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Timekeeper "And so, there is no advantage lost in accepting the invitation."

    Whether or not her argument was good, Tamamo was swift enough in deploying it that no one had the opportunity to disagree. Sonetto's misgivings were clear on her face, but as tactically inadvisable it might be in the Foundation's eyes, her heart is closer to Tamamo's in this moment than the Foundation's. As the carriage door closes behind Tamamo, Sonetto wrestles with her hesitation before hurrying up and feverishly wishing Tamamo good luck in making sure both of them are okay.

    Even being familiar with this Chicago that exists over 150 years prior in Earth's history than the one that Lilian and Tamamo live in, the carriage feels like something from an era long past. Glossy black with gold lining on the wheels, curtains hang down to give privacy to the windowed seats and the drivers alike. Lovingly sculpted, likely in real gold, around each border is an engraved relief of intertwined bodies, skeletons and the living locked in the torment of the danse macabre, details small enough that they blur into an indistinct line from more than a foot away. The break away from the Manus's color scheme comes in the crimson red upholstery, matched by the harnesses on the two horses.

    The horses which, seem to not require any input from Tamamo at all, or want it. The ghastly skeletal horses somehow come across as both bad-mannered and suprisingly accomodating to her, snorting when their reins are touched but obliging to circle around the cart without further instruction. The goop that seeps off of them splatters on the street with each step, and then fizzles away slowly as the carriage rolls past, like a trail of footsteps or blood from a murder scene.

    They're not particularly perturbed by the fact that Tamamo is traveling back to the Manus without any of her escorts remaining either. Like Schneider warned the Manus were planning, the direction that they take her is south, veering away from the Walden to head towards the heart of the burnt woods themselves. Along the way, she can see the convoy of the ill and the supplies shipped along with them, clogging up the road into the woods as they clamor for the arcane remedy that Flamel promised them, but the horses cut through the woods by intuition.
Timekeeper     Deeper towards the center, a heavy bank of fog walls the way in, and the horses walk through it as if it isn't there. To Tamamo's eyes, it's clearly not a natural fog, alchemically labyrinthine in the directionless sense, and she can imagine quite vividly how it might serve as a barrier to anyone trying to walk through on their own. To her, though, it's just a wave of disorientation that the horses carry her through, before letting her into the makeshift field hospital in the cold and sooty woods.

    There's hundreds of people here already, laying on cots or even just blankets spread on the ground. Many of them-- all humans, presumably-- are debilitated by their stomach pains and sickening hunger, emitting a low drone of complaints and moans without any distinct voice to pick out. Some of them are upright, trying to usher their children to the front of the queue, or getting angry and impatient at the impromptu healers.

    The leader of whom is Forget Me Not, working away at a cauldron underneath a canopy. Among the helmeted Manus servants, shamelessly out and about despite their frightening appearances, is Vertin, looking nearly the same as always if a little battered, handing out potions to frustrated patients. Lilian has a seat at an out-of-place piano bench just beside Forget Me Not, not asked to toil away for the sake of humans herself.

    When the carriage arrives, Forget Me Not hurries away from his station, wiping powdery residue off of his hands and sweat off his forehead. Behind him, those who expected a healing potion shout cries of 'snake oil salesman' or 'greedy huckster', but he doesn't pay them any mind before drawing back the carriage curtain to allow Tamamo out. A glance confirms that the Manus sent to fetch her are gone, with a disappointed huff.

    "Welcome, Mrs. Tamamo-no-Mae. Your wife eagerly awaits you. I would like to give you a proper introduction to our Manus, but I'll restrain myself as to not interrupt your reunion with your beloved." He doesn't even say 'because I'm busy', even though it's obviously true.

    After helping her step down, he turns to the horses and checks over them with an air of worry. Seeing that they're unharmed, as the horses practically 'snicker', he lets out a sigh of genuine relief and undoes their harnesses before returning to his cauldron.
Lilian Rook     Lilian had left Manus Vindictae's 'celebratory dinner' feeling complicated. After the limit-testing whirplool of stress that it'd begun with, the shuffle through every possible peak and valley of intense emotion that defined its first half, and the gut-churning regret that she'd left it with, all of it still failed to outweigh, somehow, the irrational sense of warmth that she departed it with. Even emptied of adrenaline and woozy from hard drinking, the thought 'everything will be alright' predominates everything else with its sheer unfamiliarity. Even her on-and-off fretting about Tamamo can't tamp down on fizzy sunshine feeling in her chest. Being back in the Walden felt like floating on air.

    She left the surprise meeting with Vertin in the supply closet, afterwards, feeling much, much worse.

    Despite her short stay, Lilian wound up reluctant to leave the bar at all. Moving away from where Tamamo was supposed to arrive worried her enough, but the flash-forged sense of safety she had associated with it is difficult to break in its own right when she still counts down every second to the Storm inside her head, whether she likes it or not; to say nothing of the fact that it may have sped up again without her knowing. The fact that it was Druvis' woods makes a large difference. Being tied to the woman she had, first, become acquainted with by her quiet interest and strangely high opinion, then slightly reliant on after she had stood up first in the whole room on her behalf, helps put some of Vertin's lingering words out of mind when she finally steps outdoors.

    The great tide of screaming, diseased humanity ruins it completely, of course. Now, more than almost any previous time in her life, Lilian wants as little to do with random civilians as possible, and shows it. She happily leaves Vertin to gruntwork, lifting not a finger to help anyone on her own, except the odd time when Forget Me Not looks to be in need of something that lets her show off a little.

    Especially conscious of her outerwear gathering dust in the Walden's labyrinthine basement, she wanders only where the humans don't go, and only when it presents an opportune moment to spend a little time with an apostle instead, until they rapidly dwindle down to just the one.

    When the carriage arrives, she's comfortably situated herself by the piano for so long that her personal mission has boiled down to 'keep up enough conversation with Forget Me Not that the humans feel ignored, or at least appear irrelevant to his work'. Occasionally, she strokes the keys as if she means to play, but for the most part, she wiles away the time with Night Mist across her lap, soothed by the meditative routine of maintenance.

    The last snatches of her most recent topic reach the carriage as "--urns out that the cellular mesh that the files indicate as the 'scientific mechanism' behind arcanist lineage actually respond so well to that geometric tissue modification that they can proliferate up to a point on their own; no gene therapy req--" The rest of what she means to say is atomized by the sound of hooves. She leaps up from the bench the instant she recognizes the Nightmares that Lyra had reproduced in miniature.
Lilian Rook     'I would like to give you a proper introduction to our Manus, but I'll restrain myself as to not interrupt your reunion with your beloved.'

    "Tamamo! Oh my god I was so worried!"

    Lilian practically charges the intervening distance as soon as Forget Me Not steps aside. She sheathes her sword in motion, like an autonomic task, and throws herself on Tamamo in the next instant. No sooner does she get her arms around her waist than Tamamo is hoisted up into the air, spun around twice, and firmly transferred to a clingy bridal carry.

    "I knew you'd understand! I knew it would work! Oh thank god you're here! I never once imagined that-- Oh but there's so much to-- Augh who cares! It's fine! You're fine! Everything will be fine!" she rambles on, pressing her point by smooshing her face into Tamamo's neck and shoulder until her excitement tunes back into the wavelength of words. "They didn't try to screw it up for you right? Nobody tried to sneak on or hold you back? Oh they better not have or I'll--" Lilian grits her teeth, breathes deep, and then bounces back upright again.

    "It doesn't matter! Nothing else matters! You're here and you're okay and-- You are okay, aren't you? They didn't try to feed you anything funny did they? Is there anything at all I can get you?"
Tamamo     Over the course of the journey, Tamamo had changed into her more usual battle-ready dress, removing any affectation of Western fashion, Chicago-appropriate or otherwise, for that of the many layered robe of courts and witchcraft. While unintentional, this only makes her closer to appearing as a guest of the Manus, being someone of obvious import who, just as obviously, doesn't belong anywhere close to here.

    She regards Forget Me Not with a blankness that quickly passes, its secrets unrevealed, with the mention of 'your wife.' Her eyes move sharply, searching, body moving automatically to take the assistance to dismount, saying only, "We shall see." Vague, even by her most polite standards.

    And there's Lilian, sweeping her up. Tamamo wraps her own arms around to tightly cling, uncomfortably strengthened in a moment of subconscious desperation, while every other part of her swiftly melts. "You were worried? I saw you being carried out! I could only guess what happened based upon who was present. Oh, goodness, thank you, for still being here, and for being safe, after all." She could hardly cling any more tightly, fingers outstretched to find more to grasp.

    Her gold headdress likely smells delicious in the pre-Storm air.

    "No -- well. They did shoot the messengers, even when I said it was unnecessary. The horses still knew where to go, thankfully. I thought Ms. Sonetto... but of course, she could not be here, even if there are several reasons why she has that right."

    She nods, golden bells following the motion. "I have... made do, with my charms. The madness has not yet taken hold of me. Ah, but..." Her voice lowers. "I have heard the Timekeeper was afflicted by a Charm, when she resisted? Is it so? My love, are you truly well? For you to still be here... I was so worried, to not see you come running. I knew there must be some reason, but not what it might be, apart from that you had been hurt, and then surrounded. You must, I thought, have been trapped, unable to find our exit. Are you...?"

    Relaxing just enough, Tamamo delicately holds Lilian's cheek in on one hand, looking into her eyes, trying to find... something. Some source of hurt, some malady, some explanation, or perhaps only assurance.
Lilian Rook     Tamamo's state of dress getting off the carriage is the least of Lilian's concerns. A very familiar outfit only hits her harder, if anything; the surge of oxytocin triggered by squeezing Tamamo's body against her is nearly intolerable. Just the feeling of her weight and the smell of her perfume feels to Lilian like being warmly and gently electrocuted. Her heart nearly leaps out of her chest.

    'I saw you being carried out! I could only guess what happened based upon who was present. Oh, goodness, thank you, for still being here, and for being safe, after all.'

    Lilian, who was unconscious at the time, needs a moment to process that Tamamo must have seen her being dragged out by Vertin. The comprehension blanches half the relief from her face, turning her expression towards mortification as far as it can go while she still feels so dizzily relieved. "Oh . . . Oh that's a nightmare!" Lilian gasps. "I'm so sorry! I sent the word out as soon as I could-- please believe me!" She squeezes Tamamo as much more as she dares, stoically enduring her grip without noticing the pressure, and carries her away from the carriage indulgently.

    'No -- well. They did shoot the messengers, even when I said it was unnecessary.'

    "Oh that's just fucking typical." Lilian scoffs, instantly heated, about the thing she'd already predicted so quickly that she'd told Manus Vindictae to expect it, as if it weren't probably her own friends doing it for good reasons.

    'I thought Ms. Sonetto... but of course, she could not be here, even if there are several reasons why she has that right.'

    Sonetto's name causes her to brake from waxing disdainful of her allies before it gets very far. Lilian presses her lips into an uneasy line, then rests her head against Tamamo's chest before breathing out again. "I know. I discussed it a little, but she's too antagonistic to Manus Vindictae and too loyal to the Foundation." Lilian sighs, regretfully, like an insane person. With her head so close, she whispers "If it really comes down to it, I'll take her captive before the rain falls upwards, okay? I won't let Vertin lose her too." for the last few seconds she can't be heard.

    Then, practically bouncing with energy now that she has Tamamo back, Lilian wastes no time traipsing back to her private bench, giggling to herself as she makes a little show of putting Tamamo down like a princess, though she doesn't fully remove herself from touching her at any point. She waits to settle down next to her, first to loop her arms around her shoulders and pull her into a spectacularly shameless, overly long kiss, and then to allow her to lean against her, to get to any other subject at all.

    For a moment, she just wants to breathe in the ashen air, soak up the pallid sunlight, and pretend that she and Tamamo and Vertin and Forget Me Not and all the rest can just stay in this orbit forever.

    'I have... made do, with my charms. The madness has not yet taken hold of me. Ah, but...'

    That, of course, breaks the spell, jolting her almost out of her seat. "Oh my god the Storm--" Lilian doesn't bother with the second word. Only Tamamo could suffer a 'syndrome' and not just 'the consequences of her actions'. She quickly realizes there's nothing productive to be done about it besides what she already can, and settles down again by turning herself towards Tamamo, cradling her head close, eye to eye, saying as soothingly as she can "Close your eyes and just think about me. You know what to do, don't you? I'll explain everything. We've got all the time we need."
Lilian Rook     Lilian takes a deep, deep breath, to focus her scrambling thoughts and bring her mind down to the correct rhythm to be effective. Like quiet dinnertime conversation, she says "Yes, Lady Arcana almost certainly was controlling Vertin at the time she killed Schneider. She'd just sworn to join Manus Vindictae, and refused the order to when it was given; I wish it hadn't been like this, but everything could have been much worse. As far as I can tell, there aren't lingering effects. Vertin is doing what she does best and forging on regardless."

    "And I'm fine. It took me the better part of the night to recover, albeit, but it's . . . sort of like with Sakura." Lilian only pauses as a single sentence becomes something like uncrackable code, just for the two of them. "The trigger was attempting to divine 'the future of Lady Arcana'. I'm telling you because I'd like to spare you the same thing. Please?"

    The lingering part left unsaid is difficult for her to find a route to, but not difficult to say. Lilian dreads having to explain at all, but she doesn't sound any more troubled than that once she gets going. "Miss Druvis captured Vertin and Schneider. I regained consciousness shortly before Lady Arcana returned to interrogate Vertin. For my part, it's not all that exciting; they took very basic precautionary steps that I wouldn't run away or hurt myself, but after that, everyone was perfectly happy to explain things. Once we all sat down and talked about it, I told them I wouldn't do anything unless they guaranteed your safety first, and they were more than happy to."

    The Lilian starts talking is . . . unusual. Not in any sense that 'this is unlike her', but closer to the confusing, difficult-to-grip energy of revealing a big, exciting secret as if there were much, much more warning than there was. It trickles into the stabilizing presence of her shared feelings.

    "Of course it turns out the Foundation was keeping us completely in the dark about what Manus Vindictae is. You sensed the bad vibe around it too, didn't you? Once it was all cleared up who I am, they were nothing but kind and respectful to me. I've spent the evening getting everything I ask for and being properly looked after while waiting for you. They haven't asked anything of me. They haven't raised a hand to me. They even--"

    Her train of thought is interrupted with a brief, disturbing ripple, identifiable as something dark and turbulent for the half-second it takes to push it back out of mind again. "They're enthusiastic about meeting you too, actually. Just fascinating people once you give them a chance! Oh-- There's a Japanese arcanist called Taira who's around somewhere, and he especially-- ah the carriage was sent by Lyra, so I have to give her a proper thank-you for-- and Druvis already helped me out a lot, so I'd like to make it up to her before--"

    Pushed out by pressure of all the things she wants to say after, and not at all by anything like guilty or worry, Lilian drops "I've joined Manus Vindictae, Tamamo. They're happy to welcome you too."
Tamamo     Tamamo takes her time. This is, after all, exactly where she needs to be. Lilian places her head against her, and Tamamo strokes her hair. Lilian carries her, and Tamamo disengages only enough to sit, without ever losing contact, and then takes a kiss as eagerly as if it were their last chance before the end of the world, as greedy and shameless as only a woman engaging in her very own First Truth can be. Every moment that is not given to the pursuit of love can only be one to some ultimately subordinate clause, and here there is a need to verify one another's existence and the fortitude of their connection. A half-measure would be the same as a betrayal.

    And then, Lilian says a number of things that catch Tamamo's ears, and she gives a look unworried, but... searching? Sly. Dangerous only in how fox-like it is, how the signs fail to escape her, from the mention of Sonetto, to Arcana, to Druvis. The capture of the former is the first obvious connection to what she says next.

    "I have said this before, that should the world stand between us, it shall be you that I choose, against the world. Whatever may come, that first choice cannot change." It's still harder to say, now, than it was that first time, in a secret place in Twin Peaks, for the far more realistic possibility that 'the world' may include many who consider her an ally, and toward whom her own feelings are friendly at the worst. It's a little easier to think of it now than minutes ago, with Lilian right before her, her presence and her touch assuring Tamamo that her decision was correct.

