Scene Listing

||

Scene Schedule

||

Scene Schedule RSS

Owner	Pose
Xion	LAST TIME: The party attended the mobilization of the Galbadian Armed Forces (G-Forces) push into an abadoned, war-torn train depot known as the "Train Graveyard" as the tip of the spear for the operation, backed up by various elites. The objective: To find access into the below-ground areas mapped out by Galbadian scouts, and find the source of the disturbance to the magical fabric of reality that was causing a wildly above-average amount of daemonic, darkness, and other nasties incursing on the area. Fighting a demon shaped like a SHITTY HOUSE and two ancient war machines possessed by ghosts, the party cleared the way for a forward base to be set up, and took a much-needed break before venturing down below. NOW: The operation begins with the party's attached liason officer, Zack Fair, assemblig people at the somehow much-less-haunted Train Graveyard central area. The forward command post hastily yet professionally erected and cleared, resembles a concrete tent set up with sand-bags and a slab of foundational block treated with some sort of white powder - most likely salt - and staffed now with a bustle of Galbadian soldiers and the operation commander, Angeal Hewley. The campaign to exterminate and clear the aboveground of threats goes apace, and distantly the sound of gunfire, soft explosions, and the clash of swords on 'not swords' brings a tangibility to the effort of things. Just outside of the secured area is an open train tunnel, surrounded by a haze of dust and rubble freshly cleared by the Combat Engineers, led by Jessie - whom the party had bailed out last time - leading into the darkness. An APC with its two headlights and for some reason a pintle-mounted highbeam flood-light casts lumins down the tunnel, where people can set up, grab gear, and even find a hot meal served to them. The air is expectant, and a map table has been set up, which Zack stands over, his sword leaned against the table.
Raziel	'The sounds of gunfire and distant clashing could be heard.  How long had it been since the last time I had been on a battlefield?  I scarcely remember at this point, one might say it was during better times, but I knew better than to say such things.  Not after all that had happened.  Men were laying out bags and blocks, the feeling in the air was tension, but the sort of ease that comes with those who are military.' Raziel walked towards the table map and Zack, offering a wave of his hand as he looked towards the map itself, trying to get a good feel for what was on it and try and commit the thing to memory.  Though it's nearly impossible to tell what exactly he was staring at...stupid ghost eyes and all.   Raziel, for the moment, does not speak. Instead, trying to commit the map to memory for later use.
Axel	Axel steps forward towards the map table, hood down. He moves over to the map, looking over it - first trying to find their location, and then what appears to be their Destination, and how they relate. "Alright, what's next? Deep dive into the darkness, right? Help explain this map to me. I can commit it to memory, but it's useless to look at without knowing what I'm looking at, right?"
Lilian Rook	Lilian is at the table already, because map tables are exactly where the important people are. This is a narrative Thing that she knows. Even after she's comitted it to memory (and taken pictures of it), she studies it very studiously in a studying fashion. It also deflects any mention of her getting food, because ew, and because she'd secretly brought her own and eaten it in a time stopped break.     The warzone sounds are ambient noise to her. She'd been around here for a while now, and had been part of two or three of these multi-day efforts before besides. It's the sound of soldiers doing their jobs. Hopefully not dying, but casualties are the price of these things; operations go on sale, but they're never free. She's made sure to grab a pile of glowsticks, flares, spare batteries, thin wire, a backup radio, and actually gone for a local rifle on the assumption that it'd be better used for sustainability, filling gaps where magic and time manipulation are unneeded and can be left to recharge, with plentiful access to local ammunition, the possibility of scavenging more, or trading with the soldiers if need be.     "That's a big flashlight to put on top in place of a turret. Should I presume there are things down there that hate light more than bullets?" she vaguely enquires in Zach's direction, flipping one of those big, heavy, obnoxiously bright military flashlights you can use as a blunt weapon around in her hand. "Please double check that the engineers double loaded. A subway tunnel is about as perfect terrain as you can hope for an offroad vehicle, but there could be plenty of inconvenient collapses big enough for people, but not for the car."
Arthur Lowell	Arthur is here, because there's a large, floating "UPDATE MINIMAP (X)" prompt at the table, which he goes up to (and presumably presses the X button on, but you certainly wouldn't /see/ that). He's also grabbed a HOT MEAL in order to recharge his HEALTH VIAL and his ASPECT GAUGE, because, for reasons unknown, Arthur just kinda works like that.     He'll be gathering up bright things in order to feed them directly into his SMALL SUN, which he then takes and screws into the bulb space of a flashlight. While it will frequently need to recharge, this will conveniently condense his light-making habits into a more effective space. It'll also cause sunburns if he blasts it at people too long. And, of course, after spending most of his formative teen years getting tilted at an assortment of towers, he finally, at last, says what fate has been waiting for him to say: "Alright boys, where we droppin'?"
Haguro	Haguro is joining the Galbadia crew again today, keeping watch into the darkness of the tunnel with her own camera to snap a few pictures just to have some souvenirs of the area. She's looking a bit worse for wear and a little undergeared between only bringing a pair of turrets with her rather than her usual four and keeping the other side of her body armored while the other is conspicuously uncovered. Her head is also bandaged up, but she's still moving normally enough. Actually coming up with a plan is somewhat beyond her for the time being, though, and the Cruiser instead opts to keep an eye on their exit point to make sure they don't get ambushed by more angry ghost trains or something. "My camera has a flash if that helps, but... I don't think that would be enough if there's already spotlights that large." She gestures at the flashlight turret following up on Lilian's observation, then checks her turrets and revolver. "I have explosives if we do end up caught in any cave ins, but that's a last resort." The offered food gets eaten, of course. "Is there anything specific we're looking for?"
Roxas	"Daemons." Captain Galbadia interjects towards Lilian as he approaches the ADULTS table, "They really don't like the light. The stuff they're made of starts to flake apart if they're subjected to sunlight or equivalent. Most stuff in deep darkness doesn't like that, you know? But daemons especially. UV Lamps really mess them up, if you can keep them under one. But you can at least sort of steer where they're liable to go if you use a big light. Sort of like... putting salt in lines near a slug."
Riku	Riku's accompanying the Galbadian forces as an independent unit. He's local, after all, in a manner of speaking, and this kind of problem is the exact kind of thing he deals with on a regular basis. Just... not at this concentration. He's determined, not foolhardy. While Riku sometimes puts on airs, right now he is serious and all business. He'd been scouting out and about, radioing in to the Galbadians about problem locations and acting as fast response to take some heat off the local patrols. He's basically taken his payment in the occasional potion and a hot meal. He's not scouting at the moment however, having joined the others for the planning session. He takes this opportunity to pull out a smartphone and take a picture of the map. Just in case. "Do you think this map is going to even be accurate anymore?" He asks.
Seifer Almasy	Seifer Almasy is gearing up. He's gearing up a little more than he usually would, too, to the point where it's kinda noticable. Normally he'd just carry in his gunblade and his coat. This time he's carrying his gunblade, his coat, and some all-purpose grenades. It says a lot that Seifer thinks he might need high explosives for this op. Then again, whether it says Seifer thinks he's in trouble or whether it's Seifer overcompensating after the planning session with General Fury is harder to say.      He doesn't have much to say that other people haven't already. He's unusually quiet anyway - he has been for most of the last operation.
Lilian Rook	"I suppose the obvious question is whether that thing up top is UV rated, but it doesn't really matter does it? Holding something in the middle of a spotlight until it sizzles is less effective than just hitting it with what we have, so the light will be fine as a . . . let's designate it an area denial asset then, shall we? The SAW on wheels."     Lilian pokes a point on the map. It of course corresponds to a path corrected to where they are. "Only so many places to start looking, and then there's only 'most likely'." she says to Arthur. I'll have you stay up front with Almasy over there. Shine your light wherever the APC's *isn't*. Keep a constant field of coverage. If that flushes things into corners instead of coming out, that's fine; we have plenty of grenades if we pin something with the lights." She waves offhandedly away at Riku. "Doesn't matter if it is. We're seeking the Underground anyways. The map won't help us there. We just need to know where tunnels are. Dark, underground, abandoned places, for sympathetic connections." she transitions to answering Haguro halfway through. "You should stay in the rear with the APC. Second line, with Riku. Don't move up with him when he engages. Lowell, though you're at the front, remain far enough back to use your light and any other stellar attacks first. Don't just charge in like last time. Also, make sure not to hit Raziel. He and I will be scouting ahead by skipping the walls."
