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Timekeeper     Any day you look, there's always a million things going on somewhere within the three-headed tangle of the St. Pavlov Foundation HQ campus. In such a large organization, there's always going to be someone you haven't met, working on something you've never heard of, that might suddenly come to your attention when it arises out of 'nowhere' to become relevant. So it is today: Zeno Armament Academy hasn't had a reason to reach out for Elite assistance before, but now it does.

    The missive explains that Laplace satellite facilities have uncovered results that suggest the presence of an anomalous Storm zone somewhere in the western United States-- that is, a location with unusual arcane readings before and after the Storm of 1966, meaning that it reacts strangely to the Storm when it comes. There's no telling what that actually *means*, though, without packing up and setting out to look at it in person. To that end, this is a collaborative mission between Laplace and Zeno, with a representative of each, along with whatever assistance Elites provide in getting there or studying the location once they are.

    ". . . Might be a specially immune place like HQ is, might be a Manus safehouse, might be nothing at all! Isn't that exciting?"

    The Zeno scout that meets you just outside the city limits of Oakland, California introduces herself as Leilani, an era native, but chipperly reassures you that you can totally talk to her about anything classified-like because she passed her Zeno exams so she's in the know! She's a dark-skinned Polynesian girl who can't be older than eighteen, dressed like a park ranger with an unstrung bow sticking out of the top of her backpack. She's got pale pink pigtails that bounce with excitement every time she talks, and besides her uniform, she has a yellow hibiscus flower carefully fastened to her bag.

    The precise coordinates of the location you're looking for weren't shared in the post seeking Elite assistance, but now that you're here, Leilani's got no problem chattering about it. The warpgate let you out by the coast of the east bay, a fifteen minute walk away from the the wooden train station at the edge of the city, which is where Leilani directs everyone to go.

    "It's gonna be a spot in the Sierra Nevadas! That's the mountain range east of here, which-- fun fact!-- has a super duper big role in how wet and green this part of the land is, because it captures all the rain before it can go any further east. That's why it's all desert past 'em!"

    "Oh, oh! But the spot!" Leilani finally bravely overcomes her urge to get distracted by other topics to get to the point, only to immediately become distracted again. "Actually-- do you know the story of the Donner Party? It's some real sordid stuff. Wayyyy back when, back before barely anyone lived out here besides the Indians, the pioneers-- well, that's what they called them-- had to make all their own ways. Lots made it; lots didn't, but the most famous story's about the group that landed right in the middle. They got snowed in the mountains over winter, and resorted to eating each other to survive."

    There's no one else at the train station when you arrive, though the train's going to arrive soon. Leilani wheels around on the wooden platform, arms spread wide with the distant valley at her back.

    "Anyways! Hello! Hi! Hiya! Welcome to America! I hope we can all become friends today!"
Lissandra      Lissandra is still in the 'establishing' phase of her new career, which means agreeing to plenty of fieldwork as long as it isn't heinously dangerous at first blush. She tells herself that eventually she'll get to take it easy, but... Well, she can just sate herself with the more active social life that so much work comes with. It's the little things.

     She's not Earth-native, let alone familiar with the 60's or America, but the internet is such a wonderful thing and she has no complaints with the fashion options available. When she arrives, it's clear she's done at least a little bit of homework; she's wearing a muave button-up dress with a waist-belt, black heels and a few extra bits of jewelry, mostly a mix of loose gold or bead bracelets. Her bag is being carried like always, and her wand is *mostly* tucked out of the way; only the bottom of its thin holster pokes out under the bottom of her dress, against her outer thigh. She contentedly transports herself to the initial meeting site via illusory-shrouded flight from the warpgate, but her staff is gone into her bag again by the time she actually comes into view.

     Leilani's pleasantness doesn't go to waste, either. Lissandra meets smiles with slightly smaller smiles, mixes her introduction with a compliment- "Your hair looks wonderful, I've never seen the color before."- and despite not being all *that* interested in the landscape itself, tries to soak up the exposition politely. "I'm afraid I'm entirely unfamiliar with the area, so it's nice to have a guide. What a story for a place to be known for though..." Her pleasant coasting is slightly shaken, and she gives off a sort of abstractly thoughtful aura for a few moments like she's filing away whatever came to mind first. It's with some slight effort that she puts her smile back on afterward. "Well, how earnest. I think I'd like that very much, Leilani."

     She seems to be glancing off down the tracks now and then while the group waits, too. It's her first time riding a train, today, so she's looking forward to it at least a little bit.
Regulus ...And Regulus!

Regulus woke up today to the sound of the radio playing The Turnip Song and a feeling a sudden compulsion to purchase one (1) turnip. Regulus soon realized that this meant that she was about to run into Flamel and that she should have a turnip ready. Of course, her reason for making Flamel eat a turnip is now different than it was before because now she has made a pact with Ahn to properly appreciate turnips. The Turnip War has ended and Regulus is bound by pirate vow to respect turnips and not dislike them especially if Ahn is the one who prepared the turnips but, just to be on the safe side, she probably shouldn't dislike other people's turnips either--for the sake of Turnip Peace. So this is now a venture not for Turnip Revenge but, like, a positive lesson. To Flamel. About appreciating turnips. That he probably doesn't need. But somehow, she vows, this turnip will be the first step towards making Flamel capable of feeling bad about the harms he does to people for more than a week.

So she has brought a lunchbox with her and also APPLe along because while she doesn't know much about Zeno--they are, like, a military right? Who knows what sort of bloodthirsty maniac will be in charge? She's going to need backup just in case things go real south.

''Welcome to America! I hope we can all become friends today!''

Regulus looks at APPLe who is holding a map in front of his 'face'.

"We are in the right place, Captain."

"Well don't you worry, Regulus will be happy to be your friend!" Regulus tells Leilani because it's Regulus's policy to accept friendship when it's offered.

''do you know the story of the Donner Party?''

"Captain...if we get trapped, please know that this APPLe will bravely--"

"That's not going to happen! The time of being trapped in cold places is over for a while now." Regulus insists as she takes a look around. "Huh. Do people not use this train anymore?" She asks.
Foundation Scions     Mesmer Jr. looks wrong any time she's outside of hospital environs, much less out in the world of the late 1920s, but that out-of-placeness is tempered here and now, by the fact she's come flanked by a pair of subtly-uniformed Laplace guards, with only the minimal amount of chrome visible on chronistically-less-garish white longcoats and caps. Mesmer Jr. has, strangely, herself bothered to take a poorly-fitting identical longcoat to wear over her normal outfit, which works far less as an era-appropriate guise, instead ensuring she looks more like a sci-fi doctor than usual. Her logic? Mountainous areas are cold.

'Might be a specially immune place like HQ is, might be a Manus safehouse, might be nothing at all! Isn't that exciting?'

"Hopefully not too excit-"
"I'm sure it's likely to be nothing. The sensor equipment is old, unreliable, and certain to be sending us out to stare at a patch of snow and rocks." Mesmer interrupts.
"Huh? No, my pal's one of the data-crunchers, said so herself she's seen a lot of junk info, and this doesn't look like-"
"'Your pal' shouldn't be talking about data like that." She interrupts, again, as the guards both share rolled-eye glances at eachother about who they're escorting.

    "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't just going to waste my time," She continues, under-breath, annoyed as she trudges on towards the train station, arms only uncrossing from in front of her chest to anxiously rub at her own wrists, and confirm her gear and mission documents are still there, on her person, where she put them.

    Idly, to no-one, and completely ignored by her trailing guards, "It's the middle of winter. I thought it was supposed to be cold, here. That's an irritant."

'Actually-- do you know the story of the Donner Party? It's some real sordid stuff.'

    "It's a rather mundane instance of survival cannibalism, frankly. It happens all the time. Beyond repulsive, obviously; but a testament to the logic of human instincts to overcome sentiment." Mesmer Jr. is coming out as having mixed feelings on cannibalism.

'Captain...if we get trapped, please know that this APPLe will bravely--'

    Mesmer turns to stare nauseated daggers at Regulus and APPLe. "Don't say that."

'Welcome to America! I hope we can all become friends today!'

"I've been to America before-"
"Hah, that's nice of you," a guard interrupts, like it isn't an act of revenge.
"I thought you Zeno types were supposed to be... gruff?"

    Mesmer huffs, and just stands there.
Lissandra      A floating, speaking apple with telekinesis(?) is inherently kind of fascinating, and Lissandra's wandering gaze probably ends up squarely on APPLe for at least a short time. It almost gets a bit rude, before Mesmer's complaint about the weather draws aggro instead, and Lissandra grumbles a little. "I should've known to check, it isn't as if I'd need to speak with the Yellow just for a forecast..." She trails off, thinking about whether to change in the train or wait until they arrive to see if there's actually snow, but for some reason decides to press the A-button on Mesmer while she's trying to make up her mind. "You prefer the cold then?" The way she asks might feel a little forced, and it's not entirely clear whether she's just filling dead air or not.

     She, to either her credit or discredit, seems to have not even a slight, cheeky thought to share about cannibalism. One could even say she's clammed up when it comes up again, if not for the effortless way she slides into distraction, gently fluffing her curl-ended hair with the backs of her hands.
Lilian Rook     When given a chance to reflect on it, Lilian finds herself deeply surprised that, out of all three choices to get deeply entangled with, it was Laplace's scientific tree fort that got her first, and neither the Foundation's reaching world-power ideological milieu or the Zeno private school slash magical soldier conceptual archetype.

    The temptation to see three times as many of those million things going on is, suddenly, very intense, but even when prompted to think about everything she's missing, Lilian can't help but remember that she's already spinning at least three and a half plates, after the clusterfuck her blood sampling day was just recently turned into by force. With reluctance, she throws on her 'Foundation' coordinated outfit, and resolves to try and scope out Zeno's operational capabilities through the elite detachment that they send.

    'Isn't that exciting?'

    Hm.

    After loading a crossbody bag with approximately point two Petras of general outing preparedness, surreptitiously slipping ammunition and runestones into her belt loadout in case of Manus Vindictae, and even going so far as to dispense with the otherwise mandatory inclusion of at least one book, Lilian expected to be tasked with making a precise impression on a crack military team of arcanists. Now she feels like she's at risk of making an eccentric military impression on an exciteable little fruity nature scout. Silently, she decides she has got to start adding Foundation-related divinations to her already overly long morning routine.

    'It's gonna be a spot in the Sierra Nevadas!'

    "Oh god."

    That's the first thing Lilian says since arriving, after maintaining absolute, grimly neutral attentiveness. It's still barely more than whispered to herself. Those words cause neuron activations in all the second-scariest places.

    'Actually-- do you know the story of the Donner Party?'

    "Please--" Word number three.

    'Wayyyy back when, back before barely anyone lived out here besides the Indians, the pioneers--'

    Lilian feels goosebumps break out on her arms. Like a chill wind has just blown in, she turns to face the source of her instinctive dread automatically.

    'They got snowed in the mountains over winter, and resorted to eating each other to survive.'
    'Captain...if we get trapped, please know that this APPLe will bravely--'
    'It's a rather mundane instance of survival cannibalism, frankly. It happens all the time.'

    Lilian's eyes skim over both Laplace guards and land on Mesmer with single-minded shuddersome reluctance. The instant she sees her, a certain sequence of words she once said to her pop into her mind.

    "I bet you taste like shit."

    She looks away, slowly and robotically, without saying a word.

    §Why the fuck is she here? Doesn't Laplace have anyone else? Isn't she supposed to be oh-so-busy running the ward? She's the laziest, most expendable member, isn't she?§

    "It's a pleasure to meet you, Leilani." Lilian starts, stiff and forced, but trying not to be. "Lilian Rook. O-5, six years of experience, and currently working with the Foundation." she says, in lieu of anything to do with the Paladins. Leilani said she could talk classified, but still . . .
Lilian Rook     'Anyways! Hello! Hi! Hiya! Welcome to America! I hope we can all become friends today!'