    "To save any more lives than this is a privilege of the strong, no?" One of the earliest points of Lilian's own philosophy to be verbalized to her, put in different words, and a far different context.

    Tamamo reaches into one of her sleeves, and pulls out a quartet of talismans, tossing one to each of the corner rods holding the canopy over the little platform with the piano. They adhere instantly, then seem to fade, remaining visible but, somehow, part of the background. "Let us have a little privacy, now."

    This type of barrier will hardly keep anyone out, and won't make those within difficult to observe. The mental trick extends only as far as imparting a feeling of unremarkability, letting all details slide away, denying importance or interest.
Tamamo     "'Like with Sakura'...? Ah, I did surmise that you had stepped into a diviner's trap, though I could not deduce as to who laid it. So, it was 'that woman,' after all. Fret not, dear one. I will not step into the same that you have thoughtfully sprung."

    She nods along to the rest, inviting Lilian to lean against her, or lay her head on her lap, or whatever else suits her present level of energy, from moment to moment. "We shall speak more of the Foundation and their secrets another time," is delivered gently, words necessarily only for keeping on task.

    'I've joined Manus Vindictae, Tamamo.'

    "Mm, and that... as I said, Lilian. My place is ever by your side, as yours is by mine, and this one thing is more important to me than the fates of nations. Your well-being is, as well, and so..."

    Gesturing before her, all details of her words and actions likewise hidden by the simple barrier, Tamamo says, adopting a professionally efficient, no-backtalk-brooked tone that Lilian has occasionally heard of the healer, "Strip, and show me your back. I will check your wards, and also for any cursed materials with which you may have come into contact. I already have the purification arrays prepared, if they are any of the same aspects previously encountered. We may have but hours before the Storm, but that is no reason not to be thorough."

    She's really not accepting any protests, and not making any accusations that can be argued against, in the first place, though as she gets to work, her touch both delicate and precise, she does add, "The Third and... the Thirteenth." That may be the first time Tamamo's ever called on the Code, herself. She does now, purely out of knowing how it's a shortcut to comprehension for Lilian, specifically, a verbal ambush she's made herself unable to ignore.

    "'With dignity,' dear, 'regardless of their station.' As for 'that one,' from that which I have seen, I suspect both 'death' and 'bleeding.' I did not hear enough to speak of more, though I would be unsurprised in finding another pair." It doesn't slow down her work at all to talk it through.

    "Masks ever make it easier to forget the faces underneath, I know. Oh, my dear, sweet, and wonderful Lilian, my love and my bond, my wintry star, cooly guiding those who know not the warmth you need and seek... you have gone through something terrible, all because I was not there to hold you. Should I have argued harder against the splitting of the group? I cannot help but think this, that I hold a share of its blame."

    Finally coming down to kneel beside her, both hands on her back, Tamamo reads traces of things still unknown to her in any detail, but clear enough to raise sparks of anger -- not at Lilian, but at the one who dared to take hold of her. Breathing by Lilian's ear, "Ah, how awful. How truly dreadful. What is 'that woman' thinking to do, with the wife of another? No, no. I can hardly be asked to forgive her. It was my mistake to not be present, but it was their mistake to take advantage of you, my dearest one."
Schneider Greco      Schneider is steadier on her feet now, and less pale than her palest, but for all that Odette fusses and Holly dotes, she's insistent there isn't time to fully clean off the dried blood that mixes with her red-feather dress and spilled in rivulets down her legs.

     It's hard to argue with her urgency, with her Storm-sick men Achille and Cosimo arguing over who will get to eat Achille's golden pocketwatch. Several of you are likely tempted to do the same. She keeps stealing odd glances at them, as if she can't quite believe their behavior, but doesn't cut in.

     All that means is that, as she steals an abandoned car off the street, piles in all the Elites she can, and takes off at a tire-screeching pace through the ailing city towards the Weyerhauser Forest's edge...

     Schneider still looks like death, or maybe like Death. Clotted red and tattered black and near-bone-white.

     "My-lord Vertin will be at the Manus aid camp," she says, adjusting that newfangled thing called a 'rear-view mirror' to look at her allies sitting in the back seat (what else is it for?). "Her suitcase, it will save outsiders and arcanists, but it can-not shelter humans of the Era from the Storm. At the least... if we rescue her, we-all will be safe, right?"

     "Hey, wait. Then what about us?" says the very-human Cosimo, squished against the right passenger door by sharing space with Achille.
"Huh?! That's a fucking raw deal. Why'd that Vertin lady make it like that??"
"I do-not think it is of her choosing."
"So the two of us are just gonna die, no matter what?!"
"... I do-not know."
"What do you mean you don't know? What was all of this running-around for?! If I knew the world was gonna end for me no matter what, I coulda--"
"If," she cuts him off, "the Lady Arcana has con-se-cra-ted the Forest as safe, already... then there is a sal-va-tion for you, should we cap-ture it."
"... If."
"If."
"If..."

     Her two men sigh, and then a moment later, so does Schneider.

     All the while the woods scream by her as she tears up the rural dirt road, at one point hair-raisingly passing a ramshackle Manus convoy heaped high with luxurious personal possessions, goopy-masked minions, and remarkably few of the actually Storm-sick. But then there's a white wall of fog on the horizon; and Schneider, recognizing it, widens her eyes and curses while screech-turning the car to a stop.

     "Merda," she mutters, just before the thunk-thunk of casually driving her stolen vehicle over the roadside ditch to park it behind some of the forest's omnipresent scorched trees. That hides it at least halfway decently from the road.

     It's not hard to notice what she likely noticed: birds keep flying into the fog-barrier's edge, getting 'confused', and flying back out looking dazed. A couple lie on the ground stunned not far from the road, having smacked into trees just after exiting.

     "They are sending people in. Their convoys must have some way through. If we hijack that 'aid' caravan, my-lords..." She thumbs the handgun's hammer, bright eyes already looking for good places to hunker down for a clean ambush.
Riku Asakura 'My-lord Vertin will be at the Manus aid camp,'

Riku nods to this, so they won't be at the Walden, but in this other place.  "Why are they gathering so many regular people here, though?  I thought the Manus hated humanity, or at least thought themselves superior to them..?"

'What do you mean you don't know? What was all of this running-around for?!'

"Didn't you want to save your boss, no matter what happened?" he asks.  He's glad Schneider is alive, of course.  Perhaps a bit nervous about her skill with guns and what she can do with them.  

'the Lady Arcana has con-se-cra-ted the Forest as safe, already... then there is a sal-va-tion for you, should we cap-ture it.'

"So if she did then those people are safe?. That's potentially good news." If not confusing, given what the Manus seem to be about.  

'Merda,'

"What's up?" he asks, until he notices the birds fly in and then fly back out again.  That fog was preventing people from getting in and out, which means they need something to get into the forest.  When Schneider points out the caravan, Riku becomes a little uneasy.  It's a way to get people into a safe zone without...

Riku remembers them unraveling into technocolor paint.

"As long as we just take out the Manus people, I don't want to deny people a way out of the storm," he says to Schneider.  
Holly Asturias ON THE WAY OVER

    Holly's treatment of Schneider's injuries, now that she wasn't on death's more or less literal door, could continue much slower, and without the risk of further scarring and corruption on the doctor's part. It's a good thing she's got those long sleeves, she doesn't have to explain why the red marks on her right arm got more prominent and infected-looking.

    Provided Schneider allowed it, Holly has spent the last while assimilated to her, granting a more passive and less taxing regeneration to her patient that way. If Schneider wasn't much in the mood to rely on her like that, it just meant the doctor would be following along and beaming golden healing light at her from afar instead. Either way, the urgency of the Storm meant they couldn't stop any more than they already had, and Holly was in agreement with that.

"then there is a sal-va-tion for you, should we cap-ture it."

    "Then... we're hoping that she's not just true to her word, but swift to act too?" Holly hadn't met Arcana long enough to get much of an impression beyond 'intimidating' and a touch of 'all-knowing'. She didn't seem the lying type, but then Holly hardly ever suspects much of anyone from lying to begin with. "Surely there is... *something* to be done, if the forest isn't consecrated?" Let her hope!!

"Merda,"

    "Fog...?"

    Oh. Weird magical fog. That's worse.

    An ambush, though. That she can do.

    Holly's bright golden rifle bursts out of, and assembles out of, her gold blood, fingers drumming impatiently already along Snowdrop's long barrel.

    It takes her a moment to remember Sonetto's request from earlier.

    "I'm incredibly sorry but it only comes in gold. Do you think you can keep it together until I don't need it anymore?"

    It's okay, she's looking at [your] neck the way you look at her rifle.

    Then to Schneider: "On your signal, then."
Ein Gwendolyn Vera Sotheby had been given a tense, if supervised, nap by Ms. Moissan on the firm insistence than a 'proper lady would rea-lly like to just sit down, just for a little bit' and then promptly deployed a tiny vial that produced a pillow of soft spongy moss and immediately conked out within minutes of settling down, curled up around her enormous hat.

Ms. Moissan had apologized profusely and promised to remain in radio contact with the team while they had gone on their raid, and had rejoined just in time (carrying a dozing Sotheby in one arm and her hat in the other with Typhon on Moissan's shoulder) to pile into one of the tank-oid era cars trying to take up less space as a full sized woman with a half sized lady in tow. Sotheby, upon realizing that they're in the vehicle (doing speed on the road) perks up with a bleary rubbing of the eyes to immediately gasp:

"My word! In my dreams I've been transported into Typhon's realm! What a wonderful Auto Island!" She gasps and wows before stretching and yawning again, while Ms. Moissan remains stonefaced educator-mode. "Lady Sotheby, you've woken from a nap."

"It's so reeeal!" She gasps, full of wonder and 'wowww!'-s right up until Schneider ditches their vehicle. As that was usually what happened after Sotheby gave her latest pep-up potion to the drivers around her campus, dumping the car in a ditch for the mechanics to find later was truly just parking in the year 1929. To Sotheby.

'I'm incredibly sorry but it only comes in gold.'

"I *say*, your hat is marvelous! Oh, are you an alchemist too? Or do you just like gold? *I* like gold, but I think it has a calming color. Which is why I very much like your hat!" Sotheby bounces, eager and happy and tugging at Holly's skirt while Ms. Moissan gives Holly the 'I am sorry for my attended Unattended Child, she is uncontrollable' look. There's a very specific look.
Regulus Regulus tries to explain to Schenider. "It seems like we're hitting the point where non-arcanists are starting to really get hit by Storm Syndrome--specifically right now, it's all about wealth becoming a replacement for food."

USE KEY ITEM: FLAMEL'S SOGGY CHEWED ON TEN DOLLAR BILL

Regulus pulls it out and shows it to Schneider. "Flamel was trying to eat this not too long before you showed up. So uh... if you can do me a favor and help me make sure nobody eats stuff that will make them sick I'd appreciate it. I--I mean I'll do the heavy lifting, promise."

''It can-not shelter humans of the Era from the Storm.''

"Yeah... She's tried before. I was the first time she tried it with an arcanist and she was able to save me. And--well we didn't actually test for Outsiders, but Laplace says it ''should'' work for them, Vertin says. I think if they weren't pretty confident, we probably would've tried to do things pretty different."

''Why'd that Vertin lady make it like that??''

"She didn't make it." Though Regulus is certain of that she's a little unclear on the details. Maybe she should ask Vertin about it sometime. "But, I mean, she did try saving humans with it so--if she knew, she wouldn't have so many times..."

She can't really blame Cosmio and Achille for getting frustrated. "I...I'm sorry. We'll do everything can do, try anything we can try."

Regulus pops her last candy in her mouth and takes a deep breath. "Far as I can tell, only Arcana can see through my invisibility, so unless we run into specifically her, it should still be effective."

She hesitates a little. It won't disguise the SMELL of blood, but considering the mass of people around here and no doubt plenty of injured people, that might not be an issue.

''Surely there is... *something* to be dione''

"You talk a lot about doing that--thing you do when you go into people or whatever it is? Maybe you could help someone like that."

''Holly's got a gun.''

"Well armed for a doctor." Regulus sighs. "I hope people aren't so desperate that they start eating guns, even golden ones."

Regulus looks over to Sotheby and frankly admires and envies her enthusiasm and joy. She gives the kid a tired looking smile and says, "Glad you're here with us, Gwen. Things might get real loud soon. APPLe will stick with you too, okay? If you need anything just give me a sign and I'll rush right on over.--actually---"

She looks to Schneider, "I can turn you invisible, that should help you pick out a good ambush sight. We get to team up! That's pretty fab, don't you think?" She looks to Sotheby but considers the wisdom of making Sotheby invisible when there's a Moissan looking out for her so instead she gives the tutor a peace sign.

And then she'll vanish from sight. Along with Schneider--and anybody who asks her to be invisible fast enough. She's not sure how long she's gonna need to rely on her arcane skill though so she's limiting the effect to those who ask her for it rather than trying to hit everybody.
Lilian Rook     'I have said this before, that should the world stand between us, it shall be you that I choose, against the world. Whatever may come, that first choice cannot change.'

    'A look in Tamamo's eyes' is something that would take a lot more than this for Lilian to miss, but under the circumstances, it's hardly something she can bring herself to worry about. That she might have failed to protect her, of all the things in the world, so soon after their sworn 'forever', has taken up too much space inside her head to leave room for little things like 'misgivings' and 'suspicions' in its wake. Even just the strain of isolation makes the sound of Tamamo's voice elicit absolute certainty that everything Lilian has done since last seeing her was the right thing; no matter how trite and tragic its necessity.

    'To save any more lives than this is a privilege of the strong, no?'

    Somehow, Lilian processes feeling sad and guilty in direct parallel with its shamelessly happy opposite. Hesitation nearly gets the better of her. Her smile is slightly uncomfortable and confused. "Of which we've all had our sobering reminder, I'm afraid." she says. "No matter how many times I've said it . . ."

    Of course Lilian knows what the barrier is. She's seen it a million times before. She has, in fact, implicitly trusted in it every single time. What it's for seems to escape her, though. Despite being watched not-distantly-enough by a crowd of desperate humans, and hardly more than five feet away from one of Manus Vindictae's major personnel, the insistence on extra privacy puts her just slightly on edge.

    'Like with Sakura'...? Ah, I did surmise that you had stepped into a diviner's trap'

    "I'm not even certain it was meant to be a 'trap'." Lilian says, uneasy. "I think the Storm played some role in it. Vertin did say that arcane abilities all become heightened as it progresses. But . . ." Even with the privacy wards up, Lilian seems reluctant to share her specific thought. She chews on the words a while, and then her lip. "It might just be how Lady Arcana is. It's not as if the Foundation has ever divined any information on her."

    'We shall speak more of the Foundation and their secrets another time'

    Lilian smiles, relieved, that Tamamo wants to speak about it at all. The corner of her mouth scrunches up in misgiving about leaving until later, but the moment quickly passes. 'But the wards are up. Why?' is the question silently asked by her roving eyes.

    'Mm, and that... as I said, Lilian. My place is ever by your side, as yours is by mine, and this one thing is more important to me than the fates of nations.'

    But then she throws her arms around Tamamo a third time, and all is forgotten and forgiven. The great big breath of shuddery-charged relief she lets out on hearing it drowns out her own thoughts for a time. She laughs, weakly, and says "I can't believe I let myself worry that it'd all be difficult to explain. Of course you'd understand. You absolutely always would. Oh Tamamo . . . I'm sorry it's been so . . . But there's really no reason to worry anymore. Even if there is, I'll show you that everything's fine, I promise."
Flamel Parsons     Flamel being slightly cramped in the car means that eventually it comes time to... levitate just outside it, riding along with a telekinetic grip, like he's jet-skiing. He's still quite wiped out from his little emotional outburst he had with Schneider's then-presumed corpse, so he's drifting limply on his back, staring up at the sky. Somehow, his telepathic communication is just fine here. Fully private dissociation, as long as you don't mind the near-hearse-like feeling of it.

