the sensation is quite nauseating. It's dilluting her senses.

    As such, a brief moment of vulnerability is created in the stasis-cage. It's a moment as tiny as a pinprick to the demon relatively speaking, but it's an infrastructural weakness all the same. Mizuki really can't decide whether this is a curse or a blessing in disguise; now, of course, she knows it will likely linger around that point in attempt to wriggle free. The only trouble is, that 'where' has effectively stopped being a singular point. It will take some doing, finding that point again - or rather the myriad fragments that now constitute it - but Mizuki will endeavor to do so over the course of things. As she's able.

    Until she can narrow things down more, though, Mizuki isn't going to bother chasing silhouettes. Mizuki spikes her blade into the ground to both physically and figuratively anchor herself in place, then closing her eyes entirely to focus on the residue of the energy she found within Nathan. She isn't going to bother trying to fight this thing directly -- rather, she is going to attempt to make herself a system of white blood cells to fight off the demon wherever it appears it Nathan's timeline. She starts off with moments pertaining to Nathan that she's more vividly aware of: those in Lordran. Then she remembers the hours-long argument Nathan had with Psyber some months after she first joined Heaven or Hell -- that moment as well. Mizuki spreads herself throughout time, or more specifically Nathan's memories of those times, in the form of butterflies. And each time a butterfly finds a tendril of the entity reaching, they will spike down in effort to stave off its consumption of the events.

    This leaves 'real world' Mizuki incredibly vulnerable. She doesn't care. People can guard her if they see fit to, but she is an extremely low priority target and she expects to remain as such. Unless it happens to notice what she's doing, of course, but this should be a difficult thing to retrace.
Nathan Hall     Mizuki has sealed, is sealing, will seal the creature in her crimson ring, but it was too entwined with Nathan himself to be extracted from him properly. While isolated from his past and present, it cannot be isolated from his future, its specific meal and the prey that it was most wrapped around. It is already beginning, would soon begin, and already has begun to devour Nathan's future potential in the timeless moment that is 'now'. The Earth is, was, and will be coming undone. The sky is, was, and will be splitting apart. It is an apocalyptic undoing that is and isn't tearing Boston apart. Outside this temporal maelstrom, the city goes unharmed, but in the immediate proximity of what constitutes a massive temporal crater, it is a shattered metropolis.

    The timeline it's follows, screaming and desperate to evade an enemy it can't pull away from through a barrier it can't breach, slams around and around the cage violently. This is the one of the few, rare times when it's possible to hear Nathan scream in pain. Devouring more and more, the creature takes in more and more of a carefully cultivated identity that it's raised specifically to be able to be eaten. The creature itself seems to feel no pain, despite a dagger deep in its eye-flesh. But it does respond to a threat, and an obstacle. The barrier outside, and the "cells" within it, that seek to strike back against its gnashing teeth and universal hunger, slowing its progress through the temporal tree.





       INTERESTING.                    We've never worked TOGETHER.

            very   very
      very    very
         very         INTERESTING.
                very                          Unlike the part you know
          very                                as PSYBER, I can't immediately

                                           parse

                                        or

                               understand




    Your presence.


                                          Hm.

                                                        No, no no no.

                                                I know what sort of
                                                person you are. I can
                                                see where my tools are
                                                in your past. Whatever
                     Yes, yes                   you're doing, it's an
                        yes                     obstacle. I'll have
                                                to remove it.


                               Could you remove it for me?

                                           no?

           YOUR STORY IS AN INCONVENIENCE


                                               I WILL

                                                    EDIT

                                                        IT


The creature fixed, fixes, will fix its eye through the barrier Mizuki formed. While it might keep it trapped, it cannot prevent the attack that the creature launches. Not on her body, her mind, or even her soul, but rather, her timeline. It is attempting to tear out a portion of her timeline, causing her to become someone or something else, to suffer an identity death that causes her to become another person, another possibility of who she was, is, and could be.

    Its temporal teeth go to lock around the timeline segment called Shiori. It seeks out a point of regret, of self-defining choice that it could alter without the defenses of the soul surrounding it. It seeks to sink its teeth into and devour the decision to enact the grand experiment that resulted in Mizuki's eventual formation.
Priscilla     Priscilla has been well informed of her intended role in Psyber's semi-obscurely named 'Project Ahab'. While the others set up the killbox and prevent anything from going horribly wrong, Priscilla is to work in tandem with Riva and Setsuko, the Lifehunt coordinating with the Bees and the Sense of Battle, to seal the entity's destruction before things can slide out of control. They're unlikely to get a better, or even a second chance, after all. Her movements, too, are long refined instinct, though coordinated by the nonsensical light of a peculiar soul rather than the timelines of war or the guidance of the swarm, and honed like those of a predator rather than a warrior or guardian. The moment Psyber's hand darts forward, and Mizuki lunges from her rest, Priscilla is crossing the fleeting straight path of unoccupied cobblestones in the space of a heartbeat, weapon at the ready and invisible in just about all potential timelines where her present location would be useful to know.

    Time unwinding at the seams is obviously reason to give her pause, though it isn't simply the collapse of causal relation of events that prevents her from taking the last couple of steps. Out of all the people here, she is the closest one by far to mirroring the causality demon's core nature, even if still light years away from it in an objective sense; thus the best adapted to navigating its morass of hazily branching disconnection that resembles the world her distant ancestors had once inhabited. No, it's the unbidden sense that doing so won't play out to her satisfaction. Maybe it's the odd sense of deja vu. Maybe it's the Librarian's reaction in of itself. Maybe it's in the strange, uncomfortable thoughts that immediately flicker into her head at the sight of so many Nathans and the realization of how little she knows of what she intends to do will truly cause. Killing an entity beyond linear time and space isn't an issue for her. Trying to imagine, and to deal with, what that could mean for the one person they're all doing it for the sake of however, abruptly seems a lot more difficult, now that she's faced with how little she's truly tried to think about it.