    "That'd be nice." she says, smiling distantly. She looks over at Regulus without any particularly strong emotion (she doesn't remember most of the road trip; not even the parts she effusively gushed at her), and then waves to Lissandra pleasantly enough. Her left hand rests permanently on her sword, worn on her hip this time, making it abundantly clear that her fashionable belt is in-fact double strapped to hold a scabbard. "Could you tell us more about the location itself?" she says, gently prompting without specific criticism.

    'I thought you Zeno types were supposed to be... gruff?'

    §Oh thank god someone said it.§

    "Private security has a reputation as well, you know." Lilian says, turning up a palm and partially shrugging. "Even I'm actually military. That sort of reputation is something people overly exaggerate to paint the career with a sort of anti-civilian mystique." she says. No way she's going to admit she thinks Leilani is out of place herself. "I'll admit that it seems unlikely that Manus Vindictae would be involved. The Nevadas aren't exactly an ideal staging ground." Lilian lies. "But there's no sense in not being prepared. If it comes to that, then it's a pleasure working with you."

    §Ignore her. Don't think about her. Pretend that stupid fucking hot-cold passive-aggressive needy clingy wishy-washy psychotic manipulative desperate for attention cunt doesn't even exist. Believe in the future, Lilian.§
Flamel Parsons     Flamel Parsons..

    Wasn't fucking invited to this, obviously! Laplace Scientific Computing Center has every reason to mistrust that man and his shenanigans, especially after recently getting everyone stuck in a survivalist nightmare scenario, not to mention his collaboration with Manus Vindictae. Although measures are well underway to unburn that particularly ashen bridge, it'll be a while longer before the conference to really repair Psychonaut-Foundation relationships enough that allies of enemies might be forgiven by allies of allies. Zeno might have plausibly invited him, but only because they haven't met the bastard, but that's also why they wouldn't invite him from the start. Surely he doesn't meet their exacting standards! So why did he show up here?

    He's been studying the Storm, still. More importantly, he's been studying places where the Storm might intersect with psychic phenomena, such as places where massive psychic impressions that predate the existence of the Storm Syndrome might line up with Storm anomalies. The Sierra Nevadas are one such locale, and Parsons is well on his way to investigate.

    That's the why. What about the 'how'? Later, for that.
Timekeeper "What a story for a place to be known for though..."

    Lissandra gets a cutesy double-handed wave from Leilani, and a pleased twirl that makes her bag rattle at the compliment. "Oh, well, it's not all it's known for! It's a beautiful place too, I'm told. Not that I've ever been! But these are a totally different kind of mountains from back home, so they must be, right? My first time on the mainland at all was just half a year ago. And thanks! Your outfit's really cute!"

"Well don't you worry, Regulus will be happy to be your friend!"

    "Oh, you're *that* Regulus, right? I've heard people gossip about you!" No explanation for that is forthcoming, but she does try to give Regulus a high five(?!). "Nice meeting you!"

"The sensor equipment is old, unreliable, and certain to be sending us out to stare at a patch of snow and rocks."

    "Well, um, I hope not!" Leilani's bright expression only barely dims at Mesmer's sourness, and she rebounds quickly. Her gesticulations practically involve galloping around on the train platform, swooshing her hand through the air to indicate teleportation, or wiggling her fingers to represent the rain.

    "Imagine! If we start finding places like that all over the world, then we'd be able to save so many more people! And all those protocols of teleporting people around or ferrying people all the way to Europe would get so much easier. Don't you think that'd be cool?"

"I thought it was supposed to be cold, here. That's an irritant."

    She's not ignored by Leilani! Leilani's got lots of things to say about that. "Oh, don't worry, it will be! Once we're up in the mountains, it'll be chilly, and might even snow a bit. But down here, being right next to the bay means the water keeps the temperature stable all year round. And there's wind that comes right through the coastal mountains because of the difference of air temperature, bringing ocean air over the bay."

"It's a rather mundane instance of survival cannibalism, frankly. It happens all the time."

    Leilani pauses, arms sinking down to her side. "I don't think I know of any other time it's happened..."

"Could you tell us more about the location itself?"

    "Oh, yep! Well-- I've already marked the coordinates on my map, so with my arcane skill, we're not gonna even need directions. Should be a walk in the park, besides the critters, and the cold, and maybe whoever's waiting for us...." Miraculously, after trailing off, she remembers to answer the question. "Oh! But it's a short hike away from the closest train station, up by Donner's Pass! That's why I brought it up, heh. And to get there, it's juuuuuuuust,"

    While Lilian is focusing all of her energy on ignoring Mesmer, the train whistle sounds to signal its approach. Leilani claps, and pulls out a stack of tickets from a pouch on her bag, wiggling them for everyone to take one. "Three hours or so by train! So we'll have lots of time to get to know each other."
Timekeeper     The interior of the train is shockingly cushy, really. It's moderately packed, but the relative strength of the pound to the dollar in this era conveniently allows for booking first class, a designation almost exclusively used for members of vague and ominous government organizations such as the St. Pavlov Foundation. The seats are armchairs, facing one another, with carpeting and lamps to make the interior feel like a living room. Once the tickets are handed off, Leilani plops into one of the seats with a gleeful expression.

    "I've actually only been on a train once before? How about you guys? Oh, do they even have trains where you're from?"

"I thought you Zeno types were supposed to be... gruff?"

    "Um,! Well, you should see the sergeant, ehehe...." Leilani awkwardly laughs, kicking her feet in the chair. "Iiiii guess I'm maybe a bit of an oddball. Barely even qualified to graduate from the academy. Sorry if I'm not what you expected."

    She rebounds extremely quickly from that moment of vulnerability though, clapping her hands together when the train lurches into motion. "We have to spend the time somehow! How about talking about where we're from? Since we're all from such totally different places and all, especially *other worlds*. I'll start! I was born in Ka'a'awa, but for most of my life that I remember I lived by the Zeno base on the leeward side of O'ahu!"
Flamel Parsons     Flamel Parsons... is certainly a member of a vague yet ominous government organization. Which is why he's one of several anonymous background figures in the first-class carriage as the others board, having supplemented his meager travel expenses funding with personal cash to take this as a half-vacation. He's quite caught up in the Psychonauts equivalent of airport reading, from the look of it: "SELF-HURT BOOKS: Psychohazardous Literature and Its Damage", by Cassie O'Pia. For all intents and purposes, given his relatively timeless aesthetic, he barely stands out from the crowd, and it would be very easy to take a seat without noticing him. For better or for worse, he seems to have not noticed the new boarders, at least, but there's a few that he'll be very familiar to.
Regulus ''Don't say that.''

"Yeah I mean I just told him he didn't need to." Regulus says to Mesmer, taking a moment to look at Lilian biting the inside of her lip for a moment as she says, "Hey Lilian--you're here on behalf of Laplace, right? Can I give you something for them later?"

''Oh, you're *that* Regulus, right?''

"Yo!" Regulus returns the hi-five. "I see my infamy has preceded me...!" She grins. "But don't worry, I'm here to help." As if the alternative would be for her to be here to cause trouble which might have been the case until she met Leilani and was instantly won over. Regulus doesn't know of many instances of cannibalism either but she also, like, doesn't really look for that sort of thing. She actively avoids looking into that sort of thing, actually!

''So we'll have lots of time to get to know each other.''

"Oh that sounds great. I'd love to hear about you ended up with Zeno!" Regulus chirps and is quite willing to take up a generous amount of space on some cushy seats, letting out a small content 'ahhh'.

''Oh, do they even have trains where you're from?''

"Well yeah." Regulus says. "We've had the Tube since 1863--" Oh no, Regulus is about to provide some random history factoids as is her right as a Reverse 1999 character. "--It was the first underground passenger railway! Of course, it doesn't compare to the open sea, but it has it's charm points for sure. They were actually digging a new line called the Victoria Line before our timeline got reversed--I believe it was gonna start with connecting Walthamstow Central to uhh... Highbury and Islington I want to say?" She sighs wistfully. "It's a shame we never got to see it completed."

Once she's settled in, she opens up the lunchbox she's been carrying around and reveals a turnip with four popsticle sticks stuck in it to represent limbs and some candy 'eyes' fixed on and pushes it over to Flamel's way.

"It is your turn to accept turnip enlightenment Flamel. Respect the turnip. The turnip is your friend. And you don't trap your friends in a super blizzard to do experiments. Especially not today."

She keeps shoving the turnip at Flamel until he accepts it or her arm gets tired, whatever comes first.

She leans and whispers, "You weren't vague enough this time... heh heh heh..."

And then she pulls back.
Flamel Parsons     Flamel barely notices Regulus, until the turnip is very much prodded into his view. "Huh? Wha--" Then he jolts. "Woah!" He drops his copy of Self-Hurt Books onto his own toe in surprise, and makes a "ffhhhhh" noise, before shaking himself out of that. "Were you *following* me? With a group this big? Wow! I guess you picked up some espionage tricks while you were at the Motherlobe, that's actually very impressive. Don't do that again, though, it's very unnerving."

    He picks up the turnip, makes direct eye contact, and, rather than preparing it in any way, immediately bites into it raw, entirely forgetting(?!) that there's a skin involved. It looks to make him visibly have some sort of subtly, intensely negative reaction, but he nods and unconvincingly says to Regulus, "Mmm! Thanks for the snack." Each chew is a heroic effort. Dude you're supposed to fucking peel those at least, the skin is so bitter. He leaves the negativity of the experience on full display so that Regulus can have this put to rest.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_UJ9_Qhekc
Lissandra      Lissandra makes a slightly dramatic, pouty-sounding sigh at the confirmation that the weather will be colder after they arrive, but it's at least a little performative; she still reaches out to calmly pinch a ticket from the top of the stack when Leilani offers them. "Well, it sounds like you're anticipating quite the boon for the future, so I'll hope for the best. Once again, I'm relieved to have brought extra clothing. Funny how often that pays off." She seems unbothered by a three hour trip timeline at least!

     After boarding the train, Lissandra looks both ways to see as much of the interior as she can manage on the way in before she follows the flow of the group toward their own seats with a pleased little hum. "The ride must be smooth, if they can afford to furnish a vehicle this well." She's caught up enough in the mystique of a first train-ride that it's easy to glance right over Flamel in passing, but that won't last too long given a certain pirate's ambitions.

     Leilani certainly knows how to mind a group though. Lissandra isn't sure if she's just that professionally familiar with comforting a crowd, or if it's just something that comes natural, but it seems like something worth encouraging, so she takes a mustering breath as she prepares to skirt around the less-pleasant parts of her childhood. Most of it, really. "Ka'a'awa and O'ahu? What charming pronunciations. Well, I'm afraid I'm not from anywhere all that special, once you put aside it being another world. Born in a little farming village. For several decades I homed in a cottage in the woods, just along the border of two lords' territories. Most of my neighbors were the animals of course, but given my profession I still had visitors now and then, good and bad. And I'd have to leave to make visits of my own as well. Now I'm dwelling on another Earth, though. Trying to become acquainted with the new technology and such." She's certainly not sharing much in the way of specifics, and seems to be hoping that if she keeps pushing forward that nobody will get a chance to naturally ask... "For what it's worth Leilani, even if you had a difficult time in school you shouldn't degrade yourself too much. A navigational skill- or rather, arcanum? That's quite a valuable thing. And you've clearly worked on your people skills too." It's genuine praise! Where Lissandra's from you could get a really good job with skills like that, and come across almost entirely harmless to boot.

     Regulus calling out Flamel, meanwhile, has Lissandra leaning arm-over-seat around to try and see his face, with one eyebrow quirked up like she's watching a small animal do something really stupid. "... A... Pleasure to see you again, Flamel..? Why does he look more surprised than... Nevermind."
Lilian Rook     'Oh, you're *that* Regulus, right? I've heard people gossip about you!'