Xion	The map, such as it is, is more about entrances, landmarks, and potential exits. Much of it exists in a vague state, though it's usefully vague: landmarks and sympathetic connections. Trails to follow. Safe spots, if you get lost. Much of it is penned in the same handwriting, a boyish scrawl. 'While hoping you were anywhere but where you are, take three lefts and climb the ladder you find'. 'While expecting danger, turn around and walk backwards until your back hits a wall, take a right, and open the door by turning the hadle left.' and so on. Zack is asked about the light, and thumbs to the pintle-floodlight. "Daemons hate bright lights. It's why Deling City is always so bright, even during the dark hours. City of lights, you know? As for the engineers..." Zack cups his mouth. "Ey, Jessie! You 'double loaded'?" Jessie's brown bob of a nonregulation ponytail perks up from her work stuffing two entire sachels full of tools. The tools are, largely, of the kind that either go boom or make other things go boom. "What, should I get a third bag, you think?" She wonders, entirely serious. Zack shakes his head, chuckling. "We're professionals, ma'am. Don't worry about it." Haguro presses the RECONFIRM MISSION OBJECTIVES button, whcih prompts Zack to square up, tapping his finger at the center of the map. "By hook or crook, but probably not by Central Command's plan, we're getting here." The center of the map is dominated by a giant cogwheel labelled '???', VERY HELPFULLY. "We're going to recon the area in force, figure out if it's connected to the uptick in disturbances, shut it down if so, report back if not. Simple. While that's going on, Commander Angeal will finish up mop-up here, so we can always send in more teams if we don't find what we're looking for. The idea is, if we go in, make a bunch of noise, and smoke out all the bad guys, anyone who comes in after us will have an easier time." As for the ongoing operations, even Lilian will be pleased to know that Galbadian paramagical equipment features every combat operative knowing at LEAST the Cure spell, so any soldier can support their team with triage and first aid - it keeps casualties down to the 'freak combat accidents', especially for mop-up operations. It is a well-oiled machine, and Galbadia is more than willing to use hyper-elites like the party as the tip of the spear and let the regular forces mop up behind them. It works well when you're accustomed to Literal Superheroes as irregulars.
Raziel	Raziel looks up from the map after a moment, "I am assuming we have no idea what this is?" Raziel says, tapping a claw on the gear.  Well, if that's not the most likely thing he's heard.  Next, they'll be sliding block puzzles. With a look back up he nods towards Lilian's command of 'don't shoot Raziel.' "While I will agree with Lilian on that for the most part, in a desperate situation do not be afraid to shoot near me.   The worst that can happen is that I disincorporate.  Other than the bad company I'll be keeping, it'll be more of an inconvenience." "The tunnels are not likely to be this generous the whole way down, do we know about how far we have until we need to worry about tight spaces?"
Roxas	"I don't think strict 'A to B' plans work in places like this... but /this/ is a really good idea." Captain Galbadia taps at Zack's handwritten instructions / directions, which looks like complete nonsense but in case anybody is actually wondering /is/ absolutely how it tends to work in places like this. No guarantees, because that's part of the point too. RIKU finds that the local Darkness trends towards becoming innavigable, and he's not quite certain why. It's not that there aren't 'exit' points, but there simply aren't paths going in 'deeper'. Just an endless set of highways that loop around to completely different places and contexts, without apparent connection to what's really "farther in". It's sort of like finding one's self on a bunch of adjacent stretches of highway that don't quite connect to distant-but-visible roads into a town that can only be accessed by one single path, in and out. It's also the sort of place where people tend to die if a natural disaster occurs and evacuation is required, because the entire population loads up the Only Road until it's bumper-to-bumper indefinitely.
Xion	Zack nods firmly. "About halfway in, there's a bridge we'll come to, and it'll be too narrow for the APC. We'll leave Biggs and Wedge to handle the car, and continue on foot with myself leading, and Jessie on hand to clear any new debris collapses. I pretty much know my way around by now - and we won't have to do anything too crazy to get there. Honestly, it was harder to map the way there than it will be to repeat it!" Zack rubs a hand through his hair. "I had to check to see if the trick was doing hopscotch or barefoot. It wasn't, but I had to see a medic after for the blisters. Porous stone and my poor feet don't mix!" Jessie sniggers. "Puppydog Zack strikes again." Zack looks hurt. "H-hey! Just because Commander Angeal calls me that doesn't mean you can, soldier!" Jessie just rolls her eyes. "I report to the Quartermaster General, not to you, doggy." Zack looks flustered. "Anyway. There's only one junction I'm worried about, because I've only found it twice, so we may have to do some doubling back. Just... trust me, ok? I mean it. No doubts. I know how to get there, but the only times I got there, I knew I knew so, if you don't trust, you're gonna muck it up."
Raziel	"You...knew that you knew?  Are you telling us that these tunnels somehow change depending on the confidence of the walking trying to find his destination?" Raziel asks, almost incredulously.   "And here I thought the ancients had annoying conceptual puzzles.."
Arthur Lowell	"Yooooo, blondie, what up? We pairin'." Arthur heads to Seifer, immediately assaulting his hand with a series of daps, pounds, bumps, finger-wiggles, slides, low-fives, interlacing complex motions, esoteric elbow maneuvers, and other suchlike. He flicks his sunlight on and off, an agreeing motion to Lilian, then cranks his hand in a weird twisting gesture to summon an exotic spirographic spellcircle. "Gonna get those GATES up in that biz too. These PUZZLES are FUCKED, I already hate the look of this WALKTHROUGH. But I'll make sure we get that dumbass geometry DEALT WITH for real." He says, confidently.     He's raring to go, and wants to plunge on in. But he'll restlessly stick around if it looks like there's more planning that needs dealing with. He knows this is pretty serious business, and that he should at least know everything he needs to not be responsible for other friendly folk being dead on the job here.
Haguro	Having marching orders certainly makes things easier to process. Nodding towards Lilian, Haguro shuffles back to stick close to the APC, keeping her revolver in hand while her turrets remain pointed downwards for the time being. She doesn't want to risk causing premature cave-ins, after all! "I'm confident enough in my aim that I won't hit you, but I'll leave that as a last resort just in case." She reassures Raziel, actually sounding confident about that for once. "If we're drawing all of them towards us, there should be enough targets around to not need to do that, anyway. Leave the larger clusters to me, and I'll soften them up as best I can." As the briefing continues, Zack does mention something a little more concerning about having to trust his sense of direction over anything else. "O... Kay. Erm. That does sound a little odd, but you know thi splace more than we do." It certainly sounds like Haguro has her doubts, but those doubts will fade soon enough once she has something to shoot.
Riku	Riku also gets why the instructions on the map are the way they are. He stares at it, however, squinting for a moment. "... Who made these notes?" He asks Zack. He isn't sure he wants to hear the answer, but he asks anyway. Turns out, he did. "All right." He says, not pushing the matter further. In the meantime, he looks over to stare at Lilian for several seconds, but chooses not to take issue with things, apparently, simply turning away. Instead, he quietly begins examining the area in other ways than simply physical. "The Darkness is warped here." He says, simply. "Probably won't matter for now, but don't expect a clean getaway if something goes bad." He turns to Arthur. "Careful. It will probably affect your gates, too."
Roxas	"That's the way the Nevernever is," Captain Galbadia gesticulates towards Raziel, "occasionally somebody will try to map one of the more stable areas, like Faerie. But it's always changing, and the sympathies aren't always the same. Anyway, it's true that 'feeling' matters. Someplace that's broken down and creepy will always lead to someplace worse than someplace that's well-kept and brightly-lit." "The element of Darkness is most strongly associated with primal feelings and junk like that, so I guess how you're feeling matters more." "Somebody told me once that you shouldn't ever cross into the Nevernever at a carnival..." He mumbles thoughtfully to himself. "You sure got a lot done." Captain Galbadia comments towards Zack, rising out of his carnival-centered introspection.
