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Priscilla     "The where, not the not. Why in the name of an opposite of a lack of common sense would you wish to go anywhere the post isn't sent? If that were your aim, you'd need only go to any floor. You would have an infinitismal fractional chance of ending up anywhere else. Otherwise, you could stay here; I see neither hide nor hair of a package from here, plastic, post, or otherwise!" Somehow, that grin actually widens at George. "Indeed, you may wish to call it ancestral memory! More than you realize about this place is deep inside its genes, both literal and metaphorical! Hereditary are its instincts, and its illness."

    Thomas insists on the ground floor, and so it's another stomach-churning rocket ride all the way back down, thankfully mere minutes instead of the multiple hours Yuuki has correctly surmised it'd take to go by falling. How this building *exists*, never mind just the part where it stays upright, is a mystery, almost as if it were possible to support it by the sheer weight and volume and stolid, stagnant, hard and unchanging routine within it.

    Having to really stop and listen and absorb the feverish, sleepless-eyed droning on the ground floor is far from pleasant. The ticking somehow feels even louder, each second seeming longer and longer. The urge to glance for the nearest clock and see how close it is to 5pm is intrusive and overwhelming. Those with the stomach for it do begin to notice a pattern, albeit just one, and a loose one at that.

"Form 2584, stamp 10258."
"Form 3988, stamp 10258."
"Form 0945, stamp 10258."
"Form 4590, stamp 10258."
Starbound Flotilla     George seems satisfied with finally having an answer from the group on a precise number. The man flicks his cigarette onto the floor of the elevator and punches in the number that the others have decided on, as Gilgamesh asks. "Well, either we run into a post office, or we run into a whole big stack of forms. Hope you guys are braced to zoboomafoo this floor if a million papers dump out the second the elevator dings." He leans against the wall and grins brightly!
Thomas Alva Edison     Thomas looks at the judge, "Yeah, but I don't see any clues to where the floor is we need to go...so ground floor it is!" He says, with a smile back to the feline. After all, cats of a father have to stick together. Even though he was not a cat...and also because...nevermind.

    Edison, in his RAINBOW SHOULDERS steps onto the elevator and takes it back down. Upon getting to the bottom he with the group starts investigating. Is it Five o'clock yet, he wonders idly, taking a look at the clock. Alas, it was not...

    "Guys, I think the place we need to go is on 10258...call it a, strong hunch." he says, hearing the men repeatedly say the same stamp number. There is a beat, as Edison just shakes his head, this had to be the work of a simpler mind. He was sure of it...but how and why?
Gilgamesh      Gilgamesh encourages everyone to press the button, because as much as he can amuse himself literally anywhere, he *does* have things to do that aren't 'sit in this elevator.'

     Like sit in other places!
Janine Liberi     Janine is here of course. And the sheer drudgery that surrounds her is driving her nuts. Even though someone as affluent (and fated to die young) as her would likely never end up in a menial office position, it's a fear felt deeply by everyone in her generation, and this over-the-top satire of it has her on edge.

    "God, we gotta get the fuck outta here. Postal office, postal office..." She gnaws on her right thumb as she paces, trying to figure it all out. But Edison has an idea first, and she nods furiously. "Yeah fine whatever anything to get out of here."
Tina Natsumi Tina's looking a little more pale by the time they reach the ground floor, the physics defying speed of the group's rocket-elevator clearly not agreeing with her stomach. Luckily, it's been a while since she last ate (probably), so the elevator remains puke free!

This time.

"Hhgh. Remind me not to eat before bed again." Tina chimes in with a pained laugh, staggering a bit and trying not to grimace when George gets ready to hit ANOTHER BUTTON with Edison naming the floor number matching the stamp. "If that one doesn't work... Uhh. Maybe we can try 4590, 3988, 2584, then 945? So we ain't movin' too many floors at once." She suggests while bracing herself for the elevator to move again.

Come on, puke suppression. Can't look bad in front of her biggest donor now!
August Kohler August tries to listen to the drone, as they return down to base. He really doesn't like it. But he manages to hear the number, with help of Edison saying 10258, so he moves over to the buttons, the redhead placing his phone in his pocket...

And since no one else is pushing it, August pushes 10258, after taking a moment to look for it. There's a reply to Tina. "Those aren't the destination. They're the form numbers, but they all go to 10258. Which means there's something there, right?"
Aoko Aozaki     "Yeah, 10258's probably our best bet. You know, maybe we can just shove someone and steal their stamp or something, and then use the stamp to get around if they think it's that valuable," Aoko muses. "Though I gotta say, for a place that's supposed to be the source of specters, it's looking pretty dang mundane!"

    Except the elevator.

    God bless this unholy creation.
Priscilla     Floor 10258
    Postal Service.


    After a million slightly different permutations of the same, soul-suckingly monotonous, hypnotically uncanny office --the same officer, over and over and over and over and over again without end or variation or escape-- the elevator letting you out into a dark, dingy, barebones warehouse of a floor is somehow a relief. The tinny little ding is followed by silence so complete it is almost like a wave, crashing into and filling the cramped elevator with a stagnant pressure of its own, as if the vacuum of entranced droning and the synchronized falling of stamps were a sound in of itself. The sound of ticking is distant --faint, but never quite gone, even here.

    The dim purple floorspace is almost totally bare, only otherwise cluttered by stacks and stacks and stacks of poorly organized metallic crates, each looking as if they were designed to hold ammunition or the like, but instead packed with multiple tons of forms. The labels on them are nonsense and the addresses make no sense, save that a lot of them are for Alma. Great big windows let some light filter in, but only weakly, due to the thick layer of drab, grey dust that cakes the panes.

    The Batter is the first to say it. ". . . No one?" he thinks aloud. He is indeed correct. The floor appears to be completely empty, despite its ostensibly critical function for the whole Zone, and the fact that the millions of drones in the rest of the buildings are churning out stamped forms at an alarming rate even as he speaks.