    <They've promised so many humans some kind of immunity to the Storm. There has to be some kind of substance. Otherwise the Foundation would have used that knowledge against them a lot, right? Proof of all the past times it didn't work. The last time, I remember, people were transforming into monsters... But there wasn't a case, nothing I could see, of a human with one of those masks, coming apart in the reversing rain like that.>

    <So there has to be something.>

    ---

    When things stop, when they reach the barrier, it's time to scout. He drifts to the ground, lays there... And then he closes his eyes. Translucent psychic mechanisms disengage in his head, and a weird mixture of psychic steam and fluid rush out. "...Okay! Alright, there we go, safe to vent misinformed grief." He pops back up. "A barrier! That's promising. That makes a pretty solid, significant landmark for a safe zone. But how they're getting the convoy in..." He beams. "I'm an *expert* on psychic confusion *and* infiltration. Leave it to me."

    A heavy pulse of psychic energy surges out of him. This wide-area scan is meant to explore not just the mechanics of the mental influence of this barrier, but also the mental tracks left behind by the emotions of previous drivers. That should identify not just the right path through, but also, the moments they'll most likely be distracted. All of this comes to his allies through telepathic perception...
Odette Raskins Fussing with Schneider is one of the few things still keeping Odette sane at this point. The work keeps her mind at least partially off that growing hunger, although hearing Achille and Cosimo arguing over the watch keeps drawing her attention over. She does eventually relent on the fussing upon Schneider's insistence, not particularly worried about cleaning the rest off once she's confident that Schneider can move about on her own.

"Can't you two just share it? I mean... Ghnh. I-I've got some disinfectant for my tools, so I can cut it up real quick." She suggests, definitely not trying to find an angle to get a piece of that watch for herself.

Crammed into the back with everyone else, Odette scrunches herself down as best she can, hugging her legs and counting  the buttons on her jacket under her breath so she isn't staring at Holly's hat. She nods quickly when Schneider asks for confirmation about the group's safety with the briefcase, looking briefly frightened for a moment before remembering that Schneider also mentioned 'outsiders'. That wide-eyed stare returns, though, as she realizes something right around when Achille and Cosimo speak up.

"Wait, yeah... We can't just leave them. Maybe we can... Y-yeah, if the Manus already has a way of saving people at the camp, maybe we can sneak you through, too." She says with a slow nod at Riku, trying to sound optimistic and not lingering on the big 'if' like she totally is in the back of her head and the front of her mouth.

Spotting the convoy and wall of fog on the way over, Odette inhales sharply at the sudden turn-stop, mumbling a quick apology to Sotheby and Ms. Moissan for accidentally leaning at them for a second. She wriggles out of the car a moment later, slinking along the ground to get out of everyone's way before peeking over the side to watch the convoy and the odd behavior of those birds.

"If we hijack it... Y-yeah, that'll be our best bet. Too many of us to sneak onto one without whoever's aboard noticing." She concurs, opening up her medical case gingerly to keep it from making too much noise. She feels out some vials and sticks syringes in, preparing several of them with sleeping agents ahead of time to stick them into a holster along her pockets.

"Ready when you all are. Aah... Ready enough." Odette takes another breath to get her heart ready, and also to not stare at Holly's gun too long. She is so SO hungry right now. "M-maybe.. Oh. Regulus, yeah, good idea. If they can't see us, and we can't see the gun, anywhere could be a good ambush spot."
Timekeeper WITHIN THE RELIEF SHELTER:

    The structure of the camp over the past few hours has naturally evolved into some sort of implicit caste system. Through the connections known to Ms. Moissan via the Foundation and the Sothebys, a large portion of the socialites and bureaucrats of Chicago were called to demand aid from the Walden, and where they've set themselves up to receive it is very different from the ambulanced poor brought in with the truckloads of supplies. If Sotheby's parents were here, one could easily imagine them among the people who had canvas hoisted on poles for personal tents, propped up on pillows from home rather than on cots or the bare ground.

    None of the infrastructure here at all is the Manus's own, looking around, besides the obvious alchemical appliances and the inexplicable blue-black piano. The sick humans and local government brought their own cloth, mundane medicine, food-- and wealth too, in all forms and quantities; whether that's to hopefully bribe Forget Me Not into curing them sooner, repay the Walden for helping, or out of Storm-addled refusal to leave it behind, is likely different from person to person. The trove of humanitarian supplies will, within a few hours, belong to no one but the Manus Vindictae, to be used as a nest egg in the new era that follows.

    The American National Guard, still in its early years in 1929, has made an appearance to help direct the people and trucks, and frustratedly fail to find any foothold in bickering with Forget Me Not. After releasing Lyra's horses to trot back towards the Walden, he's beset constantly by soldiers demanding to see certifications that don't exist, people begging for him to brew a potion for themselves or their loved ones, and so on, irritatedly shooed away by his helmeted servants regardless of their tone or intentions. He keeps brewing as he does, and eventually Vertin gets a chance to break off from her own servant-equivalent duties to gravitate towards Tamamo and Lilian.

    A flicker of relief shows on her wan face at seeing Tamamo, and she arrives just as the word 'strip' is spoken, which changes her expression not at all. Up close, she looks considerably worse for wear, both physically and spiritually. Dried blood crackles around where her white shirt tucks into her pants, her own blood blooms around an hours-healed bullet graze that cut the fabric around her shoulder, and she has stains of Arcana's black fluid on her, if much less than Lilian. She has one of Forget Me Not's healing potions in hand, that he is very slowly administering to the patients around the clearing as he makes them.

    "Hello, Mrs. Tamamo. So you've arrived safely." The unspoken parts-- 'so the message was delivered properly, so Schneider is still alive, so the rest are on their way'-- are communicated with nothing but a tired lift at the end of her sentence that doesn't even qualify as a questioning tone.

    Even with Tamamo's barrier, it doesn't feel safe to talk about treason openly in view of Forget Me Not and the Manus followers. Instead, Vertin tilts the potion in her hand, watching the precipitate inside swirl around. "I'm not perfectly knowledgeable in alchemy, but the reagents Forget Me Not uses do appear to be relevant for healing and calming one's stomach. Those who have received it already have begun their recovery."

    She hesitates, then shakes her head. "Be safe. And ready for anything."

    Her next stop, dodging around uniformed soldiers who try to declare previously nonexistent rules and regulations over her, is the far edge of the relief camp where Druvis stands apart from the rest. With Forget Me Not busy and the other apostles uninterested in the treatment effort, the nearly-private moment is the first they've had since Vertin first walked through her woods.

    "Ms. Druvis. Did your walk help with your restlessness?"
Veronica     Veronica's instincts tell her that Schneider should by no means be on her feet. Maybe this *is* to do with her arcane skill? Or she's as hardened by Chicage as the toughest Fixers and Wing agents are in the City. Veronica's instincts also tell her that the watch Schneider's guys are bickering over *does* have a nice shine to it...

    Veronica realizes she's salivating, and swallows uneasily.

    When Schneider pulls over and explains the barrier situation, Veronica nods. "Yeah, maybe there's some doohickey in the trucks that lets 'em get through. Like a pass-key, or some kinda magic rock."

    Veronica scratches her chin a little. "There's Critters made of rock, right? In this fog I could pass for a big one o' those, maybe knock over a tree or two on the road ahead to get the truck to stop? Then we can jump 'em and I'll drag the trees back outta our way."

    The flower-mandala of hands spreads from behind Veronica's shoulders, who has forgotten that some present (Cosimo, Achille, maybe Schneider) haven't seen her do this before. The overlapping arms fold around her hand in hand, and Baker and Seventh's concrete and brickwork body grows around that. Rather than its full size, which could rival some of the trees remaining in the wood, Veronica reins it in to about eight or nine feet tall.

    After a brief consideration of the terrain, she marches a short ways down the road toward the fog barrier, close enough that she gets a little woozy even with her hometown's psychic support to help her focus, and brings down a pair of trees from next to the road to lie across in a sort of roadblock. Thump-thumping back toward her allies she broadcasts in as close to a whisper as she can manage, "If y'all want I can drag down another tree to hide behind? Just say the word."

    Once Veronica's work is done, she shambles away in Baker and Seventh, farther back from the road. "I can still help from afar, long as I know who's where," she explains as she recedes into a looming, hopefully-critter-shaped shape in the trees. She'll be a bit farther from the action, but when she hunkers down she passes for a pretty convincing boulder.
Flamel Parsons     Once it comes time to ambush, Flamel's got his own psychic Confusion 'grenades' to detonate along the path, his own telepathic force to force a driver to stop and get into the back, and his own ability to rush in and keep things peacefully incapacitated. On Schneider's orders, that's the plan he'll execute. Mostly, of course, in an effort to get ahead of her guns, which are merciless. He can't bring himself to discourage the, shall we say, *passion for a particular skill*, of someone he's put in the 'camper' category, but he'd still rather keep this hijacking PG-rated so he can extract any protocol information from the driver.
Tamiel Luxis     Tamiel looks a little queasy letting Schneider move like that--her every instinct screaming at her to not let a patient wander off looking like THAT.

    But the Storm was getting closer and closer by the second, and she wasn't sure if her birthright had enough juice to pull her out of it...Nevermind what it meant for everyone else.

    "I thought the Manus hated humanity, or at least thought themselves superior to them..?"

    "Maybe they want to get more masks on people, for more monsters," Tamiel suggested, "...Or they want to see the look on their faces, when they learn what's--" She catches a scent of chocolate just out of the oven, and her head turns like a puppet on a string, staring in naked hunger at--

    That's a gun. That's a gun. Stop. She grabbed without looking at her shadow's collar, as it stepped into three-dimensional space, and pulled it back like a naughty kitten before it could pounce. "Stop that," she says, to herself, giving the shadow a shake.

    The intoxicating smell of the blood-gun, though, still tickled at her nose. "...Wish you'd warned us," she breathed, and didn't let go of her shadow until she'd shoved it down back in its place.

    "I can turn you invisible, that should help you pick out a good ambush sight."

    "I'll come with," Tammy offers, a something black and sharp materializing in her hand. Something else to focus on, except the treats--the gold. She doesn't fully trust her talents, not so close to Arcana, but her own shadow at least had never betrayed her.
Lilian Rook     'Strip, and show me your back.'

    "H-huh? Tamamo?"

    Lilian thinks something like 'What a way to suddenly feel back on edge', but the burst of nervous tension that ensues is still nothing at all compared to what she'd sustained for an hour inside the Walden. She complains, readily and loudly, saying "I know they can't see us, but I can still see them! That's so-- . . . ! Can't we go back inside?!", but her whining doesn't amount to meaningful resistance. Before long, Lilian huddles her folded-up shirt to her chest and fusses about the timing while facing away. Even Vertin's sudden presence can't convince her to flat out disobey Tamamo's concern; and so she only tries to pretend she isn't looking, like a cat who's just fallen down the stairs.

    Her back looks fine, though the skin adjacent to the ink is slightly burned, on close inspection. The closed circuit of magic has been strained, semi-recently. There are no signs of any unusual injuries, but as for 'curses' . . .

    She's practically soaked in Arcana's presence. Even after washing off the unidentifiable black substance, arcane residue remains, and not all of it is even washed off. Traces of it are still in her hair. It's only that her darker clothes don't show the stains, compared to the Foundation white blouse that she had to abandon in the labyrinth, under Sonetto's suspicion.

    'The Third and... the Thirteenth.'

    Lilian's embarassed whining cuts off. All of a sudden, she sounds genuinely unhappy.

    "But they're not our 'fellow man', Tamamo!" says Lilian. "It's not about their station! It's about--! Come on! You and I both know they're not the same as us! Don't tell me you've forgotten how they treated you?!" Though she doesn't move to resist Tamamo's examination, Lilian's tone rises halfway to teeth-grinding exasperation within seconds. "You it said to me yourself! After I told you about what Chicago was like, you told me that you'd never feel safe showing your true self around them! What kind of 'fellow' is that?! What dignity?! Do you know those animals tried to do to me while--"

    Lilian reaches what she doesn't want to talk about much more quickly than she was prepared for. She aborts her line of argument and tries to find another, shivering the next time she's touched. "They're a different species, Tamamo. They're a completely different life form from us, and they'll never understand us. Not that they've ever tried. Manus Vindictae only exists because those people can't stand letting them having an ounce of dignity for even a single second of their lives. And the Foundation--"

    'Did what, exactly?' interrupts her own train of thought. The sound of 'That's exactly the problem' rumbles like a bomb inside her head only seconds later. "If nobody else came through time with them; if nobody was pushing back against themat all, what do you think they'd do?"

    'Ah, how awful. How truly dreadful. What is 'that woman' thinking to do, with the wife of another? No, no. I can hardly be asked to forgive her.'

    "Tamamo!" Lilian whines, still carrying a fragment of the anger she'd directed at humanity earlier. "She was the one who brought Vertin and I out of the dungeons and up to the table, and treated us like human beings! All she said was that I was worth something! All she asked Vertin was about the Storm! About what the Foundation is up to! Her issue is what they do to children! What's wrong with that?!" Listening to herself, Lilian flinches and halves her volume, looking regretfully over her shoulder at Tamamo for yelling.
Lilian Rook     "Manus Vindictae didn't cause the Storm. Lady Arcana seems certain that the Foundation did, and frankly, her case for it is much better. The Foundation wants us to believe that it's all Manus Vindictae's fault because they're 'freaky' and 'uppity' and 'violent'; because they're arcanists who take up space and make noise instead of lying down and taking it. What have they ever shared with us? What have they ever even explained? Is there even one good reason to mistrust Lady Arcana? Is it just how her magic looks?"

    There is. And her name is Schneider. And the longer Lilian rants on about it, the more of her energy bleeds away, hemorrhaged through the open wound that she refuses to look at, much less address. Only now does she think to check if Vertin has actually wandered far enough away from the wards to hear her or not. She hardly cares either way, though; if Vertin has something to say, Lilian will only tell her to 'read the room' once again. She has no particular reason to believe that Forget Me Not can't see and hear everything anyways.

    "You're not to blame at all." she finally mumbles out for Tamamo. "Schneider and Vertin got caught because I collapsed. I collapsed because of something completely unknowable. The only thing to learn was that I shouldn't keep thinking I can get away with doing that sort of magic inside my own brain." Lilian says, and takes a deep breath. "Nobody took advantage of me. The humans inside the Walden certainly tried. Forget Me Not, and Druvis, made certain that they didn't."

    "Nobody ever does that, Tamamo. You know that. I know how bad it all looks, but does that really only mean something to me? Even if they're bad people, they're people I can trust to do something when I need help; not just let me rot so they can watch a sick little poignant tragedy just for them."
Holly Asturias "Oh, are you an alchemist too?"

    "A little bit!" Holly is happy to say, "But I'm afraid I mostly deal with medicinal herbs and drugs, and not gold." But-- "... oh. Oh, you meant... no, no, that is just my blood," she manages to not-at-all explain. "Ichor runs golden, and hardens much like it. Once in a Revenant, at least." This also explains nothing, but it isn't as though she has time to give the whole lecture. She just smiles to Moissan, unbothered by Sotheby. "I'd be happy to trade notes when we're less pressed for time. You'd be the only other 'alchemist' I've met!" By title, at least, that she knows of.

"You talk a lot about doing that--thing you do when you go into people or whatever it is?"

    "Assimilation?"
    Holly blinks at Regulus' suggestion.
    "It... may? A human playing host to a Revenant would be somewhat susceptible to effects that normally only affect Revenants, but I couldn't say if it would be enough for your Storm. Still... if it comes to it, I can try. But even then, that would only let me save one person." With a slight frown.

    She does not feel the need to add 'and it presumes I am still standing' even though that's a real concern right now.

"Well armed for a doctor."

    "I have to be." Her frown from the previous matter doesn't dissipate. She doesn't *like* that she has to be, even though she objectively enjoys firearms for their own sakes.

"...Wish you'd warned us,"

    "I'm sorry!" Holly says, very seriously, in a tone that falls somewhere between 'stressed' and 'I forgor'.
James Bond      Looking for something to think about other than the likely fate of Achille and Cosimo, Bond eyes the bezel of his wristwatch in a way that he immediately wishes he hadn't. The sharp application of his thumb and forefinger to the opposite wrist provides him something to focus on instead, until Riku speaks up.

I thought the Manus hated humanity, or at least thought themselves superior to them..?