Xion	"Getting out is easy. Where we're going... It doesn't want you around." Zack answers. "But I made the notes. It's been my job. Operation DEEPGROUND. They were making a big ruckus of training specialists after I found this and that, but... Nothing ever seemed to come of it. I guess I'm just lucky." He smirks, vocalizing 'lucky' in the same way a staff sergeant would say 'volunteered'.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur squares up, clearly, kind of into a boxer's stance. "HELL YEAH, darkness gonna FIGHT ME. I'm STARS, baby! I'll deal with the WEIRD SHIT as it comes." He looks like he's dodging and weaving in silly ways. "I figure GATES can link in just a little with those SYMPATHIES, give us kind of... BEACONS to figure on, y'know?" He gestures over in Lilian Rook's direction. "LIL' wanted some BEACONS, yeah? Pretty sure."
Xion	The path through the darkness, which is lit up by the rumbling of the APC's lights until the party has to traverse a narrow bridge over an ancient-seeming Cliche Anime Aqueduct that has two waterfalls and a whole lot of 'nothing' on either side, is relativly uneventful. A few long, two-dimensional ghost spectres try to claw at the party from the shadows before being dispersed. A strange biomechanical soldier with a 'helmet'-face and two red LED eyes lurches and shambles from a corner, missing a right arm and most of its toes, and swings some sort of rusted pick as a weapon before being cut down. Enormous rats, the sort you go 'ah, yes, we are in a sewer level, I see' meanace from out of strange tubes that produce a thick, acrid sludge. The way becomes weirder. Zack stops the group, tells everyone to close their eyes, and begins doubling back - those aware will notice that they continue forward, not backwards, in space. Doors are interacted with one person at a time, and must be used with the round-knob handle in an alternating order. First a left jiggle, then a right turn. Signs are pointedly read that tell people to turn back, carefully reading out every warning before continuing on - and Jessie suffers a jumpscare by a street-art like shark that must be put down for doing so halfheartedly. Weirdness continues and deepens, until, Zack holds up his fist while on a metal grated bridge over a dark pool of water, like an airlock, with the entire group held within. "Lights out." He orders. Once everyone has shuttered or snuffed their illumination, eyes begin to acclimate. The sound of rushing water fills the ears, and the dark water begins to glow with a natural illumination that seems impossible. The reflections of the shifting pool waver on the walls. The sound gets louder. It becomes deafening. Zack's fist remains raised, the classic 'hold' handsignal like the soldier was gripping onto a steel beam for dear life. One begins to notice things. That the door before them has no handle, and the hinges are not on this side. It is set into the wall in such a way that creates a perfect seal. This is a door that Does Not Wish to open, clearly. A sound like a typhoon comes, onrushing, a great torrent of water that serves to threaten to drown or wash away all those there. A sound that you should - you MUST - turn away, run, seal the previous door behind you. It's inviting. It's demanding. It's pleading. You MUST leave! Zack's fist remains raised. He's counting, under his breath. The heel of his foot taps in a hidden rhythm. Right as the sound seems fit to crash through, to fill the area with water, silence instead fills the small chamber. Silence, and the click of the way forward opening. Zack lowers his fist, turns back on his harness light, and pushes open the door, smirking back at the group. "First time I tried sticking around, I nearly peed myself. Here we are..." The area before the group features a small balcony, before the door, and upon it, a massive series of clockworks, like they had entered into the working parts of Big Ben. A tremendous gear sits, spoked down the center, like a platform. Far, far, FAR above, a single window sits, just barely visible, with daylight streaking through as if the sun shone from right next to the ingress. The path 'forward', such as it is, seems to feature a bit of CLOCK-BASED PLATFORMING, climbing up a clearly semi-linear path of spokes, gears, and turnstyles that can only be described as 'entirely linear paths with JRPG offshoots going the Wrong Direction' intended for traversal by people with solidly above-average ARPG platforming skills.
Axel	As the group eventually progresses, Axel keeping the gear in mind, he helps clear out enemies. Chakrams go flying, slicing into dogs, soldier, rats, etc, even as he gets lightly damaged in the process. The shark jumpscare is the weirdest, even as Axel follows all his instructions, and he still scratches his head after they slay it. And then they have to turn out their lights, and there's the sounds of the pool. It's nerve-wracking, but...Axel watches Zack's hand, breathes slowly, and waits. As the sound gets louder, so does the tension further come off him. But he's not scared traditionally. He just doesn't know what to expect, and it bugs him, especially with all the waiting. But eventually, they overcome it, and he sighs a breath of relief. They step into the chamber, and see the clockwork ahead. Axel...smiles, and turns to the others. "Finally, something we can wrap our heads around. Let's get to work, yeah?" Taking a single step back, Axel waits, and then sprints at the gears. He leaps, landing on top of a spoke. He makes sure he has balance, and then propels himself upwards in a 'double jump' to the next, before kicking off it and rapidly bursting to the next. From gear to spoke to turnstyle to spoke to turnstyle to gear, he's fluid, even if from time to time he takes a few seconds to reorient himself. Hopefully, he'll be able to reach the top without the platforming puzzle changing rapidly.
Roxas	Captain Galbadia is a bit nervous for a person who is as large and ludicrously strong as he is. A lot more jumpy, in fact, than Zack. He seems to have his shit together enough to follow instructions and not get too out of sorts, but the tension in him is way higher than anybody else here-- except maybe Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie, but even that is a bit of a stretch. He is in fact so jumpy and wound up that when Jessie gets JUMPSCARED he punches the street art shark right in the fucking nose before he actually realizes what it actually is. Afterwards he just looks a little sheepish and apologetic, despite the fact that he /punched a shark in the face/. It's not until Zack admits that this place messed with /him/ pretty bad that Captain Galbadia issues a relieved sigh. He nods, "That... was pretty nerve-wracking, if you ask me. You're really disciplined to have been able to have figured all that out and brought it back to us. I don't know if I could've done it... especially this quickly." A little more of the Captain's inexperience shows when he has to do JUMPING PUZZLES. He stops completely and extremely carefully gauges his balance and the jump before he goes-- even though by all physical feats he's shown previously this should be not just easy but /piss easy/ for him. He also wanders in the wrong direction to pick up what is either FABULOUS TREASURE or GARBAGE SITTING IN DEAD ENDS with alarming consistency. Because of this, he winds up being one of the SLOWEST to reach the end of PUZZLE HELL. By the end of it, he's examining a bottle of KING BEHEMOTH ENERGY DRINK. That he found here. In the evil sewer clocktower.
Raziel	Raziel would say this is the oddest thing he has experienced, but that would be a lie.  It's only odd in the strange order that things are taken.  Even when the oppressive voice bears down on Raziel, trying to get him to flee, he pushes forward.  Raziel follows, only quietly nodding when Captain Galbadia literally just punched a shark in the face to establish superiority.   When they are asked to put lights out, Raziel looks a bit...taken aback.  His eyes and hand glow in a soft spectral light, which means he has to both close his eyes AND wrap his arm up around his cape as they wait.  He hopes that was enough... The clocktower.  Well, this is...normal?  Ish.  Somewhat?  Kinda? As others move to jump puzzle/platform puzzle, Raziel uses his claws to dig into the side of the wall and starts clawing his way up the side of the wall, until he gets a good height, and leaps off.  He grabs the tatters of his wings, aiming to glide to a gear, before leaping to the next. He does this a few times, eventually getting a wall, climbing up, and leaping across in a controlled glide.
Haguro	A place that maps itself based on your intent instead of logic or... Hm. Locale? Geography?" A beat. "... Geometry? That sounds kind of like that bar, doesn't it?" Strangely enough, that thought is what makes it far easier for Haguro to trust Zack's sense of direction. It's far better than the alternative of trsuting her OWN instincts to find this place, and she doesn't even bat an eye before closing them to start walking backwards. And as stated earlier, Haguro is indeed the crack shot with her lower-yield explosives and revolver alike. She sticks to her formation order, staying near the APC while leaving the close-range engagement to her companions. Using the weaker explosives does mean leaving more enemies to clean up with her revolver or for her allies, but she can at least minimize the risk of bringing the ceilings down on everyone that way. When the lights go out, she starts to fidget. His hand closes, and she keeps her hands clenched around her revolver tightly just to have something solid to hold onto. The sound of rushing of water has Haguro straining to not turn around, to not stick her head somewhere safe, to not hide. She holds her breath for much too long as that fist stays in the air, and she even starts to hunch over as the fear takes root in her mind. By the time that door opens, Haguro's scurrying through the door for dear life, white as a ghost and panting heavily from holding her breath for so long. "H... How did you even figure something like that out? That was awful!" Haguro is still shaking considerably even with Zack's attempt at humor, and coming to the clockwork zone is something of a relief for her since it means not DROWNING/sinking in a roundabout way. She sticks to hopping small gaps carefully, but it doesn't take long before she starts cheating a little bit with creative use of her chain-knife cannon as a grappling hook of sorts. Anything to get up and away from that sinking feeling.