    The initial scoping around, before serious examination, reveals two flights of stairs that go to a higher and lower level within the same floor, as well as two corridors completely sealed off by haphazard stacks of ridiculously heavy and robust crates, and a single sheet of paper sitting on an otherwise barren and dusty checkout desk. It reads:

    First version: They are six feet under, wrapped in hot metal and liquid plastic.
Janine Liberi     The vast quiet of the postal office is greatly preferable to the droning on other floors. Janine relishes in just long enough to get over the modern nightmare of the other floors, and is soon irked by the lack of obvious pointers here. "Seriously," she agrees with the Batter. "Postmaster must be taking one hell of a coffee break for all this to pile up." She kicks one of the stacks to make her point, sending an echoing bang through the warehouse.

    She goes to the desk first and foremost, and reads the only bit of paper on display. "Oh good, puzzles. My /favorite/," she bemoans, before taking out her smartphone and snapping a picture for later review. Next, she approaches the steps, and shouts out, "I'm taking the upper floor!" before ascending.
Thomas Alva Edison     "Hmm..." Is all Edison says immediately towards Aoko. "I do not deny it...the mundane quality of this place. While on one end it appeals to me as a well oiled machine, this is not a net that provides the oppertunity for man to dream, but a net to snare them from persuing their goals...while through a different lens..."

    Edison, however steps out of the elevator into the room. Well, it was the right way after all. Walking into the dusty, unused room, he shares the sentiment of the Batter, or at least he thinks he does. "Yes, this is odd...for a place that is vitally important, no one being here is...odd," he speaks, walking around the room. Heavy crates, filed notes and stamped forms...it is almost like a characture of a working system.

    "I think we should not split up. There could be another reason why this place is empty and seemingly forgotten."
Aoko Aozaki     "Well, if I was gonna guess, it might have something to do with this," Aoko notes, with regards to the possibly threatening possibly just a puzzle piece of paper left to sit on a desk, entirely too meant to be found to be ignored.

    "I'm just wondering if this is a clue, a threat, an admission, or all of the above!" Or none of the above, given this place!

    "Oh, don't be a sourpuss, you're entirely too big and glowy to be a kitten about this," Aoko laughs at Edison, making for the stairs headed down. "Come on, come on! Creepy floors don't explore themselves!"

    It's probably no surprise a younger Aoko is no more mature or patient.
Gilgamesh      The King of Heroes stands up from the comfortable couch. With an expression not unlike absolute boredom, he announces to the room - and the invisible puppeteer - "I am already weary of this place."

     A maul appears next to him. It's huge, and unbelievably beautiful, despite being nothing more than an exquisitely-carved hunk of rock on an equally beautifully-carved stick. It gives off a sensation of power barely restrained as the King of Heroes takes it into his hand and shoulders it. "If this is the heart, then it has defenders. If it has defenders, they will come forth when it is attacked. They will probably be the shadows we seek. Otherwise, they will likely be able to lead us there, either by choice or by accident."

     The King swings the maul lazily into the ground.

     The floor starts peeling away from the point of impact. It's not boring all the way through the floor and making an unsafe pit; it's more like the maul is stripping away the 'floor', sending it rolling backwards like waves.
Tina Natsumi      If not for crates, Tina would be hard pressed to know whether or not they were even going anywhere. Everything looking so strangely bland despite the coloration is certainly odd, and having to stare at so many labels is a painful reminder of BAD THINGS.

     So she tries not to pay too much attention to them. The stairs are a thankful change of pace, and the sheet of paper draws a curious noise from the streamer.

     "Dead person covered in... Metal and that plasticy water from out there?" Taking one more look at the sheet, she starts heading downwards while giving Gilgamesh a wide berth with that maul. "Well, six feet under might be literal, too. Won't know 'til we hit a dead end!"
August Kohler As they step forward into an extremely quiet and empty postal office in the middle of this building, August is further confused. What the hell is up with this building? He centers himself by focusing on the mission. "Batter, do you have any idea where the spectres might be?" Since the Batter likely doesn't...August steps forward, and looks at the sheet of paper.

"Six feet under. I'm going to go down, then." And when Edison says they shouldn't split up, while Janine is already heading up...August shrugs and moves to descend. "We'll be fine. We have radio if something happens. Janine, give a shout if you find something!" He seems to be in an oddly good mood, despite appearing exhausted.

And then August goes to descend, he stops to watch Gilgamesh smash through the floor. It's kind of weird, but Gilgamesh has logic. He'll wait a second to see if spectres crawl up or if the stairs collapse from it, before proceeding downstairs.
Starbound Flotilla     "If I had to guess, lady," George asides, swaggering to Janine and Aoko. "You're looking at something about a destination. Nothing comes through here that isn't all about going somewhere, right? Must just be, eh, a shitty address? You'd think they'd have numbers." He peers up the stairs. Janine's heading up alone, while the others are headed down.

    "Well, common sense tells me that sour stuff over there," He gestures towards Janine's ascent. "Is gonna be glad to spend all her time alone if everyone's heading downstairs." He stops, peers down the stairs, and then... "So, obviously, I gotta head upstairs." Literally just to mess with her. The old timer makes his way up. "Hey, whassyerface!" He calls out, to nobody in particular. "Make sure to get the Batter going up or down or something! Probably down, easier to take out a floor and bring ghosts down than to send them up." He must be talking to that mysterious "       ".
Priscilla     Whether up or down, the stairs lead to more of the same. It's probably understandable that if this whole building, the Plastic Administration, is ultimately channeled through the postal service, it must occupy a great deal of space. There are likely stairs above and beyond even those, as this 'floor' is many times larger than any of the single storey office floors. Crates upon crates pile up in every corner, unsorted, unmoved, some left there so long and backed up so badly that they too are covered with as much dust as the windows. Nobody can go to this floor for fear of spectres, and yet the bureaucratic machine doesn't even slow down; the machine is so much bigger that none of its cogs can stop it.