    So with no grasp of where probability sits, of how many potential outcomes she and the others are about to deal with, and what some of them could really be, she decides to skew those probable and possible futures in their favour. Moments before the inevitable blows arrive, the Eye of Calamity flashes, its light refracted bizarrely as it passes through many different spaces, times and events at once, to the point where it resembles a constellation of molten stars overhead. Priscilla makes no effort to try and pin down a definitive place to cut blindly just yet. As the demon unfolds before her, she suffuses it with the essence of another being once beyond linearity, injecting conceptual 'disaster' into the madly multiplying branches of its future actions, dooming it, in a sense, to suffer the absolute worst of whatever kind of 'harm' the being can conceptually sustain from the others.
Riva Banari The seething mass of the nonlinear extradimensional entities known as the Bees were-is-will be fighting the other nonlinear entity already, the swarm of mechanospiritual insectoids working to hem in the beast and shut down how many timelines it can access, swarming it with possibility and potentiality. The beast already hammered into a manifestation of them in another timeline. Ironically, Riva is far more vulnerable in standard three-dimensional space. The Bees cannot operate directly there, but the battle she cannot see twists inside her like a knife, causing deep nausea.

She slams down into the beast, attacking directly in her limited three-dimensional capacity as the modified Ajoran Holy Symbol seethes with Anima, crashing into it with an alpha strike. "WHOA UGLY!" She yells as the horrifying, mind-rending thing becomes apparent. Her senses recoil from the thing, but she still tries to strike regardless, keeping her body interposed between the beast and Nathan as much as she can with the weird way it's kind of connected to him. In this reality, she might not realize that it literally does not matter, though.
Nathan Hall       YOU
     AGAIN

   In each timeline that branches
   like a tree
        a stream                    You continue to be an
        an arc of electricity          INCONVENIENCE
        rain on a window


                         You said he is your COMRADE
                                  I would end HIM
                                  that there is one fate for me


                                    ?
        ?          ?          ?                                    wrong

          The Library of Time that you perceive
  ?       as a linear man, the being you call   ?
          "NATHAN HALL", is the door I have
          created by hand. Do you mourn the
          loss of "a closed gate" when it           ?
  ?   ?   becomes, through consumption of its
          form, "an open gate"?                  ?

      ?                        ?                           THAT IS ALL HE IS  
                                      ?
                    ?                        A PATH


               The comrade you cherish is the collective product of
                 a series of events that is, by its definition, my
                                    IDENTITY



       Just as an open gate defines the existence of a closed gate
       Just as a  shut gate forms inevitability for an opened gate



                               what are you protecting



    Setsuko's attack slams/slammed/will slam into the body of the creature with tremendous impact, and much effect. It tears/tore/will tear through its midsection, ripping it into shreds. But not for long. In a timeless singular instant that composes the context of this reality, the being has consumed enough of the timelines of Nathan Hall that it can, could, and will yet be able to form defenses based on what it has fed on.

    Holy magic saturates its body. A limb on its surface makes a twisting gesture. A bracer shines. The being's body is/was/will be covered in a sheet of interlocking icy plates, a holy armor of packed water, blunting the strike to less lethal levels.

    Setsuko, now fully finding herself within the torn-up collective of broken time, will find her soul making contact with not just her current timeline, but the timeline of Setsuko within another branch of how events occurred. Where Psyber refused to go through with his plan, and where she is/was/will be able to sustain an attack from lateral timespace. With multiple of the identity of 'Setsuko', it is possible to begin to understand how things work. Which is unfortunate in how brief a "moment" she has to perceive this. The being turns on her. It opens its maw, and with the full extent of the tremendous powers Nathan possesses, possessed, and could possess, it strikes towards her, and attempts to wipe out her "present". She will be left with only the past and the future, unless she somehow manages to withstand the wiping out of her present through escalating atemporal assault angles

    "Salutations."

    "I understand the nature of your action. I understand the nature of your intent. I understand the nature of your enemy. Please, stand by. You will benefit from assistance."

    Something has helped.

    Kaminagi Setsuko(s) may now execute an assault against the creature by accessing her full past and potential future, both divine and mortal. Assuming her present was wiped out in the massive incomprehensible strike, she will be able to take no new action formed in the moment. However, she is now capable of striking towards her foe with any past attack she's executed, and potentially, if set well in future stone, an attack she might execute in the far future.
Mizuki     Mizuki's eyes do, do not, did, did not open wide in the realm of physicality as the demon projects itself against her timeline just as it has upon Nathan's. For an instant, her heart is, was, was not ripped from her body. She clutches at her chest. Her form evaporates into indistinction -- she disappears, reappears, shifts. Her hair dyes brown, a very particular shade of brown; her clothes become the uniform of a school, a very particular school. For a brief moment, she isn't in control. She's someone else. The demon would feel a tremor along several convergent threads of Nathan's timelines, actual and potential. There are active severances at several points. The chronological neurons that connect events like the death of Kalameet with how Priscilla was hurt prior to his defeat dissolve. But, this maneuver also means to limit the avenues of access the demon has to different sections of the timeline. Like amputating a leg to prevent the spread of a cancer.

    Outside, Mizuki-Shiori falls to the ground, still clutching her chest. Cyan flecks pour from her being as though she were not only hurt, but dying. As though she had died. The only thing keeping her from erasure is a constant pattern of fast-forwards and rewinds that clearly mimic the pattern she had observed the entity to follow before. Every time her timeline jumps forward to a point where 'Mizuki' never existed, it leaps back to a point where she potentially could have. In the interim, temporal threads weave in and out of the unoccupied void left by the event's destruction, attempting to fill it back in. Throughout all of this, though, something other than Mizuki continues the fight against the demon. Something that is her, but isn't: the aggregate consciousness of all of her lives. The will that underlies her being and drives her concept.



    Pathetic.                Terribly pathetic.

Do you have any idea,

            even the slightest, faintest hint of one,

        as to what I am?

            Who I was?

                What I represent?


    We are not that different, you and I.

                But your aims -- they're so small. So primal.


You mean to hijack the timeline of one person.

                One blip.

                    One tiny apparition scattered
                        upon the stage of time.


                I will consume them all.


            And I have already lived too long,

                seen too much;

    And I am not the only one.