    Lilian looks at Regulus again, and remains silent.

    'Hey Lilian--you're here on behalf of Laplace, right? Can I give you something for them later?'

    "Sure." Wait which question was that an answer to?

    'Oh, yep! Well-- I've already marked the coordinates on my map, so with my arcane skill'

    Lilian brightens up at hearing this. She doesn't notice it herself; at least not immediately, but there's a distinct difference in her tone and energy when she asks "Oh really? What sort of arcane skill is it?"

    'besides the critters, and the cold, and maybe whoever's waiting for us....'

    "Oh don't worry about that." Lilian says, shaking her head. "If it gets to be too much, just stay behind me."

    'Three hours or so by train!'

    "Oh."

    There goes all that energy. Lilian's hopes are quietly dashed. The future refused to change.

    'Barely even qualified to graduate from the academy. Sorry if I'm not what you expected.'

    "Qualified is qualified." Lilian says, dull now without her optimism. "I was top of my class, so believe that I mean it."

    . . . . . . . .

    Well, at least the inside of the train is nice. Up to her standards, even; a far cry from the inside of Madeleine's nine-seat jaloppy shitmobile. The furnishings improve her mood somewhat, and so Lilian checks her ticket for assigned seating, then ends up in a middle seat with a full view of one side, unbuckling her bag to rest beneath the chair and settling in without complaint. She has no idea how she's going to pass three, or rather six to nine hours if she insists on efficiency, which she will, like this, but Leilani is bravely doing her best.

    'We have to spend the time somehow! How about talking about where we're from? Since we're all from such totally different places and all, especially *other worlds*.'

    §Oh okay. She was actually cleared. Weird.§

    "Well. As for myself, it's a bit of a long story." says Lilian. Not wanting to seem too into it, she removes Winter Crow from its drop-leg holster, opens the break action, and starts performing all seven chamber checks that she did before even leaving work. "I'm from a Earth nearing the very end of the twenty-first century. We don't have 'humans' and 'arcanists' like you--" she half-truths at best, "--but we have people who use magic and people who don't. Actually, the latter was convinced that magic wasn't ever real, starting around the end of the sixteenth century." Lilian smirks at that, for some reason.

    "The two sorts of people lived entirely apart. The people who continued to practice their various traditional magics concealed their existence for centuries, at first to avoid increasing persecution, then to avoid the theatrics of revealing themselves to the world, and the exploitation of their divergent disciplines from the sciences that was likely to follow." She repeats that line exactly like it is; what she was told growing up, and never examined. "Thirty-five years after the turn of the millennium, everyone on Earth was threatened by a global disaster, caused by an . . . invasion, of creatures that weren't quite either 'arcane' nor 'alien'."
Lilian Rook     "A lot of people died." Lilian says. She spins the arrays around one more time, to keep her eyes down. "Nineteen in twenty people according to the official figures. It lasted fifteen years, and became so severe that even the Enlightened, the people who can use magic, came out of hiding to defend humanity. In the end, almost all the survivors were concentrates in fortified arcologies that are still sort of the closest thing to 'cities' even in the modern day. Because of the relative ineffectiveness of human science at defending humanity against the enemy, and the comparative effectiveness of arcane means, however, there are more Enlightened per Unenlightened people on Earth than at any point in history, so . . ." She half-suppresses a grimace at a passing thought. She chooses different words than the ones that'd popped into her head. "The Enlightened hold a lot of positions of power, and make a lot of decisions, due to their increased importance in maintaining everyone's way of life."

    "All of that happened before I was born, though." Lilian casually drops, flicking her weapon shut and re-holstering it. "I was born to an Enlightened family living in the United Kingdom, though I was actually born in Ireland. Most of my extended family had already died, so I grew up with only my parents, siblings, and the house staff." Wait, shit, should she not have said 'house staff'? Is that abnormal? Is that rude? "Private property, outside the Urban Centers. I started private school at thirteen-- one for only Enlightened with 'good families'." Meaning 'pureblood lineages'. "I picked up a PhD in aetherial dynamics and a minor in biology. I quit research for a time to enroll in a top military academy instead, but I've since come back to performing scientific research in my own time. Biology regarding what makes people better and worse at magic, you could say, and now it's iterated over generations."

    "Officially speaking, I'm both a knight-- Order Ring of Solstice-- and an O-5 military officer, as well as a doctor. I've been all over the world, and it's different everywhere you go." Still, she pauses to try and think of commonalities, for an excited teen girl's consumption. "They're all places that are recovering, and talking about the future. People want to explore the Earth again, even though it's different now; like pioneers, I suppose. Enlightened and Unenlightened are still learning to live together, but there are all sorts of opportunities available to people now that there weren't before. Because the old economy collapsed, people try to maintain an orderly society with whatever roles help one another, and get what they need through requisition instead of money. Hmm . . ."

    "It's a lot more advanced than here." Lilian resumes. "Computers are tiny and portable. Air travel is cheap-- people barely drive cars anymore, though of course travel is increasingly being done by Warpgate. With proper medical treatment, even ordinary people can live a very, very long time. Easily over a hundred. There's plenty of food, and most of it can be grown indoors, now, thanks to science. Television, radio, the internet; they don't extend internationally anymore, so people focus on local cultures. The hot thing right now is 'historical revival'; people getting practically archeological about the past twenty-first and twentieth century, and trying to reconnect with their roots through literature, music, fashion, and that sort of thing. Enlightened society is more unified than it's ever been, but very private, and they tend to be very wealthy. There's an entire secret country that a lot of them live, now; an international neutral space for putting aside old feuds and productively managing the future of humanity."
Lilian Rook     Even though she'd taken it at a slow and steady pace, Lilian exhales as though it were an effort. "I could talk for hours about my school, the academy, uninhabited Earth, the Eastern Seaboard, Yamato, and West Coast Urban Centers. Magic, my family, the estate, growing up. The military, the Hidden Continent, and about a million social events. So perhaps it's best if I don't go on."

    But despite that, Lilian perks up just to say, "Oh, and I'm getting married in a month and a half. That's important." Nothing about the world maybe ending in two years, though.
Foundation Scions 'Imagine! If we start finding places like that all over the world, then we'd be able to save so many more people!'

    "Of course it would be a good thing," Mesmer snaps, "I'm well aware of the logistical inconveniences to be solved, and I'll hardly complain if I do happen to be wrong. I just can't see the point of falsely inflating hopes that this will be anything more than a field trip."

'You prefer the cold then?'

    "No, I don't have a preference. There's a set range of temperatures that are conducive to health, functionality, and comfort; and preparations one can take to maintain that range. This weather isn't what I expected," She says, despite her only preparation being a coat that probably isn't hers.

'Oh, don't worry, it will be!'

    Mesmer exhales. "Well. That's a relief. You weren't the one who wrote the briefing, were you? Include that bit about this city's weather, next time." Next time? What's the point in her chastising? They won't work together again, probably, and not here, definitely, and not at this time of year, definitely-er?

'Hey Lilian--you're here on behalf of Laplace, right?'

    "Regulus, what are you on about? I am here on behalf of Laplace Scientific Computing Center; whatever it is that you need to hand off, obviously, you'd give to me." Mesmer glares at Lilian throughout that, instead of Regulus. The guards, still nearby her, nudge each other a bit and try and get Regulus' attention- they, too, are Laplace-sent.

    Mesmer, as such, notices the tail end of Lilian staring her way; and mutters out a curt "Don't leer at me that way," with, hopefully, no way at all of knowing what exactly flashed back up to Lilian's mind.

    Mesmer takes her ticket from Leilani's hand, without looking at it, before remembering to step aside and let her guards take theirs. Without her or them really forgetting the other party is there, the distance mutual annoyance forms is astronomical. The Mesmer is a pain to be assigned under.

. . .

    "Excuse me. I have the windowside seat." Mesmer holds a ticket in front of herself, staring at it, double checking its number, and the fact that Lilian happens to be between her and her seat. "Please stand up, so I can cross; preferably don't return."

    Tapping her foot in the middle of the aisle, Mesmer stays there for as long as it'll take, even if others try and pass behind her. Her guards are relieved to have seats a bit away, snickering amongst themselves. Then, before any confirmation, Mesmer shrugs off the silly guard longcoat she'd been wearing to fold up (right there in the aisle!) and hold in front of herself.

    When she can take a seat, she doesn't, instead removing packaged wipes and a small spraybottle to sanitize the cushy furniture. The longcoat is left on the empty aisle seat, hopefully with no-one having it assigned to them.

'Private security has a reputation as well, you know.'

    "Sure, miss, but she's from Zeno, that Zeno. They're the real soldiers, and all that." To Leilani, "No offense."

'Barely even qualified to graduate from the academy. Sorry if I'm not what you expected.'

    "You didn't have to add that part," The guard says, disconnected from words just prior, sympathetic awkwardness taking over.

'I've already marked the coordinates on my map, so with my arcane skill, we're not gonna even need directions.'

    "I'd like a copy of the map, please, so it isn't just up to your arcane skill."
Foundation Scions 'How about talking about where we're from?'

    "No, thank you. I attended the SPDM; I'm high-level staff at Laplace, anything before that doesn't matter." Mesmer closes her eyes, and pinches her nose, trying not to think of sitting under a familiar tree to murmur about just that.
Lilian Rook     EARLIER:
    'Regulus, what are you on about? I am here on behalf of Laplace Scientific Computing Center; whatever it is that you need to hand off, obviously, you'd give to me'

    "Well Regulus, you can pass it along through me or through her. Your choice." Lilian says.

    'Don't leer at me that way,'

    "Oh god shut up." Lilian rolls her eyes. It helps distract her from a murderous impulse.

    NOW:
    'Excuse me. I have the windowside seat.'

    Lilian freezes, bookending her story. She glances right, then back. "No." she says, just to herself.

    'Please stand up, so I can cross; preferably don't return.'

    "Sit somewhere else." Lilian barks on instinct. Nothing can possibly be worse for this. She has to fight for her life here. "Regulus. Switch with her." she says, and not 'switch with me'. "I'll share my snacks." Like coaxing a fucking dog.

    Unfortunately, Lilian does stand to let someone else through, which gives Mesmer Jr. a completely pathetic window to bolt for her seat, if her dignity is that low.

    'How about talking about where we're from?'

    'No, thank you. I attended the SPDM; I'm high-level staff at Laplace, anything before that doesn't matter.'

    "She crawled out of a bog. Laplace injected her with chemicals to look like a living person. She's their prized experiment." Lilian says. "Since she still technically rots, though, she has to sanitize everything she touches and they have to pump her full of chemicals. That's why she always smells like cleaning products. They keep her in a storage closet when they don't need her; for the temperature regulation, you see."
Flamel Parsons     "... A... Pleasure to see you again, Flamel..?"
    Flamel manages to swallow back his horrible turnip which, actually, did not have to be horrible at all and which he opted into having horrible. And there's Lissandra! "Hi! Why... are you here? Are you all following me too?" He retrieves his book, peering at the larger group, then brightly smiling at Lissandra. "Well, it's a pleasure to see you too! I thought you were mostly in the medical and mystic fields, I didn't know you had gangstalking expertise. How long have you been involved in conspiracies?" He sounds genuinely friendly and curious about that, which is sort of absurd for obvious reasons.
Lilian Rook     'Hi! Why... are you here? Are you all following me too?'