    "Maybe they don't. Maybe they do, and just want to prove a point, or get something out of it. Or maybe they know that at the end of the day, someone's got to wear those masks."

    Thump-thump. The car is hidden. Bond finds a hiding spot--under the car, if need be, but preferably someplace where he can set up a crossfire with Schneider. He is planted for long enough to reflect that this is probably a terrible idea. He racks the slide on the pistol that was loaned to him, all the same.
Ein The table, for the feast, had slowly dwindled after the spectacle ended. Flushed in the cheeks and feeling the tension headache coming on, greased into place in her skull by the warm glow haloing her head and the throbbing of blood in her temples. Her skull sloshes of it, acid a different sort of bitter burn to her mouth than ashes. She had drunk of the wine and now regretted that too, with no ability to tell the woman who asked her what her answer had since been updated to.

Was there a plan? Did Vertin, being controlled, kill Schneider? She seemed dead enough, having left them, and she had toasted the empty spot.

Sick, sick, sick, Druvis III had risen with all the regal grace that someone thinking their absolute most sober thoughts could muster, and when Forget Me Not had come to attend her, gently brushed him aside. She cared deeply for him, her first 'friend', and so the nausea of the hate she felt that seemed to want to channel towards him had to be turned away, had to be left aside, couldn't be indulged in any more no matter how much she knew it made him pleased to engage.

"No," She begins, cutting him off, and frowns at that as her eyes slide away and down. Her hand, though, guides at his bicep for a moment, brushes and then departs. "I must walk, and listen, one last time for this era." She insists, half-mask of bramble obscuring only one eye. "It has been too loud tonight." She speaks, and whether or not Forget Me Not understands, or even if he complies, there is only one force there that could bind her in her chair and the Lady Arcana had already departed for other appointments.

---

Druvis had walked her woods for a time, as the great mass of humanity began to occupy it and were drawn within it. The drapings of strange phantom-shaped extensions of departed life had been growing more and more solid in their smoke-like apparitioning as the Storm deepened and power of gnosis saturated the air. The echo of the forest before gave more body to ditch a car behind, more shape to occupy beneath for all, welcome shade from a lurid reality, and a depth to the voice that Druvis walked among. She walked down the back path behind the Walden, along the river there in the spectral trees without need for lanternlight, and returned 'home' in her small place at the heart of the forest where she kept her things.

She had expected to find Arcana there. The darkness, the gutters of shadows, the place where Schneider had sat and ate with her, Druvis for a moment expects Arcana to somehow be there - for her ritual, for some final purpose, to admonish her for 'treason' - and finds an empty and dimly lit hovel.

A raven caws from the makeshift window, exposed to the covered outer light, and Druvis tries to understand whey she came here. Eventually it comes to her that her face itches and she hadn't washed the other side of her face.

. . .

When she finishes, in her dim mirror, and sees the black upon the cloth be ashes, and her cheeks clear, she looks down at the mask she had placed besides the washbasin... and finds half a mask unsuited.

---

Druvis, as she was with time enough to clean up and remove the cuts and burns upon herself, returns to the aid camp at wandering pace, caught deeply by wistfulness even as she rounds back to the gathering. The horses are back, and with Lilian gathered Druvis finds herself fallen in besides by Vertin.

'Ms. Druvis. Did your walk help with your restlessness?'

Druvis III's unmasked eyes glide away for a few frames and her arm rises slowly, right across center to hold left bicep. "I believe I am... lost, to restlessness." She returns, but as her fingers work against her arm, she releases the tension and swings arms to besides, gaze shifting forward. "It helped, though."
Riku Asakura 'Holly's gun'

Riku stares at the weapon for a lot longer than anyone should.  He swallows down saliva and tries to tear his eyes from the gold.  He agrees that some warning would have been nice, but doesn't voice his opinion because it's already been said.  Still, he can't help but side-eye the weapon a few times.  

He smiles at Sotheby, "I'm glad your nap was a good one!" he says brightly, trying to take his mind off how hungry he is and towards someone else.

'Maybe they don't. Maybe they do, and just want to prove a point, or get something out of it.'

Riku frowns at this.  "So, just turning the humans into monsters for them to throw at people?  That's..." he doesn't know what to say.  These poor people are going to be turned into fodder or worse.  He's not sure if being unraveled by the storm or being used as fodder by the Manus is worse.  
Regulus ''It... may?''

"I mean--there's only one way to find out, love, and if it works today you save one human, then maybe I don't know Laplace calls you in and they figure something out and they save many more. Or at the very least, you save one human every STorm, that's something." And then she hesitates and admits, "Or you don't save anyone. And at least now we know for sure. We shouldn't... just assume something doesn't work. But either way, we'll still need to get back to Vertin and the Suitcase to test it out."

''You'd be the only other 'alchemist' I've met!''

"What are you talking about? You've met me too. I guess you didn't hear the hit song Re-re-regulus alchemical genius."

She assumes Tammy wants to be invisible too so Regulus nods at her before smiling at Odette to encourage her, but a little less forced than before. Even if Schneider wasn't actually dead, she did come through in the end.

Naturally Regulus is the sort of person who would only be able to use a gun in a Sam and Max style way, but her own method for 'saving lives' is to use her invisibility to ambush people and konk them out with arcanum lasers or just kicks and punches.

APPLe remains by Sotheby as her bodyguard. In case she needs one.
Timekeeper     As the Timekeeper's Assistant, it's only natural that Sonetto would make saving Vertin her utmost priority. The pure facts of a piece of paper with an assignment briefing, a list of protocols, a lecture, a handshake and smile at a re-introduction one year ago, are the messengers by which fate decides the course for its adherents long in advance. Through this holy paperwork, Sonetto was instructed that on this day, in this moment, at 0 2 : 1 9 : 39, she would want nothing more than to ensure that Vertin is safe.

    Vertin's safety will also save everyone else's lives too, including her own, which is important, but somehow subordinate in her mind. It is a simple function of the 'Timekeeper' that she saves lives; it's impossible to imagine Vertin without that. So, by saving her, Sonetto will be 'saved' as well.

    "Yes. Please drive, Schneider."

    The urgency of the mission is such that not only does Sonetto not insist on seeing Schneider's license before letting her in the driver's seat, but she doesn't even make a comment about the *theft*.

"Huh?! That's a fucking raw deal. Why'd that Vertin lady make it like that??"

    But oh God is it so scary to be sitting in this car now. Sonetto is crammed into the back seat's footwell with a blankly nervous expression, knees to her chest as she rattles around with every bump and turn. The wait before the action is always the hardest part.

    "She did not." Sonetto confirms quietly. "I believe it was recovered on a field mission long ago."

    In the footwell, Cosimo and Achille's voices are both extremely close to her ear, and impenetrably invisible to her through the back of the chair. Their realization of the outcome that she'd forgotten hadn't been spoken aloud feels like the stab of being called out on a lie, and the guilt of it already being too late to change anything about it.

    Maybe they *would* have betrayed Schneider back then in the labyrinth if they'd known. But that's sort of horrible to imagine too, right? Does Sonetto want to believe that?

"... then there is a sal-va-tion for you, should we cap-ture it."

    "--Ah! That's right!" Sonetto seems more buoyed by the prospect than the actual humans in question are. "When we have reunited with the Timekeeper, they will likely be able to tell whether the ritual was performed."

    Methodically professional but more talkative all of a sudden, "The Storm is not an instant of danger when it arrives. For the following day, the world outside of any protected zones will be immediately lethal, and so to secure the forest safely we will have to purge all Manus presence by force. We are far enough from the Walden that it seems unlikely that the two safe areas are merged, which would make travel between them impossible."

"What a wonderful Auto Island!"

    When Sotheby wakes up, her stretch plants her shoe right square on Sonetto's face. Without enough force to kick, it's just sort of pressed against her cheek, and when removed, Sonetto has a blearily befuddled expression. "... 'Auto Island'? What is that?"

"I'm incredibly sorry but it only comes in gold. Do you think you can keep it together until I don't need it anymore?"

    Out of the car, Sonetto's face snaps towards the gun as its color materialized, distracting her from the array she had begun tracing out with her glasfeder. Swallowing drool, she explains neutrally, "I can't eat gold. Gold isn't food; things such as cabbage and fish are. So it is okay."
Timekeeper "You talk a lot about doing that--thing you do when you go into people or whatever it is? Maybe you could help someone like that."

    Sonetto considers this, while having next to no context for Holly's assimilation or Revenants in general. The risk assessment that immediately comes to her mind forces her to consult her moral code on whether she values Holly or Cosimo or Achille's life more, and her calculations come up short. The life of one human criminal, or the life of an offworld Manus sympathizer? Both betrayed the Manus to help the mission, and neither seem likely to provide long-running assistance to the Foundation in subsequent eras.

    Where the Foundation falters, Vertin emerges. In this moment, Sonetto becomes absolutely certain that Vertin would unhesitatingly say 'all of them', in a voice that overrides what the Foundation might argue for their priorities. A moment later, Sonetto is certain that she can't possibly do the same.

    "... The mechanisms of the Storm nor the suitcase are not known fully to anyone," She begins, haltingly. "But arcanists and humans differ by blood. While it is possible that your arcane infusion could immunize a human within the suitcase, it seems equally possible that your soul would be taken along with their body. I don't know. ... I'm sorry."
Ein Having stepped on Sonetto, Sotheby is terribly sorry, even if she did no damage. There was something terrible about it. Like she had stepped on an animal's tail! Mortified in her unladylike behavior, Sotheby is all sorts of apologetic.

'... 'Auto Island'? What is that?'

Activating, because the Typhon Lore is the key to solving a problem, Sotheby tightens in and gets to Explaining. "The Brave Hero Typhon is the hero of Auto Island! A travelling island on the seas of adventure and great journeys while he battles the e-vil Jupiter!" Then, dropping from radio drama pitch, she drops into trivia parenthetical. "The Auto Island is the wandering land of dreams, and it's a little like that large one we just left! It's why I was so surprised, I've never just walked out of a dream before!"

Ms. Moissan tries to be ready. "But you have woken up several times from them." She dryly injects, and Sotheby just giggles to herself as if she was engaging in wordplay. "I'm sure I've taken many naps but today seems different!"

. . . "Today is different. Come on, Lady Sotheby, we'll need to keep moving so stay close." Ms. Moissan recommends, hand landing on Sotheby's shoulder, and Sotheby nods solemnly with her very big hat adding the wave of feathermotion and mass to her deep intention.

'What are you talking about? You've met me too. I guess you didn't hear the hit song Re-re-regulus alchemical genius.'
'... oh. Oh, you meant... no, no, that is just my blood,'

"Oh! Perhaps I have! I haven't quite the head for music - it's all a bit of a jumble of happy sounds, isn't it? As long as it's good music, it makes *me* happy, but it's what you play at parties!" Sotheby laughs, but points at Holly's crown of golden blood.

"Because of this golem's ichor, I thought she was an alchemist-alchemist! Oh! Oh!!!" Pivoting from Holly's skirts to gripping Regulus' hands, Sotheby energetically bounces her way as well. "Do you know how to create gold? Mother says it's the 'original secret' of alchemy from which the whole shape of the Philosopher's Stone can be traced! We should compare notebooks! And journals! Oh, and talk stargazing, of course, it's important to account for the magnetic alignment and phase of the planet when mixing, but if you're good at gauging liquids really it's a piece of cake. How does 're-re-re-re-re-re-'" Sotheby didn't remember how many 're' there were in Re-re-regulus Alchemical Genius, and is saved by Ms. Moissan continuing on with "-egulus, Alchemical Genius. How does it go? Perhaps if the Lady is extra quiet she'll hear it if Miss Regulus hums it." Ms. Moissan truly tries her best while Sotheby is back to fully powered activity.

Distracted, and looking back and up to Holly again, Sotheby looks up and bites her bottom lip thoughtfully.

"You've met two alchemists now!" Wow! "If your blood is solid, are you jointed in a special way, or are you constantly breaking and healing your gold as you move?"
Schneider Greco      Schneider's preparations for the ambush boil down to 'flattening herself behind a scorched tree and familiarizing herself with her gun'. Her eyebrows lift at Regulus, while her men get back to bickering (dispiritedly) over the chewed-on golden watch.

     "So this is the ra-tion-a-li-ty of 'humans', mmh? That they succumb to the Storm's sicknesses, while we en-dure... what are you eating, over there?"
"Uh- ghhck- toffee."
"Cream dessert."
"Really."
"... Achille's watch. But I swear, it tastes just like..."
"Well, gold does-not hurt the stomach or the teeth, but I will stop them if they go for the silver, my-la-dy Regulus," Schneider sighs. Her eyes slide off to the side.

     "... You were shel-tered by the Walden less than me, my-la-dy. Are your thoughts still clear?" She looks to Regulus with concern, and some other feeling. But a glance aside at Sonetto- swallowing drool at Holly's gun- darkens Schneider's expression with the likely answer.

     Schneider pulls an only-slightly-bloodstained silk handkerchief from her jacket's pocket, picks a loose piece of gold off of Achille's watch despite his protestations, and surreptitiously offers Sonetto both; one to wipe her lips, and one to have a taste.

     "Do-not worry, my-la-dy Holly. It is usually some-one else's mouth ask-ing for my gun, right?" she teases, before being pleasantly surprised by Sotheby's pep-up potion, shrugging, and glugging the whole thing like a champ.

     Her pupils constrict. Her heart rate jumps a good fifty percent. Her smile remains lazy. "Mmh, my lit-tle la-dy, you have a talent. You could sell these things, you know?"

     Flamel drifts by her, and with a perhaps-surprising tenderness, Schneider pats his hair with a hand. "The masks..." She hesitates for a moment. Her men look to her queasily. "How much they protect from the Storm, I can-not say, but... from all I know, a human who wears them is al-rea-dy dead." She nods unhappily to Tamiel. More masks, more monsters.

     . . .
Schneider Greco      It's a couple minutes before the Manus convoy pulls up. Little surprise it's ricketier and less formal than the delegation they sent to fetch Tamamo; bigger too. It's just a pair of cars, one behind the other, each with three or five farming wagons hitched to it.

     Implicitly, the sight is grotesque. Only the last wagon in each procession has a few of the money-poisoned bedridden sick heaped onto it, pale and weak and slumped back without even cots; the others are devoted to people's variously-chewed possessions that the Manus (or their own hunger) must have convinced them they need to bring. A whole piano, gold-framed mirrors, briefcases leaking cash, the taxidermied moose head from someone's wall...

     In each of the cars is a quartet of Manus followers, with a few more riding on the heaps of goods on the wagons hitched behind; most of them are black-masked pistol-carrying humans, but a few have been assimilated into dripping humanoid monsters already. Flamel can tell- and Schneider could guess- that their way through the fog isn't granted by any talisman or blessing, but by Manus followers simply instinctively 'knowing' how to navigate the mystical labyrinth of the fog-wall.

     Mystical knowings don't help a whole lot with Veronica's felled trees barring the way, though.

     The lead black-masked driver swears as he comes to a stop in front of the trees, and a pair of drum-headed toughs disembark to try to move them. Schneider smiles across the road at Bond; then she holds out her hand to accept Regulus's magic. "It is nice, for once, to work with friends. Do-not shoot the drivers and spare a car if you-all can help it, right?" She winks back, and then moves as she fades from view.

     Her men set aside their unease and lay prone to line up a shot with their submachine guns. If no other signal comes first, they take their chance to open shrieking fire on the two drum-headed bouncers trying to move the trees; the first one collapses after a moment's concentrated fire, but the second shelters behind it and then charges into the woods towards them despite its wounds.

     There's a general howling and uproar from the Manus followers under the gunfire. The weakened Storm-patients are thankfully mostly out of the line of fire; they barely have the energy to lift their heads. After a few seconds, the other followers try to shelter behind their wagons and goods, returning fire with whistling magical finger-gun shots and traditional small arms.

     Schneider is hard to track for the first few moments, but when someone invisible climbs into the cab of the leading Manus car and slugs the driver's drawn-out 'ghost' in its mouth, it's easy to guess that's her. Another follower is immediately trying to shoot her by guessing while the unfortunate driver grapples 'thin air'.
Tamamo     'Hello, Mrs. Tamamo. So you've arrived safely.'