Riku	"Sure. What I'm saying is that if we the Darkness or Gates to escape, it might not drop us back in a place where we expect. We might get farther away, but it might be farther away in a pile of Demons." Riku replies. "Keep things short range if you can. Line of sight is best, it's hard to warp things too badly that way." Meanwhile, they move out. The environment is somewhat scenic if you like aqueducts and spooky. Riku mostly continues to act as a skirmisher, ranging wide and interdicting threats as they appear. When Zack begins giving instructions, Riku listens. The man went through all the trouble of working this stuff out, and Riku's not going to be contrarian on this. They proceed, using the strange and unusual methods of proceeding past the initial gates, pushing deeper into the darkness... And when they getto the pool, Riku nods. He didn't have a light in the first place. He sees the Door forward, hears the beginning of the rusning water. He clenches his teeth, fighting the increasing, unreasoning fear that begins to mount, the expectation that he'll be washed away, dashed against broken rock at best, left floating in the middle of a dark and twisted Underground at worst. Knowing the horrors that might be doesn't make them easier to resist, in many situations... But he stays put, his teeth clenched even as they are about to get blasted... And then they're through, a test of fear overcome. Riku exhales loudly, and steps forward through the door. The next area looks... Interesting. "Huh." He says, looking around. "I wonder why this is here." He says to no one in particular... And then he steps forward, leaping from gear to gear, grappling on turnstiles, flipping, even using his Eidolon as a rebound platform to double jump or hurl himself to locations too far for his not inconsiderable leaping distance. Yeah, he's pretty much set for this kind of thing. He does keep an eye out behind him in case someone needs a rescue. Falling looks like it'd be problematic.
Arthur Lowell	Being a veteran Weird Dungeon Diver doesn't make any of this less nerve-wracking. Arguably, the unfamiliar mechanics and exotic concepts actually make a veteran more worried, because of how many chances there are that this place's sympathetic connections will form a severe negative outcome from more innocent materials. But Arthur has a good, proper flashlight, and a good, proper inability to healthily express stress, so he's still swaggering and enjoying himself as they make their way through. He enjoys cutting down the small fry, turning the lights up on them, and especially ignoring signage that looks rather official. Rats, weird bridges, even funky doors or strange sharks, these are a little more familiar, even if the mechanisms aren't.     The water really gets to him. He DID spend years in a place where he had to basically drown daily to get around. He's /terribly/ relieved when that turns out not to be a thing. Zack's levity helps. "HAHA, GRODY. No more of that shit UP AHEAD, right? Or, like... ACTUAL FLOODING also." He asks, in an upbeat, bullying-yet-positive tone.     CLOCKTOWER PLATFORMING!! Arthur can deal with this especially. And can help others! As he ascends, he scatters POWER-UPS or GRAVITY SWITCHES or TELEPORTATION GATES all around the visible gearworks, and makes use of them himself to rapidly reach the top of the area... Or at least the part where they get to a door. All of them are left behind for others to use, of course, because Arthur wants to share these things with his allies! Including the Differently Auric.
Lilian Rook	Lilian reiterates what she'd guessed the other day, to Raziel. "My money, and there's a lot of that, is on a Locus. It'll be the defining feature that connects whatever territory from somewhere else is brushing up against here. Something related to the Train Graveyard, and more importantly, the War itself. It might very well be very mystically powerful, or at least intensely sympathetically significant. Disarming, dismantling, or destroying it is the objective I expect."     She pauses to consider the second layer of what Zack has to say. "Mmm, yes. Please stay ahead of the APC and any personnel but myself and Raziel, and when we're coming up on a point of significance that you remember, radio us. Of course, I'll memorize these instructions as best I can, but these are personal, subjective, metaspiritual qualia. We probably won't get the same feel of things as you do." She looks up from the map. "That goes for everyone by the way. Splitting off to follow the instructions on your own might take you somewhere completely different." She gives a sour, appraising look at Jessie for the first time in hours of being around her.     "If you do get lost, find your way back to the surface and then Lowell's most recent gate." she says, and then briefly explains PSO coloured telepipe theory. She waves dismissively in Haguro's direction this time. "You won't hit me either way." Then she points at Riku. "Rely on him-" then to Axel "-or him to consult secondarily if there's a disagreement or fork in the way, or if you become isolated in chunks. Radios should still probably work."     Those are the extent of her further instructions before she has to turn the rest of the wheel over to the Galbadians' hands --less reluctantly than usual, given the *overall* professional, military air they've operated with thusfar. She has conflicting feelings, but hasn't treated them like helpless normie babies so far. She even leaves most of the navigating to Zack's gut and memory, even if hesitantly, and double checking him constantly against what she remembers of the map, likely not feeling too great about leaving anyone else in control of anything, period.     From there, she mounts the flashlight to the rifle, and relies on the local gun for as much as is feasibly possible, conserving her energy and the metaphorical sand in her hourglass for threats that won't be taken down in 1-2 turns by the party or spooked with a surprise round. Where there are long stretches of little important, she ghosts ahead of the party several times to check around corners, down offshoots, or through thin walls, and only occasionally sends back gunfire noises after doing so. The atmosphere around her is 'serious'; neither gung ho and heroically careless, nor tense and fearful. It's the kind of feeling that an EOD expert gives off when they're deep at work on an unfamiliar bomb with plenty of time left.     "I believe you, but I'd have preferred to loudly mock whoever got scared this time to hearing that." she says to Zack after the BOOMING FEAR TEST, diffusing a little of her tension in doing so. "I'm a little surprised you'd bother. Was that when you had your unit, or after?" Lilian glances halfway of the angle needed to look at the Captain directly. "Some of it is discipline, some of it is just an open, but not unguarded, mind. A lot of it, even." She turns her light back on directly at the clockworks, removing it from the rifle and stowing the latter away. "Looks exactly like the right place." She points it briefly up at the window, mostly to see if she illuminates a glowing panel, or if the light vanishes because it's a genuine actual window outside.     From there, she takes some interest in the gearworks, first checking to see if they're actually mobile, then if they were originally meant to be, and then if they serve any mechanical purpose or if they're just a motif. The platforming itself isn't too challenging for her between the axis of abilities she has to use on it.
Xion	Zack, on how he figured it out, actually gestures to a climbing carabiner on his harness. "Actually, I didn't. I came back with a breathing mask and latched myself to the bridge and waited it out. I expected to be smashed downstream, but if it always works the same way, every time, with the same timing... It's a test. It had to be. So the third or fourth time, I wasn't too worried." "Also, there's another one, that's just slightly different. THAT one washes you away. It's important to turn your lights off to check - the light's different and the water's still, so you can tell if you need to clear out or not." He taps his temple lightly. "I've been running a lot of operations down here, just grinding it out. It's basically supernatural cardio!" He chuckles, and the nod-and-wink to getting stronger via literal grinding the Mystery Dungeon goes highlit and underlined. Arthur's question gets a shrug. "Never checked. There's some weird stuff up higher, so I just confirmed my path, reported it to Central, and it wasn't really a thing until Operation T-Rexuar. Central thinks there's some weird connection between this area and whatever bad going on." Big shrug from the G-Forces elite. "Could be. Probably isn't. Water features are pretty prominent at crossroads, though. If you can find moving water, there's a path. Stuff works like that." The end of ONE OF the J-ARPG paths features a SPARKLIE. The sparklie is a can of KING BEHEMOTH. The sparlie is next to a SIDE-TURNED vending machine that has an entirely NONINTERACTIVE BOUNTY of things and refuses to disgorge more. There was one on the floor in front of it! HOW DARE YOU QUESTION RANDOM OVERTURNED VENDING MACHINE! Jessie moves to wander down one of the other side passages, picking at a pile of rubble and shifting the gear-debris as if she'll uncover something interesting! She doesn't. It's a pile of debris, at the end of a dead-end. The gearworks do seem to be functional, and following the design with the eye implies that they are at the base of exactly what it seems like: an entirely serious, massive clock that would work were it not off! Climbing up is easy, if a bit repetitive. Climb up the side, traverse across, check the side paths, find a really absurdly overwrought treasure chest with LOOT in it and no lock, rinse and repeat. Following the gearworks, or simple 'actually not viewing the area from a 2d or fixed-camera perspective' reveals little cut outs or hidden paths into the darkness that seem wildly out of place, these filled with yet larger treasure chests containing hidden goodies. There are precisely three of these during the entire ascent - one found by Axel, one by Riku, and one by Raziel - all three of whom are EXTRA USED TO THIS SHIT. Zack is quick on his feet, climbing up without help using standard - if enhanced - soldier-style wall climbing. Jessie is someone who Zack waits at the lips and offers INTERACTION HELP to. "I do most of my scouting operations alone. It's faster that way. There was a few others, but most of them tapped out after a while. Me? I live for this stuff. Isn't it great?" Captain Galbadia handles the platforming like a super-rookie, causing Zack to lament openly. "Come on, rookie, you're making G-Forces look bad in front of all the wizards!" He shouts, partially in encouragement. "Don't gauge the jump - treat it like a climbing wall, visualize, and execute." As the party heads up towards the shred of daylight, the only thing the entire area is bereft of is... any sort of direct connection to 'a war', as Lilian put it - why this 'Locus' was important.