            The weight of our timelines is far too much for you.

        You will try,

            but you
            will
            fail.

And then,

    you will

        be


                    P U R G E D.

    At that, the pace of the white blood cells becomes vastly more aggressive. And oddly, they seem to act now with individually wills: though their paths are no longer directed by the Mizuki the members of this group may know, they are nevertheless guided in orchestration by her, facets of her, splinters of what was, is, will be. The most furious among them are no doubt guided by whatever residual components of 'Shiori' linger in Mizuki's mind, but there are other reflections of Mizuki's past selves present here as well. All of them act of their own accord, all of them slowly acclimating, learning more about where the entity is weak. They multiply in effort to overwhelm. They share knowledge of the weaknesses they learn, but each also learns individually. All the while, several more of them retreat inwards, attempting to form a protective barrier around that specific crevice of Mizuki's timeline.

    It's a sensitive point, but even the demon might have bit off more than it could chew here. It has been so long since then, and so many other happenstances depend on that instant, that the timeline is likely far, far too vast to be consumed whilst the entity is dealing with so many other obstacles already, exterior and interior.

    Or so we will hope, anyway.
Nathan Hall       I still don't understand what you are.

         You could be so many other
         things, the way any other part
         of the linearity of your
         existence so often could be,
         and yet no matter what
         changes, you're always here.
         Why is that? What's special
         about being here, about
         defending the Library? I can't
         comprehend what could stay so
         rigidly the same despite                   i don't understand
         everything, even the Library's
         potential future modes of
         thought seems to hold no clue.


                                                 If you continue on this path


                                  I'll be forced

                             to use

                        the Library's



                               GREATEST POWER
                                                             and neither of  
                                                             us want that





    Kimiko moves when Setsuko does because Kimiko was, is, and always does move when Setsuko does. This is an eternal present where time is meaningless. But something about the puella magi is catching negative attention right away. A sudden rush of atemporal violence. Her armor may be useful against this attack, or may not be, but more than likely, it won't; this is an attack that comes from a sideways direction in time, an angle that is nearly impossible to interpose armor against. It attempts to destroy her PRESENT, leaving only the PAST and POTENTIAL FUTURE of her identity intact, punching a hole in her existence.

    "Salutations."

    "Kimiko. There is no special bond, and no great connection. However, it is possible to understand what you are, purely on your own, without need for that. It is possible for me to have an understanding of what you are. You have protected well in the past. I can't protect you right now. But it's possible that I can allow you to protect."

    Like Setsuko, Kimiko's soul comes into immediate contact with its sister shard, still fighting against the assault from another branch of this timeline. Together, and with a brief moment of help, she will gain the ability to provide protection ito others or to protect herself with any act of protection she has performed in the past or is very likely to perform in the far future. Protection offered to her allies, to the myriad Nathan Hall timelines yet being consumed, Nathan's soul itself, or even to herself.
Setsuko Kaminagi     Knowledge floods Setsuko from another timeline. Herself. Different paths she chose. Different courses of events. Her response to them. Knowledge, all of it threatening to overwhelm her... and yet, bringing no danger of that at all. Because it is all 'her'. She can comprehend it. She can understand it, on the deepest and most fundamental level. She will be able to apply it-

    'Now' ceases to exist entirely.

    Setsuko's comprehension ceases. Her divinity remains, endures, even begins to move her form on sheer autopilot, but she does not see, hear, even think. All her human skill rendered useless, her divinity not strong enough to carry through on its own. She has been rendered a nonthreat by her own linearity.

    But then something brings her knowledge. Foresight and past experience. What was, is, and will be. An outside source of 'perception'. And far, far in the future, the demigod glimpses a towering beacon of blue, a fuzzy moment in time of pure power, instinct, of utter knowledge and certainty. She cannot discern the moment itself. But she can feel the knowledge of the technique therein, passing into her comprehension. 'So that is how it's done.'

     And with the flood of knowledge from past and future she can comprehend 'now' enough to move.

    "...I... don't... /care/," the silver-haired woman hisses, her body beginning to move, eyes closing. The flowing, billowing cloud of divine might around her abruptly winks out. Completely and utterly dies. Far more ominous than a simple thunderstorm, a moment of perfect and utter calm in a place where 'moments' don't - shouldn't - exist.

    "...even if you created him... even if you guided his existence from the start... you did not just create a path... you created... a /person/." Zanjintou comes around behind her, its grip lengthening, its crossguard expanding out.

    "You created a person, to whom other people became attached. Of whom other people grew fond. For whom other people developed respect. Whatever your intentions, whatever your plans, whatever his nature, you created an existence with value in and of itself to others. And those others have the power to protect that existence from anything, from anyone - including its creator!" A lightning-fast ripple of blue becomes gleaming steel. Divinity takes the shape of a massive blade.

    "So you tell me that he is nothing but a closed door being opened, a gate being destroyed to create a path. Then here is my answer to you!" The weapon comes around Setsuko, whipping up dust in its wake, ending its spin over the demigod's shoulder. And her eyes finally open, revealing her irises to be alight with a vibrant blue glow.

    "We are going to rip that gate called Nathan Hall off the hinges you've so carefully crafted, and take it for ourselves. We are going to carve you apart. And we are going to collapse the open door down on your lifeless, timeless corpse!"

    She cannot strike at the Causality Demon's core yet. It isn't the time for her ultimate technique as a demigod - it would not reach her foe. So instead she will bring to bear her ultimate technique as a warrior. A soaring strike, rising to the heavens. Descending more fiercely than a meteor, swinging a blade of divine might with inhuman precision and power. An attack those present know all too well.

    "ZANJINTOU! ITTOU... RYOUDAN!!"
Nathan Hall    I continue to have no understanding of your intentions.
                                       of your purpose in these actions.
                                       of your perspective.



              These things elude me.