    Descending a floor leads to a maze of dust and crates and narrow passages between desks. A few more mysterious slips of paper are found scattered around, thoroughly belonging to no one --the only pieces of lettering left here, as all personnel cleared out their things when they left.

Second Version: They are eight, and they have long beards. They watch what is happening from their high silver spheres.

Third Version: One big insect, whose mandibles spit meat."

Fourth Version: They are four, each one attributed to an element. They protect their respective crystals.


    The floor above isn't any better. It almost seems like just another procedural generation of the other two. No signage. No direction. No way on earth anyone could find their way around this place, and yet it somehow exists. How were these crates ever delivered anyways? There doesn't seem to be a harbour or airport. The crates don't even look like they should fit up or down the stairs.

Fifth Version: Five, like the fingers on a hand. Their lungs produce primordial smoke.

Sixth Version: There are but two, in a secret zone.


    The rolling of reality caused by the crash of Gilgamesh's hammer causes teetering piles of crates to upset and crash down, creating a spreading wave of deafening, metallic avalanches, which unseal the exits that the most overstuffed of piles had been blocking. Oddly, the cacophony is met with ringing silence. Even now, yet the oppressive feeling of this floor doesn't change; the invisible charge, the stifling tension, the tick tock tick tock in the air, only seems to grow stronger. Gilgamesh feels the tingling on his neck of spectres alright, but turning around, he finds only a paltry quantity crawling out of the cracks to meet him, like timid, starving rats, rather than the murderous apparitions so far.

    On the lower floor, the avalanche opens the way to a chest. No spectres. On the upper floor, still no spectres. The crash collapses a wall to wall . . . wall, of crates, suddenly exposing the end of a wide, main hallway, wherein a second elevator is visible in the wall, where it should logically be sitting *outside* the building, since there are windows right next to it, in the same wall it occupies. The buttons are dark, with a red light flashing to indicate it isn't in service, or is otherwise locked. In front of it, there is a reception desk with a single, pasty, especially sickly looking office drone, sitting blearily at attention. He'd been trapped behind all those crates for . . . how long? And he hadn't said a word? He barely seems to notice the others still.

    The Batter merely communicates "The Spectres will be with their own kind. That man." when asked by August. It sounds cryptic, but he'd made his perception of a certain someone abundantly clear last time, not being one to mince words --when he speaks any. The paltry assortment of Spectres around him and Gilgamesh are starved, emaciated looking animals, with long, lemur-like tails caked in soot, and hollow black pits for eyes and skull-like faces, their corpus standing up on their back like the bristles of a threatened cat. They hover like flies, darting back and forth in a dizzying, unnatural way.
Gilgamesh      Gilgamesh pays absolutely no mind to the little creatures, or the office worker. The most attention he spares is to open the Gate of Babylon, its golden ripples shimmering around him, and rain down destruction upon them as he always does. The weapons come stabbing down and then vanish in bursts of golden sparkles as they're retrieved.

     Meanwhile, the King himself simply walks off to find this elevator Edison mentioned.
Thomas Alva Edison     Edison, ends up following the people who go up, shaking his head and wondering why he bothers.

    Litterally, these kids are like herding cats. Litteral cats. He is sure they're going different directions out of pure spite. Edison considers things again, well...it would cover territory faster. The problem comes down to only being one Batter.

    However, the thing that catches his attention most of all is the elevator where there should not be one. He looks out a window to see if he can see...something? A shaft or anything to indicate maybe a glass elevator or something attatched to the outside. Failing that, he looks at it. Attempting to see if it is locked, or merely turned off, and if he can...jury rig it to work for him.
Aoko Aozaki     "Huh... so one big insect, with eight bearded guys, and four crystal guardians. Kind of weird someone would leave that info lying around like that," Aoko says, though as they regroup to head to the new elevator, she asides to the Batter:

    "How do you know that's what he is, anyway? He said he was one of the queen's agents, right? Are you saying the queen would hire angry ghosts? ... or that the queen might herself be an angry ghost? And why would he be going around killing specters as one of the queen's agents if he was one, himself?"

    Well, it wouldn't be that weird if there were feral specters and less feral ones. Though that man was definitely very rude, and powerful beyond the things encountered so far.

    "Maybe we can grill him for his side of the story before you bat his head off." That'd probably help.
August Kohler As they reach the notes, August takes a picture, and then moves to open the chest when the avalanche opens a way. Thanks, Gilgamesh! Grabbing whatever is in the chest, August proceeds to move to regroup, though he replies to Aoko. "If he's a spectre...well, we've seen what they do and are like. I wouldn't be surprised if he's a monster pretending to be 'human'. Or the queen, either. I already shared my theory about her and this place, after all." August's anti-monster bias is clearly applying blanketly to spectres - it's known that he trusts the Batter, after all, since the Batter's the most 'human' thing he's seen.

"And if the spectres are going to be with him, that means he has to be controlling them or something, right? It's the only thing that makes sense."
Janine Liberi     Janine snaps photos of those notes and texts them out to August as she looks around the floor. The rumbling from below caused by Gilgamesh gets her to audibly 'tsk.' "Can these assholes not go a day without causing a mess?"

    The collapse does reveal an elevator though, presumably their way out. The furry in the group seems to be the techhead, so she leans against the wall and watches him. "So how's it looking Simba? Wait shit, maybe Kimba is better since he's a white lion... anyway, does it run?"
Starbound Flotilla     When Thomas goes to investigate the outside, George goes to investigate the worker. Engaging socially means more chances to keep Janine active and engaged with the problem too, and The Youth These Days always have such trouble with that. "Hey!" He snaps several times to get the drone's attention. "How's it going, Right Angle? Any idea when the elevator's gonna be back in service? I'm an Engineer and he's an inventor, we could get this baby purring like a Judge if this thing's out of order." He spins a wrench around his hand in a low-key stylish kind of way. "What's the situation? Why're you here when everyone's all cleared out over the ghosts business?"
Priscilla     The spectres that surround Gilgamesh are far more meek than the others. While every one of them so far has instantly attacked the group on sight, often even getting the jump, these ones hesitate until they are summarily skewered to every surface like an unusually haphazard bug collection, whereupon the Batter begins whacking them like golf tees to fill the empty time. It's weird, for what is supposedly 'the source of all the spectres'.