Roxas	Captain Galbadia, as it turns out, /is/ a super rookie. He doesn't really need to act like that, but it's like he learned how to take difficult jumps like... well, a normal person. More like what you'd expect of Biggs or Wedge than him. By the time he gets settled at the top, he regards Zack a little apologetically and rubs at the back of his neck. "Sorry... they didn't get around to putting me through the special ops training yet. I look forward to getting to parachute in with a motorcycle, though." He responds to Zack, halfway between outright enthusiastic and awkwardly dorky. "You're right, though. I /should/ be doing the sort of stuff you're doing." The Captain admits.
Xion	But, the LOOT is pretty good. The handful of RED and BLUE chests, all trimmed in gold, have a wealth of MUNNY, some mid-grade POTIONS (Hi-Ether, Mega-Potions, and the like), and a few curious odds and ends - including a very fresh-looking GUNPICK, like that of the Esthar Terminator before. The hilt contained a firing chamber, and the multi-tipped crescent shape easily doubling as WAR PICK and BLADED CRESCENT both. The Secret Chests are in pink and light birdsegg blue, trimmed in gold and platinum with gems. The chests are, very strictly, worth a kings ransom each, so if people collect them: they're B I G M U N N Y, but the contents are uniform: A wealth of gleaming, shining crystals that all shine with a soft inner light that defy reason. Like sunbeams captured in diamonds. Their beautiful radiance is a joy to behold, and easily could be coveted as wonderful treasures even if there's... No earthy reason or meaning to them. In each of the chests containing these crystals, a single, blank-faced GOLD MEDAL with a strange winged pattern surrounding a crowned heart in rosegold, and a single piece of cracked obsidian where a gem of any value could be inset, surrounded by beautiful scrollwork. The SUNBEAM DIAMONDS are faintly magical, but of course they are. The blank GOLD MEDAL, on the other hand, is bereft of all value or meaning beyond its component elements - like a photograph faded to nothing.
Raziel	Raziel's claw hits a weird cubby hole.  Looking up he pulls himself to a ledge and presses his hand experimentally against something.  With a force of will he pushes through it, and then there was a chest?  Picking up the loot for later, he pushes himself back out to make another leaping puzzle jump. "So...I'm not understanding, this is all supposed to be some sort of connection to the emotions of that place?  Why is...there this clock instead of war?  Or a battle, or a field of dying men?  This all seems highly out of place if what was told to me was true." Of course, Raziel might not be seeing the big picture, these types of things don't work like this in his world.  Part of his resistance and throwing off the fear was due to living in the underworld for a while.  It's just something you get used to after some time.   Raziel, if needed, gives the Captain a hand...claw up.  He doesn't say anything judgemental, that's up to him to decide how to learn or what to learn.  "I have the benefit of not being alive anymore.  Though I was used to flight and twisting my body just right while I was...mostly...living." "Also I found something," Raziel says, holding out the SUNBEAM DIAMONDS and the strange GOLD METAL blanks. "Any idea what this is, besides the obvious?"
Axel	Axel reaches into a hidden path, and finds a CHEST. He opens it, because duh. Gems and...some sort of medal. He immediately starts dumping them in his inventory, and then continues to the meetup spot with the others. Once they're all there, he unpockets a gem and the medal, and nods to Raziel. "Found them too. It looks like a jewel could fit inside. Let's see..." Axel takes the Fanciest Looking Sunbeam Diamond, and moves to try and insert it in the medal and see if it anything happens. He does hold it slightly at arms-length, in case it's crazy darkness stuff and decides to explode.
Roxas	Captain Galbadia in fact /does/ take assistance from Raziel, because he isn't so badly trained that he wouldn't use TEAMWORK as somebody who was most definitely a grunt before all of this. He shakes ihs head in response to the ghost's questions, though, "I don't know... I've never heard of a Clock Tower in relation to the Sorceress War. The gems feel sort of magical, but..." He takes one of the medals to look at it, "... These look sort of like money? Sort of fancy to be coins, though... maybe it was an award?" He hands the gold medal back to Raziel.
Lilian Rook	"It's interesting." Lilian replies to Zack's probably rhetorical question amivalently. "If it's been around for a while, and stays that stable, I admit, it seems like something I'd want to be the first one through." she admits. This is exactly the kind of thing she'd experiment with and press on into as far as she could *precisely because* everyone else tapped out.     Treasure chests are stupid. Loot is stupid. The fact that the clockworks appear to be functional is interesting, but Lilian is lacking any means to get it moving, or any knowledge of why one would want it to; she just knows about clocks kinda as a passing interest. She spends a lot of time trying to ascertain why any of this would be here and arranged like this, especially in water, where it's liable to rust or erode something as precise as a clock, but gives up after a while.     "Wherever we are, it's functional, not just symbolic. This thing-" she kicks the gear/ground "-would be telling time if we found a mainspring. That implies someone built it, had a reason for doing it, and hasn't been around in ages. The water could have happened after, but streams and navigation are old partners as human prehistory. I don't see how a gigantic, kind of poorly designed clock has any connection with the war in the past here. What kind of magic did that Sorceress use anyways? This isn't the way it is just for the fun of it, or to look ~surreal~." She pronounces that last word with audible sarcastic jazzhands, partially articulated by a shift of expression.     Eventually she just looks upward. "If this place is mapped out to an extent . . . well, I'm just dying to know. Is there a dial and a hand to any of this? One moment." At that point, she lifts off the ground, and low budget anime floats off to any sort of ceiling egress point --all the way back to the original window, if she has to-- in order to get some kind of picture of what they're crawling around in the guts of. A collapsed clocktower the size of a city and a billion years old? Some giant elaborate device buried in the side of a mountain? Absolutely fucking nothing?
Roxas	"Sorceress Adel was an extremely powerful generalist in the use of paramagic," Captain Galbadia explains to Lilian, "but her unique power as a sorceress was believed to be a sort of talent with biological matter. There's always been rumors that she was sort of a giant by the end of it all, because she'd taken in so much physical mass and used it to make herself bigger and stronger."
Riku	Riku might have to investigate this DEEPGROUND thing in more detail later. If these guys are doing extensive investigations into the Underground, it might be to his benefit to acquire that information... And also keep an eye on just what they're poking at. In the meantime, Riku clambers through the area and acquires FAT LOOT, the contents of which gets tucked away. The GOLD MEDAL, however, is stared at for a minute before he digs out one of those SUNBEAM DIAMONDS and tries sticking it into the gem slot. They were stored together, may as well see if this was the intent or not, inadvertantly doing the same test as Axel.