                          You know, even the Library -- the thing you call
                          Nathan Hall -- lacks a potential future in its
                          refined state where I might consume the
                          comprehension of this action you take, will take,
                          have taken. Perhaps an error in the cultivated
                          composition? But that would make very little
                          sense. The tools I use to do this are meant to
                          prune away the connections with the gate and the
                          impurities in the timeline that cause this sort of
                          behavior. Through consuming, I understand the
                          things you would expect to say: "FRIENDSHIP",
                          "ALTRUISM", "KINDNESS". But none of those things
                          seem to apply.



         You can hurt the identity of "Nathan Hall" when it is
         convenient for the purposes of Channelers, and yet it
         seems beyond you to accept "his" harm for the benefit
         of the source of the channeling.


                                       I believe
                                                    I understand
                                                                  j
                                                                   u
                                                                    s
         Psyber. You need to understand something critical.          t

         If you continue on this path,                                 e
         I will be forced to use the Greatest Power                    n
         at the disposal of the Library of Time.                       o
                                                                       u
                                                                       g
         It will make it impossible for you to kill me.                h
                                    for any of you to kill me.
                                    for "Nathan Hall" to be the same
                                                           as he was
                                                             before.


    "Hello, Psyber."

    "I want you to act with the assurance that all will be fine before this concludes. Your plan will change before it is complete. But I am confident. I trust your intent. I trust your action. I trust you. Hold on. Keep holding."

    Psyber, in this line of time, has not performed an act of violence against the being yet, of course. And so it has not sought to strike against him. But something is here. Something assists. Psyber's soul is connected, not to one fragment of his timeline, but to two. He will be able to pull, from his past and future, just as the others. But while the others had assault, protection, or other such things, Psyber can access something entirely different. An act of hunting. An act of tracking. An act of trapping. Guardian though he may be, angel though he may be, judge though his concept may be, his HISTORY is something else. His HISTORY is that of a Hunter of the supernatural. Which is why he is able to take any act of Hunting from his history, or likely potential future, and use it against the being.
Kimiko Shinobu     Kimiko cannot explain why she continues to exist, because the reasons for this are unknown to her. In all timelines, she is, and she is assured to be. Her beginning is inevitable, and from it, her present becomes immutable. If certain others were attacked, that could effect her present self's undoing, but that may be a far more difficult undertaking, and she seeks to not present an opening within which it may be attempted.

     She speaks in a voice lacking all emotion. "Your understanding is unneeded. You are not a person, and are therefore not an enemy. You are a threat to contain. You are prey, seeking understanding of the hunter."

    Kimiko does not defend herself, and her armor, as it exists in the present, is unable to deal with this issue. This Kimiko, that which exists at this moment, is destroyed--but into her place rushes her future and past, condensing into a being not quite like any of the above, and fully cognizant of this past/future situation, and precisely what she must do.

    The knight in gleaming plate and chain is gone, and in her place stands one in armor a dull and lifeless gray. Cloth drapes over in royal red, a half-robe that billows in still wind. There is no face to her helmet, only a smooth, featureless curve, until it reaches the unadorned crown atop her head. This figure is taller than the girl that is/was, and there is a trace of inhumanity to her features, and her proportions.

    Not an eye, but the image of an eye, appears on the face-plate where a right eye should be. A voice echoes, less in speech than in psychic reverberance. It speaks in a series of runes that are conceptually equivalent to sound, and their meaning is made apparent to all who listen. There is no scratching at the mind. The words are pure and clear. Though audible to all, knowledge of their target is unambiguously transmitted, as well.

    VIRGINIA speaks.

    "You are unclean. You are a monster."

    The efect of her will is centered on Nathan Hall, but it reaches outward from him to encompass the battle in all timeframes to which she has access. It is similar to what a few have seen before, but the 'taste' of it is different, and this time, it is carefully targeted. When she last fought, she attempted to purge all that she saw, burning it from existence with faux-flame annihilation. Here, her target is only that which is foreign, corrupted, or otherwise of the one she marked as filth, the target of her disgust, selectively reducing its traces to nonexistence where they can be differentiated, starting from the bodies of her allies themselves, and working outward in protective spheres of purging, heatless fire.

    VIRGINIA orders.

    "Cease existence."
Nathan Hall                                    ...


                  Different.




    I am indulging, will indulge, have indulged this
    attempt to communicate. You are correct. Present.
    Past. Future. These are not things that Are. They
    are organs of the beast of your greater linearity,
    the same way that you are cells of the same beast.
    I do not understand the actions that your
    linearity takes. But I have come to consume the
    Library of Time. It is the thing you call "Nathan
    Hall".


                               I created this.




                                          It belongs to me.





                  It is sustenance and it is a door. By consuming
                  it, I gain, will gain, and have gained an
                  expansion of what you call "thinking" that permits
                  me to comprehend what "is" within this. The
                  "death" of my Library is the same as the "death"
                  of "a closed door" when it becomes "an open
                  door".



             You understand.
             You will understand.
             You already understood.



    The tremendous creature is still striking around its barrier. But the bitter form of the betrayed Nathan Hall rises. It is a demon wearing Nathan's skin. "You wanted to speak. I've consumed enough that this will be a more suitable method. I recall there were various issues with my ability to communicate into this reality before. They've been resolved. Though I can't handicap my own 'thinking' to the point where I can sympathize with cells of a greater beast of linearity like you, I can speak the way one cell speaks to the other." It says, rising and turning to Eleanor. The thing wearing Nathan's skin approaches, tilting its head. "Does that answer your question?"
Eleanor Lamb     Eleanor's face is an impassive shell as she withdraws her emotions inside at the... appearance of the Entity. As Nathan Hall rises, did rise, will rise up to meet her, the young lady shakily pulls a notepad from her pocket. It's the notepad she was using... that time they went to speak to the Regent of Eveningstar. She flips through a few pages and looks up at Nathan. "So you're claiming to be the reason that Nathan... took all these steps that he did? The gathering of power? The contract with the Exalt? That Persona of his? Becoming a Tiny God?" The pencil rests against the paper as Eleanor's blue eyes narrow. "Nathan seemed frankly confused about all of it when I talked to him about it. When I asked him why people follow him. When I..."