    "The guardian has fallen to impurity, and so this Zone is now impure. If everything were as it was supposed to be, there would be no spectres. If there were no need to purify it, there would be no sacred mission." The Batter says, then starts walking towards the stairs. "Okay. I must purify him regardless, though."

    The chest contains a Fortune Ticket: Recovers 200 HP. unhelpfully as usual. It's gold around the borders. Edison looking outside sees nothing. No shaft. No adjoining elevator car. There's nothing that seems to exist beyond the elevator doors --at least not in a place that can be accessed without going through the doors themselves, as the only possible entrance into whatever space the car itself occupies. It seems to *work*, but be locked down with some administrative override.

    The square-headed, bald cubicle-dweller stirs to attention when George snaps his fingers in his face, finding his voice and speaking up in a jittery, unsteady tone, practically vibrating with an intensely uncomfortable aura of frayed nerves even beyond those of the quietly terrified farm and mine workers.

"Uh . . . Uh . . . The access to the secret lift is uh . . . forbidden . . . Did . . . Did I say secret?" he insists, sunken black eyes glancing left and right, thick with sleepless shadows.
Tina Natsumi      What strange notes. Tina takes a couple of pictures herself, then waits until August and Aoko are done with it before turning the sheets around to snap pictures of the back just in case. Worst case scenario, she wasted a tiny bit of storage space on her phone that'll never be erased.

     Ever.

     "Eight beards watching stuff, insect barfing meat, four elemental crystal... Things. Five smoke-breaths. Two... Somethings." Tina furrows her brow while regrouping at the elevator, the puzzle drawing out even more questions than answers thanks to all the gathered clues. "And... We still got the first one talkin' about a dead 'they' that doesn't even have a number. Y'think they might be in a coffin under the sea somewhere?" A beat, and then Tina shakes her head. "Nah, that doesn't clear the hot metal part..."
Starbound Flotilla     "Yeah, don't worry." George says. "We're mechanical kinds of people. It's our job to know about secret lifts, don't worry." George says, waving a hand vaguely. "How do we de-forbid it? There a key somewhere around here? You got a key, Right Angle?" He continues bothering and hassling and being a general issue for the drone. "My friends got an appointment with the Queen's inspector and they're making a huge mess waiting to see 'im. Didn't he come through here or something?"
Aoko Aozaki     "How do you fall into impurity, though?" Aoko queries the Batter, since apparently these are topics he's willing to speak on more than usual. "I mean, I get it, specters are impure, you have to do your thing, but how does it come to that? How do specters come to be? How does an elite agent of the queen, in charge of killing specters, end up one himself?"

    It might end up important, later.

    Although August elicits a frown, the first out of Aoko so far. "Monster's just a word people invented because what's different is scary. I don't like using it until all the cards are on the table. Call it sympathy for my kin."

    'Her kin,' she says, looking as human as everyone present. She does get called a monster a lot though. Gaia's a jerk.

    She lets George handle the starving drone for now, since he seems to have a plan of action.
Priscilla     "An . . . An appointment. Ah? Uh . . . Really? No, uh . . . I think that's . . . uh . . . impossible . . . I can't let you pass . . . Unless . . . you uh . . . you have the code?" the pallid bureaucratic cog responds to George. Despite his words being those of bleary confusion, as if still not quite aware of where he is or who he's talking to, he emanates such an overwhelmingly, petrifyingly nervous energy that it feels like it wouldn't be surprising if he outright combusted, like his silent, hysterical tension is some kind of physical pressure. That level of jumpiness is outright superhuman --as in quite possibly inexpressible by a normal person.

    The Batter speaks to Aoko, and Aoko only, as the Choir deals with the drone. "No one is in charge of purifying spectres, because the spectres aren't supposed to exist. The fact that they have appeared necessitates the role of the Batter. The Queen's Inspector can say anything he likes, but the guardian is meant to maintain order in this Zone. He has failed, so his Zone must be cleansed of his impurity."
Janine Liberi     Janine doesn't have much to do, but George has stumbled across someone who may be in the know. All they need is the code. "Of fucking course we need the code. Just finding the thing behind all these boxes isn't challenge enough, oh no. Now we need to sync up with the logic of whatever cruel God designed this place and solve this shit. I just wanna smack some uppity ghosts!"

    August makes a suggestion over the radio; what about the numbers on the papers? Janine promises to kick his ass if he's right, and storms over to 'Right Angle.' "Hey, Twitchy. Is the code 6-8-1-4-5-2?" Her hand is concerningly close to her sword as she delivers the sequence like a threat.
Thomas Alva Edison     Edison sighs...

    Well, this is likely to not go forward. He could try brute forcing it, but it might just do more damage to the object than help them forward. As he stands up, however, someone mentions a code, and the pieces of paper match up. Janine is already on the case, however, putting two and two together, with August's help. Well, he supposes that is why they are working as a team, more ground covered that way. Though he still thinks splitting up was not a good idea. Faster is not always better, in his honest opinion. Not...always.

    Just after you nail the formula down. Get a working product and manufacture it well first. Then you speed it up.

    Edison, with his mind on how to properly speed up a process walks towards Right Angle, as he is being called, and smiles pleasantly at the drone.
August Kohler Aoko gets a frown in return from August. "I've seen things that fit the bill of monster. I mean, we've seen these spectres, and they fit what I'd consider it." He's a monster hunter in his mind, after all...though he quickly shakes off the funk and moves back downstairs, briefly.