    There's no time to explain. "Parsons. Swap seats with Mesmer Junior." God she'd even take that guy. Parsons only inflicts the Dark Urge (Minor), not the Dark Urge (Impossible).
Flamel Parsons     "Parsons. Swap seats with Mesmer Junior."
    "Why is that such a high-urgency... Hi, Lilian! One moment." He stands (from a window seat) to join the main group, still smiling wide and uncertain. And there's lots of bright waving to the Mesmer! He looks like he has absolutely no idea what's going on or how anyone else he knows got here. "Oh hey, always great to see a Mesmer again! I don't suppose this means you're chasing the same anomaly I'm trying to track down, are you? We can compare notes!" He happily tucks a hand around his literature. Apparently he has a particular objective related to it? And one he assumes Mesmer is already attuned to, for god knows what reason.
Lilian Rook     'Why is that such a high-urgency... Hi, Lilian! One moment.'

    "Because she's dangerous and I don't want to be near her." Lilian hisses. "Hello Parsons." comes begrudgingly after. There's no need to be rude. "I'll even overlook how suspect it is that you're here."
Lissandra      "Not intentionally." she says back to Flamel, making the very beginning of a laugh in her throat. "No, no conspiracies. Mostly just a bit of recreational skullduggery as a young girl." Once he's summoned for a grave task, the first question Lissandra might have wanted to ask dies peacefully on her lips, and she settles back into her seat properly as he walks over toward the rest of the group where she doesn't have to twist to look at him. Lilian seems to want him in Mesmer's projected spot, and Flamel wants to share notes, so that's two things that more or less solve themselves without Lissandra's input. Yipee! Without confirming or denying anything about an anomaly, she pleasantly asks, "What kind of anomaly is it that you're after?"
Foundation Scions 'Sit somewhere else.'

    "Why? Just because you felt the need to take the seat next to mine?" Mesmer nearly snarls, her wrinkled-nose sneer is so severe. "It's absurd to demand I swap; swap with Regulus or Parsons yourself. I don't want you sitting between me and the aisle; not with your sentiments. No- don't swap with either of them, actually, swap with someone normal, like-" Mesmer looks around the train car and comes up blank.

    "Just stand up and let me pass. You're making an absurd scene for no reason," She says, making a scene.

    Mesmer is, unfortunately, not above making the mad dash to the window seat; nor is she above stating, "It's my ticket-assigned seat, if you continue to raise a fuss about it, I'll ensure it comes to the point that the conductor is informed. Please, let me be, it's a seat, it's my seat, and I picked a ticket first, regardless." Did she?

    She makes a bit of a show of having gotten past, at least, by annoying, faux-relieved exhales and her seat preparations.

'Oh hey, always great to see a Mesmer again!'

    "No thank you." Mesmer bristles up, arms crossed, staring at him before looking back to Lilian. "You can explain yourself more clearly, don't shout, but I don't plan to make idle chit-chat, Parsons."
Regulus ''Flamel eats a turnip!''

Regulus watches him at first but then gets uncomfortable staring at him while he eats a turnip that she made look like a turnip person and looks away. The important thing is, is that everything turnip-related is over and the future will be improved. "Oh, uh, yeah. I'm pretty good at sneaking and finding people. Uh--no problem." She's pretty sure that's not how you should be eating a turnip either but she's eager to extract herself as quickly as possible so she doesn't comment on it.

''Obviously you'd give it to me.''

Regulus says, "...I'm not trying to pick a fight or anything." Before she reaches into her bag and draws out the clockwork crystalline unit she had stolen from Laplace during the tour. She spots the two guards nudging each other and she sees this as a sign and she approaches them and drops it in one of the guard's hands. "Sorry for stealing this before. I wanted to study it so I could try to replicate a similar unit. I wasn't sure if I would be able to just remember from looking at it so..."

And then before cuffs can be clasped around her, she rushes back to her seat and shoves herself down in it.

''Regulus switch with her.''

Regulus stands up.

''Swap with REgulus or Parsons.''

"Okay! Figure it out and I'll go wherever. All the seats are great."

She gloomily shoves herself back down in the seat she's chosen in the meantime, wondering just how long this train ride's going to actually be or if, maybe it crashing horribly and trapping everyone in a blizzard would be somehow an improvement.
Foundation Scions 'She crawled out of a bog. Laplace injected her with chemicals to look like a living person. She's their prized experiment.'

    Dismissive, hardly paying attention, and eyes still closed, "That isn't true. She's a compulsive liar, performing for attention, you can dismiss whatever you hear with a smile and a nod." Then, a bit more irritated, "I was born in Germany- West Germany, not East- no, the year's wrong for that, isn't it? It doesn't matter. Not a 'bog'."

'Since she still technically rots, though, she has to sanitize everything she touches and they have to pump her full of chemicals.'

    High-pitched nasal upset-tone, "What? Don't be a disgrace of a filthy slanderer, of course I'm not some rotting, septic corpse; this train car is just filthy, it's obvious, I don't know how you people ignore it when you can clearly feel it on your skin; and proper sanitation procedures simply don't exist at this point in time. I don't want to track someone else's dirt and filth and disease onto me, my clothes, or anything else; I won't be doing that. I'm not rotten, I'm perfectly sanitary." Quieter, "Don't smell me."
Flamel Parsons     "I'll even overlook how suspect it is that you're here."
    "Huh? Wha-- I mean, I'm not going to say you shouldn't be a little suspicious of an agent of a vague yet ominous government organization like myself, but," Flamel scratches the side of his head, squinting one eye closed behind his sunglasses in a baffled way. "Aren't *you* following *me*? What *are* you doing here? I'm trying to track down a possible UPE... are you after it too?" He seems to be sort of helplessly grasping for ideas here.

    "What kind of anomaly is it that you're after?"
    Lissandra gets his expression bright behind his sunglasses. "I'm so glad you asked!" He says, beaming smile turning into a satisfied grin. "Even if you're only recreationally gangstalking me, I'm always happy to have a little help tracking something down!" He looks between Mesmer and Lilian to try to figure out the seating situation so he can sit down and explain... "Oh, you don't wanna swap, Mesmer? I could swap with Lilian! We can share intel telepathically and all." He puts both palms together excitedly, making it clear that, by certain standards, he might be a worse aislemate than Lilian is. This is rapidly turning into one of those top-down seating maps where you have to pick adjacent seats by number to maximize survival chance.

    Once he's settled in a seat though, or even when he's made to unsteadily stand, he gets to to explaining. Opening up the book, he details...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UPE-595: The Emigrant's Guide
Classification: PRS-4

Containment: Restrict publication and distribution, censor for minds with SHD-2 psychohazards or higher.

Description: Originally manifesting as The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California, UPE-595 is a high-risk literature-based infohazard typically distributed in books pertaining to travel, self-help, and "journeys of improvement" in abstract. This infohazardous payload is a refined convergence of low inhibition, high disruption of consequence, financial incentive, risk amplification, and decisionmaking disruption that self-perpetuates within vulnerable mindscapes of readers. The class of vulnerable hosts consists of individuals with psychic self-impressions of leadership associated with tribe-level or higher social group magnitude. Individuals without influence over large social groups, or individuals unaffected by strong incentive, may handle it safely, but may accidentally pass the infohazard on to vulnerable individuals as "carriers".

In severe outbreak scenarios, UPE-595 is known to cause mass social self-destruction disasters involving up to a hundred minds. While this typically makes it self-containing, manifestation of UPE-595 must be tracked and contained for reasons of public safety.

...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    "...So I've been trying to track it down in this area." He explains. "I've got a lot of theories about 'psychic burn zones' that a UPE-595 manifestation might have created in this area, and how it might line up with Storm anomalies... Even if you're all here to surveil me or something, I'd love help!"
Timekeeper "But don't worry, I'm here to help."

    "Yeah! But I'm gonna be keeping an eye on you still!" Leilani says it so cheerfully while giving Regulus the high five that it almost passes beneath notice.

"Once again, I'm relieved to have brought extra clothing. Funny how often that pays off."

    Settled down snugly into her seat, Leilani spreads her arms and legs wide and slouches with a bro-ish 'ahhh', for all of five seconds. Then she pops right back up, bending over to shuffle through her backpack energetically while chattering, as if that was all the relaxation she needed.

    "Sure does! We learned in basic training to always pack as if we could get stranded alone outside at night at any time. Even if you don't gotta wear 'em, you can use 'em as a pillow."

"Oh really? What sort of arcane skill is it?"

    Leilani brightens, happy to talk about it as every arcanist except one is. She delicately removes the hibiscus from her bag and cups it in her palm, and even though it's definitely been clipped for some time, the petals are still as lively as they must've been when it was in the ground."Same one as my makuahine-- my mom, had!"

    "I never ever get lost or lose track of the winds or where north is, yup. And if I wanna go somewhere, then I know the world'll help me get there." She giggles to herself. "They almost disqualified me from the exams because, like, what if my arcane skill cheated for me! And then I said, 'wouldn't that be super helpful if it did, though???', and they let me through."

"You didn't have to add that part,"

    Leilani covers her mouth with her hand, and the flower in her other palm wilts a bit as if it's a living animal. She doesn't *sound* like she's unhappy at all, though. "Yeah, that's enough about that!"

"I just can't see the point of falsely inflating hopes that this will be anything more than a field trip."

    "Even if it's a field trip, it's an important mission to know for sure! And field trips should be fun, right? Seeing new places, exploring the wilds, becoming friends...."

"I'd like a copy of the map, please, so it isn't just up to your arcane skill."

    "Oh I don't... have any copies." Leilani takes out her map and lays it flat-- or tries to, but there's seemingly no certainty on where Mesmer will sit, so she has nowhere she can put it for Mesmer to see. Instead she just awkwardly holds it up for Mesmer to either take or look at. "But it's marked here, so you can copy it onto yours if you like, Miss Mesmer."

"Well, I'm afraid I'm not from anywhere all that special, once you put aside it being another world."

    "You say it's not all that special, but I've never even seen a 'lord' before! And thst sounds really pretty. There wasn't much besides chickens on base, but back in my village there were animals eeeeeverywhere, all the time. But you're a real natural with this whole 'other worlds' thing, huh!"

"Well. As for myself, it's a bit of a long story."

    Three hours is a lot of time to talk, and Leilani can talk through all of it. She's absolutely head over heels for any little story from home, broad or specific, and a natural at active listening, but with Lilian's long topic, there's a few bits that end up sticking out, besides just her chatter about how interesting the world's history is.
Timekeeper "Oh, you were born in Ireland? I know some Irish! Dia duit; caidé mar atá tú?"

"I've never seen the end of the world, though I guess I will at some point... but it must be kind of heartwarming to see how people can bounce back from that, right? It's not the end of the world, it's a new kind of world!"

"Wow... what's a computer?"

"Air travel for civilians... but wouldn't that be dangerous? Or do they train for it?"

"Laplace injected her with chemicals to look like a living person. She's their prized experiment."

    "Ah..." Leilani, who definitely knows that Mesmer is a Mesmer and not a rotting bog corpse, struggles to catch up with this situation.

"That isn't true. She's a compulsive liar, performing for attention, you can dismiss whatever you hear with a smile and a nod."

    Well this isn't any better. To keep things from devolving, and failing to do so, Leilani refuses to respond to either of the things the two of them said. "Hey, we've got so much time, how about we play a game? We can play shiritori! I can teach you!"

"Even if you're all here to surveil me or something, I'd love help!"

    Also there's some fuckass suit man here who everyone seems to know already! Leilani looks between Flamel, and every Elite who's here, and comes to the most reasonable conclusion she can. "Is this a friend of yours? From another world? Er, hi! I'm Leilani! Sorry that you must've got sent to the wrong coordinates, but we're all here now, so let's not let this luck go to waste!"
Lilian Rook     'Sure does! We learned in basic training to always pack as if we could get stranded alone outside at night at any time.'

    "Then Zeno's instructors know what they're talking about." Lilian concludes, matter-of-factly. "You're not grunts marching in line; you're a vanguard agent, scouting out unknown territory. I may not look it, but between my magic and--" Lilian pats her bag, pulling it up again just to do so (then open it). "--this, I'm prepared for more or less the same."