    The fight aboard the Drasillum. 'You are a General of the Union.' Eleanor's lip twitches, and she sighs. "You see, I highly doubt that... you, and I use that term very loosely... Could have forced this man to do anything he was set again. That 'you' had anything to do with people molding their lives around him. That 'you' conjoled, coerced or even managed to influence people to love Nathan. Hall."
    Her words are rough now, emotion sliding into them. "I highly doubt you, a creature of... whatever you are... would have the patience, the understanding or even the concept of how to craft a life such as Nathan's."

    When did she start shouting? Was she always shouting over the terror and horror? There's a borken pencil and a torn book in her grasp, and she's face to face with the creature.
    There's a entire file folder of Nathan's sessions in front of her, carefully crafted from many hours of interviews and therepy.

        There's a gun in Eleanor's hand.

A man in a massive diving suit stands behind her.
    A battered man in a vest and black slacks stands behind her.
        A man in a worn sweater and work pants stands behind her.

There is a lighthouse behind her.
    There is a lighthouse behind her.
        There is a lighthouse behind her.

    Eleanor's eyes narrow. "You /have not/ been Nathan Hall. You are /not/ Nathan Hall. You /will not/ be Nathan Hall. That is something that /does not belong TO YOU/."

    This time it's definitely the pistol, and Eleanor aims right for the Puppet's right eye. Those broken lenses are her target.
Nathan Hall     Riva does her best to interject herself between Nathan and the beast. The creature is blasting out of his chest, alongside his timeline, but she can still interpose. "Landing" somewhere on the creature, trying to conceptually interpose herself between it and the stream of timelines, the convoluted mess of existences, she can feel a terrible undulation inside. There is a gap in there, in the timelines. Something is missing. It'll need to be dealt with. Later, though. What matters now is this: In the constant, decaying, fraying moment of the now, the massive snake that she's holding onto keeps trying to plunge its awful maw into the stream of time.

    She manages to halt its attack, and in a sense, a whole array of other attacks. Forcing it away from the target of its hunger, she manages to force it away in a hundred other strikes as well. And, for a moment, she can feel her soul linking... With something greater.
Nathan Hall     "Salutations."

    "You seem... More varied than usual. No-- That is your passenger. Please... Please standby, I am trying to adjust my... I am trying to determine how to use this perspective."
    "No, I understand. Riva. We have not known each other long. But I hold confidence. Psyber informed me of what I needed to know. I understand your concern, and the distant distress with which you have regarded this situation. If I can just... Apologies, I need only..."

    The beast is tired of this horrible game. The tremendous stab that strikes into it and forces it off of and away from the timeline stream gets the response one might predict by now. It has already, is already, will have already tried its attack against her PAST. Now it tries an assault against her PRESENT. Turning its massive maw against her, the full power it has thus far extracted from even a fraction of Nathan's timeline is turned on her, doing its best to wipe out the 'present' of her timeline in a single incomprehensible, indescribable blast.
Nathan Hall     "Oh. Of course. I need only ask."

    "Salutations, multitude. I need to route a call. No, not mine. Please, connect her with herself."

    The help comes in the form less of a direct impulse and more of a framework and prompt. The Bee within her is given a route, plotted a course through the shards of space to link Riva with Riva, to bring together a multitude of angles of perception in a shredded personal timeline. It gives Riva a purpose, a powerful angle of impulse against the timeless being from sideways of time. Like the others, she has something in her past that can be expressed now.

    Her artistic ability is made manifest. She is given prompt to Create; to provide form and shape from her own personal history for this beast. The next splinter, the next fragment of time, the next single moment that the group is able to access as a means of combat against this creature, will be Created by her. An environment, a being, or a force from her history, or even from her potential future, can be used to redefine how the Causality Demon will be made manifest, and how it will visit upon this reality. She can make sure the next shard is stabilized this way, and possesses something like linear time, or physical space.
Guest Psyber     Any act of Hunting...

    Any ACT of Hunting...

    ANY act of Hunting...

    Psyber knows the moments he wants to choose. Moments that encapsulate his ability to hunt. And he's going to travel back to those moments.

    The first... is Kalameet.

    Psyber emerges from a split in reality directly in front of the Psyber that just used the Sunslayer Greatsword for the first time. The two stare eye to eye and the half-angel says, "I need you. You are a Hunter in this moment and there is yet greater prey to fight."

    Kalameet-Psyber hoists the sword up across his shoulders and nods, "Right. I'll keep the questions limited, for now."

    "I have more to grab." "Go, I'll meet you there."

    And then... far back in the past, at a moment the Causality Demon tried to erase, a half-angel lays on the brink of death wielding Erinyes, the hammer of Zaliki the Solar Exalt. He has fallen in the final push against Viridian Sunrise, but he has succeeded. And it's a glowing white hand that reaches out towards him as Prime-Psyber grabs him by the arm and pulls him up.

    "Wh-"

    "I don't have time to explain. This is the greatest prey you have ever fought, and in this moment, you are Hunter. I cannot fight my current prey, but perhaps I, and I, and also I shall succeed. I will return you here when we finish as if you never left."

    "So I survive this?"

    "No. Who you are now dies today. I am who you will become, and I am sorry I did not avert this, but it is necessary." Prime-Psyber says in a flat tone. It's hard for him to realize that 20 minutes after being returned, this iteration will be forever scarred.

    He has one more stop to make. Because he gets to draw from a potential future. A future that, at this point, could never exist. But a future that MAY have if things had been different. And he walks towards that future, stepping out of a fracture in causality and coming face to face with himself and Nathan in an alternate timeline.

    He looks towards him, "The Causality Demon didn't whither and starve in your timeline?" He asks, standing over the corpse of a blonde woman with a bloody knife. In response, Psyber raises Memento.

    Archangel blinks once, an eye turning purple, "Let's go."
Guest Psyber     All of reality seems to stutter as three points in a one timeline fold into a single point in time while an impossible alternate future intersects. And yet, when causality smooths out again to compensate, there stand four versions of the same person. Prime-Psyber, Kalameet-Psyber, Viridian-Psyber, and Archangel.