August's going to glance in the pathways that the avalanche freed, see if there's more loot, and if so, clear them. If he doesn't find anything immediately, August will head back up to the elevator, hopefully with the code problem now solved.
Gilgamesh      Gilgamesh puts in 6-8-1-4-5-2 as he hears it over the radio because he assumes that is probably right.
Aoko Aozaki     "Huh. Weird. Why lie about something like that though? He was yelling at that farmer about how only he's allowed to deal with specters in this Zone, wasn't he? Got all huffy about us going in, like we were a problem. I'm not saying he's not shady, guy sure looked like a monstrous specter alright, but he's also the most human thing we've met so far. Wouldn't exactly call all these worker drones very people-like, and the common specters have just been mindless angry ghosts as far as I can tell."

    Then again, maybe that guy's script is just to act like an angry jerk and he's no different.

    "SO ANYWAY! Were you actually a batter for a team before deciding you had some holy mission to see through? Got any aspirations in life besides purifying specters? A tragic backstory, maybe?"
Starbound Flotilla     "I guess we have the code! I don't actually know, that's not my department. I'm just following rules, you know." George says, shrugging a bit and settling to one side, arms crosses and head cocked to one end. "Just like you. So I guess my friends have /a/ code. That good enough to make this work, Right Angle? You supposed to let people by if they know about the secret lift and have a secret code?"

    He smiles placidly, and stays well out of the way of his friends in this task, because he can sense that Frustration Punch feeling that Janine moves with.
Tina Natsumi      Trying to sort out the puzzle isn't going to get Tina far. Instead, she heads back to the elevator while keeping an eye on Janine and the one who may or may not be getting punched soon. She pantomimes talking with her hands (somehow) followed by a punch to an invisible person, then makes a big X with her hands.

     Someone has to warn him not to stick to the rules.
Priscilla     "The . . . The code, it . . . it is exactly correct." whispers the pasty, exhausted desk worker, sat behind that sealed-off desk for who knows how long. It isn't a whisper of surprise or confusion or awe, but of sheer, brain-blanking terror. ". . . Ho- . . . How . . . ? You . . . You must not pass!" he suddenly exclaims, jumping up in his chair, sunken eyes darting straight to Janine. "I don't want to die!" he screams, his voice jumping in pitch and volume to a sharp stab to the ears, the nervous energy around him becoming almost *oppressive*.

    Then, some kind of . . . buffer overflow happens. Like his agitation had tripped the cap and circled around into some kind of petrified zen. "I'm going . . . to Alma . . . It will be nice."

    His head blows off. That isn't to say it explodes or is shot, but it literally blows off, like a cork. It even makes a loud, resounding pop, bouncing off the wall, the ceiling, the desk and then rolling onto the floor, leaving wet splats of pitch black 'blood'. Like a shaken champagne bottle, the clean stump of his neck begins *gushing* a high pressure *geyser* of that inky black gore, spraying and spraying and spraying more than he could ever hold in his fragile little body, wildly erupting straight up into the air so high that it hits the ceiling. The smell of charred flesh --of plastic melting in a microwave --of sulphur fumes --of coal smoke-- fills the room on the spot, oozing out of him as if released from an opened can.

The Batter used Wide Angle!
Burnt x1: Ailing employee of Zone 1.
No weakness/resistance.

    Without his head, the office drone's body begins jittering about wildly, advancing on you as if in frame-skipped fast forward, swinging its arms with bone-crushing, superhuman strength --the kind involved in legendary feats of adrenaline, ten times over. It flails wildly in vicious, all-consuming terror, lashing out at everyone around it, splashing them with fountains of petroleum blood.
Janine Liberi     "Oh for fuck's sake, August was right. Gotta kick his ass now," Janine grumbles as she turns from Right "Twitchy" Angle and pulls out her phone to inform the people downstairs. Only for the pained convulsions of the drone behind her to grab her attention, just in time to see his head literally pop off like a champagne bottle. "WHAT THE FU-" she begins, as black ichor spills from the stump, and its limbs begin to thrash.

    Her sword comes up to block the arm, but the sheer panicked power behind it still launches her sliding back along the aisle. "God, people can't even die right here... c'mon Biancabella!" A look into her polished blade brings forth the maimed Persona, who conjures up a gale-force wind that launches Janine right back towards the Burnt. Her sword flashes as she flies by, piercing their oppressive presence as she aims to open as many cuts on it as possible. Maybe lessening that torrent will weaken it?
Aoko Aozaki     Oh god it's a zombie!

    An attrociously fast zombie.

    A younger Aoko is a bit more easily startled, and certainly seems a bit less comfortable around combat than she'd previously been - the Gilgamesh style of standing still and lancing energy blasts around gives way to a more hectic attempt to avoid getting flailed at (and a notable failure, at that, the headless drone splashing Aoko and ruining her school uniform with that weird blood).

    All of Aoko's magic goes straight into her legs. Her magic circuit(s) flare(s) up visibly, blue circuitry that suddenly roars like a jet engine.

    "Geez, first specters, now zombies! Well, this guy just lost all of his redeeming features alongside his head and sense!" And it's doubtful they can beat it back into him.

    Flames gush out of Aoko's foot and the rear of her knee as she crouches down, stands her ground, and then delivers an earth-shattering kick to blast that drone as far back as possible.

    It's quite the kick.

    It might help that there's a burst of blue light following after it, but it turns out this magus knows how to throw a decent kick! There's skill behind it, not just raw magical enhancement and laser power. Though those contribute way more to the danger, really.
August Kohler August doesn't make it out to the corridor, when the others are inputting the code, and he stops as the desk worker freaks out. As the buffer overflow happens, and his head blows off, the mirrored bracelet on his wrist is immediately brought to eye level, especially as the corpse keeps moving, and petroleum blood is spilled out. In that second, August realizes two things.

These creatures aren't human. And also, they can become spectres. Which explains how their boss is also a spectre, perhaps.

"Let's do this...Persona!"