    "Timekeeper Vertin, it is good to see that you are well enough. I have heard of the turmoil in your brief stay." It would be reasonable for any hearing this to assume that she'd heard such from Lilian. She did not.

    "Walk safely." She doesn't say 'I don't have time to treat you, too.' It's only implied, and Vertin's already working, so it must be fine. "Ms. Sonetto will doubtless be concerned upon finding you in straits."

    'It might just be how Lady Arcana is.'

    "Perhaps so." Tamamo's tone is gentle. "A trap need not be deliberately laid. It is something that may be considered at another time. Hm, Ms. Bouanich... I wonder how she is doing, at the moment."

    'H-huh? Tamamo?'
    'Can't we go back inside?!'

    "Trust me on this, my dear. We are less noticeable in moving about less." Besides that, it wouldn't be 'back' inside, for her, since this is a new location. She'd rather maintain vision for her own sense of safety.

    'Even if there is, I'll show you that everything's fine, I promise.'
    . . .
    'Don't tell me you've forgotten how they treated you?!'
    'After I told you about what Chicago was like, you told me that you'd never feel safe showing your true self around them!'

    As Lilian's tone and demeanor shifts, Tamamo remains steady. She's not angry or unhappy with Lilian, whose hair she is now cleaning with a small washbasin conjured like a magician's trick, methodically working lock by lock, hot water supplied by thermos and changed over as needed. This does, incidentally, leave Lilian far more physically trapped than most other conceivable positions to find herself in.

    "I remember, my dear Lilian, both recent lands and distant ones. I remember golden plains, and those who pursued with only hatred in their hearts. Hatred, perhaps, and fear, and loyalty to that which declared me 'monster.' I remember, too, though it has never been a fact that felt important to speak, that it was the diviners who sicced the hounds upon me, those arcane-users of that bygone era, who ever sought to rule lesser men. They were different than I, to be sure." But not different from 'arcanists,' she doesn't need to add.

    "You have told me, before, of the arts followed by those of your line, of the idea of 'perfected form' in humanity, of something to which one may aspire, and by many means come closer to attaining, while still not yet knowing the distance between the self and 'perfection.' You never called those 'another species,' those who had walked further, or less far, upon that path. Mm, 'animals,' perhaps, in a heated moment..." She doesn't press. Her fingers move, straining sludge with oil, and she moves on.
Tamamo     'And the Foundation--'
    'What have they ever even explained?'

    "Perhaps it would be best that we consider the Foundation with some suspicion, given how less than forthcoming they have been in some matter. There have been cases in which they have been much less reliable than would be desired, and I might have some words for their views on raising children." It's delivered with marginally more heat than she has for talk of whether to plant rosemary near the side door or further down the lake path. She's smoldering, but that's directed elsewhere.

    "It may also be, as you say, that the lieutenants of the Manus Vindictae would welcome me with open arms, and that they may be filled with wondrously unique conversational partners, of whose company I would most enjoy. If you say it is so, then I shall believe it, and I will give each of these such opportunity to make truth of your impressions as they are able." A final, cleansing rinse is enough for hair. For cloth soaked through, Tamamo directs it be briefly removed, and added to a pile framed by talismans and ringed by lines of glittery, metallic powder. The blue flames distort when looked at directly, but leave the cloth largely unchanged, if lightened. Brushing the wet-slicked hair behind her ear, Tamamo leans in to complete the ritual with a kiss.

    'You're not to blame at all.'

    Tamamo smiles, "Thank you for saying so. And yet... things would have been different, had I been there. I could have spared you much. I might have done something to save you from what, it seems, you did not notice. It is fine now, of course. I protect you now, as I ever will, to the very best of my abilities. Ah, but during that time... it did come to pass that 'that woman' did, ah... seek to touch nigh everywhere upon your body, and cover you in her... goo." Would 'fluids' be better? No. No, it wouldn't. There's no good way to put this. "She did this after drawing you out of her own dungeon, and shortly before ordering the death of the one you went to aid, whose motives were the entirety of your reason from briefly separating from my presence. There can be no argument, then--"

    That same, gentle, loving tone, talking about things that are obviously impossible to deny, "In any just world, is there a single hand that could be raised in objection, to say I should not, by right, kill 'that woman' with my own hands? She has disrespected you, myself, the subordinate she controlled by hostage, the Timekeeper, and -- even in the most positive, most humane, least malicious light -- she has disrespected our marriage."

    Helping Lilian straighten the most of her clothing she has remaining, and pulling out a long length of clean cloth to form a wrap over some that's missing, Tamamo continues from a prior point. "My place is with you, my love. It is not with 'the Foundation,' nor 'the enemies of the Foundation,' nor with 'the world beyond either.' There is no contradiction, here. We shall fight for our happiness, in every world, and if you wish to put your efforts toward befriending, or toward distancing, I shall remain with you. We need not live amongst the cities, nor need we work amongst the Foundation. I shall place my foot down only in such cases as these, that I shall not ignore those who harm us, no matter how they might beguile, how they might intrigue, and strike curiosity for the sake of aligning you to a cause of change -- that they begin by covering you in curses. I will not allow that, for no loving wife would."
Riku Asakura 'The arrival of the Manus convoy.'

Riku is surprised at how rickety and barely put together the convoy was, compared to the horse and carriage that Tamamo was drawn away in.  Every time he sees what the Manus do to non-arcanists, it makes him really think that they're much more willing to only spend expenses on those they consider 'worthy' instead of equally.  

Still, he can't stand around doing nothing; it won't get him anywhere.  Others are invisible, but he ducks down below cover and grips his Fusion Riser.  Taking a breath, he pulls the Riser up...

"You go!" he states, activating an ultracapsule.  A ghostly figure of a giant of light appears next to him.  "I go!" he says again, activating a second capsule, and this time, a ghostly figure of a giant of darkness rises.  "Here we go!" He brings the Riser across each capsule, scanning them before bringing the Riser up into the air.  "It's time to get ready!"

A moment later, he brings the Riser down over his heart and shouts, "GEEEEEEED," as a blue and white energy pours out from him.  

FUSION RISE!
ULTRAMAN
ULTRAMAN BELIAL
ULTRAMAN GEED PRIMITIVE

Geed, as he forms and grows, flies towards the side of the cars that the Manus are hiding behind.  He aims to be a disruptive force for them and attempts to prevent them from getting cover from his allies by using the cars.  

Sadly, the masks have stripped them of their humanity, but it also means he can fight them as monsters instead of humans.  He reaches down from his massive height and attempts to swipe at the Manus, attempting to bash them to the ground or send them flying away from the cars.    
Holly Asturias "Or at the very least, you save one human every Storm, that's something."

    Holly regains her smile. "That is something."
    It isn't good enough.
    But one is a lot bigger than zero.

"I can't eat gold."

    "I heard that humans used to put flakes of gold in some of their foods, actually. It was a sort of status symbol, though I've never tried it." Holly you are *not* helping.

"I don't know. ... I'm sorry."

    Ah, but there goes her smile again. Reality is unkind. "I couldn't say. But it isn't as though 'safe conditions' to test will ever be on the table. If I don't try, am I to be fine asking myself 'would it have worked?' for the rest of forever? If it harms me, it won't be the first mark on my body from doing my duty."

    And yet the fear of dying is running a tight second position in the race for what governs that choice.

"I guess you didn't hear the hit song Re-re-regulus alchemical genius."

    "Ah - no, I mustn't have," Holly admits, taking Regulus at full face value. Two alchemists, then!

"Because of this golem's ichor,"

    "Golem?"

"it's important to account for the magnetic alignment and phase of the planet"

    "I-Is it?"

"but if you're good at gauging liquids"

    "Oh, very good, but -"

"If your blood is solid, are you jointed in a special way, or are you constantly breaking and healing your gold as you move?"

    Holly, not entirely dizzy so much as envious of Sotheby's energy, and doing her best to stay focused despite the tonal rollercoaster and her waiting for Schneider's ambush signal, has to pass a series of awful will checks to stop herself from staring at Sotheby's neck too much as she bounces and prances and goes back and forth.

    Her blood must surely be Ichor-rich...
    No! Bad. That's the Storm talking.

    "A-Ah, no, my blood is quite liquid, I assure you. It does harden in contact with the air, to some degree, and I can force it into shapes, but it doesn't impede my movements any more than yours does."

"Do-not worry, my-la-dy Holly. It is usually some-one else's mouth ask-ing for my gun, right?"

    "My, I *have* noticed how good an eye you have for firearms. Perhaps a trade, later? Lilian was positively enthralled to try mine over drinks. Why, she obliterated a chair." A wry smile.

"It is nice, for once, to work with friends. Do-not shoot the drivers and spare a car if you-all can help it, right?"

    "Mhm, very well." But it's all business now. A brief respite from reality through chatter was nice.

    Holly kneels, and tracks her rifle on Manus followers, one by one. Careful, accurate shots to the head, rays of blazing blue light that threaten to freeze their heads solid on impact, with or without an ensuing crash and shatter depending. Frostbite and slowness lingers, even for those who can push past the icy snipes.

    She makes sure to prioritize targets that directly threaten any of her allies, over ones that are simply standing there.
Regulus ''I can't eat gold. Gold isn't food.''

Regulus bites at her lip. How much time does she have before she starts trying to eat a gun?

''It seems equally possible that your soul would be taken along with their body.''

"What? Really?" Regulus frowns. "Guess it's too risky. Sorry Holly." Don't call her Dr. Acula when you are trying to apologize, Regulus tells herself. And then she thinks: The Storm is such bullshit grumpily.

''Gold does-not hurt the stomach or the teeth--''

"Are you sure that's pure gold?" Regulus warns Schneider. "It might just look it."

''I haven't quite the head for music.''

"Oh I was ... asking Holly, we had a record party--" But she's startled a little by Sotheby seizing her hands. "I was always more into the machines, but I was hoping to get a good look at this stone I ... returned before I could really do much with it." As usual, Regulus is hesitant to talk about her past and apparently that includes her reasons for wanting that thing to begin with. "But I'd absolutely love to talk shop with you, Sotheby. Genius alchemists can always learn more!" She brightens at Moissan's idea and says, "Brilliant--! Okay, after that line, it's 'Call me what you like' and then you repeat the Re-re-re-Regulus Your Record Player's All You Need, The ocean and your rock'n'roll dreams!" Regulus hums along to continue the song for Sotheby's amusement. This also stops Regulus from inquiring after Holly's bones as well but Sotheby is already doing a great job by asking important questions, see.

She seems surprised that Holly is still not discounting the attempt which both impresses Regulus and also makes her feel a little sick.

She tries not to think about it too much and obscures her unease with her sunglasses. ... And then it's a-go-time.
rRegulus wiggles her finger around in a small circle and touches Schneider's hand--and then they both--and Tamiel if she's close enough--vanish from sight.

Regulus is ALSO hard to track for the first few moments, but when the charging Manus suddenly trips over nothing--well that's probably Regulus sticking something out to make sure he doesn't get too far, but ultimately ends up following Schneider to the first Manus car to help pry the gun away from the Manus JERK (emphasis Regulus's) trying to fire on Schneider before they accidentally hit her. Or someone else for that matter! Someone like Regulus! She follows up with a light blast to the face to help disorient them further.

"No more bullets headed your way today." Regulus mutters. "Think you've had enough for one day."
Flamel Parsons     Flamel fondly regards Sotheby's revitalization. "Well! Having seen a couple post-nap campers in my time, gotta say I'm happy to see what she can manage. Think we'll be coming up on some alchemical challenges, so get your brewing cap on." Then it's time for waiting...

    Waiting, waiting... Flamel gnaws, idly, on his Psychonauts company credit card, rendering it thoroughly useless and somehow, simultaneously, inexplicably, draining his own paycheck. When it's time to move, he springs into action, though, quick to act on his specialty.

    Flickering out of invisibility himself, he rushes between two mind: First, the Manus follower aiming for Schneider, diving in and trying to thoroughly disrupt their ability to estimate Schneider's position. Then, the ghostly form Schneider is grappling with, planting a hand on/through the ghostly cranium and working to instantly twist the man's sense of self and duty around. Is it unethical to cure someone of only the problems that make them your enemy? He simply obliterates, in a clean telepathic wave, whatever history of personal trouble and stress might have turned this man to a lifestyle of helping Manus Vindictae -- or short of that, just rewires the parts of his brain that associate the correct and good courses of action that helps Manus Vindictae with driving this gang there and not worrying about the Manus combatants who got subdued. He'll need that instinctive knowledge of how to get through!

    Honestly, if these guys get shot while they're wrestling with Schneider, he'd hardly blame her. He could pull those instincts, that knowing, out of some dimming gray matter if it got *bad*. Either way, he'll have someone ready to drive the group through.
Veronica     Veronica, during the brief wait, enjoys the moment of peace and quiet away from anything valuable-delicious to eat. She keeps a gentle focus on the barricade logs, to know when someone runs against or tries to move them - she could lock them in place, if she wanted, but that ruins her element of surprise.

    Instead she waits for that tactile-telekinetic signal of pushing-back, and charges her way out of the trees like an avalanche, barreling forward with more speed than her weight should allow her legs to muster. She arrives in time for the surviving transformed bouncer to be rounding the Schneider goons' cover, and she lunges for him in a tackle. The Manus servant can either roll with the blow, fall, and take a few bullets from Cosimo and Achille, or become a goopy-black smear on the pavement...

    Once in the thick of the fighting, Veronica holds her roadside position as a centerpiece around which the other, more precisely-lethal Elites can maneuver and anchor themselves. She's not using too much force herself, lest she damage the road, but she's willing and more than able to withstand gunfire or basic arcane attacks. With Geed up in the air, Veronica presents herself as a grounded, genuinely-architectural pillar of the fighting force.
Odette Raskins "thing you do when you go into people or whatever it is?"
"A human playing host to a Revenant"
"someone's got to wear those masks."
"But arcanists and humans differ by blood."

The more Odette listens to Regulus, Holly, James, and Sonetto, the more she gets ideas on how to hedge their bets for Achille and Cosimo. While she's waiting for the ambush to start with her syringes full of sleeping drugs at the ready, she mulls over an option that had briefly hit her before.

"Maybe if we can snag some of those masks... Ugh, no. That'd be as good as dying, looking at the people we saw all those other times." Odette grumbles, pursing her lips as Schneider confirms that won't work. She rubs her face lightly while glancing at her case again. "A blood transfusion, maybe? No, that's too risky without testing for matches...  There's got to be some other way to skew our chances."

"what are you eating, over there?"

Odette's face drops at the betrayal (even though they never agreed), even if it might not be visible with Regulus' aid. They were so cool before, too, and now they've shown their true colors...

At least she still has a credit chip to chew on that she doesn't need to share.

"I heard that humans used to put flakes of gold in some of their foods, actually."

"What does that even taste like? I... Huh." Odette scrunches her face up, but she doesn't seem opposed to the idea. She does, however, shoot a wounded look over at Achille and Cosimo again.

"... Maybe we can try it later, when we're all out of here safely. Miss Sotheby, have you ever had anything like that?"

When the convoy arrives, Odette feels another discomforting feeling in her gut for several reasons. For starters, the state of the people piled in the back is horrifying to see. It's getting harder to hold the hunger back, though, when she sees the pile of stuff The Manus procession has brought with them.

"Do-not shoot the drivers and spare a car if you-all can help it, right?"

"G-got it. We do this fast and clean, then. I'll get any stragglers out of the way, and they should be out for a while." With a fistful of syringes, Odette slinks along and around the convoy, waiting for the louder members of the crew to start drawing the attention of the Manus followers.

Thanks to the gunfire, Odette can move in with relative impunity! Still keeping her head down so as to not get in the way of stray shots, she sneaks up on the followers and circling around to get at them from the sides. She slides the syringes in precisely to inject them with the sleep-inducing reagents, dipping around their backs to avoid getting her head caved in or a bullet through the skull.

With any luck, Odette might even get a chance to snatch up some of those firearms they've brought along. She's not keen on using them on the Manus followers herself, but she's not above keeping a pistol or submachine gun on her person just in case with how close the Storm is getting.
Tamiel Luxis     "Wagons." Tamiel murmured, scratching at the back of her head. "They like wagons, huh...?" It was a little strange... "Do you think they mean to make the humans 'pay' with their valuables...?" Why else bring them? The piano, the ornaments...The cotton candy--

    --No. She breathed, and some silver filigree filtered back into coherence.