    Each one is wielding a piece of Psyber's panopply. V-Psyber has Erinyes from Psyber's past, while K-Psyber is still holding the Sun-Slayer Greatsword. Prime-Psyber is holding Erinyes in one hand and the chain from Memento in the other, while Archangel is holding, of all things, Majestic and Sovereign.

    All four of them have formed a temporary alliance, though all seem leery of Archangel, who seems the least stable-unified. And they all step forward to begin their work in earnest. K-Psyber goes first.

    Kalameet-Psyber darts in, wielding that greatsword as if it weighed nothing. He begins circling the causality demon and striking at the points where the blade can find purchase. It's a vicious combination attack that uses the full agility and speed that Psyber can muster, darting around and coming in from any angle that he can approach to attack from, never losing an ounce of momentum. He only seems to stop when Lifehunt has built its full charge. Then he hangs in the air, freezing in place in the same pose he was in when Psyber found him and after he attacked Kalameet the first time.

    It's Archangel who goes next. Majestic and Sovereign ignite with purple Shajem energies. The half-angel steps in with all the power and speed he's known for and begins swinging the dual-wielded blades. And every strike he delivers is suffused with Wrathborn's powers, eroding away at the existence with terrible nightmares. One of Archangel's eyes is snakelike and purple as it watches its prey. He moves with the precision of a trained butcher, making his cuts and sheathing both swords before taking out the blood-covered Memento dagger and standing in the position he was met in.

    Viridian-Psyber is next. He needed some time to catch his breath and he still looks fairly injured. But as Psyber is ought to do, he presses on. His assault is crushing, the rocket on the back of the hammer igniting into a blaze of cobalt and powering up every tremendously forceful blow and hammerfall that happens. Moments in time of incredible power and determination to crush this foe. And then he collapses, falling over backwards and unconscious like he was when he was summoned.

    Prime-Psyber is left, holding Einherjar, "Job, Thirty-Thirty-Two. He covers his hands with the Lightning and commands it strike his mark." He coils one hand back, the blade in his hand letting out a peal of thunder. Psyber then swipes his hand forward and the sky above the battle splits open, a tremendous holy-alligned smiting bolt coming down to crash into the creature with all of God's Authority. And then Psyber seems to take the pose of holding the chain to grip the creature again.
Guest Psyber     And reality SNAPS again as each iteration of Psyber rubber-bands back to where it should be in the timelines or alternate universes, their ties done and them restored to where and when they should be across any existence or possibility.

    And it's then that Psyber speaks, "Whatever you use, I will keep fighting. Nathan is my best friend and I swore I would come through for him this time. Whatever it takes. Your plans, your cultivation be damned. You won't take my friend from me. I didn't hurt Nathan Hall to convenience your damn Channelers."

    "I did what I thought was right at the time. You had no control over my reactions and I refuse to be complicit in your creation. You didn't guide actions, you simply fostered bitterness. You are nothing more than an infected wound and I will be the surgeon."
Nathan Hall     Priscilla is one of those rare few who possess an ability to apply a force sideways in time. Like the Causality Demon's own way of attacking, she can shove, and do so with great force. It's not a stab, but it's enough, and it's on a level that the Causality Demon is ill-prepared -- in the sense that it could have a past at all -- to handle. An eye meets an eye. The Eye of Calamity finds itself in what could be called a staring contest if you were being comedic. It could be called a contest of wills if you were being approximate. What it actually is, is a complex and near incomprehensible conflict between two wholly incompatible modes of existence beyond reality, where the timeline of Priscilla herself becomes the battleground.
Nathan Hall     Her impulse against the Causality Demon, trying to force it into misfortune and DOOM it, travels along its shape. When Dragons fight humans, they need only strike at the point of the Now. Somewhere, the temporally and spatially distant mechanisms responsible for Kalameet's structure and action on the world will act beyond their standard capacity.

    The process of DOOMING the being causes a certain unusual effect far down the temporal line. She can feel it affecting part of the creature's body that does not exist in this space, or rather, does not exist in this time's frame of this space. Or rather, that's what it might cause. Assuming she can win this incredibly complicated contest, through her will... And, due to the timeless nature of the attack, the will of Kalameet. Yes: As far as the Causality Demon is concerned, Kalameet is not dead, and his non-linear eye is a way to involve him in the attack. The attack impacts him in the distant past as well. But perhaps not in a way that may turn out well for Priscilla...
Nathan Hall     The Causality Demon turns its eye on her and attempts to devour a portion of her past. Specifically: A portion critical to Priscilla's presence as she is now, and a portion critical to Kalameet's death. It reaches far back into the past. Thousands of years. It reaches towards Priscilla, and it attempts to change a decision. Or rather, to create one where there was not one before.

    Long ago, Priscilla, being a good child and cared for by, well, by at least one parent, had gone along with something. She had gone along with a massive political scheme that she might not have understood before. She had gone along with a fearful attempt to eliminate something that was not understood. The Causality Demon tries to attack the part of her past where she did not choose to defy. It attempts to write her into another existence entirely by attacking her timeline at the point where she went along with entering the Painted World, and where she was sealed. Perhaps she would have been killed for this defiance, or perhaps the Lifehunt would have made her untouchable. But if she had not been sealed in the painting, she would have left with the other gods, and not become an ally of the Union. Kalameet would not be dead.

    This is a low blow. The Causality Demon is doing its best to cause the distant past of Kalameet to assault alongside it, and force Priscilla into an alternate present; it is a death of identity. Well, assuming the nonlinear past of Kalameet goes along with it.
Nathan Hall     The world is ending.

    Fire is falling from the clouds. Screams are, were, and will always be heard from all directions. Thunder, lightning, everywhere. A flood of some sickly, horrible, thick substance in the streets.
    It is a lightly cloudy day. People are still walking around Boston despite the first few light flurries of snow beginning to come down. It's a bit brisk. But it's a nice day. Perfect for a quick walk.

    The world is not ending.