Those familiar with August's Persona probably know that when he summons it, there's a spark of blue energy. That doesn't happen, but instead, a grey aura appears, manifesting around August, as blotches of dark red, darker than blood, bleed through it. The aura ends up manifesting in front of August, intercepting the petroleum blood and the attack as a massive eight-foot tall knight in black powered armor appears. With his armor fitted with thrusters and exhaust pipes, Dietrich steps forward, holding a large greatsword that seems mechanical. He stares at the corpse.

With absolutely superhuman strength, the sword is swung into the corpse, moving to batter and slash it. It's not a strong strike, because August is exhausted, but it might be enough to knock the Burnt into the air for the others to throw strikes into. August has a sort of fiery zeal to him, as he fights.

He knows what he's supposed to be doing. "Tear him apart!"
Thomas Alva Edison     "What the...?"

    Thomas takes a step back, "Son, you need to calm down. Take a long deep breath and think abou..." and the transformation is horrifying. It looks like someone is burning, it smells like someone is burning. Edison is forced to defend himself, bracing against the attack. His resiliance and simply harder than it has any right to be body weathering through the blow as he braces against the attack. This isn't right...maybe the batter was on to something here. Maybe something about the spectres does something to people, but at the same time...there were barely any here.

    He can puzzle this out later, he had to fight back now. Electrity builds in his hands as he swings back, aiming to slam his hands down into the arms of the burnt, before attempting to smash him back onto the ground.

    "Son, you NEED to control yourself. The only thing you have to fear, is fear itself! Now struggle with it, bring it back under control and return to what you were."
Tina Natsumi "Hey now. Nobody's gonna kill you, don't you worry." Tina tries reassuring the desk worker that's started freaking out, but it's to no avail when he goes from freaking out to eerily calm to head removal.

That last one is likely where things have diverged greatly from reality. The geyser of blood and chunks is a little less freaky by comparison, but still rather horrifying to behold. Jumping back as that stench spreads, Tina brings her arms up in front of her to half push half defend against the flailing drone swinging out at her. She manages to push herself back enough to not just pancake against the wall of the elevator, but the pain still lances through her arms enough to discourage doing that again.

"Of course it'd get weird like this... Is it ever normal with ghosts?!" Tina flips her phone around to peer at the reflection on the case, calling forth a robotic Persona clad in red, white, and blue. "If they ain't dying normal-like, then we just gotta put 'em to rest. Uncle Sam!" It's gripping what looks like a bomb this time around, the moderately-taller-than-human machine whirring to life as it tosses the bomb like a football at the headless drone. On impact with just about anything, it'll detonate with a miniature mushroom cloud!

It's not actually radioactive, of course, but the imagery is what's really important. Also, making sure this ghost stays dead if they can actually re-kill it.
Gilgamesh      The man's madness is enough to hit the King of Heroes in the back as he's standing there playing with the elevator. The King stumbles forward, smashing his face into the elevator hard enough to leave a (beautiful) dent. When he straightens, his nose is bent.

     With an irritated flick of his thumb, the King presses his nose back into place. There is a click. There is an irritated glance towards the Batter.

     "You missed him."

     The holds up his hand.

     The Gate of Babylon opens wide.

     "I won't."

     The Gate expels a massive weapon - a huge sword just comes *flying* out of nowhere, nearly as large as the room they're in. It grinds through the walls, grinds through the ceiling and the floor, grinds through the desks, and, with all probability, is going to grind right through the guy himself.

     Gil's just tired of this place enough to wreck it on purpose while he kills the target.
Starbound Flotilla     "Woah! Woah woah woah!" George shouts, ducking and weaving. "Ahhh! Shit, watch it, he's burnt out!" He tries to get out his shotgun, but the weapon is too large, too unwieldly. Before he can level it right at the drone, his superpowered arms slam brutally into the gun and blast it away. "Son of a bitch..." He mutters, drawing a hefty pistol. "Hey! Bats! This isn't a purification situation, is it? 'Cause--" He bounces off one of the impacts, and skids over the ground, but keeps steady footing.

    George keeps his distance, both hands hoisting the gun and peppering the thing, trying to keep back from the... Truly /startling/ amounts of damage suddenly being levied against the lone drone. Jesus! These guys have a lot of firepower to blow on this guy. Some of the cover he has to take behind the crates is just to keep the shockwave off him. "'Cause apparently I'm not sure there's gonna be much left of Right Angle here to purify!"
Priscilla     When Janine halts the Burnt's advance with her wind and begins slashing it open, like a pinata subject to too many grazing hits, shallow rips open in its body and begin disgorging its insides like a leaky barrel as well. With the chainsaw sword grinding into it, black blood flecks and sprays absolutely everywhere. Edisons' demands fall on deaf ears --rather, no ears at all, lacking a head-- and the Burnt thrashes against him with all its strength, the convulsions of electrocution only making it wilder and more forceful.

    Holes sprout all over its body as George ducks for cover, splattering the black gore over the walls that begins to look not dissimilar to him as when Yuuki had used Artemis on the fat spectre in the barn. The Burnt's struggling with Thomas is interrupted when Aoko comes flying out of left field with an aerial magical rocket kick, smashing it out of the way so hard that its wrists snap and tear, leaving Edison still holding both of its hands in his big meaty paws where Aoko goes flying away with the rest of its body against her heel, and then against the wall. When she leaps back, it crawls out of its crater, only for the Bater to suddenly weave out from behind her and smash it right back in with a sickening crack of his bat and a white hot blast from the Add-On, putting it back into place when Tina drops an itsy bitsy nuke on it, and Gilgamesh's giant sword just ploughs through ceiling-to-floor, letting the smoke clear to reveal only a deep trench swimming with black liquid, slowly bubbling with the noxious smell of hot tar.

    The code Gil punched in, still lingering on the screen, suddenly flashes. The light turns green, the elevator *ding*s, and the doors rattle open.

Floor ???
The Director's Office.


    The elevator only has one setting. It carries them automatically to a tiny, equally purple waiting room, without so much as a chair to sit on while no doubt meant to fidget under the stale lighting. A single door mere feet away opens up into *something* like an executive suite, for this place. The room beyond is much larger --big enough to host a pair of decorative pools to either side, splashing with artful ripples and waves of luminescent white plastic lit from below, and a long, curved desk at the head of the room, by a wall of panoramic windows.