    'I never ever get lost or lose track of the winds or where north is, yup. And if I wanna go somewhere, then I know the world'll help me get there.'

    "Oh. That's . . ." Lilian pauses, pleasantly taken aback by hearing another enthusiastic answer to that same question. Are arcanists just . . . ensouled? No, there's Mesmer. "Extremely handy, actually? Especially as a scout. And . . ." She deliberates on the words, then smiles. "Extremely sweet. 'The world helping'." She glows on that one for a little while.

    'They almost disqualified me from the exams because, like, what if my arcane skill cheated for me! And then I said, 'wouldn't that be super helpful if it did, though???'

    Lilian scoff-laughs. "Isn't that the entire point of recruiting arcanists? What's the point of using an organization that prohibits people from using their unique skills instead of making use of them? If I'd heard that at the Academy I'd have laughed my way out."

    Leilani is strangely pleasant to talk to, Lilian decides. Perhaps it's just because she's young, but despite being military, her genuine enthusiasm for being here is oddly soothing.

    'Oh, you were born in Ireland? I know some Irish! Dia duit; caidé mar atá tú?'

    Lilian blinks, sitting back a little bit. "My. It's been ages. And you're surprisingly proficient." she says. "If you're receptive to any advice, my only tip would be that you present a more laid-back . . . mien? Than that. "You could try being a little more informal, like cad é mar atá tú?" She sounds so proper about it, and yet she's bouncing very slightly in her seat.

    'it must be kind of heartwarming to see how people can bounce back from that, right?'

    "It is, when they can focus on it." Lilian smiles, a little melancholy, but not altogether. "There are growing pains to any 'new world'. But in the end, it's a reminder of why humanity is worth protecting, I think."

    'Wow... what's a computer?'
    'Air travel for civilians...'

    Hm. Lilian thought that Leilani being cleared would mean that she knows about Laplace's capabilities. She cautiously decides to skip the first part, and answer, "You know the aeroplanes they developed in the Great War? They get much larger, faster, and safer, until they're practically just flying trains."

    '...I'm not trying to pick a fight or anything.'

    "Bitch." Lilian monotones at Regulus, who has now, clearly, declared War on her.

    'Aren't *you* following *me*?'

    "What? No. Why would I bother to do that. You're always following me." Lilian says, spider-man pointing at him. "You're the one who's obsessed. I'm here for work. You know. The thing that you do when you're not blowing up your company HQ."
Lilian Rook     'I was born in Germany- West Germany, not East- no, the year's wrong for that, isn't it? It doesn't matter. Not a 'bog'.'

    "Can't even get your story straight." Lilian tensely mutters.

    'Why? Just because you felt the need to take the seat next to mine?'

    "You're always saying you want me to stay away from you; so stay away." Lilian hisses back. "If you're so frightened of me then you can take the opportunity to fuck off. Fighting with me about who has to move just proves that you're a liar and you can't live without harassing me."

    'It's my ticket-assigned seat, if you continue to raise a fuss about it, I'll ensure it comes to the conductor is informed. Please, let me be, it's a seat, it's my seat, and I picked a ticket first, regardless.'

    When Mesmer sprints past to get to the chair instead of Flamel, Lilian remains standing right in front of her own chair, stunned by the utterly brazen show of insanity (according to her) in front of everyone else; not just her own guards, but in front of Zeno and the Concord. Wordless only for a moment, Lilian drops back down into her chair out of sheer disbelief at first, then the stubborn refusal to be intimidated and ousted by Mesmer fucking Junior, who had just barged into her lab and essentially stolen her property yesterday.

    'You can explain yourself more...'

    "You slimy, lying fuck." Lilian whispers, just loud enough for Mesmer to hear. She tilts her head just enough to direct her voice, the quiet words spilling out faster as she goes on, until they clutter together.

    "Manipulative psychopath. Pathological liar. Scheming little thief. Writhing scumfuck parasite malignant tumour of a human being. Empty fucking vessel of rot and decay. Walking corpse; rabid dog; grimy little degenerate fuck. Nobody can stand you, conniving little mealy-mouthed two-faced whore. Depraved, insatiable, friendless fuckless femcel freak. You're the world's loudest suicide risk shambling around like a zombie until your brain rots out your ears and nose and all you can think about is how to get your greasy little pestilent fingers into everywhere you can get them before you cease functioning. The SPDM kids should have bullied you until you killed yourself. Jump out of the train and make everybody happy. Hang yourself in a closet and end your sad little miserable life."

    (Un)fortunately, from two feet away, Lilian just looks like she's angrily muttering to herself under her breath to vent her frustration/like a crazy person. Balling her fists in her lap, she forces herself to breathe as deeply and evenly as she can; a challenge in of itself, straining her focus and her body, as her heart hammers in boiling fury about Mesmer; about her parachuting out of the picture when she'd allowed herself to be vulnerable near her, and about her worming her way right back in to throw her petty bureaucratic weight around and take something incredibly private and dangerous away from her for no reason but to get under her skin.
Lilian Rook     It worked, it's working, and it drives her crazy. The thought that she'd just given up on her makes it worse, too; that she'd thrown up her hands, walked out, and joined everyone else in ignoring her mere weeks ago. The longer she compulsively tries to make any sense out of her behaviour, despite her attempts to think of anything else, the more it stokes her directionless frustration, until Lilian is wearing a divot in the floor with the tapping of her heel. She goes through her bag, unscrews the cap on a metal bottle, drinks from it for long enough that she has to hold her breath, then stuffs it away as if drinking pissed her off too. She glances sideways for the umpteenth time, bites the corner of her lip, squeezes her thumb inside her hand, then pinches her wrist under her sleeve until it hurts, and stares out the opposite window instead.

    'Hey, we've got so much time, how about we play a game? We can play shiritori!'

    "English or Japanese?" Lilian says, more grateful than she sounds. "Well, I suppose we can just go by phoneme, but if you know more than four languages, you'll have a terribly decisive advantage." she says.
Lissandra      Listening to a funny man espouse his strangely literalized supernatural object-of-fixation is, at least, an upgrade from being proximal to Lilian and Mesmer's ongoing tiff. Unfortunately, Lissandra isn't far enough away to fully ignore the latter, but she damn well tries to pretend she can for a little while, while humoring Flamel. "So it's a... Cursed book, or some other written work. Related to... The 'cult mentality'? If it's not a joke, then it certainly sounds like an issue, but altogether unrelated from what I understand to be our purpose. I suppose I could ask the wildlife when we reach our destination, but we'll have our own considerations to prioritize. You understand, I'm sure. Dear Leilani and the Dame Commander get final say though, I think." The privilege of not being a leader is to make decisions that you don't care about into someone else's problem, even if that's kind of inconsiderate when they're already having someone *else* made their problem.

     Focusing on Leilani again, Lissandra offers an almost nostalgically comisserative smirk as she talks about getting stranded. "Fortunately, not something I've experienced in quite some time. But I've taken good care of my bag for a reason; I'm not sure I could go without the extra space anymore, honestly. Best gift I've ever gotten." She gives the bag, now sat in her lap, and affectionate little pat like it's a pet. She laughs at the story about Leilani's exam too, but the 'enough about that' skips some of her filler dialogue. "I always had to get a little bit more... Aggressive, when being tested, but my teacher was just that sort..." When the map comes out, Lissandra makes a little 'oh' and shamelessly leans in, fishing her phone out of her bag to snap a little photo of it. "The woods were quite lovely year-round, yes. There were issues now and then, but..." She hesitates, swishes her phone like a hand-fan, and shakes her head as she ditches the topic. "Nothing important. Chickens are really wonderful creatures though, I've kept a dozen or so over the years myself. When you speak to a creature every day though, it gets a little hard to treat them as a source of food. That, and a chicken with an ego is a dreadful sort of menace." It's still pleasant to think about, even if she makes it sound like trouble. "I wouldn't call myself a natural, I've just had a bit of time to study up since unifying. I keep busy."

     She ends up listening to Lilian's exposition without much interruption once she begins. She'd poked fun about prying up stories from her before, but the interest wasn't just for show! She does get up after a couple of hours, seeking out what passes for a bathroom or at least a little storage closet somewhere on the train to quickly get changed into something warmer. When she returns, Lissandra has changed out of her cute new dress in favor of long slacks, fur-trim boots and an off-season vaguely christmassy green sweater with red speckles, and she throws her felt jacket on over the top of that for good measure. She's even got some black silk gloves in her lap when she sits back down!

     By then, she's far enough into Leilani's camp on sheer genki-girl appreciation that she immediately catches on when she offers to play a game, and leans in. "Shiratori you said? Of course, that sounds lovely. Oh, him? I've met him once before." Lilian did say she'd overlook something or other for Flamel, so Lissandra's not going to be the one to out him just yet. She'll just stick to the half-truths for now, though she does have to play off a small eye-boggled headturn by adjusting her hair, when Lilian says 'blowing up your company HQ'. Just ignore that... "He seems pleasant enough, if very invested in his area of interest. Not that I'm one to fault that."
Lissandra She deeply considers repeating her previous offer to Lilian, and making a sensory barrier between her and Mesmer, but... Well. At this point that'd just be protecting Mesmer from Lilian's nasty muttering. Hopefully if Lilian wants such a thing she'll remember, otherwise Lissandra is simply going to have to try and be tactful a little longer. "A language game is it? Well, I'll do my very best given the relative handicap."
Timekeeper "If you're receptive to any advice, my only tip would be that you present a more laid-back . . . mien?"

    Seeing someone react with such clear positivity to having their language spoken so obviously gratifies Leilani that it's possible to surmise that her interest in language comes solely for that. Where Lilian is bouncing just a tiny bit, Leilani is as excited as you've ever seen her, tippy-tap stomping her feet just to get the wiggles out.

    "Yeah!!! Ohhhh, I never thought I'd meet a native speaker of that of all things! I've never heard someone speak it before, but there was a book in the library on the base! I'll keep that in mind! Go raibh maith agat!"

"English or Japanese?"

    A tiny bit bragging-style, Leilani kicks her legs. "I'm really hoping to be a translator eventually! If I get the chance! I know... English, Japanese, Hawai'ian sort of, some Cantonese, a bit of French... but we'll stick to English! It's only fair. I'll start... um... engine! And then someone has to say a word that starts with that last letter."

    The hours pass, whether everyone tears each other's throats out or not. When the train gets nearer to their destination, Leilani takes out a big fluffy coat from her bag and wraps it around herself, while the altitude of the tracks increases enough to make your ears pop. Eventually, the train comes to a stop by the rickety frost-covered station after a dark tunnel through the mountains. There's no one waiting to get on in exchange, of course.

    The mission really starts once the train pulls away and leaves the group all on their own. The view from the train station shows dense coniferous forests rolling up and down the rock. There's snow up here, but it's frosted over and crunchy rather than being fresh. There's a road somewhat further down the mountains, but it's unpaved and for as long as you watch it, you don't see a car drive by on it.

    Even that little bit of civilization fades away when Leilani pivots on her foot and takes one confidently exaggerated step in the exact opposite direction. Once she's in the treeline and out of view of the tracks, Leilani pulls out her bow and stringer, holding it down with one foot to deftly tie the string and prepare it. She unzips a side pouch of her backpack, and it falls diagonally to expose a quiver with arrows already packed in.

    She uses her teeth to help pull her gloves on, voice muffled through the leather. "Aight! Now we juft haff to walk a bit, and we're there! 'Snice weather, isn't it? Juft wafft out for crittersh!"

    Unknown to the Elites, despite their continual proximity to this world, is that 'critters' can mean fucking anything. Leilani's prepped like she's going to need to take down a moose with that bow of hers, rather than one of those cat-sized carbuncles.