Haguro	Zack's confidence is not the sort of thing that's shared by Haguro, especially when he mentions that there is a version of the water trap that will totally sink +the shit out of her. Having all those jumps to get through does take her mind off it well enough, though, and she's soon getting into the rhythm of leaping or swinging across gaps without so much as thinking about that water again! Except for now. And now. And now. The loot is interesting enough to see, at least, and even Haguro can't ignore the isren's song of collecting a few of those crystals. She gathers some of those crystals into a sack, but she pauses when one of those strange GOLD MEDAL is in hand. "Eh? What's this? There's more here, too." She looks over at Raziel's and Axel's finds, then at her own. "They look rather old... Hm. Let's bring some of these back." Haguro makes that suggestion while holding up said MEDAL, flipping it over a few times before stuffing that into her sack alongside a few DIAMONDS. Not all of them will be for the Galbadian forces, of course.
Arthur Lowell	Arthur is always /fascinated/ by the easy loot, but very little of it fits conveniently into a GRIST CACHE. The MUNNY is, of course, immediately submitted to an elaborate grist-gambling minigame. The POTIONS are of interest because Arthur can mix them with MOUNTAIN DEW to get lots of fancy GAMER FUELS. He also follows along to the big loot chests. Whatever these crystals are... He'll leave the medals to the other. The SUNBEAM DIAMONDS take his interest.     "GRIST!" He shouts, immediately basically pouncing on Raziel's find. Unless stopped, he intends to slurp up most of the SUNBEAM DIAMONDS in the form of what he seems to think is SUNBEAM GRIST. "Fuckin' FINALLY! I knew this DARKNESS was holding out on me! Bullshit 'don't have grist'. I FUCKIN' KNEW IT! YEAH!!!" Arthur seems even more full of enthusiasm now that he's discovered yet another connection to the local world's effects and systems! Even if it's insubstantial and probably not even accurate. Well, at the very least, the GRIST CACHE does somehow have a slot for SUNBEAM GRIST.
Xion	The SUNBEAM DIAMONDS (this is not their official name, this is their ??? Placeholder Name) are quite big - each as big as a child's clenched fist. The medal's darkened (or broken, or simply entirely 'dead') gemstone shimmers with reflected light, and rubbing on on the other produces *A* result, even if it is not perhaps the expected one. Like a burned-in image on a TV, each of the BLANK MEDALS has a bust, or a humanoid partial 'picture' in silhouette. Spikey hair, or bobs and curls, the outline of clothing, that sort of thing. Without knowing exactly what the source is, though, it's impossible to play WHO'S THAT MEDAL-FIGURE. There was absolutely a purpose to these. Absolutely a point, but... Now, an untold stretch of time after each chest was lovingly packed full of something precious and a mess of valuables, does their intent become somewhat more clear: They're not hidden chests in the sense of an ancient level designer. They're ancient time capsules, left by someone wishing another would enjoy some snapshot. A forgotten chapter, where both the author and the intended audience are dead, forgotten, and their chapter wiped from history. Lilian decides that enough is enough, Game Extension the likes of which is only seen by OBSESSIVES and those CLASSICALLY TRAINED TO POKE ABOUT sorts be damned, and circumvents the rest of the (rather absurdly time consuming but otherwise treasure-packed and fruitfully lucrative) ascent to head to the SUNNY WINDOW. Inside, is a single room, which certainly doesn't work in SPACE, as the outlook seems central enough to the clocktower, with an enormous table in the center, and six chairs. Surrounding the table, adjacent to the walls, are a tremendous wealth of bookcases with dusty tomes that are obviously filled with tons of COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT LORE with LIKE, MAYBE ONE USEFUL PASSAGE that any old protagonist could glance at and discern the single relevant piece of literature from them. You know, like, JRPG bookcases. In the center of the table is a single book. The pages are yellowed vellum, and inside the script is either cipher of foreign, ancient language, though there are helpful pictures and diagrams inside. It is bound with a blue cover and a silver leaf embossing on the front depicting a stylized heart sitting atop a snowflake-like spikey symbol. Lighting up the entire room is a clock-face window, the 'top' of the clock tower (wasn't there more to climb?) with the clock hands stopped at TWELVE. YOUR clocks are also stopped at TWELVE NOON, PRECISELY. Below, there's a little city with humanoid figures milling about. The clock face is ENTIRELY IMPERVIOUS, as is the walls around it. Behind, is another Clock Face, also set at 12. When people draw close to it, their watches (at least, Zack's), beeps like the hour changed. TWELVE MIDNIGHT. It is entirely dark, though there's a broken part of the face that jaggedly reveals a dark, barren badlands glimmering with bits of metal stuck in the ground. At the center of it -- a massive, black sinkhole that sworls like a singularity. ARTHUR LOWELL manages to slot in the SUNBEAM DIAMONDS into his Grist, but it does not slot in as SUNBEAM GRIST. Oh no no. It is ??????X Grist. The other characters, besides the X, are obscured. It is unclear how many other characters there are.
Roxas	EARLIER... "I just... don't really know what to do. About finding out where I came from." Roxas said to his superior, across a cluttered desk. At the older man's back was a bank of monitors, some of which displayed familiar locations or things -- Twilight Town, Traverse Town, Castle Oblivion, Kingdom Hearts itself -- while others still remained dark as night, the timestamp in the corner ticking away as nothing at all visible transpired. Xemnas stared towards Roxas over the tops of his hands, folded across one another before his face. It was tricky, handling this one, and he knew why. By a petty and cruel trick of fate the boy had inherited a HEART, but the body that he inhabited did not match it. For that matter, the body itself did not even possess the information that it ought to have. Somebody else had spirited those away, contained them, made certain that they did not become a Heartless for long. He would liked to have known who did that. But Roxas had no answers to give. Not in his mind, at least. "The metaphysics of a Nobody's mind and consciousness," Xemnas said, "are a complicated matter. There are many reasons you might fail to absorb the memories that once were yours, all of which are inscrutible as the next. Instead you have made memories of your own, forged an identity that can sustain you in spite of your emptiness." "But I think that you are looking in the wrong places." He rose from his desk and took Roxas by the shoulders, steering him out of his office. "So go and look for them elsewhere. Follow your instincts. Not your thoughts." "But I--" Roxas protested, but the door shut firm behind him. He looks dejectedly at the ground, and meanders off to ponder what was said to him and, eventually, act upon it.     NOW... A black-hooded figure emerges into the ROOM WITH THE SUNNY WINDOW. He was neither present during the ascent, nor does he appear to have come by the road that you traveled at all. No sign of his presence stirred in the surroundings until the moment that he entered that specific room. "... Huh?" Roxas wonders, loudly. "Why are you guys here?"
Axel	Axel looks at the gems and the medal. Interesting...but kind of useless. He repockets them in his inventory as a souvenier, and ascends to the top. When he does so, he glances around. Both at the clocks that change, at Zack's watch when it beeps, at the book, outside at the two different views - and definitely squinting at the black hole of death. And then, Roxas shows up. "Huh? Roxas?" Axel says, absolutely surprised because Roxas Wasn't On This Op. Brushing his fingers together and heading over to his comrade, Axel speaks up. The way he talks to Roxas and just seems to not see him as a threat will, hopefully, be enough for the Galbadians. "We're here on an operation with Galbadia. Trying to clear out some nasties. What are /you/ doing here?"
Raziel	Raziel loses his diamond, this isn't the end of the world, but he is annoyed that he lost the diamond without learning what it was.  It's really the principle of the matter.  Whatever he'll take Arthur's share of the gold, while a highborn vampire, he still had his heart of adventure...and love of treasure.   Standing up, fully, he looks over as Roxas appears in front of them, and then asks them why they're here.  He looks towards Axel because he's sure that Roxas didn't come with them.  There is a moment of suspicion, before then he sounds surprised as Roxas is. "Yes...we entered...the Underground by going underground," Raziel chimes in.  "How did you get here?"
Riku	Riku isn't sure what to make of it. He has no idea who or what the silhouette belongs to, He tucks the medal away though, having no particular desire to hand it over. It might be useful somehow, and Riku is no less vulnerable to amassing potential KEY ITEMS even if they aren't, in hopes that rubbing item A on thing B might get him some kind of progress in his quest. Instead, he gets moving and heads up the clocktower to join the others, using his abilities to quickly scale until they get to the top. The environment at the summit is Meaningful, but not in a way immediately apparent to Riku. The chirping of his smartphone causes him to check the time, noticing the shifting going on. This is more obvious. This is a record of something. Riku stalks around the dioramas, trying to look them over to see if there's anything he can identify offhand. What he's not expecting is the arrival of the hooded person. Riku turns, looking directly towards Roxas and blinks. The guy he keeps accidentally doing the same thing as! There is a grimace on his face as something about that bugs him for no readily discernable reason. However, Axel is asking the pertinent question, so Riku simply remains quiet, waiting to hear what's going on.