    They've come just in time to find Dedan. The tall, gaunt, unnaturally twisted, ashen grey man behind the desk, all gigantic snarling teeth and scrunched black pits for eyes, is surrounded on every side by thick swarms of spectres, popping out of thin air and congealing on him like flies to honey, piling into the room by the dozens.

    "Miserable morons! Piss off!" Dedan snarls, sweeping out one gnarled and clawed hand, and ripping through five spectres with splatters of red blood --much darker than what the batter produces, almost a neutral tone, but blood nonetheless. "This is my Zone! You ain't got the right to be here!" Another furious swing takes out a half dozen more spectres, replaced right away. "Get outta my sight, you phantoms of shit!" Dedan screams, smashing both hands on the desk and releasing a sweeping pair of white beams, scissoring around him in full clockwise orbits, finally obliterating the gaping flock and their dead fish stares all at once.

    "hhh . . . hhh . . . YOU!" he roars, pointing to the door you enter from. "It's you, you're the source of all my troubles! The ectoplasmic lord and his personal army who've been eyeing my beloved zone. What do you want? Why've you decided to be a pain in the ass?! I've dedicated my whole life to this place! You've got no right to ruin it with your damn ghosts! SHOVE OFF!!"
Aoko Aozaki     "You know, King, everytime I feel like I might manage to impress humanity's oldest hero, you just open that magical gate of yours and out comes something I couldn't even conceive of," Aoko says, having landed by Gilgamesh, and perhaps being just a bit huffy, but also playful. Then she spends the next several minutes trying to get the blood off her clothes.

    Yeah that's not happening.

    At least the elevator cooperates and takes them right to where they want to go. Look at that office! Look at all that... purple.

    And the cursing.

    "Whoa, hey, calm down! We're here to get rid of those specters too, you know? I mean, the Batter over here seems to think you're one, and you seem to think he's one, but let's not get muddled up in who's an abomination against the World and who isn't, yeah?"

    Diplomacy! Can Aoko do it? No, almost assuredly not. But she'll try! It's better than nothing.

    "Though, you seem to have things handled here. Nice moves! So um... how about we sit down and talk this out? Figure out why everyone thinks everyone else is a specter."
Janine Liberi     Janine looks at the bubbling puddle that was once Right Angle (Twitchy to his friends) and makes a face. "What the hell was that? I mean, I can't blame him for it, I'd lose my head too in a place like this." With a terrible pun made, she heads into the now open elevator and tolerates the cramped ride to the Director's Office.

    The first thing she sees upon arriving is Dedan killing - no, purifying - a bunch of spectres. "Whoa shit, someone else who can put 'em down for good! Hey man, we're on a holy-" She's cut off as the Director swivels on them and begins hurling accusations that they are the source. So Janine does what she does best; escalate by returning fire with bad language.

    "Hey, fuck you man! We're the ones who just had to crawl through your shitty office building dealing with your godawful bureaucracy to try and get rid of these things! How dare you come at us with your bullshit, you toothy prick!"
Thomas Alva Edison     Edison is left with two arms in his hands. The realization hits him after a small delay of realizing what was going on. The arms drop as the horror is realized just a little. Edison takes a steading breath, before he can do anything else the Drone was dead. His attempts to talk the creature down fell on deaf ears. His mind so far gone to fear, causing him only to let lose a sigh. "Well, you do not have to be afraid anymore.." he says, softly, and with a silent moment for the deceased.

    Without a word he walks towards the elevator. He is silent the whole way up, until the door opens and they are treated to the boss of the zone killing Spectres.

    Edison comes to life, perhaps out of necissity. "No, stay your hand. We are not spectres...this man is the Batter.." motioning to the Batter, "He is here to stop them, and I suppose we are here to help him. However, we don't know some things...like what they actually are, why they show up...and who is actually controling them."

    Edison moves forward, even as his body is pushed to his limits. Sighing as people already get mouthy. "Please," he says, with a forceful, but calm voice. "Lets stay calm, peaceful, and figure this out."
Tina Natsumi      "Did we..? Wait. Nah, we got it. Not bad, everyone! Not ba-" Tina gets a whiff of the liquified Burnt, bolts right out of that elevator when the doors open, and just pukes right there in the corner of the waiting room.

     It was a valiant effort, but at least she didn't get it in the elevator itself.

     And then there's a crazy thin man just tearing the spectres apart bare-handed. Looking between Aoko and Janine with their contrasting approaches, Tina laughs heartily and wipes her mouth off once before stepping forward.

     "Howdy, pard! We ain't here with the ghosts. We're here to help out with puttin' down this whole ghost problem, even." She reaches over to clap the Batter's shoulder with her (clean) hand, then turns to Dedan with a curiously raised eyebrow. "So what's your job here, anyway? SO us ghost hunters know who we're workin' around."
Starbound Flotilla     George takes a heavy breath, holstering his gun. He gives Janine a quick, jovial response that sounds a bit too at-ease for the circumstances. "This place is hell, ain't it?" He heads into the elevator. "Ever notice how everyone's on edge, never happy, they're always stressed or pissed or got their brain smoothed by white-collar hell? Kind of a mess, isn't it?" He chuckles. "Just remember. This place tries to antagonize the Choir directly head-on. Make sure you don't think that's exclusive. Might be that everyone around here's got the whole world against them, same as the holy mission."

    George heads into the waiting room after the elevator finishes, but then seems to make a realization. "I'mma wait back here, if that's cool with you all." He says, taking a lean against the wall. "Gotta catch my breath. Old man lungs, you know." For reasons that are his own, George doesn't show his face to Dedan up ahead, letting the others sort out the encounter however they will. What's his deal? His deal is a mystery.
Gilgamesh      The King puts on his most famous expression - a wry smirk that simultaneously says I'm Better Than You And I Know It and I Appreciate Watching You Try To Reach My Heights - as Aoko sidles up next to him. "Hah. Don't give up. The heights may be unreachable, but the act has meaning nonetheless."