    The reality reveals itself a short ways into the woods, when a scraping soung comes from further away. Leilani warily tugs at an arrow and looks around, having just been rambling about how you can probably *almost* see the historical site where the Donner cabin was supposed to be, and if you want to borror her monocular go ahead--!

    "What was that...? I'm not hearing things, right...?"

    A second later, a splash of black fur moves against the snow. Lunging through the trees are what at first looks like a pack of normal wolves, but once your eyes focus, reveals itself to only be three separate organisms-- and the body parts of a half dozen more. Black furred wolves, each with two heads, six to ten legs, eyes running down their flanks and clusters of tails, with their jaws wide open to bite, which Leilani identifies as "Ah-!! Managarmr! Hit both of their heads or they won't go down!"

    An arrow of hers lances out to pierce straight through one of them, but there's still five heads to go.
Lilian Rook     'Yeah!!! Ohhhh, I never thought I'd meet a native speaker of that of all things!'

    Lilian's smile, sincere as it is, grows a little faint. "We're not common." she says. "Especially people who learned it before English. Not anymore at any rate. Even I mostly picked it up from--" Hm. "--people around the house faster than the tutors got me on English; almost incidental. It's heartwarming, of a sort, to meet people keeping it alive."

    'I'm really hoping to be a translator eventually!'

    "You'd be good at it." Lilian says, baselessly.

    'Is this a friend of yours? From another world?'

    "I don't dislike him." Vaguely affirmative. "He can be a bit of a menace, but he's one of relatively few people who genuinely means well, all the time."

    'I'll start... um... engine!'

    "Evert."

    . . . . . . . .
Flamel Parsons     "I'm here for work. You know. The thing that you do when you're not blowing up your company HQ."
    "One time! It didn't even blow up." Flamel almost pouts. "And anyway, I'm really not following you! I didn't even know I'd meet you here. I'm here for my own thing! A statistical majority of my thoughts don't even meet the empathy-tulpa that astraphorically corresponds to you." He glances to Mesmer though, worrying about all those thoughts spilling out of Lilian's mouth. "Besides, I think you have enough obsession in your life." He leaves the precise nature of that un-expounded upon.

    "Related to... The 'cult mentality'?"
    "At least a close-ish relative!" Lissandra's willingness to understand gets Flamel nodding approvingly. "But mostly how it might correspond to Storm anomalies by persisting from times before the first manifestation of Storm Syndrome."

    Word games! He's got the exact level of skill in word games that it takes to challenge campers at camps, but not enough to be resoundingly effective. Still, he promises no telepathy to steal anyone else's chaining concepts or nudge anyone towards anything bad.
Flamel Parsons     Flamel gets his coat on when it comes time for the trip, still baffled that everyone else is joining him. He packed for solo hiking! Well, no excuse not to swap trail mix. His trail mix has a nice helping of Dream Fluffs mixed in, in the flavor of Refreshing Morning Air After Nine Satisfying Hours of Sleep. It doesn't give you the sleep, you know, it just has the refreshing morning air brainfeel. "I'll keep an eye out for animals! We've got some weird ones where I'm from, so I'm sure..." He's sure he can deal with that.

    It turns out to be less of a weirdness disparity than he thought. "Oh, gah, heck, these guys have two heads?! This is awful, I can't astrally project the same thing twice! ...I'll just shoot!!" His marksmanship ability is actually quite significant, even in his lately drained state. Two fingers on a temple, one hand-gun brandished like a weapon, and he starts blasting away, trying to target psychic signatures in distinguishing ways to avoid falling prey to that pack-ambiguity that tricks the visual center so efficiently. Given Leilani just took one of two of three down, that means the higher psychic signatures are on one of the unharmed pairs, but he can zero in on it quite easily and pepper both with bolts until they fall unconscious or otherwise give up the rushing assault.
Lissandra Lissandra slips her own gloves on as everyone is disembarking the train later on, and rather than stringing a bow she draws her staff out of her bag completely hands-free and gently brings it around to a horizontal hover beside herself. With the soft 'hmph!' of someone bouncing into a slightly too-tall chair, she hops up atop it and tugs at her pantleg to try and cover as much skin as she can in the cooler air, while her broomless broomstick lifts her up a dozen feet or so into the air. Not too high, since she doesn't want to deal with that much wind-chill, but enough to get a slightly better view of the valley. So much for a 'hike', when she's bringing her own ride. "It certainly *looks* nice... A bit nippier than I'm accustomed to, but I suppose there's nothing for it..." She sniffles slightly, before the cold's even really had a chance to bite at her nose.

     She's glad the wind doesn't seem excessively strong, since drifting along on her staff lets her recede slightly into her clothes like a graceful turtle and stay a little warmer. Whether this outweighs the warmth that the hike itself would produce is questionable, but it reduces the amount of things she has to think about, as long as she minds her head well enough not to bonk into any tree limbs while she's drifting behind Leilani from above. She draws her wand after a while with slightly-numb fingers and conjures a tiny fireball in front of herself to try and warm her face and hands as they go, but lets the flame fade when Leilani starts to respond to the encroaching noise. "No, you're... Most likely not just-"

     The beasts attack! Lissandra sucks a cold breath in through her teeth and winches her flying staff up and back for whatever space the can take overhead. Options are rapidly considered and sorted:

Could she command these creatures? Unlikely, she doesn't know their intelligence level or whether they're 'animal enough' for it to work yet. Gotta study up on 'critters' later, if this is what they mean.

Could she intimidate them with a frightening image? Probably not immediately. Her gut tells her that flame would be persuasive, but if these creatures are bold enough to attack a group of twice their number, it might only backfire.

Needing to strike both heads makes it tricky for Lissandra to defeat these herself in one go, especially with the cold distracting her. Mesmer has guards, Lilian is plenty capable, Flamel has psychic abilities, so the most vulnerable here are potentially Leilani and that girl Regulus she barely knows. And the apple, but... He's an apple? Surely the wolves- Managarmr- won't care about him immediately.

     So, Lissandra prioritizes Leilani for now, since she's both in the front of the group and stuck with a projectile weapon against rushing animals; while maintaining some height off the ground to make it hard to leap up at her, she swoops in overhead of their enthusiastic guide and shifts her grip on her wand, folding her thumb around the side and pinning it to her palm, while arranging the fingers of that hand; the wand emits a faint orange light at the tip that enhances Leilani's reaction speeds and dexterity, so she can move more confidently. At the same time, numerous duplicate images of her form in the space surrounding her as decoys; she can only see them as faint outlines, but the Managarmr (and everyone else, it seems) can see, hear, and even smell the imitations as if they were the real thing. It's clear there's some trickery afoot, given the copies sometimes pass through one-another, but it should certainly make it harder to track her.
Timekeeper "Even I mostly picked it up from--people around the house faster than the tutors got me on English; almost incidental."

    Leilani's smile takes on a different temperature, cooler and more wistful. It's like it sets her entire presentation, from her bright clothes to her pink childish hairstyle, in a totally different tone, just for a moment.

    "I learned it from my makuahine. Hawaiian, I mean; before she passed. And then I started going to school, and almost forgot it all! If I get a job as a translator with Zeno, I'll be able to study any language I want. I didn't know Irish was that way too...."

"When you speak to a creature every day though, it gets a little hard to treat them as a source of food."

    Leilani's eyes widen at Lissandra, gasping delightedly. "You can speak to *animals*! That's so *cool*!! Is that your arcane skill?"

"I didn't even know I'd meet you here. I'm here for my own thing!"

    Leilani is a fairly newly minted soldier with a specialization in scouting and translation. The past six years of her life have been dedicated to teaching her to be sure that she never makes an executive decision ever on anything, especially when it comes to field missions. She wasn't given any instructions on what to do if a mysterious man happens to be tagging along with the group for 'his own thing', but the people she *was* told to expect know him, and that's enough for her to punt that can down the road for now. One can only imagine how she nearly failed Zeno's exams.

. . .

"It certainly *looks* nice..."

    Leilani whistles at the flying staff, taking an excited lap around it as if it's a new car. It's clearly not, like, her personal favorite interest, but she seems to have a very concrete mental model of broomsticks. "Oh wow. You're a pilot? I had no idea...."
Foundation Scions 'You slimy, lying fuck.'

    Mesmer Jr., matching mumbling volume with curt-tone, rattles off an 'I'm not,' an 'No, I won't do that,' or a 'You're speaking nonsense to each and every one of the vitriolic statements Lilian whispers in her direction; embarrassing of her to make certain she doesn't miss any of them.

    If she could do that without the statements obviously upsetting her, she'd sound smug, but they do, the ticks of annoyance and ambient anxiety obvious in her staring-out-the-window rigid posture. Performative, forced, when Lilian finally stops the bombardment, Mesmer pulls a small metal case out of a pouch, full of packaged earplugs, which she puts in. Three hours of silence it'll be.

. . .

    Mesmer is so glad to be off the train, despite the fact that it is significantly colder outside. It's a good thing, it turns out, that she brought the longcoat; and not enough of a good thing for her to actually be warm- insisting on her usual absurd uniform dress is an action mutually exclusive with comfort.

    "I was right. Rocks and snow to stare at; little else but cannibal facts." Out on the train platform, setting out, the Laplace guards fall in behind Mesmer and go over some of their own gear. Both of them reveal a bit more of their techy gadgets here, now that it's even more private, and, distressingly, the exact same sort of zapgun Mesmer carries seems to be standard issue amongst Laplace's security forces in the stead of a pistol. Does that mean Laplace is more ethical than most places, or Mesmer is waving a more dangerous weapon around than she states?

'Aight! Now we juft haff to walk a bit, and we're there! 'Snice weather, isn't it? Juft wafft out for crittersh!'

"How far 's it supposed to be?"
"Can you say 'critters' again?" Snickers the other guard, at the same time.

    Still, both nod to Leilani, and not, for instance, Mesmer, at the instruction. Mesmer rolls her eyes.

    Lectures, murmurs, and the lull of hiking, on the whateverth hour of being awake Mesmer's on, gets a surprised, quiet, "What..? No, your magnetic flux would be far more erratic if you were hearing things," out of Mesmer, at Leilani's worried exclamation. The wolves, dashing out, doesn't parse as animals to her, even as her guards shout, draw arms, and step to either side of her.

    Ozone fills the cold mountain air as the K-tope callibrator zapguns crack and sizzle away, more appropriately styled for shooting at UFOs than supernatural wildlife, melting holes in snow and sizzling treebark on missed shots. Mesmer herself fumbles to draw her weapon, and join the fusilade- or really, picking one of her two guards to physically hide behind, and shoot at the critters from the cover of another's body.
Lilian Rook     Even if Leilani is a joy, Lissandra is pleasant company, Flamel is Fine, and a bit of a quirky element, and Regulus is just being herself, the hours are another trial on Lilian's mental endurance. Word games last her a little while, then telling a couple of the more cheery stories about school lasts a little longer. She whittles through her . . . thermos? Relatively quickly, then cracks open a water bottle bought at the station next. Even though lunch was two hours ago, she still unwraps a couple of sandwiches and a chocolate bar, possibly just to keep her dopamine and distraction levels up, careful not to touch either without the plastic in the way.

    Floundering a little without a book, she orbits between counting coins, bullets, runestones, compounds, battery charge, and eventually calories. The weather getting colder blissfully distracts her for all of ten seconds when she gets to put on her coat and reassemble bits of her outfit overtop (namely her belt). Caving into the increasingly manic need stay mentally busy, she flips open her field operations notebook and begins making tiny, cramped sketches of the train interior and individual people in the margins, then flips open her compact and tries touching up her still-perfect makeup.