    "The Storm make so many things useless," Tamiel commiserates with Holly, sadly. "Even if I tried to spread my arcanum, I don't think it would work well. At its best it keeps people from dying, from...almost anything. But the Storm makes it like they were never born. Would it even do...anything?"

    "I'm not used to seeing people and not being able to help them," she admits. "I hate it."

    Tamiel joins Regulus and Schneider, on their raid of the frontmost car. While Regulus goes for the gun, Tamiel grabs the back of his head, and insivisble force suddenly pushing, trying to SLAM it against the dashboard, and, with startling strength, simply try to pick up the goon and throw them out of the car, with enough force to skip once across the ground.

    "We worked hard to patch her back up," she complained.
Timekeeper "The Brave Hero Typhon is the hero of Auto Island! A travelling island on the seas of adventure and great journeys while he battles the e-vil Jupiter!"

    "Oh. Okay." With the exact same tone of acknowledging-nod she uses when told about the miracles of lesbian pregnancy or that it is her role to martyr herself for the cause, Sonetto acknowledging-nods at Sotheby. For someone so bad at concealing her expressions, it's incredible that she remains unreadable by acting like an alien being introduced to every one of Earth's concepts one by one. She could wholeheartedly believe that this is reality, or she could just be humoring her delusions about lore.

    Except, this one she does actually understand, in her own way. "Our Auto Island brought us to where we will have to defeat evil enemies as well. So... maybe it is not that different from the one in your dreams."

"As long as it's good music, it makes *me* happy, but it's what you play at parties!"

    Oh no. They might share a similar wavelength, actually. By the time Sonetto's third nod-of-understanding is directed towards Sotheby, they've become peers in earthly dissociation.

    "Regulus has many opinions on the music that she is familiar with, but isn't it all hard to tell apart?"

"Well, gold does-not hurt the stomach or the teeth,"

    Not being the one addressed, Sonetto's attention is still keenly straining for anything to do with the growing hunger that she commands herself to ignore. The 'promise' implicit in Schneider's words cracks that discipline, eliciting a softly pitiful noise of hope from Sonetto. "It doesn't?"

    And in return, the dog who has never known hunger is given a treat by the one who knows it as a state of being. The rationalizations in Sonetto's mind only make it as far as to split the scrap of gold in half with her nail, leaving one to Schneider while putting the other in her mouth so hastily that her finger is caught when her teeth bite down. The handkerchief follows closely after, covering her lower face as if to hide her surreptitious chewing.

    She's well-enough in control to know that she's eating a metal, atomic number 79, insoluable and nutritionously inert, but that's irrelevant when the taste fills her mouth. The air that rushes in past the handkerchief crackles with saliva, until she swallows and wipes it away. The flood of relief washes through her like a first breath after suffocation, barely papering over the hole that insists on 'more'-- but for Sonetto, one indulgence is more than enough.

    Her array finishes in record time after that. Once it does, the glittering hemisphere of stars drawn from tightly coiled love letters surrounds the fallen tree and the caravan that stops at it, and translucent arcane crystals rain down to pen it in and execute one of the helmeted Manus monsters that exits the car.

    She goes to the human patients in the back once the car is under their control, to dutifully fulfil her role as a humanitarian field agent.

    "I am Chief Investigator Sonetto of the St. Pavlov Foundation. The arcanists within the relief camp are dangerous racial supremacists and lawbreakers." She hesitates, realizing that they're too sick to move, and 'disembarking' would mean losing the slim chance of comandeering the forest to survive the Storm. "Please remain calm. You'll be safe with us."
Ein 'Our Auto Island brought us to where we will have to defeat evil enemies as well. So... maybe it is not that different from the one in your dreams.'

"Hooray!" Sotheby bounces, low-voiced and conscientious-toned towards the Sneaking Mission, but also, wahoo! Yippe! "Then, I'll help Typhon prove his worth and defeat Jupiter!" She announces, and the distressingly still-animate rabbit stuffie on her shoulder pumps its ragamuffin cloth-gloved 'fist' and. . .

It's a stuffie. It says no meaningful yet poignant speech, because it doesn't say anything. However, Sotheby seems to be lost for a few seconds imagining the whole thing and nodding along.

'but isn't it all hard to tell apart?'

Asked a Scientific Question, Sotheby brings her hand to lightly brush the tip of her chin and look up and away and loop-de-loop about and come back to... "There's party music, and sad thinking music. Oh, and jazz!"

Given the second line but ambiguous on the first, Regulus earns the warm bafflement of Sotheby, a hand over her mouth and a gasp upon her lips while she continues go gaze starry-eyed. "I'll have to get a record player for myself, later, then! And, uhm, where can I find the 'roll'? Like a baker? I've never been to a baker shop before but I'm very familiar with bread and cakes!" She he-he-hees.

'Mmh, my lit-tle la-dy, you have a talent. You could sell these things, you know?'

"Why, thank you!" Sotheby glows, seeing Schneider being clandestine and going into Sneaking Mode herself (she crouches down). "I think it's nice if people are re-vitalized!" It hits like drinking adrenaline. Shooting the stuff is a slam of it and not a measured trickle. Schneider, of course, goes hard. "If I sold it, then, some people couldn't have it?" Sotheby works through, slowly, then shrugs. "Plus, that batch took pinch of phoenix pinion for that real 'revival' feeling to it, so there's no price I could set that'd be economical! Either I have feathers, or I don't."

Offering out priceless potions as party favors, Sotheby returns to standing up at her full height when near Holly, because she has to look up at the much taller woman, and also look up above her hat-brim.

'Golem?'

"Your arcane genus! You're not human, and so, by construction, you'd be a humanoid, and it's *rude* to presume if someone's reanimated or not, so I would ne-ver, and really it's most accurate isn't it? Because your blood is controllable magical construct, you're a--" 'Flesh golem' is also rude. Sotheby aborts with a smile and a blink.

'I-Is it?'

"The weight of the moon is ever-important for liquid measures and the pressures of humors!" Sotheby instructs instantly. Yes! It is!

Holly(...) has to pass a series of awful will checks to stop herself from staring at Sotheby's neck too much(...)

Sotheby stares back! Her grin increases the more she's captivated by the reflection of gold and emerald in Holly's eyes, waiting in an empty cycle for more questions. Ms. Moissan, standing just besides, fixes Holly with a look. The pleasantness is reassessed. With the checkpoint clearing, the field agent loosens her mallet to ready it for a fight.
Ein but it doesn't impede my movements any more than yours does.'

"If you make your hat bigger, does your blood pressure lower, or do you have to spend more of your energy maintaining a higher force on your own being?" Sotheby asks, pulling out a grimoire-like notebook leafed with bookmarks of various kinds from leaves to letters to ribbons, and flips through into the depths of the book to start referencing and getting out a whole second diary book to start taking notes. She gets half unpacked before quickness is demanded, and she's scooped up by Moissan while putting her precious books away much quicker than she was getting them out.
Timekeeper "I believe I am... lost, to restlessness."

    The lack of mask is half of an answer to Vertin. This is the other half. She should be relieved at not having the Walden's powerful druid as an opponent in this upcoming fight, but the look on her face is tiredly sympathetic.

    She extends a hand to Druvis. "Then will you walk with me? Perhaps we'll find someplace to go."

. . . .

THROUGH THE FOG:

    There might have been other ways to get through the fog with the array of abilities at the Elites' disposal, but there's none cleaner than using the method the Manus already were. Being driven through it induces a feeling of dizzying vertigo and confusion, like the ground and your head are moving at disjointed speeds, but with a finger in the Manus driver's mind, Flamel can tell they're mostly unaffected by it. The same sort of psychological stabilization that the masks grant against Storm Syndrome feels like it applies here-- and in 'wiping clean' parts of his mind, Her influence seeps through the cracks to pool in the empty space. Not so quickly that there's any problems by the time they break through the fog to reach the field hospital, though.

THE RELIEF SHELTER

    (Read my earlier poses for a more thorough description!)

    Somehow, it seems like Flamel was right. Among the milling soldiers, and patients, and politicians, Forget Me Not is right there, working away at his cauldron nearby the piano that used to be in the Walden. Some of them even seem to be doing better after drinking the potions he's created: particularly those among the wealthier class connected with the Sothebys, the local government personnel, are gradually sitting back up on their cots, though they still prod at their food, unable to eat it.

    Forget Me Not isn't expecting the Foundation group to arrive in his little sanctuary, at least not so urgently that he's searching for your faces in the parade of new arrivals. Instead, he's chatting surprisingly cordially with a feeble-looking but exorbitantly-dressed woman, a plump man in a bowler hat, and a uniformed National Guard.

"I promise everything will be okay, Mrs. Durant. Yes, you and your family-- yes, your associates as well, will be treated next with the highest priority."

"Mayor Thompson, how good it is to see you up and about already. ... More, you say? I'll have it ready soon. A smart man such as yourself knows what dosage he needs, of course."

"... Officer, is the proof of those already feeling improved not enough for my alchemical skills? No? You need to try a remedy yourself to approve it?"
Lilian Rook     'Hm, Ms. Bouanich... I wonder how she is doing, at the moment.'

    "Inside the Foundation, thank god, so the same as always." Lilian replies on impulse. She has too many things to say and too little time to share them in, and so the irrepressible urge to just talk, to say everything and anything at all to Tamamo, overrides the places where even little pauses should go. "Overworked, underpaid, slop-fed, sleep-deprived, and ignored, as usual. Like they do with all of their arcanist graduates." she mutters.

    'I remember, my dear Lilian, both recent lands and distant ones. I remember...'

    At first, Lilian is calmed, because it's Tamamo's voice. Then, she is reassured, because the words align with exactly what she meant to invoke. And then, at a certain point, she is silent, only because it is Tamamo speaking, and the roiling objection that builds and builds within her is subservient to the sheer violence that Lilian uniquely ascribes to the act of 'interrupting a calm explanation'.

    'You never called those 'another species,' those who had walked further, or less far, upon that path. Mm, 'animals,' perhaps, in a heated moment...'

    "Because that isn't the same, Tamamo." Lilian sighs, exasperated that she would trip up on something so obvious, and yet finding no clear explanation available to draw from her own thoughts. "Out of all of Vertin's allies, how many of them get the kind of looks that I do? Who else gets called delusional and insane and a crazy bitch without doing anything unusual? Even Asakura can turn the size of a building and still stroll down the streets like it's nothing. You were there to see Manus Vindictae's grassroots believers try to rope Regulus in right away, but did they ever try with Rita or Basque?"

    The tint to everything Lilian says is inescapable. The tone that subtly grows the longer that she speaks is as though she is pacing around the edges of something dreadful. Her frustration, both at thinking it and being unable to find the words for it, can be felt in the tension suspended in her body, even without looking at her face. "Give it a few months. You'll see. Someone who isn't you will flash some magic right before a Foundation officer's eyes and they'll say 'Gosh they bring their boys up different over there', and then someone will glance at you and say 'Well their arcanists are so polite, it's no wonder.'" Her fingers slowly curl, and her nails dig into her clothes.

    "Nika isn't Enlightened. Sakura is surrounded by them. Nobody near Ash could tell if they tried. But they were all isolated the same way, weren't they? Think about how the rabble are around Xion; or Arthur, Strawberry, Lala, even Hikaru. I mean, why is Love a freak but Angela isn't? Why is everyone so casual about Rita's tentacles and Grimm's walking corpses? Nash is out there with a computer that summons demons and nobody bats an eye, but god forbid Petra jump twice or Woz introduce his boyfriend a little too loudly."

    She can feel herself going in circles. No matter how much she tries to elaborate, the point never seems to arrive. Unlike herself, Lilian winds down into a frustrated sigh and moody silence.

    'I might have some words for their views on raising children.'

    "I can't believe I grimaced and looked away as long as I did." Lilian mumbles. Tamamo's agreement on the Foundation is reassuring, and yet, still . . .

    "No, I can. I just knew what the response would be, and I didn't have the energy to deal with it, so I told myself 'later, at a more convenient time, when I have more pull with them'. Did you do that too?"
Lilian Rook     'If you say it is so, then I shall believe it, and I will give each of these such opportunity to make truth of your impressions as they are able.'

    Lilian smiles, small and bleary. "I don't know what I did to deserve you." she say. Her mood improves only slightly, sincere as it is. None of her frustration lies with her wife.

    ' Ah, but during that time... it did come to pass that 'that woman' did, ah... seek to touch nigh everywhere upon your body, and cover you in her... goo.'

    No matter her emotional investment, the absurdity of the topic is too apparent not to make Lilian laugh. It's an uneasy release of pressure. There's a wince to her voice, like it stings a little just to have the experienced aired openly. "I'm fairly certain it's not like that." Lilian says, without much energy. "I don't know how to make heads or tails of that woman. She speaks a completely different language than us. I don't know what she was thinking, but . . ." Lilian's eyes avert themselves. ". . . I think there's already a sort of person I don't judge by the same standards, and I think I've been too precious with it."

    'In any just world, is there a single hand that could be raised in objection, to say I should not, by right, kill 'that woman' with my own hands?'

    Lilian grimaces. Her huddled-up posture says it all for her; that this is the topic she least wants to entertain right now, and yet, it couldn't possibly make any difference.

    'She has disrespected you, myself, the subordinate she controlled by hostage, the Timekeeper, and -- even in the most positive, most humane, least malicious light -- she has disrespected our marriage.'

    "Can we please talk about this later?" Lilian winces. "Schneider's situation is complicated. Nobody was telling us anything. I don't know how to feel about it, and right now, just I don't want anyone to tell me how I should." She swallows a little harder than she should. "Last night wasn't okay. I'm not planning on just forgetting it happened. I'm only saying that the way it happened wasn't what you're imagining, and there are a lot of facts that we need to know before we go deciding things like that."

    'no matter how they might beguile, how they might intrigue, and strike curiosity for the sake of aligning you to a cause of change -- that they begin by covering you in curses. I will not allow that, for no loving wife would.'

    Lilian reaches for the sole remaining article of upper bodywear she has, now that Tamamo is done purifying it. Pulling it back on is an adequate excuse to keep her eyes somewhere else. At a loss of what else to say, she uses the time to gather herself back up, so that she can feel out where her bedrock is on the point.

    "Can you promise me that I can still talk to you?" Lilian says. "Even if it's not fit for anyone else to hear, and even if I perhaps don't really mean it, you'll still be the one person who will hear me out, won't you?"
Riku Asakura Once the Manus goons were dispatched or scattered, Geed reduces inside and sort of fades away, evaporating before revealing Riku again.  Glad that nobody is hurt, he walks over to one of the cars they are going to use to get in and sits down.  Unlike Schneider or Bond, he can't drive a car because he has never driven one before.  

In the mist, Riku feels confused and dizzy; he's not sure which way he's going, or if he's going to be sick or not.  Then again, he hasn't had anything to eat in SO LONG, according to his body.  Thankfully, he does have an empty stomach.  Once they reach the other side, the dizzy feeling goes away, and he's back.  

Forget Me Not is right there, but right now, starting a fight in a sea full of civilians seems like the worst thing to do.  Instead, he ducks behind the cars and looks for others.  

<J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "Right now, not turning into Ultraman might be your best bet. You can be just a guy! Look very, very normal and move around a lot. Get multiple angles."

Well, that makes sense.  Riku does just that, walking among the crowd and listening in to what they're saying, and getting a general feel of what's going on in the crowd and camp.  He avoids Forget Me Not's area, but doesn't know where Lilian, Tamamo, or Vertin are, so if they see him, then he can't really do anything about that.  

He also asks how people are doing, and is sympathetic to those who are suffering stomach aches right now.  A side effect of eating things they shouldn't, but are being driven towards because of the madness of the storm.      
Schneider Greco      Schneider had looked down at the little bit of gold that Sonetto gave back to her. Going hungry to feed someone else: she knows that trick. And another arcanist has just indulged; so surely it isn't shameful for her to, right?

     . . . She had pocketed the half-a-scrap, indecisively.