     Then Dedan happens.

     The King strides forward as if he owns the place. As far as he's concerned, he does. As everyone else asks for the man to stay calm, the King simply walks up to the desk, fearlessly, apathetic to the dead and dying and purified things that lie around him. His fingers slide into his coat. He snaps his fingers, and the medical-tasting cigarette given to him in the elevator appears, already lit, between his pointer and middle. He takes a taste of it before flicking it back into the gate.

     "I am Gilgamesh, King of Heroes, King of Uruk and of Babylon and of Denmark, King of All That Is, Was, and Ever Shall Be. I'm in a foul mood, mongrel; disrespect me again and you lose your head."

     It's matter-of-fact. It's not huffy or bratty or braggy - it's simply a statement of truth.

     "You own this Zone? Then as your King you will answer me this: when did these worthless creatures first appear? Why do you hate the Batter? And whom do you think we are working for?"

     "What do you know about "          "?"
August Kohler As they slay the horrible creature, take the elevator, and end up in Dedan's office, August strides forward confidently, flanked by his Persona. As Dedan freaks out at them, August...doesn't get angry. He seems a bit bemused, actually, as he shouts at them. It's when he says that the ghosts are /theirs/ that there's a light in August's eyes, as August approaches the desks and places his hands on it, staring forward at Dedan.

"Nice to meet you too, Dedan. My name is August Kohler." There's emphasis. "And I'd stay your tongue about calling us monsters. Isn't that kind of rude?" There's an implicit 'or I'll cut it out' there, as August decides, internally, that Dedan is not their friend. But...tenet one of his new code is to try and show compassion and empathy to others. So August will do so, and not move to attack him.

"We're looking for information on the spectres. The Batter here says you're one of them. Isn't this your district? Why are the spectres flooding it? We can cooperate, you know."

Up until they have to get into a fight, at least. August hasn't only not ruled it out, he's expecting it. But he's confident, very confident, that he'll be able to handle whatever Dedan has to throw at them.

Though something's uncomfortable about the fact Dedan can purify spectres, and that the blood is a different color. But the Batter hasn't let August down yet...and Dedan, clearly, has.
Priscilla     "How dare you respond?!" is what Dedan spits out all of a sudden. "And how dare you imagine that I'd just put up with this shit?!" he continues yelling, with zero regard to what anyone has to say to him. The moment someone has something to say to him, whether level and calm, or just spitting back at him, he only yells louder for them having the gall to even reply at all. The only one he actually replies to with any sort of answer is Gilgamesh. That alone is kind of impressive, but definitely not the tone he wants to hear. The King can get him to answer, but even the King can't get this 'guardian' to be an inch of civil.

    "You should know since they're your fault, you arrogant prick! Whatever you did a couple of weeks back, it's been pissing me off non-stop every day ever since! I hate every single one of you, and I don't give a shit what you're up to; leave!" He blanks for a second, before only raising his voice somehow further. "*Who?* Are you screwing around with me? Listen good. I'll make this simple. Get outta here and take your goddamn spectres with you, or I'm gonna kill you. All of you. I hope that's clear enough for ya. If I see you around again . . . You're dead."

    After being an absolute piece of shit who talked over everyone, screamed accusations, ignored anything they had to say, accused them of lying, implicated them as part of some kind of conspiracy that doesn't exist, and then insulted and threatened them for the past two minutes, Dedan puts the cherry on the top of the sundae by suddenly disappearing with a loud, electric *bwomm* and a flashing upwards halo just like the red transporter cube that had taken them out of Zone 0 and brought them into Zone 1.

    There is, in fact, some form of transporter behind the desk. Little more than a strange, faintly glowing section of floor, but it seems stepping on that will take them . . . probably, wherever Dedan went.

    The Batter, stoic throughout the whole tirade, finally answers Aoko, of all times. "I did." he says simply, giving her perhaps the most unlikely answer possible. "And not at the moment. Too much depends on the completion of the mission. I can't be distracted with thoughts like that."
Gilgamesh      Gilgamesh's dangerous calmness does not extend to the room. The Gate of Babylon opens in nearly every direction around him. The King is obscured by a sea of ripples as blades emerge around him like some kind of magical golden porcupine.

     The weapons just erupt outwards. It's an indiscriminate festival of destruction as the King just pours all of his extremely considerable firepower into doing as much damage to the office as he meaningfully can. Clues, potential treasures - all of it is just being rendered down into a fine paste by an unbelievable amount of artifacts fired in quite literally every direction. Not the floor, not the lights, not the windows, not the ceiling, not a thing is spared his irritation.

     It's not as much pleasure as the King would like.

     But it is pleasurable nonetheless.

     And he might still destroy the zone later, just for fun. He hasn't decided yet.

     But not until Dedan can see it. So that he can watch Dedan's face sink into despair.
Thomas Alva Edison     Edison feels he is reaching the end of his rope with all of this. Between the 'boss' of the zone acting like a complete asshole, angry that people even talked to him or tried to talk to him at all...was kind of a slap in the face for trying to give him the benifit of the doubt. He can not even say it was because of people being needlessly antagonistic, though he was afraid it was going to lead to other self fulfilling situations at this rate. Gilgamesh trashes the office, and August gets a nod from Edison. It was quick thinking, that was for sure, and Edison feels old again. Of course it could be just his wounds, more than anything. He might need to try some of that...flesh...
Janine Liberi     Janine's scowl deepens as Dadan just blows her off and only answers the shiny golden himbo that is Gilgamesh. She stamps a foot down and shouts "SHUT UP!" loud enough to make ears ring. Out comes her sword, which she points at Dadan.

    "You're a piece of shit, so we're gonna put you down. Then all those miserable wretches who you've got losing their heads can go free. Put your head to the floor and apologize and it'll be quick."