    The floor is worn down beneath her heel on and off in little bursts, as her stress crests and falls in arbitrary waves. She resorts to trying to scam earphones off someone just to plug them into her smartphone and try to listen to whatever dry recordings she can get, and then sighs six or seven times about the lack of internet. She gets up to 'stretch her legs' every fifteen to twenty minutes after the first hour, which amounts to little better than pacing like a caged tiger, then starts trying to recall from memory every detail of whose blood, what type, how much, and for what purposes, she'd taken yesterday. She consults her personal calendar twenty one times, goes through her phone's entire photo gallery twice, reads and re-reads all of her text messages, needlessly brushes her hair, and generally acts like a lowkey busybody lunatic.

    Her conversations are sporadic, starting and stopping abruptly. Medical science with Lissandra, then magical 'attributes', then talking in vague terms about the practices of several Paladins Elites. A mildly futile one with Regulus, trying to figure out enough about Petra's musical tastes that she can hold a meaningful conversation about that later. Work, small talk, and probing questions about whatever bullshit went on at the Motherlobe. Laplace gossip with both of Mesmer's guards, commiseration about training and hours, and whatever else she can think of. And, of course, whatever Leilani wants. Not trying to indoctrinate anyone into her favourite board game is a stress behaviour.
Lilian Rook     It's not the usual kind of general hyperproductive mania, either. Lilian complains about the lack of stops, the lack of fresh air, the lack of ability to exercise, the lack of ability to nap, the lack of food, the lack of alcohol, and then starts scribbling down her best guesses at people's perfume notes out of petty spite about the completely normal lack of climate control airflow. She taps her heels, drums her fingers, squeezes her arms, rubs her temples, stretches compulsively, works each of her fingers individually, and also squeezes her fists, chews her lip, pinches herself, or digs her fingernails into her thighs about a zillion times when she thinks nobody is looking. At one point, she exceeds all boundaries of good manners by unsheathing Night Mist across her lap (well, across the chair arms) and proceeding to examine and polish down the entire blade, where it will naturally jab the business end into Mesmer's space constantly.

    Forty-five minutes before the trip is over, Lilian excuses herself into another cabin to 'decompress' and 'mentally center herself' by walking the whole train, and comes back looking grimly depleted fifteen minutes later, taking the remaining half hour in quiet.

    . . . . . . . .

    Getting off the train is clearly an incredible relief. Trudging her way off at first, Lilian breathes deep at the station and then paces way off before coming back in a much better mood. She watches Leilani string her bow with some evident fascination, asking about its draw weight, materials, if she knows who made it, and if she has any special techniques, feeling her kinship score increase from the activity. By the time they all get to near the Donner cabin, Lilian is even in a good enough mood to say "You know, if it comes to cannibalism, I'd win. Just saying."

    'Ah-!! Managarmr! Hit both of their heads or they won't go down!'

    Nobody pay attention to the kinda freaky way Lilian just sighed. The frozen snow crackles under the telltale slide of her boot, as she rolls her shoulder and settles her fingers onto the hilt of her sword, lowering her body. Thinking nothing about the impression she wants to make on poor little Leilani, much less on Laplace through the guards and Mesmer, mind emptied of all else but relief in the moment that violence is inevitable, Lilian breathes "Liomsa uile na fuílleach Ama." onto the winter air without fogging it.

    Stunned by K-topes or otherwise, whatever condition her allies leave critters in by the time she finishes the incantation-- even if they're already defeated-- the state that they end up in afterwards is almost guaranteed to be the same: a sudden scrape of steel, a whining sound like vibrating glass, bursts of snow hurled against tree trunks, a frigid whirlwind of overlapping waves, and ribbons of red blood painted across the white field to gratuitous excess. A little more is spattered across a meter of snow as Lilian flicks her sword clean, then flips it back into the sheath with a crisp, glassy crack.

    There's a good chance that she just chopped at least one already-dead or helpless critter to pieces in all of that, but that doesn't even appear to have been to spite Mesmer with the amount of blood. Lilian settles herself down with a few toe bounces, exhales (fogging again), and resumes walking with a slight but measurable lightness to her step, still eyeing the woods for any arcane freak shit that might decide to fake her out and reveal the secret wave two.
Lissandra      **Before the Ambush**

     Leaning toward Leilani, Lissandra muses, "You know, it's pleasing that you were already considering that kind of work. Translators, envoys, that sort tend to be well compensated. If you dream of it, all the better. It's... Valuable too, that you can connect with her over it. Your makuahine. It makes me happy to hear."

     The other questions (or observations) aimed at her are lighter though, and help dispel some of the cold-induced slouching. "Well, it was a... Colleague of mine, who graciously taught me how to speak with various creatures. I confess, I was extremely fond of the idea myself when I learned about that little trick... It's hard to imagine life without it now. I've picked up lots of little things like that over time- magic works a little differently where I'm from, but... Well, my 'arcane skill' doesn't solve very many concrete problems." She briefly wobbles her hips to make the tail-end of the staff sway, though it self-stabilizes. "You have the same kind of flying tradition here, I take it? It's almost died out back home. I only acquired it while pursuing another type of magic entirely..."
Timekeeper     Three critters, with no subsequent waves of precisely three more arriving, aren't any match for the group after the initial scare. Critters can be variably intelligent, but these seem almost like 'zombies', for lack of a better word; multiple wolves grafted together, with long distended spines and mismatching limbs. With Lissandra's buff, Leilani leaps backwards away from a lunging bite, hammering the managarmr back with several arrows in its flank. Between the K-Tope callibrators and Flamel's blasting, they're all either unconscious or nearly there when Lilian finishes the job with all of them simultaneously.

    Afterwards, Leilani makes sure to pull her arrows out of the corpses, washing the blood off of them with the snow. "I don't really know much about critters, but these ones look mutated somehow... maybe there's some uncontrolled arcane environments out in the mountains, and they used to be normal wolves. That's a little sad, but I hope they can rest now...."

"You have the same kind of flying tradition here, I take it? It's almost died out back home."

    Afterwards, it's right back to talking! "Oh, yeah! Zeno's got lots of broomstick pilots. Back on O'ahu, there were so many that they basically had a whole section of the base for themselves, so I didn't get to talk to them much, but you could always see them flying over the water if you knew when!"

    The path that Leilani leads everyone on eventually slopes down the mountain, precariously slippery with the snow and lack of path. From her pack, she withdraws two telescoping metal picks, long enough to stick into the ground for stability while she makes her way downwards, but she doesn't have any extras to give to the others. In the pocket between the mountains, a glassy blue lake fills the valley, picturesque against the snow and conifers.

    Leilani continues her tour-guide-rambling to pass the time, gesturing with one of her walking sticks down by the lakeside before cutting herself off suddenly. "So, supposedly one of the Donner families got stuck riiiight around here! They were split between a bunch of different camps, the history goes, and the most isolated and stranded were stuck by this lake for months without food, so really it's amazing that any of them survived at-- huh? Huh???"

    It takes a moment to see what she's seeing, when looking down the side of the ridge. The lakeside shack, the one that should be eighty years old and broken down even in this era, has the only human activity you've seen in miles. A handful of easels are set up by the cabin, facing towards the lake, each one with a painter stationed at them, stumbling around each other without any visible signs of communication besides painting. That alone would be surprising, but--

    The paintings seem to be approximately of the lake, but they're all drawn entirely in haunting blue and black with vivid red splashed across. The source of the latter is a bloody corpse strewn across the ground between the three of them, with open wounds used as a palette to dip their brushes into-- the three painters, in return, are all wearing masks, black hands clasped to cover their eyes. There's another painting, a brightly colored cubist painting completely unlike theirs, that's hung up on the wall of the cabin.

    Leilani gasps and then drops down into a crouch, grabbing her bow. "That's--! That's totally the Manus Vindictae, right?! That means....!!"
Regulus Regulus blinks, stunned for a moment that Leilani said something like that in such a chipper manner but honestly she kind of digs it. "Heh...! I'm not so easy to catch, so you better keep a close eye...!" She pauses before admitting, "Uh but I'm not actually up to anything today besides wanting to help out." Even if it's of course to tell Vertin what they find. "But it's a good idea! And then you'll see how easy it'll be for us to be the best of mates."

''Bitch.''

"Oh come oonnn..." Regulus grumbles. "I'm returning it partially 'cause you suggested I make things up, you know."

''Critters!''

"Woah..." Regulus murmurs. "Haven't seen wolves with that many heads before." She's always a bit hesitant to rush into combat, but when not engaging in combat means the possibility of getting eaten by wolves or, like, adopted and forced to work out until she gets as ripped as Hiromi? Yeah, she must fight for her life! Especially against that last one!

The APPLe can, at least, float out of easy reach though Regulus does actually lend a hand by blasting wolves in the head with big flashes of light--more akin to stun them, perhaps, than to actually finish them off. But hey, every little bit helps. Especially if it means not having to spend all her days doing pullups until she's got like 600 abs like Hiromi does.

Once the fighting is over, she seems relieved and follows along, giving worried looks LIlian's way occassionally but otherwise chatting along with APPLe about music of the 1920s with the occassional history tidbit--

"Wow! This is a long way to go for some inspiration!" is Regulus's first thought until her gaze slowly turns towards the corpse.

...

...

Regulus quickly covers APPLe with her hand so that when he screams it's muffled into her hands.

"Whew... You gotta be careful about that, they might still be around here..."
Lissandra      It comes as a relief that the fight is over so quickly, and once her support is no longer necessary Lissandra flicks her wand aside and breaks off the spell, letting the enhancement and false images fade. Said maybe a bit more lightly than it's felt, she quips to Lilian, "Well done again, oh exploding knight! Need a towel?"

     She doesn't just stay overhead like a sassy seagull though, she drifts back down to a more comfortable speaking distance while Leilani and Lilian clean up. The talk of a mutation, on the other hand, has her regretfully leaving the relative comfort of her flying broomhandle and dropping onto her own feet again. In a matter-of-fact manner, she collects little samples of fur, teeth, blood... Things to inspect later, given the opportunity.

     Once that's done, she takes a breath somewhat further away from the shredded bodies, and climbs back onto her floating staff to answer that bit about Zeno's pilots. "It's a bit surprising. I know of fighter planes, but this is the first instance I've heard of broomstick combat pilots. It's an effective form of transport, but entirely exposed in a battle... I may see about coming to have a look sometime." She's learning so much today!

     While descending the mountain, if someone else needs help down the slope Lissandra will find a little stone or some other solid debris and enchant it with floatation magic; it won't have enough lift to outright pick someone up, but it's enough for them to hold onto and catch themselves if they do slip. All it really takes her is a three-stroke flick of her wand and a light tap for each stone or stick, like a signature she's long-since gotten used to writing blind. Even Mesmer is welcome; provided she's willing to ask for it and touch something that's been on the ground.

     Lissandra of course has no slope-related issue herself, and pays Leilani most of her attention inbetween trying to stay alert to any more 'visitors'. She'd ask some prompting question about the region's morbid folklore, but sighting some sketchy painters using a corpse as their paintbucket is a very easy way to keep her on topic. First order of business; with her palm outward, she makes an illusory obstruction in front of their group, masking their presence from sight to give them time to confer unnoticed. The cold is starting to bother her though, and it seems she's having trouble concentrating on that while she talks; the area isn't as wide as she'd like it to be, and rather than muffling their voices with magic she has to settle for just speaking in a lower tone herself. "Manus..? Is that their uniform then? Bizarre." Normally, she'd be fairly confident in capturing these goons from ambush, but... It's been long enough in the mountains by now, the cold is starting to put a little more strain on her than she'd like. If she can't *perfectly* mask her approach, she's not eager to try and be a hero on her own. "... What is your policy for encountering them, then? It's a bit far for a sleeping or stunning spell, from here."
Lilian Rook     'Well done again, oh exploding knight! Need a towel?'