    The White Time Cells, a flurry of butterflies inside Nathan's temporal profile, keep him protected from the vicious teeth. And yet, while the beast seems progressively more torn up by each assaulting flapping mass, it continues to devour as much of Nathan's temporal profile as it can. The timeline erupting from Nathan himself is beginning to scream in pain, trying to surge away from the gnashing teeth. The rate they're being consumed has slowed, but the damage the beast sustains to consume them is rapidly increasing. The beast itself has no particular response for Shiori beyond a short, terse few sentences, delivered in a surprisingly coherent way.

                    Do you think I aspire to world-ending  
                    evil? The consumption of all timelines?
                    I don't understand what evil is, in your
                    mode of existence. I desire existence.  
                    Not as a whole. As a part. Your ambition
                    may outstrip mine, certainly. I simply  
                    wish to Be.                            
                                                            
                    Perhaps I can figure those other things
                    out later.                              
Nathan Hall     The historical, predictive strike from Setsuko tears through time. This is a strike that comes from a different part of time itself. The shining strike rips along the surface of the membrane of reality and impacts the Causality Demon from unexpected angles. The strike, in some timelines that will never know fruition, cleaves entire blocks of Boston in half. But this is not those timelines; Setsuko acted with precision. All that force is concentrated into a strike that is as controlled as it is powerful.

    What it enacts is not a massive, dramatic gush of powerful striking. It is modest and humble, and exactly as powerful in all the right places as it needs to be, in the sense that a god of honorable warfare should be. The head of this branch of the creature is sliced away from Nathan's timeline entirely, cutting off an attack. It opens a gap that Kimiko -- or perhaps another -- will have no trouble in using.
Nathan Hall     Kimiko is not here. VIRGINIA is here. She is, was, and always will be what she is in this moment, and what she is in this moment is a cleansing fire. Where Shiroi Mizuki was able to make it punishing for the creature to dare to consume more of the timeline it seeks, VIRGINIA is able to take advantage of Setsuko's opening to force her fire into the timeline, defending it by making it near-lethal to consume. With the two together, now the being is pulling away, unable to bring itself to consume more. Only a fraction of the potential futures have been consumed. But that is enough. It is, perhaps, too much.

    The fire is beginning to spread along its length, as if exposed to some awful incendiary component. Whatever effect this is having, it's going to surge through more of the timeline with its blazing inferno. And yet... Something terrible is wrong. There are portions of Nathan Hall's own timeline that are burning. There is something FOREIGN or CORRUPTED there. Well, it'll have to be dealt with later.
Nathan Hall     The thing that is wearing Nathan Hall's skin lies dead, twitching. We won't describe the awful details of the mess that was, is, and will be made by that action. And yet, it continues to speak. It doesn't seem offended in the least by the fact that Eleanor just shot it. "In the sense that, without me, there would be a librarian named Nathan Hall, of an unremarkable nature, you are correct. A General, a leader, a diplomat, an ally: No. These are me. The things are what I placed in the fleshy vessel that would become my library. I am the library in the sense that I am that which stocks the shelves, that which brings the readers, that which burns the books. You should think of me as the Curator to his Librarian."

    "He is, after all, a Librarian. Keeping such things is his job."

    That seems to be the end of that session. Informative.
Riva Banari This has gotten profoundly weird.

But then, she should have expected it. But how can she expect something like this with her limited understanding? Her view is so narrow, like a dot trying to comprehend the hypercube. Unfortunately, that hypercube things the dot no longer needs to exist. Riva knew this was going to be the usual response of trying to stop things from eating other things, but even with a fraction of the power that the demon possesses, all he has to do is interact with Riva in that limited space to prevent the intervention that could stop it. Overwhelming force is brought to bear on her personal self, and Riva screams as she begins to feel her Self fracturing, burning away in the nonlight-

But that voice. Knowledgable. Studied. Clinical. Confident. It's like how she remembered him, before Drasilium. Is it him? She was helping him, and now he's helping her in return. That's what she will believe, regardless.

Trust is paid both ways, as her reality cracks once again-
Riva Banari Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see.                  

TRANSMIT
                                                 initiate the Akashic signal
    RECEIVE
                                        initiate the regression cadence
        COMPOUND INTEREST IS THE GREATEST FORCE IN THE UNIVERSE
                              initiate the reincarnation frequency
            THE BEGINNING IS JUST THE ENDING REPEATING
                                           this was your life

                       WITNESS - The Chain Of Being.                        

Screaming. Blood, Cries echo through the air. The smell of sweat and blood and other, stranger fluids lie heavy on the air along with woodsmoke. Blurry eyes on rock walls, rough-hewn stone, flinch at the momentary sight of a bright red-yellow thing. The screaming and cries die out as reality twists turning to be laid down on softness

A tiny hand reaches out to grasp a tiny leaf of ivy.
Riva Banari Now look what you've done, sweetling. If we didn't know better we'd think you were trying to get us killed on purpose. But you didn't know. You couldn't understand that it sees so much more, is so much stronger.

But because it doesn't play by the rules, we don't have to either.

Screeching, honking, acrid smoke clouds the sky. Choking black soot clings to exposed flesh, only yielding grudgingly to precious water. But at the end of the day, people have bills to pay. The doors fo the factory yawned wide, spitting her out as well as all of the others. While most trudged back to their home, she took a different path like she usually did. Over a fence, through an alley, into the quieter placed, where the smoke and the pain didn't reach.

There, at the darkness on the edge of twilight, was a spot of color in the middle of the sooty black. Flowers, blooms that shot up despite the poor soil. A little garden carged out of the hull of an abandoned home. Cheap, useless, but comforting.

She sat there in the growing darkness, a hand reaching out to brush against the ivy that curled up and around the building, framing her sanctum.
Riva Banari Sapience is an inherently orderly construct. You are born in chaos, but you learn quickly. The universe stamps its rules on your malleable mind like an assembly line.

You learn, you grow, you die. You don't know what lies beyond the veil. We're not going to tell you. You wouldn't understand.

White. Everything is always white on that day. White and black, anyway. She kind of hated it, really, but it was too late. The dress was picked out. She was wearing it, even. Way too late to change it. She stared into the mirror, trying to think of how she could work with this, add her own special touch to things.