     In the cab of the first car, there's an over-crowded riot. Schneider can handle the passenger just fine while the driver's stunned, despite being half his size; Regulus grabs the passenger's gun while she locks his arm, and Tamiel ejects the driver onto the road.

     BANG, finishes off the disarmed passenger. Schneider had said 'any human wearing a mask is already dead'. She doesn't hesitate to prioritize accordingly.

     "Thank you, my-la-dies," she says smoothly, letting her invisibility fade while hopping out. "But you-know, I have been shot be-fore." For a second it seems like she's going to blow the driver's brains out too, advancing on him while he lies on the ground; instead she grabs the collar of his shirt and jerks him to his feet, gun to his neck in an obvious threat. She plans to use him to get through the fog, it seems, and being masked doesn't dull his self-preservation instincts enough to not be afraid.

     As the rest of the fighting dies down, she marches him over to the last wagon, where Sonetto the sick are gathered. Most of the people here are 'just' in varying degrees of malaised agony, but one young man in particular looks so weak he can barely raise his head; he must have been borderline malnourished even before the Storm.

     "P-please..." he wheezes at Sonetto. "I just got off a stomach flu... ain't kept anythin' down in days... I can smell it on your breath, just a bite ma'am, please...!"

     It won't do him any physical good, but Schneider fishes that little half-scrap of gold out of her pocket and presses it back into Sonetto's palm, beneath the level of the wagon where the ailing man can't see. Sonetto will get more pleasure from the charity, after all. "He needs it all-the-more, right? Mhmhm, we 'lawbreakers', we can catch for ourselves."

     . . .

     The passage through the fog is done with Schneider's gun still pointed at the masked driver, from her seat behind him. "You are such a hu-ma-ni-tarian," she dotes on Sotheby, with an apologetic look to Moissan- naturally Schneider is a bad example for nobly-hearted young ladies, but at least she knows it. "That money means noth-ing to you, you do-not forget it is something to others, right? What a rare gov-er-nor."

     Returning to Holly's topics makes her eyes flirtatiously sparkle, on the drive. "A chair? How adventurous, my-la-dy. For me, it is usually the table in danger, if not the bed... the Lady Rook has spoken high-ly of your time to-geth-er. This was be-fore she was married, right?"

     She waits until the driver has actually parked in the camp to strike him on the back of the head, before he can get any silly ideas.
Tamiel Luxis     Schneider kills the passenger.

    Tammy winces, visibly, as Schneider takes the shot, putting the goon out of the picture for good. She can't help but stare a little bit, before looking away, rubbing at her elbow. She hated how easy it was to look away.

    The Storm was almost here. Every second counted.

    After clamouring into the car, Tamiel spent the ride through shaping her own agents, trying not to look outside--it hurt, to look over the landscape--but instead pinching at her shadow like clay, rapidly and expertly folding and pressing them into shape. She pinched out little ears, and a nose, and legs...and pinched it off of the rest of her shadow.

    "Regulus," Tamiel asked, grabbing at the arcanist's sleeve. "...Can you hide my wings? They're a little obvious..." She bit on her lower lip, briefly. "I'd appreciate it..."

    When the car at last came to a stop, half-a-dozen black cats jumped out of the door before Tammy did, milling immediately with the crowd--some following the edge of the tree line, one or two making a dash into the camp itself, trying to find high places to climb to see the camp--up in trees, on top of tents. Would they think much about a few extra magical critters, wandering about, trying to be tall? Tamiel hoped not...

    ...Except, at least, for Vertin. She'd made a little rabbit for the Timekeeper, during the Psychoportal phenomenon. Maybe the Timekeeper would recognize it?

    Tamiel found herself jostled, made clumsy by attention split so many ways. With reluctance, she left the cats to their own devices, and tried her best to feel small, and hide in the midst the hungry masses.
Veronica     Arriving at the camp, Veronica is briefly struck by the scale of human misery on display. She shouldn't be, but, well, she's only been an Elite about a year. This is another thing she'll get used to, definitely.

    But there's a strict timer on things, and the Storm Syndrome will only grow stronger in that time. Veronica thinks what she can do, and hits on an idea.

    <J-IC-Scene> Veronica says, "Odette, Holly, we know enough to pass off as doctors or nurses. Might be able to slip into the treatment area and learn more about what the remedy's doing to people."

    Veronica knows how to move in a crowd, how to stay inconspicuous - and how to steal without anybody noticing. In a matter of a minute or two she has a government orderly's uniform for herself, a spare for Odette, and a cordoned-off supply tent to change in. When she emerges, she's the picture of a government-agency nurse - albeit with a bit more hair stuffed under the hat than most of her new peers. It'll have to do.

    <J-IC-Scene> Holly Asturias says, "Hm, hm, Veronica was it? I could not possibly pass off as a local here, so might I hitch a ride? Those remedies do interest me, if there's even the slightest chance they're real."
    <J-IC-Scene> Veronica says, "I- pffffff. Sure, it's a little crowded in here anyway."

    Holly, when she jumps into Veronica, finds that her carrier's spirit is at once very big and very crowded - a result of bearing the shared EGO of an entire town. There's enough spiritual room to get comfortable as long as Holly doesn't mind an omnipresent sense of proximity: to other people, to another place, to another time.

    Together the duo pass from one patient to the next, performing examinations both physical and magical. Dilation of the eyes, pulse, blood pressure, anything that the supplies contain tools for measuring, Veronica will measure, in an order of priority determined with her now much-advanced medical expertise. She also asks for accounts of the treatment from the patients themselves, inquiring directly about side effects and even superficial qualities like taste and color - the better for the alchemical geniuses in the group to decipher, when it comes time to reconvene.
Regulus ''Isn't it all hard to tell apart?''

"Telling it apart isn't what's important, people just like to classify stuff but music is music and you know your music when you hear it because you feel it. It's yours. And everyone's. It's a beautiful thing." She brightens. "How 'bout I build you one, when all this is over and we get a chance to breathe, I'll make it my next project for the bravest girl I know." She winks behind her sunglasses. "That's you Sotheby."

''Where can I find the roll?''

Regulus is starting to take 200 percent mental damage here because explaining why the term Rock and Roll Is Rock and Roll means getting into nautical terms and sex. Come on, Regulus, saying bullshit is one of your many(?) superpowers. Just make something up that will satisfy the sweetest child in all the world. "It's called 'rock and roll' because it makes you want to sway and roll across the dance floor like nobody's business. I'll hit you with my collection once we're in the Suitcase." Brilliant, Regulus, that's even almost a bit accurate maybe. "It's the way it gets you pumped to move like there's no tomorrow."

But she smiles. "But for now we gotta make sure there is one."

''We worked hard to patch her back up''

"Yeah, no going back to sporting bullet holes, that's the rule of the day. Because it'd be impolite to all those hard workers."

She looks to Schneider as she points out that she has been shot before like Schneider's lost it. "You...you don't get more resilient to bullets by getting shot more, it's actually the other way around." She's pretty sure that's the case with her absolute lack of medical knowledge but her great deal of confidence about bullet wounds being bad.

''Schneider Greco says, "You still haven't sent me that 'mixtape'."

"Well why didn't you say so!" Regulus remarks, digging through her overstuffed bag. She pulls out a bulky looking tape recorder with two speakers on either side and the tapedeck in the middle, with numerous buttons labeled PLAY STOP RECORD and so forth in front. She tosses it over to Schneider. Inside the tapedeck is a tape labeled 'Regulus's FAB Mix-Tape For Marvelous Mafiusa' with a sticker of APPLe on it holding up a peace sign. "It's doublesided love, if you are finished with one side turn it over or you'll only experience half of the magic, and you deserve the full show!"

Regulus's morale has increased to 200 percent!

RELIEF CAMP

Regulus wonders how exactly how Veronica is gonna keep herself from drawing attention but presumably she's got a plan for that. Like maybe a big oversized coat you DO slide your arms through the sleeves of. But Regulus isn't really ready to start giving hot tips to other Watchmen just yet, she is more concerned with what she's going to be doing. She gets out and asides to Schneider and Tamiel, "Gonna try and get a good look at that piano and that cauldron." Regulus says. "Gonna stay invisible as long as I can. Let me know if you need anything and I'll bring the NOISE." Tamiel asks her to make her wings vanish too so Regulus snaps both her fingers at Tamiel's wings and makes them vanish away in a shimmer of light.

She slips away to do just that, keeping an eye out for beautiful women with objects shoved through their skull just in case, but she's pretty sure Forget Me Not shouldn't be able to spot her at least. She's certainly uninterested in picking a fight but maybe she can get a look at what he's doing and figure something out, or about his cauldron, or see if anything's odd about that piano he had lugged over here all away from the Walden.
Holly Asturias "Your arcane genus! You're not human, and so, by construction,"

    "Oh!" Inbetween shots. "You can say vampire, if you'd like. Regulus informs me they maybe or maybe don't exist in your world, but you know the word?" Ah, but reanimated? "I should clarify I was born this way," as if that clarified much of anything. "But I quite appreciate the consideration!" Sotheby's not being rude about it, and that's always + social points.

Ms. Moissan, standing just besides, fixes Holly with a look.

    ""

    The combined stare of first Sotheby, and then Ms. Moissan, makes Holly blink, and then look back and forth between them. Is something the matter? After a few more moments of that she decides that no! Nothing is the matter at all. Yippie.

"If you make your hat bigger, does your blood pressure lower,"

    "You know, I've never tried," Holly responds honestly, pondering how large something would have to be to elicit that kind of bodily response. "In theory it must be possible, though the, if you'll excuse the terminology, blood-to-matter conversion is quite efficient." With the Manus cleaned up and the convoy secured, Holly can spare Sotheby some time as they get ready to head in. Placing her rifle over her shoulder with one hand, the other extends, and little strands of gold gush out of her palm to form into an empty glass vial, surely perfect for alchemical needs. "See? No impact to my..."

    She pauses.
    She reconsiders.

    "... that would be a lie, it seems. Am I that hungry...?" Her blood pressure did spike down briefly. And now it's back up, higher than average.

    "A-Ah, no matter! Here. You'll have to let me know how a blood-stored vial does for your alchemy, later."

    A little something to look forward to.

"A chair? How adventurous, my-la-dy."

    "A little after, in that example! I was hosting her at my hot springs. It was a wonderful time, though I didn't expect the alcohol to affect her so quickly. Because of the blood, perhaps...?" Or did she drink more than she noticed? "But a table or bed... my, you do not play around, do you?" Of course she doesn't, she's Schneider.

RELIEF SHELTER

    Tall as she is, dressed as she is, even if she put the gold away, Holly sticks out in this crowd, and most likely any crowd. This, in her mind, is true.

    In reality she's another arcanist amongst a dozen here, but the worry she might be recognized from the Walden adds to her reasoning to ask Veronica for a quick ride. She'd love to get her grubby little vampire hands all over those supposed remedies.

    And so before they're fully in view, Holly liquefies, and splatters onto and into Veronica's back, painlessly disappearing into her bloodstream. When she speaks, it's disembodied, audible mostly to her host.

    The experience is invigorating. Passive regeneration, a bit of a vampire's thirst, and just nice little buffs all-around! If anything Veronica does 'costs resources', it costs less, it's snappier, more responsive.

    "Ah, come to think of it, I never apologized for dragging you up to the balcony. Sorry! I suppose it's obvious now, but we were there to help Schneider. More accurately, at her request, her sister. I have... no particular love for the Manus and their agenda, besides the good these safe havens might be able to do." That ship probably sailed though.
Ein The humanity of Chicago, the people of connections and power, the wealthy, the well-to-do, were those that declined naturalism or even conservatorship. There was no sense to the burning that was allowed beyond the separation of Arcanist - even those well off, even those wanting to become American and not Arcanist - and Human. It was seared into her, or so she felt, a burn...

But having cleared her sinuses with wine and wiped her face with water and cloth, the 'burn' had been reduced to a dull ache, the constant revision down of her real feelings when confronted. She hated 'America', the beast that her parents tried to pay tribute to and were instead eaten by. She hated 'Chicago', which stood aside and smiled in the light cast by the burning of the forest which had taken her in.

Did she hate them to death? They were cultures, concepts, that perhaps in the great Multiverse could be defeated with powerful arcanum. She had heard it done! And yet,

The sickness, the madness, the apocalyptic seizing of the writhing corpse of 1929 as it struggled forward as far as it could, made her want to keep walking.

It was so tiring to hate them in their sickness, their weakness, their infirmity. It was so tiring to hate them all that she had realized she had long since gone hoarse screaming about it and now, ten years older, it was just sad.

Moving with her deliberateness, Druvis III stands as her own answer for what suits her now. Moving, maskless, the throngs of people trying to be helped are at a scale it almost depersonalizes the impact of having to think 'I'd be sorry, but there's nothing left to offer.' at each of them, but to commit to it all is all such work. It's all very slick, the sort of thing that Forget Me Not might do indoors were they presentable and welcoming to the crowd, and so she is for a moment alone among the throngs besides Vertin.

The Timekeeper offers her hand.

'Then will you walk with me? Perhaps we'll find someplace to go.'

Druvis doesn't look for a beat. Then her head turns but her eyes remain off and away, uncertain that she wants to see it. She doesn't want to touch, pensively indecisive at the hand, but, she doesn't have to make the whole motion herself.

Vertin's gloves receive the flapping-braked landing of a well-tended raven, the corvid folding wings confidently and looking between the two women. Vertin, Druvis, Vertin, Druvis, Vertin, D-

Druvis produces a fat blackberry and holds it out to be sidebeaked and snapped up by her winged friend, and remains besides Vertin as they walk together. If she was to walk away from Manus Vindictae, she had little other choice, but she was aware of the tests and the results.

"Is it among these people, Vertin?" She asks, and looks at the ill humans scattered around.
Holly Asturias (Also, previously, because the player forgor.)

"Even if I tried to spread my arcanum, I don't think it would work well."

    "Never born... no, I can't imagine anything I can do or could ever do could combat something so..." Twisted? Insidious? 'Fucked Up'? Holly's face twists a bit, unhappily, and she chooses to hope. "But perhaps I need not cure what the Storm does, if I can trick it into thinking someone is 'not human'. Arcanum... would vampires be arcanists here, I wonder?" By blood she is decidedly not human, and Sonetto seems certain the distinction is made that way. But that means so little as a guarantee.

"I hate it."

    "... yeah," Holly says, abandoning any pretense of professionalism or trying to sound like she's in control or a doctor. "I do too."

    The BANG of Schneider's shot snaps her out of her thoughts, and Holly opts against tasting the blood of a mask-wearer.
    ... but it's evident by her stare she wants to.
    This damn Storm.
Flamel Parsons     Flamel gets a taste of what the mask does. Looking into the mind from this angle... this implies a lot of things aren't true, while assuring Flamel that a great deal is much more complicated and obfuscated. Proxying him through this is a careful puppetry, where each strand threatens to carry a ferrofluid up and impale the hand. Is she having this effect on every mind of every mask-wearer? Is it all Arcana, slipping into the cracks, like a mason putting mortar into a decaying wall? Where the mortar is herself, and there's not even a decent mind control so much as a vague hollowing and replacing?

    Uncanny. Makes him shiver.

    ---

    Flamel approaches the camp, once they disembark. As usual, invisibility is a godsend for a spy, letting him approach Forget-Me-Not rather quickly. The man's mind is something he needs a look at, now that he fully turned against Schneider. And Flamel needs *answers* for what happened to his camp-- his ally.

    He doesn't expect to get a high-resolution dive. He doesn't expect, of course, to manage much of anything spectacular at all. But at least an image or two, something to see the plans the Manus have, something to see how they're fighting the Storm Syndrome, something to see what will happen when the Storm arrives, that could be enough. And maybe he's a valid candidate for Flamel's Stormchaser Procedure? Apply the Storm Syndrome antipattern in the right place...

    He whispers, softly, into his radio. "Want in, Schneider?" He's attempting to get the door telekinetically onto the very base of Forget-Me-Not's skull, flickering ever-so-softly in the view of anyone who might have psychic resistances or strong will. Someone, for example, such as Lilian, and Vertin, whose presence he didn't notice. Such as the hidden Tamamo. People who might be curious what the Psychonaut is about to find. If they sneak in alongside, use Flamel's open invitation to Schneider to get a peek at Forget-Me-Not's psyche, what might they find in his short-term high-depth low-resolution exploration?