Haguro	Eventually, gathering stuff turns into rubbing stuff on other stuff. Seeing those images of long-dead people has Haguro confused at first, then going "aww" from the initial hit of amusement followed by an "oh" from the subsequent hit of reality knowing that everyone's watching ghost imagery. Turning away from that quickly, the Cruiser with the now-heavy pockets starts poking through those books that have been discovered in the SUNNY WINDOW room. She goes through books at random, but it's the one in the center that gets her attention after not too long. Before she can get to it, though, her watch starts buzzing, and she looks down at it with a perplexed expression. "Have we been down here for that long already? I guess those.. Earlier traps took longer than expected." It's plain to see that something still seems off to Haguro, and not being able to put her finger on what just bothers her more. That odd feeling pays off when someone else entirely shows up in the room, and Haguro only has her hand on her revolver for a moment before stopping once Axel greets him. ".. Oh! It's... Um. You. The boy from the shopping trip." Haguro smiles softly at Roxas, albeit with some uncertainty as she starts glancinga round again to make sure nobody else shows up out of nowhere. "It's dangerous around here. How..." No, she'll leave that question to Axel. "Are you hurt?" Haguro's just going to have fuss over him a bit. Not too much (maybe), but someone has to make sure he didn't get himself stabbed or drowned by ghosts.
Lilian Rook	It doesn't take long for Lilian to figure out that the bookshelves aren't a point of interactive interest. She only flips through a couple before deciding they're obviously just someone's personal collection of boring filler. The one in the center of the table is of considerably more interest, and, treating as a grimoire and taking some basic precautions in touching and turning over the book to examine it for signs of implanted magical lockouts, trigger phrases, and other paranoid wizard gotcha bullshit, starts poking through the contents, assessing the book's age through its weathering and materials, its probable value through looking for things like whether it was printed or written by hand, how skilled the writer was, etc. and any diagrams that appear to be of supernatural significance, or at least something universal, like geometry. Geometry is common in weird esoteric bullshit.     She decides right away that this is probably going to be extremely important, given that it is definitely a dead language native to whatever this place is, but that she doesn't really have the time or priorities to sit here trying to crack it open the whole way. She folds the book shut and tucks it into her kind of cramped carry space, giving up a magazine to fully empty an ammo case via inventory tetris.     She approaches the sunny clock window and takes a good, long look at the town outside, holding her hand over her eyes and channeling her energy into them to push the barest, vestigial edges of human vision that normally no longer see things phantasmal, looking to visually identify any signs of magic or weird distortions, as her only means of checking the town for anomalies, since all she has is line of sight.     From there, she does one final thing. Pacing back and forth between the windows, checking her watch, she moves over to the sunny window, and-                 -----[stop]-----     Lilian checks her watch to make sure it's noon, then walks back towards the dark window, eyes on the AM/PM indicator.                 -----[start]-----     As soon as she's done with that though, Roxas bumbles in, and she makes sure the book is discreetly stowed before answering. "G-Forces operation." she answers simply. "I don't really care how you got here, but you sound like you know where this *is*." she continues pointedly. "For as much as that matters. This whole place is disjointed in spacetime. Someone or something . . . broke it off. Cast it adrift. In stasis, I suppose. I don't think the clock is broken at this point. It's probably not meant to move. It's been preserved or something. I hope you have an idea, because there are some things I'd like to try that might cause . . . anomalies."
Roxas	"Uh... well..." Roxas folds his arms over his chest, /probably/ looking up at the ceiling. The truth is that he doesn't really know. He was following his gut, but what his gut wanted him to do didn't really have very much bearing on... anything, at all, really. It doesn't make sense. This place just... felt... right. But he certainly didn't see anybody else passing through. He wasn't certain that anybody had been here but him in a long, long time. "Xemnas told me I should follow my gut, so I... just sort of did that?" He offers, but it sounds as if he's equally disbelieving that he's here as anyone else is. "I didn't see any nasties, though... there's some people outside, but they seemed nice enough." "Huh?" He tilts his head slightly in response to Haguro's question, "I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be? There's nothing dangerous here." He looks up towards Lilian, and makes what is most definitely a contemplative noise. The problem is that although he knows this place, after a fashion, the information related to that knowledge doesn't actually exist. It is like a word perpetually on the tip of your tongue, deeply and personally familiar but-- absent. Completely and utterly absent. With a frustrated, even angry noise, Roxas shakes his head. "I'm sorry, I know where I am and don't at the same time. But..." Roxas ignores the clock faces and moves over towards the bookshelves, "... I think... I think I know that time isn't wrong here. It must be like Twilight Town, or Traverse Town. It's just... always like this, because that's what it is. You know what I mean?"
Haguro	"That's a relief. It... W-well, it does raise even more questions-especially about this Xemnas person-but it's good that you're safe." Haguro glances around again, seeing a distinct lack of other people that aren't already part of the group. "Where...? No, no. He wouldn't be here." Of course he wouldn't. Roxas was the one who knew to come here, so it wouldn't make sense for someone else to be here yet.. "It's alright. I don't know what you mean, but these other towns. Can you get there from here like you got here from..Er." Haguro looks around again, furrowing her brow after a moment. "You.. Came from talking with this Xemnas person? Where was that?"
Arthur Lowell	Arthur regards the mysterious chunk of his GRIST CACHE with concern and seriousness. Most things that start changing up how Sburb works do so because they have a particular weight, and he's... worried about the kind of weight this might have. He resolves to look around for more unusual SUNBEAM-related matters elsewhere.     Arthur already hates this chamber.     "Fuck," He mutters. "Did we COME UP outta the UNDERGROUND? We in the WRONG SPOT, or what?" He studies the area, frowning hard like the clocks will just, you know, kindly have a map on them. "Wait, ADRIFT? Fuckin' hell. How much got ADRIFT? Just this one ROOM, or we talkin," He peers out the IMPERVIOUS CLOCKFACE, then out to the BADLANDS. "Something like a BRIDGE. One end in ONE TIME, one end in ANOTHER TIME, maybe? How the hell's that work? Jegus." He rubs his face, dragging both hands down his cheeks. "I fucking hate WEIRD TIME SHIT."     Arthur checks something. He knows that the NOON SIDE is impervious to piercing, of course, but that singularity... interests him. There's a sunbeam and night-time duality here. If the NOON is impervious, what happens if he just... reaches out with his magic, gently tries a slight spatial handshake, and...     Tries bouncing a signal off that MYSTERIOUS BLACK HOLE to see if he can access the SPACE beyond the MIDNIGHT WALL.
Xion	Stopping time and moving between the Daybreak and ??? sides does, in fact, flip the hands of Lilian's digital watch. Doing so in stopped time is a mildly vertigo-inducing experience, able to feel the subtle point at which the clocks flip, like straddling the dateline in a tangible, magical sense. As for the book: It is 'hand' written, stylistically, but the book itself is probably magically copied. Calling it a grimoire is most accurate. The pages appear stained in places, and their edges rough. Filled with diagrams of Heartless - the doofy Shadows, and the more meanacing Darksides, the symbol some bear, and other various types - a scrawling that looks like a cartoonish cat, a depiction of a key-like weapon that features a hanging chain that should contain something, but doesn't... Riku would recognize that: Sora's Kingdom Key, though without the trailing crown keychain. In fact, he'd know specifically that, even though he can't read it, the Kingdom Key is somehow important. As for Roxas, glancing over the text before Lilian puts it away, that his experience with keychains is that all Keyblades - even Xion's - have keychains. Finally, on a cursory flip-through, it's easily discoverable that there's an ENTIRE CHAPTER on the letter X, but WRITTEN SHITTILY, like it was flipped upside down and written hanging off the page, instead of NORMAL, like the letter X should be. But then Arthur Lowell does a thing. It's... not a good Thing.
Raziel	Raziel understands the other parts of what Roxas is saying.  Feeling and not understanding why.  However...he has no idea why time is weird here and that explanation does not make sense to him at all in the slightest.  he just kinda tilts his head to one side to look at Roxas blankly.   "I have no idea what those places are."