    Lilian looks back at Lissandra. Her cheek is lightly stippled with blood-- a few thick drops that froze without dripping. "Hm? No need. I'd apologize that there wasn't any healing for you to do, but that'd seem in bad taste." she mindlessly quips back.
    'I don't really know much about critters, but these ones look mutated somehow... maybe there's some uncontrolled arcane environments out in the mountains, and they used to be normal wolves. That's a little sad, but I hope they can rest now....'

    "Hmm."

    This marks the first time Lilian has really thought about the 'Critter' situation. Sonetto had told her that they represent a major threat in the whole 'Primary Defense of Mankind' thing, so she'd just equated them to low-settlement high-magic type world random monsters that have incongruously thrived twell into the twentieth century.

    She looks down at a severed bodypart, and tries to imagine what it was supposed to be.

    "How would one 'mutate' exactly?" she asks Leilani, looking ahead. "What sort of environment could cause that? Is it a hazard to humans?" Of course, she means 'people', but Lilian is still coming to grips with that distinction.

    'Oh, yeah! Zeno's got lots of broomstick pilots. Back on O'ahu, there were so many that they basically had a whole section of the base for themselves'

    "Oh that's nostalgic." Lilian says, strangely fond all of a sudden, since she then questions "Broomsticks, hm? That's such a classic, but I don't think I've ever seen someone flying on one, come to think of it. Though it's sound military praxis to teach in any case."

    She doesn't intend to make a habit of rock climbing in this snow and ice. Leilani may be very fulfilling to watch, if one knows how to soak up and appreciate the results of someone's diligence and preparedness, but any drop she can take straight to the bottom, Lilian does, and any she can't, she takes with a little extra help from black static. Respecting Leilani's Designated Scout Position, she follows a short ways behind. She responds to yet more facts about the Donner Party's apparently infamous winter with a conversational "Are you particularly an enthusiast about stories of grisly killings, or do you just enjoy picking up local lore everywhere you go?", up until Leilani utters a second syllable of confusion; the first is ignorable, more than that puts Lilian on guard.

    Shedding her coat again despite the cold, neutral colours being a marginal stealth benefit over red (forget Leilani's pink hair), Lilian crouches down by the ridge with her hand on her sword, straining to see with her eyes what Leilani acquires easily with her scope. Some specific small details slip by her, but the important ones are impossible to miss.

    'That's--! That's totally the Manus Vindictae, right?! That means....!!'

    "I'd nearly forgotten." Lilian says to herself. "I'd only seen those masks once, but it seems that I'm not about to rid myself of the image any time soon." Of course it's that way. Lilian had only ever encountered Manus Vindictae at the onset of the Storm that Regulus had narrowly escaped from, and after that, very distantly through Schneider Greco, who stands out in her mind as more of an arcanist mobster than a terror-cultist. She'd heard the nam dropped over and over again since then, not-seldom in reference to herself, but without being around the Foundation's active engagements with them, the extremist group had almost slid fully out of her mind; a detail relegated to the background as one of the infinite things less whelming to the imagination than 'the Storm'.
Lilian Rook     'Manus..? Is that their uniform then? '

    Lilian shakes her head, then seems to feel uncomfortable leaving it at a flat 'no'. "I don't know the details, but it seems only some of them wear those masks, or only at certain times. I don't think they have a 'uniform' per se, as an underground terror group, but there are telltale signs." That shade of blue is rapidly starting to become one, in her mind. Details like that always stick out in her mind.

    "What on Earth do you think they're doing?" she whispers to Leilani. "What possible productive purpose could this serve? It doesn't even look like they're performing a ritual." That one special painting is giving her an uncomfortable feeling, on an instinctive level, but she has nothing to back it up, and she can't tell if it's some kind of artifact, arcane object, or ritual keystone from here. "Our course of action is the same either way; we can't just turn back and ignore them here, especially with a victim already, but I'd like to know what we're walking into first."

    She looks around, as if Vertin would magically appear by desire alone, and sighs. "Doctor Lissandra. If you were to move with only one person, would you be able to sneak up on them? Regulus and APPLe can manage stealth magic on their own. I'd prefer to surround them from at least three points, and I'd be happiest if Leilani stayed up on this vantage as overwatch." A thought strikes her a second later. "Can you hit them from here?" she asks Leilani.
Regulus ''If you were to move with only one person, would you be able to sneak up on them?''

"I can turn other people invisible too." Regulus offers. "Especially if it isn't for a really long time. You know, if it'd help?"

She is also sort of looking around hoping for Vertin to magically appear but alas sometimes you can't expect her to make it to the event chapters.

APPLe could theoretically also just disguise himself as an apple but he'd have to remove his bowtie and that'd be so embarrassing and scandalous so he'll need to be invisibled too.
Flamel Parsons     Flamel zips into cover near Leilani. "What?" He mutters. "Why would they be out here? As far as I know their work's mostly in urban Chicago and alchemical bootlegging. But they're..." He squints behind his sunglasses. "A ritual. Performing a ritual. But what... No, that can't be a ritual, can it? But the group's too small for it to be infested with UPE-595." He mutters, looking to Lilian and scratching a cheek. Then he thinks on it more. "What productive purpose..."

    "Wait. Wait, hold on. I think I get this. Regulus!" He grabs her shoulder, tugging her down to his level of cover, jabbing a finger emphatically at the group and their painting and whispering tensely. "The *art mania* that was happening, back during 1966! Look there, look." He says, gesturing at the painting, and the... murderous element to it. "Do you think it might be the same Storm Syndrome from last era?"

    As Lilian forms her plan, he sucks air through his teeth. "Not that I have strong pro-Manus affinity, but I don't suppose you'd let me take a peek in their skulls first? Actually, wait, I forgot--" He vanishes into invisibility and surges ahead to try to see if they have it... That familiar Storm Syndrome he remembers, from the last era. Better to go ahead and psychically scan the artists and area as best he can without checking in with the most ardently anti-Manus.

    Is this once more a land of starved, isolated holdouts, taking what they need from their own? Is the artistic mania struggling to survive as its hosts wear down, using blood for their cultural obsession? Maybe the Donner Party left such a mental impression on this land that something interacted with the Storm, these masked Manus given their immunity still clinging to the last vestiges of the old Era's mania due to some local anomaly.

    Or maybe there's just Manus here doing lunatic Manus shit. Good possibility to accept and figure out how to navigate if it comes to it. He's studied his new allies, of a sort, enough to understand they have a, shall we uncharitably say, flexible definition of acceptable thinking and ritual cost. He can't go and throw stones in his tissue-paper house.
Lissandra      "Ah, they're the quirky type." Lissandra says in a 'reframing' tone under her breath, as if that sums up everything she's just learned perfectly. Unfortunately, Lilian's request has her frown, and she splays the gloved fingers of her left hand and shakes out a slight shiver. "... The conditions aren't ideal." she admits, nonspecifically. "A single extra rider, flying at low speed, shrouded from sight... Should be fine. But muffling the sound as well, right now, would be tricky. No verbal communication, and we should be fine by avoiding the ground and the canopy." She pans her eyes around, and puffs a warm misty breath out of her nose pensively. "Well, it looks like most of the people here are light enough."
Timekeeper "How would one 'mutate' exactly?"

    Leilani shrugs, not dismissive, but totally unable to come up with an answer on her own. "I don't know, but I hear it's a thing that happens. We used to get critters flying down from inland that the sarge would call 'mutants', but I don't really know how..."

"Are you particularly an enthusiast about stories of grisly killings, or do you just enjoy picking up local lore everywhere you go?"

    More brightly, during the hike, Leilani cheerfully explains, "Oh, no! I think it's really horrible! But that's the human history this little part of the land's got, so I think it's important to share!"

"... What is your policy for encountering them, then?"

    Like Leilani said, this is actually her first time ever having a combat engagement with the Manus. She looks uneasily at the group of painters and the corpse between them, then back at the group, and makes up her mind.

    "Um... we outnumber them, and we have the element of surprise. There's no way they're up to anything good, so... we'll just ambush them and take them out."

"What possible productive purpose could this serve? It doesn't even look like they're performing a ritual."

    "If they're doing something weird, and you can't tell what, assume it's a ritual and that it's dangerous. That's what I got told about 'em." Leilani nods seriously, and the direction of her gaze lands squarely on the corpse that's already there. She passes around her monocular so that everyone else on the ridge can get a closer look at the scene too.

"Can you hit them from here?"

    "Yep. I'm a real crack shot with this, y'know! Guns are only better for people who don't practice with proper weapons." Leilani says absentmindedly while nocking an arrow, and belatedly remembers Lilian has a gun. "Um, sorry. I just don't like them."

> Flamel

    Iiiiiit's much more along the lines of Manus doing lunatic Manus shit. There's no trace of Storm Syndrome, from this era or from 1966, though reading the painters' minds puts him close to an entirely different overwhelmingly deadly psychic force. Their minds feel like they're suspended over an endless void that dwarfs them in every direction, echoing with whispers that overwrite everything else about them-- but it's not Storm Syndrome!
Timekeeper     Three mindless masked acolytes does not a Manus safehouse make, however. Whatever the plan, once you're spotted, it's the *painting's* eyes that snap towards you, all three of them. The cubist woman's face moves in low frame rate, repetitive 'animation', mouth gasping open in fury and painted tears streaming down her face. She shouts, an anguished, aggrieved noise, sounding like she'd throw her arms up in frustration if they could move.

    "Ohhhh! Oh, oh, oh! Look what you've done! You philistines! Barbarians! Oh! My art!"

    She sniffles and her face turns away, revealing another angular mouth on the back of her neck. It twists into a bitter pout, choked up with tears. "It could have been perfect... a landscape steeped in madness, but the tension, the contradiction-! between this perfect stillness and the rapture they must have felt in that first bite.... But no! No, it was not meant to be!"

    "Fine, fine! You may have it your way! -hic-"

    At her indication, one of the Manus subjects shudders and then splits open like an overripe fruit. Instead of blood, what pours out and engulfs him is slick black goop, twisting and coalescing into the shape of a bear-sized monster made up almost entirely out of teeth and a massive maw. At the same time, the edges of the shack start to smear, along with the frame of the woman's painting.

    "Keep it! Keep all of it! Cover it all in iron for all I care! You win!"

    After that melodramatic outburst, the shack wavers and then vanishes, leaving you with just the monster and two hostile goons. For how certain she was at wailing that, it doesn't *seem* much like a win on your part, since whatever safehouse may have been there before, it's not there now. Once the others are dispatched, with Leilani landing a few well-placed arrows, she frowns at the patch of empty snow, tilting her head warily.

    "Um... is it just invisible, or gone...? I think... either way, we probably shouldn't approach a building that's being affected by a Manus Vindictae spell. I guess this is enough to head back and report. We know what it is now!"
Lissandra      It doesn't take long to arrange their surrounding ambush, but in the end it's hard to really trap someone with access to teleportation or the like. From the state of advantage, ideally right after Regulus's own disruptive flash-blast, Lissandra exploits the distraction to make a swirling thrust with her wand and throw out a nearly invisible coil of energy from its tip, wrapping it around one of the goons' heads and stealing his consciousness before she retreats behind a tree with or without whoever went along with her onto that flank. Whatever happens after that to that particular goon she doesn't make it her issue to consider, but given the opportunity to blast him with a fireball or something, she chose not to.

     The rest of the fight probably resolves similarly quickly to the previous one after that, and while Lissandra makes an attempt at firing at the possessed(?) painting with an icicle, that's probably only right about when the painting decides to escape and cut her losses, rendering it moot. It's frustrating to see an unexpected lead vanish into thin air, but she wasn't all that invested in that part anyway. It's easy to just agree with Leilani, floating back over to rejoin the group and examine the fallen monster, first and foremost checking that it's fully dead before she goes further. "Haaah... Being on the chase really isn't my preference. Anyone scratched up at all? Seemed like it was well in-hand."