    Flamel's priorities are skewed. The Stormchaser Procedure ought to come first. But here he is, trying to get catharsis for Schneider of all people. She can't shoot him in the middle of an infiltration operation, but this is clearly an effort to let her do something to him if she chooses.
Lilian Rook     . . . . . . . .

    Eventually, the explosive neurochemical cocktail of reuniting with Tamamo evens out to a motivational buzz. Even their temporary disagreement (Lilian would think it psychotic to call it an argument) doesn't meaningfully lower her mood, though it dampens her enthusiasm from the realm of clingy delirium to somewhere in the vicinity of where it needs to be when Vertin makes her move. One that Lilian secretly hopes she won't, but knows she will.

    Even if their relative positions within Manus Vindictae couldn't be more obviously different, Lilian only thinks what she always does when sees her scurrying off with another armload of supplies; except this time, Lilian has the power to pull her up with her, or at least after her. Closing her eyes for a time, she indulges herself with silent imaginings of Vertin in a year; of how far and how quickly she could work her way up by showing just a little of her usual dedication; of how much they will all love Vertin once they seem her the way that she does, even if only because the secrets that Arcana knows about that language, the Suitcase, maybe even her mother, are freely shared with her, and have allowed her to blossom.

    The sweet daydream can only last so long. Lilian flutters open her eyes to the bleak reality of what awaits Vertin at the Foundation-- what awaits both of them, most likely, except that Vertin is loyal, broken-in, and valuable, and she herself is foreign, proud, and dangerous.

    Finding herself with a break in the conversation with her wife, Lilian stands back up off the bench, more out of grim resignation than the tangible duty at the core of it all. Producing pen and paper from her bag, Lilian steps out of the warded shade and into plain sight, gently tapping Forget Me Not on the shoulder over his brewing, and pressing something into his hand.

    She cuts off a human as if he isn't even there when she starts talking.

    "Once again, I can't thank you enough." Lilian says, and then laughs through "Tamamo-no-Mae gives her best regards~" She lets her gaze wander for a while, taking in the field of writhing human misery like the terrain of a battlefield she won't be deploying in. "My wife hasn't been taken care of well by the Foundation. She's been forced to put up with a lot, out amongst the hysterical humans. You'll understand if I focus on her for the time being, I'm certain, but I'd hate to leave you in the dark after you've been such a wonderful host. Please give 'that' a read when you get a moment."

    The note on the folded page is written in Irish, with fastidious care given to the year of 1929 preceding the government spelling reform.

    Tamamo shares my suspicions of the St. Pavlov Foundation, and is open to the idea of speaking to you all. Unfortunately, she has been given the wrong idea about Lady Arcana, and clearing things things up will take time. It has always been her nature to be deadly serious about matters of love and loyalty, and so I hope for your understanding.

    0PHC16-1723-1113612 -This is my secure private line.

    My allegiance has always been to Tamamo before anyone else, and hers to myself. If she begs that we return home, I will do so. As I have no intent to cut short our relationship (nor has she asked me to), my line will be open for you in the future.

    - I will not answer calls during work hours Mon-Fri or mornings Sun-Sat.
    - I will deny all contact with you if questioned.
    - I expect you to do the same if asked about me outside of leadership.
    - Tamamo will come around. Please leave a seat open at your next meeting, even if I must return to the Foundation for a while.
Lilian Rook     It's two thirds truth and one third a lie. Vertin had made her promise to stay with her; she never made Lilian promise her heart as well. She would have refused if she did. Walking away from all this-- cutting short the sweetest dream she's ever had and frog-marching herself back to the Foundation's sterile halls and baleful stares-- is already as much as she can bear. Burning and salting the earth left behind would kill something in her.

    Lilian lapses into silence for a little while. Long enough to think of whatever she might regret not saying now, but not long enough to finish. A flicker in the corner of her eye catches her stare, and then the sight of a tiny door makes goosebumps break out on her arms and her voice suddenly rise in explosive betrayal "What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

    If it were a fellow Paladin, or perhaps a Watchman she particularly liked, perhaps Lilian wouldn't do anything. Being a member of the Concord, who had bathed in the warmth and light of Manus Vindictae's inner circle all this time, only to firebomb it and parachute out merely hours ago, hits her from a very different angle. Stupid as it is, Lilian rushes Parsons on the spot, grabs at his wrist before the psychoportal can find its mark, and places her hand firmly on her weapon.
Schneider Greco      Schneider smiles ruefully at Tamiel, about the dead mask-wearer. "She was al-rea-dy eating him. It is a mercy, my-la-dy. But I'm sor-ry for the mess."

     Schneider clucks her tongue, at Regulus arguing against accumulated bullet-immunity. "You get better at taking the pain, my-la-dy. At moving 'around' the wounds, to use o-ther mus-cles, other bones, and keep in the blood. The first time you're shot, you al-most faint, right?"

     Maybe she was still a child the first time she took a bullet. "... But I'll try, my-la-dies~." Her head tilts back against the car seat, and she smiles indulgently at Holly.

     Schneider clicks 'PLAY'. Regulus's music fills the car. She lets her eyes drift shut, tilting her head to and fro.

     "Hot springs... ahh... af-ter all this, my-la-dy, show me. Mmm?"

     Her minions look at her, vaguely anxiously, before disembarking.
"So, uh. Boss..."
"Is it safe here or not?"
"Yeah. Did Arcana do the ritual yet?"
"Huh? How should I know, maravigghia?"
"Well, uh, bein' an arcanist and all..."
"You see a third eye on me? Ask that, ahh, Tamamo. She knows."
"Jeez, alright..."

     Lord Forget Me Not is giving his speech. Tamamo and Lilian, concealed, are having their hushed conversation. Flamel is throwing his door at Forget Me Not's head; Lilian lunges from concealment to arrest his hand, and some forty feet away...

     Thunk.

     The car door slams shut. Several seconds later, the crowd parts just enough to betray a short figure.

     Her coat is still ragged from the bullet-holes. Her legs are still marked with rivers of dried blood. The red feathers of her dress are matted gory-scarlet, still showing the shape of a gunshot through the 'heart'. Her skin is pale from the coffin, and her eyes are so terribly bright.

     She has a bead on him already. For a second, it's like time stands still.

     "Good-eve-ning, Lawrence," she says, breathy with glee and something intoxicatingly close to relief.

         BANG
Tamamo     'Overworked, underpaid, slop-fed, sleep-deprived, and ignored, as usual.'

    "I should invite her out for another restoration trip, I think. Her enjoyment of the last made her well-suited to that sort of work, and there is plenty of divination work in my little project, as well." Tamamo begins putting away her things as they're no longer needed, tidying the space of the bench.

    'Who else gets called delusional and insane and a crazy bitch without doing anything unusual?'

    "What?" Tamamo blinks. "Dear, who is calling you this? Do you have their names? Apart from Mesmer Junior -- would you mind, perhaps, making a list...?" Her voice lowers. "No, no, just whisper one or two to me, and..." This would be dangerous to pursue.

    'I mean, why is Love a freak but Angela isn't?'

    "Ms. Angela is inviting people into her death library and killing them for their recorded memories," Tamamo purses her lips, "but you asked that I forgive her for fighting with you, and it seemed as if you would rather I not bring up her misdeeds, at that. Did I misunderstand, after all...? She would have rather fewer friends if you chose to hold a grudge for what she did, you know."

    As Lilian winds down from that, Tamamo quietly adds, "I have never forgotten the times Ms. Rita hurt you, either."
Tamamo     '...so I told myself 'later, at a more convenient time, when I have more pull with them'. Did you do that too?'

    "Ms. Bouanich and Ms. Sonetto are affected by their time, there, but are no longer with the schools. I have wished to see the schools, myself, but... it is not unusual to see one speaking of odd matters, and wonder, 'in what manner were you raised?' You speak as if there is something specific, and..." Tamamo tilts her head, "...that you blame yourself for not knowing that piece, beforehand, that fit other puzzles around it. You should not, of course, blame yourself for this. It is only a little mental trick, and you have played it upon yourself." Tamamo punctuates that, with all her tools of cleaning put away, by leaning in to kiss Lilian on the forehead.

    'I'm fairly certain it's not like that.'

    "Mm, yes." Languidly, Tamamo puts her arms around Lilian's shoulders, now that her hands are free, and leans into her. "'Oh, no,' I hear the familiar refrain. 'Surely, this overwhelming, mystically powerful woman could not be interested in me, and not like that. It could not be! She must wish to capture and hold me forever while massaging the contours of my mind with her essence with only the purest of intentions.'" A beleaguered sigh breaks into giggling. "Oh, you are adorable... to the point, almost, that I would be loathe to correct this particular blind spot."

    'Can we please talk about this later?'
    'I'm only saying that the way it happened wasn't what you're imagining...'

    Tamamo breaks apart, if only to little more than half arm's length, to look eye to eye. "I have said all I need of Ms. Greco, but of 'that woman'... be at ease. Are you imagining that I would attack her, immediately? I am declaring only that I hold such a right, and that any who would deny me should be prepared to place their virtues on trial."

    It's not what Lilian wants to hear, or talk about, or think about, and Tamamo knows that. There are so many things she could say, but doesn't, condensing them down into one, final point on the topic. "Lilian, this is important. I wish you to try and conjure this image in your mind. Imagine, if you can, 'the Lady Arcana sincerely apologizing for having wronged Mizukume Rook.'" She waits.

    She doesn't have to add, 'You can't, can you?' She doesn't have to hammer in, 'Would she so much as bow her head?' As briefly as she'd seen and heard her, there in the Walden, it was enough. There is a confidence and detachment from the world that Tamamo, herself, knows intimately well. "Even Ishtar knew to respect some boundaries, or I would have never let her touch you," she does add, after enough time.

    '...you'll still be the one person who will hear me out, won't you?'

    Standing, smiling, "When a hundred years have passed, and another hundred after those, the world may have moved beyond every imagination of the present, and the one stone unweathered will be that still do I walk with you. Always and forever, love."

    . . .
Timekeeper "I can smell it on your breath, just a bite ma'am, please...!"

    Sonetto starts to shake her head at him, passing him over as a rationalized object of formless suffering, before Schneider gets to her. "No, I am sorry. I cannot...."

"He needs it all-the-more, right?"

    "'Needs'...?" Sonetto murmurs uncertainly, leaving her palm uncurled around the gold. It's still a little warm from Schneider's pocket, tantalizingly sweet like fudge-- except, of course, that it isn't fudge at all. Within the context of the Storm Syndrome, this may as well be poison.

    She can identify the desire to eat it herself still heavy in her mind, conflicting with her self-awareness of her altered psychological state, but more pressing than either is the strange moral conundrum that Schneider has put to her yet again. What is it that one 'needs'? She knows that this little bit of gold won't do anything to help with the young man's malnutrition. The body, whatever it might be compelled to yearn for, gets nothing at all out of gold. It can only make his state worse, by introducing more of a blockage in his stomach than whatever valuables he's consumed has already created.

    The sensory response of eating isn't the same as the rational value of it. Comparably, it's like a drug,inducing a rush of positive endorphins dissociated from the body's health superstructure, hijacked by a hostile other-force that produces unjustified joy.

    But also, Sonetto *still* feels better for having eaten it. Is the moral purity of her immutably justified behavior tainted because of that? For someone who's on the brink of death either way, what do they 'need'?

    Quietly, Sonetto offers the gold scrap to the young man, pinching it out of her hand and into his. Under her breath, she's talking more to herself than to him. "There, there... it will be okay. We will do everything we can to make it okay."

    Schneider's done this to her brain more times than she can count in just the past day. Everything will make more sense once she's back home and has gotten sleep, Sonetto reasons, smothered in guilt, pity, and nagging jealousy as she watches the bliss on his face. It's been a very long day.

. . .

    Whatever semblence of order the relief camp manages to have, it's a thin scaffolding thrown up around the chaos. There's a statement to be had in how humanity rolled in towards the Walden at the suggestion of a shred of hope and relief to be provided by arcanists, set up their own camp when Forget Me Not obliged, and now nearly everyone who's able to stay on their feet is trying to insist on some form or another of routine and organization. The hospital workers came directly with their patients, overworked before they even arrived. Veronica isn't even the most messily dressed of them when she throws an orderly uniform on.

    Going through the patients, none of them are discerning about who's treating them either, just desperate that *someone* is. From those months after the White Nights and Dark Days, and even before that when people slowly succumbed to the lingering diseases of the Smoke War, Veronica is familiar with the way that the ill grasp for her arm and moan pleas or complaints. A line is queued up, and many are too sick to stand in it; the most common request is to bring one of the miracle potions that others have already received.
Timekeeper     Holly's magical analysis is fairly promising. Flamel's description of the Storm Syndrome as a psychic phenomenon only holds water in a world where psychic and arcane infliction is different; the alchemical antihallucinogenics work to suppress the craving for money as food, pain medicine soothes the damage that's already been done, and their stomaches are settled with the kinds of reagents you would expect. Physically, Veronica can confirm the most important thing that's being corroborated by the patients who have already received a potion, that they *feel* better.

    But they're still malnourished. Their blood sugar isn't any higher, and they still can't eat any normal food. Testing them, the rejuvenative effect is boosted by alchemical energizers like the one Sotheby gave Schneider, without any of the nutritional effects, so even if they were going to live past the Storm, they'd collapse soon after. There's also the matter of the gold, alchemically unreactive, still sitting in their guts to turn lethal later. And Holly can identify magical components to the potion that don't seem to have any relevance to the symptoms of the illness whatsoever.

    Sonetto's mission in the camp is to try and secure an exit route before they inevitably need it. From within the circle of fog, it's much easier for her to study the nature of the arcanum used to conjure it and devise a countermeasure. Once she has a moment to focus on that, it's ruthlessly quick that she picks apart its principles and invokes an incantation that'll open a path through the fog later. A cluster of four trees at the edge of the clearing have written on them in dimly glowing cursive, "Ascoltare, Capire, Pregare, Perdonare" to serve as a delayed trigger 'gate' through the mist that surrounds the clearing later.

    The piano is as Regulus remembers it, if she had the presence of mind to look towards the musicians in the Walden. Having seen Arcana, the veiny cracks of blue and gold that run through the black piano are now much more unnerving, but there's no sign of her presence here personally, and there's nothing fundamentally unusual about the piano besides that. As an alchemist, though, Regulus can immediately pick up what Vertin and Holly both overlooked: in addition to healing reagents, Forget Me Not has added explosive accelerators, catalysts, and hemorrhaging agents that are delayed in their activation, covered by the fast-acting healing reagents.
Timekeeper . . .

    Vertin accepts the raven on her hand with all the grace of someone who expected it in the first place. As she and Druvis unhurriedly walk together back from the outskirts of the camp, Vertin lifts a hand to stroke the bird's neck, then hesitates. She reaches into the inner pocket of her coat, where hours earlier she stashed treats from the Manus's dinner to sneak to Schneider in the labyrinth, and withdraws a lone cashew left over, brushing off a crumb of sugar and offering it to the bird.

"Is it among these people, Vertin?"

    They walk past the sick and dying as if they're from a different world. Vertin watches them, the 'these people', mournful and distant without any way to help, and shakes her head labouriously.

    "In a kinder world it would be. But not now. I've learned well enough now that there's no standing with those being hurt and those hurting them at the same time." The humans, and their display towards Lilian in the Walden, among countless others. The Manus, who want nothing more than a chance to invert the hierarchy to have a chance at revenge.

    "It's no place that exists now. But that doesn't mean we won't find some fragments of people to start with."

    It's even easier for Vertin to spot Tamiel's shadowy rabbit than relying on her recognition of the shape of her summons. The magic itself leaves a comet trail of iridescent un-light, faerie lights that only Vertin can see that are as recognizeable to her as Tamiel's face. She follows it to the source, making eye contact with the summoned black cat while still a distance away from the center of the camp.

    Before she's glad to see them, she braces herself with a sigh. "And some of them, it looks like, have already found us."