Lilian Rook	"Don't be a baby." Lilian says to Arthur. "This is like, apprentice level time shit at most." Eyeroll.     Oddly, she seems to take Roxas' non-explanation in stride. "Time doesn't have to be 'wrong' to be functionally altered. I can't think of why anyone would set up anything important in a place like this unless they were specifically trying to avoid linear time. It is what it is, but someone wanted to live here, and leave things behind here, because what-it-is was important. That's basic sense. Like building a city on a river. It's there because a river is full of important utility."     She makes a meaningless little circular hand gesture as she starts pacing around again. "What commonality does this place have with either of those towns? I assume Twilight Town is a town perpetually at twilight?" She pauses in front of the broken window, really strongly assessing whether to go through that. Clipping out of bounds had worked out so far, but she needs to discern what kind of bad juju magic the midnight face is.     Frankly though, she'd always had better luck with midnight than midday. It's a personal alignment thing.     "This specific spot is built on a membrane inters- a 'date line'. It's conveniently placed to access two specific places that exist in different times; it's not a nexus of time being actively altered. The stopped clocks are right in both areas. It *is* noon there, and it *is* midnight here." she thinks out loud. "They're probably not. spatially connected. I don't think you could go out that side and just walk around in a circle until you reach the other. The top of the clocktower is oddly *meant* to connect here, but I don't know why the bottom is rooted in Galbadia. The Train Graveyard especially. It's like a tree or something." She snaps her fingers in the direction of the town. "Do you recognize that place at least? I don't see a way to get there from here."     She actually goes all the way up and puts her hand on the clock face. Because there is no whoosh sparkle zap crack magical effect, it's not obvious that she's hail mary forcing time acceleration on the clock parts, not really expecting them to move, but testing her feeling.
Roxas	"They're... crossroads. I was born in Twilight Town. It's kind of like this place, but the time of day is different. There's a few places like that out there." Roxas explains to Raziel. Since he mostly explained it already, he just nods an affirmative to Lilian when she asks about the time of day at Twilight Town. He doesn't really have more of an explanation than that, because he is not the Smart Guy. Riku's predisposition to find him annoying is probably spot-on, in that regard. But he does add, "I think... I might have lived here, once." Roxas perks up a little in response to a specific question that Lilian asks. He nods, and points (perhaps unhelpfully) /exactly the way she came/, "I came that way, through town. It's sort of twisty and windy and inconvenient, but you can basically go down into the waterways and come up through the clock tower."
Lilian Rook	Lilian is still doing a lot of pacing and talking to herself the whole time. "So, *exactly* like a tree then, if a ton of different underground passages lead to the base of this tower. Roots. Why do monsters come out into Galbadia, but not into your town though?" She pauses. "Or do they?"
Roxas	"Into Twilight Town?" Roxas considers that, and shakes his head, "Deling City links almost directly to Traverse Town, not to Twilight Town. I don't know /why/ it would connect to this place. Maybe because of all the lights?"
Riku	Riku, with a lack of leads, gets back to examining things. Roxas is harmless enough, and he doesn't seem to know what's going on. Just like him. Another thing that seems to make his jaw tighten just a little more. At this point, he simply watches Lilian page through the book, very obviously looking at it while she pages through. While she does so, he examinines things as much as he can. While he can't read the script, pictures speak for themselves. He looks around on the pages, seeing the Heartless that he is familiar with, the Darkside that resembles his Eidolon to a disturbing degree, and other things. He stops when he sees the key. His teeth immediately clench, old feelings rising up that no doubt make part of his mind chuckle a bit. "Why is that in there...?" He asks no one in particular, irritated for reasons he has no intention of immediately explaining. He does, however, ask Roxas offhandedly when Lilian tucks away the book, frowning to himself. He doesn't contest it for now. Again. "Who's Xemnas, anyway? Would they know anything about this place?"
Xion	The Clock Face, on the Daybreak Town side, when accellerated, feels simultaenously like time is passing, and is at a total standstill. Lilian especially can feel the idea that she could absolutely 'do things', speed up time, or even manipulate it backwards, should she like. But Time is not a Clock. Clocks tell you what Time It Is. Not if time is passing or not. Suffice to say: it's Time Shit. She also has a split second to tell Arthur to knock it off, before-- He reaches out.
Roxas	"Xemnas? He's the leader of our Organization," Roxas gestures between himself and Axel, "but time isn't really his thing. He's more... bodies-and-minds, if that makes sense? He used to study ghosts, I think..."
Xion	Like an audio driver that has just fucking MESSILY CRASHED, the entire room fills with a horrible screeching sound that is immediately fucking AWFULLY debilitating. The inner ear recoils, as if everyone immediately plunged off a goddamn bottomless cliff while standing. The world grows hazy, vibrating as a terrible frequency. Arthur Lowell reaches out, and something reaches back. It asks him if he wants the darkdarkdarkdarkdarkdarkpower absolutedarkdarkdarkdarkdarkdark It asks him if he wants to be made whole. The awful, balance-destroying, debilitating effect increases as the tinnitus increases to a full 11 out of 10. It is unbearable. Yellow eyes perk out from the shattered darkened clockface, as a jagged red smile spreads. "Welcome to our reunion. I didn't think you'd come here. aheh" There's a cut, through the air, that drops down like an absurd sword just helm-splittered Captain Galbadia. Zack cries out, from his position on one knee, seeing the Captain struck. "Rookie!" Zack gurgles. The Unit Captain prances around like a glitched-out graphical error of a jester. "Have you come to join me? Yes? No? it doesn't matter!" "You don't have a choice." The SUNBEAM DIAMONDS in the inventories of Riku, Axel, and Raziel glow, from their pockets or even the insides of their chests as the tatter-clothed Unit Captain's strange and monstrous form visually flickers about the room, grinning like a snaggletoothed monster. "You've HECKED UP, and now you all get suffering." In the distance, a long, awful tentacle reaches out from the pit, dragging... something Absolutely Awful out. A misshapen, malformed shape. The tinnitus refuses to clear. It's awful, and the only rock anyone can cling to is the light coming from the three that gathered up the strange treasures before. Like an insurance policy, almost.
Roxas	Captain Galbadia blinks as something closes in before he can react. There is a great CRACK as his helmet splits clean down the middle and falls away. A gleaming white butterfly drifts up out of one half of the helmet and ascends through the ceiling, vanishing into the ether-- back to where it came from, wherever that may be. As for the Captain he shrinks, assuming a scrawnier build. He's of utterly average height -- a good bit shorter than Zack -- and he looks as if he barely passes the physical requirements that might be needed to be a soldier at all. Blood pours down his head from where the blow struck, gashing his scalp but not cracking his skull or penetrating terribly deeply. He throws himself forward, rolling across the ground to get distance on the whatever-just-attacked him, and then comes back up ready with his sword. Absent the might that being Captain Galbadia obviously offered him, the soldier is substantially less... imposing. Impressive. Competent-seeming. His inexperience comes to the forefront and the advantage that made it less meaningful has been wiped away. The man behind the mask is blonde, with spiked hair not altogether dis-similar to Zack's, with striking blue eyes. Cloud Strife could not be much older than eighteen. He tries to rise, and-- cannot do so. He wobbles to one side dizzily, the effects of the concussion he just received firmly in force, with no superpowers to compensate. Blood pours down his face and forces him to shut his left eye. At first his hand rises to the hilt of his blade but /immediately/ both hands clutch either side of his head violently as the tremendous ringing ripples through his being. He slumps forward onto the ground, managing -- barely -- to bring his hands forward and stop himself from slamming face-first into the floor. With a hand shaking so terribly he might as well be convulsing, Cloud manages to seize the hilt of his G-Saber and begin working it free. It rattles with a steady, irregular clicking of metal against sheath. His defiance is plain as day, and nobody could say that he didn't have the /spirit/, but... If he has the strength to draw his blade, he does not have the strength to rise. And if he has the strength to rise, he certainly does not have the strength to strike. But it's important. It's too important not to try. So he tries anyway.
Xion	The Unit Captain throws back his head and laughs, as the thing begins to crawl free from the dark well it was pulling itself free from. "Oh? You can still even hold that useless thing?" "Suffering is too good for you." "Instead I will give you despair."