She glanced out the window, and she smiled.

When the music started, everyone stood to greet the bride... And were shocked when she walked out, as she was no longer just white, but also green and brown, as they war the hastily-woven crown of ivy woven around her head, and wrappings pinned to her dress to run around her arms.

It was a minor rebellion, but it felt... right, somehow.
Riva Banari But those patterns remain. Things never are truly lost, even when it all comes crashing down.

She gave you strength to rend the lion. Now eat the honeyed entrails, because it is good, because it is sweet, because it is terrible. Initiate the Samson Prerogative. Out of the eater comes what is eaten, and out of the strong comes what is sweet.

Eyes open. The void calls, but she does not answer. She reaches, but does not move. Existence bends, warps, as she is prompted to create, to choose how to bind together past and future...

And life answers. Curling, green, growing life. Ivy clings, wrapping around and binding things together, clinging along. It holds tight, sometimes too tight, but it never stops reaching for the future, no matter what it has to work around to get there, as she fills that void with innumerable connections, curling vines that will bind what needs to be bound to reach that future.
Nathan Hall     Psyber is now Psybers. The present is condensed fourfold. These alternate selves, sometime after they freeze, will wither into temporal smoke sometime after this event; time, when it's not torn to shreds, has its own way of resolving issues like this, picking up its own messes. They'll go back to post-collapse quantum possibility-space. But not before they run down this beast like a wolfpack.

    Wings lash out. Massive teeth gnash. Claws strike. But splitting attention is a consistent, even in Timelessness. There really isn't a mode of being where math says that four is less than one. Or, perhaps there is, but this being sure doesn't hail from that. With increasingly agitated aggression -- the beast is, after all, on fire, and covered in a tremendous gash from Kimiko and Setsuko respectively -- it lashes out violently. It tries to strike at the Kalameet-Psyber, but suffers a a horrible lifehunt-building slashes to its throat instead. Archangel saturates it with nightmares. Something inside it seems particularly effective there. Duet's influence, from far in the past, seems to strike it in tandem, the impact of two Wrathborns at once. The smiting light that strikes it races down its gullet like... Well, like holy lightning, really. It surges deep into the gut and the belly of the beast. Something inside is sparked. Timelines woken up. This might have a later effect. The effect right now is a massive surge in the damage to the creature, one part of a whole that is wearing down the equivalent of endurance for it, forcing it to dip deeper and deeper into what fraction of Nathan's timeline it has devoured.
Nathan Hall     Ivy. Climbing Ivy, crawling down the wasp-like snake itself, off into the torso of Nathan, off into the future. Wherever that creation is going, it's going to help define what comes next, one assumes. One hopes that Riva's lapse into a timeless perspective will make it so that these vines crawl into the future, forming something more coherent for the individuals combating this creature to deal with. After all, this non-linear combat can't be sustained forever...!

    Elsewhen and elsehow, the Causality Demon is bound, lashed to linear time by the Ivy in order to build a future that can be accessed properly. In another instance of the fractured timeline, the Causality Demon snakes through the binding force, finding what bits of freedom it can in the causality restrictions that this act of creation is placing on it. It's likely to be violent, it's likely to be strange, but this helpful, life-aligned restriction should make sure it doesn't, at least, have the upper hand when it comes to maneuvering in time. It'll have to face them down physically.

    One assumes that, at some point, her Present will come back, right? Or, well, presumably she'll have a more coherent Present in yet another branch of things. No, it won't return for this branch. This, too, is not the 'main branch' of events. The main branch will see the results of these actions put into proper play. Like the other branch, this is still a gradual construction of temporal space necessary to deal with the being in a linear way. The plan will, still, work.

    Hopefully.
Mizuki     The butterflies do not relent: they continue on with the same ferocity at all times. They keep up the pressure such as to restrict the movements of the entity so that more butterflies, those on the defensive paradigm, begin to make actual progress in repairing the void in Mizuki's timeline. It's likely unwise, but the once malicious intention exuded by each blood cell, then driven in like stakes as each one transformed to become knives, abates somewhat. In all the chaos of the fight, Shiori's essence, for some purpose or another, fights to dull the oncoming storm of conceptual stimuli. She tries to make a Quiet Place where she can be heard. She attempts to connect tethers of Nathan's memories to create a room in which she can speak to the entity directly. And if she can succeed in doing so, she appears.

    "You can speak more clearly now," She says, though her voice warbles -- these aren't sounds, but communicative impulses. It's the same sort of thing Mizuki tried to do with Kalameet, but it's using the conceptual realm within Nathan as a conduit rather than anything generated by Shiori herself. "You're steadily adopting more of your host. I can see that. You were him, are him, want to be him. I understand. But,"The apparition elicits a pause, a break in the cognitive flow. "if you persist upon your present course, the first human impulse you will learn is Fear. It will avail you to nothing. In order to progress, to exist, you must adopt weaknesses that will make it even easier for this group to eliminate you. Do you understand that?"There's a pause, though not one long enough to indicate any expectation of reply. "Surely as one so intimately connected to the general's timeline you must know what these people are capable of. Whether or not the general lives or dies, there is no question as to whether you will. You know this, don't you? There is such a slim chance of your success. You know this. As a being comprised of action and reaction, you know this."

    "But there is another way," She goes on. "If you help me, if you promise not to consume the general's timeline completely, surely we can find some alternative for you. A parasitic life form is doomed to be dependent on other existences forever -- but that doesn't have to be so. If you sample only a little, if you take only so much as would be necessary to begin creating your -own- timeline, your own string of events, you may have a chance. You may have the opportunity to Be, and to Be for longer. I can help you in this way. I can help you -- I can save you. I can give you something else to attach to, to incubate in until your time arrives. But if you destroy your host, this will no longer be possible."

    "Do you understand?"

    Of course -she- understands how the entity's fear may begin to incarnate: it's what she was feeling mere moments ago. She died, almost died, could have died. It was terrifying.

    She attempts to force this feeling toward the entity through the white cells in demonstration.
Nathan Hall     The Causality Demon replies.

    We'll see the results in another splinter.