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Owner	Pose
Timekeeper	"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."     It's actually Forget Me Not that gives the human he was talking to-- a well-dressed woman with her ill child trailing behind her-- a short extra sentence before giving Lilian his full attention. He hands her a duo of curative potions, smiles at her, and says, "Of course you may have a potion; feel better soon, Mrs. Secretary."     After that, no one but Arcana herself could tear him away from Lilian while she talks. His effusive greeting of, "Ah, Lady Rook, there you are," is a little reminder that even among the Manus Vindictae, Vertin's sense for magic is unmatched, with how easily she noticed Tamamo's ward.     He takes the note from her with a wide smile and flips it open to glance at it before folding it back up. From the way his eyes flick over the words, Lilian can tell that he can't sightread the Irish without a handbook for reference.     "You and your wife's safety is thanks enough for me. Once we've dealt with the rabble here," One of the humans waiting in line double-takes at the audacity, but can't even figure out how to respond to the casual insult. "I'll be sure to lavish her with all the comforts the Manus can provide, and perhaps we'll be able to shake off some of the poisonous barbs the Foundation has left, hm?"     The implicit goodbye in Lilian's words is taken a certain way, almost naive, assuming that she's going back to the Walden to wait out the Storm. "Oh, and I hate to delay your total reunion with your wife, but you might like to stick around a little longer before returning~"     It's then that he sees Druvis entering the relief camp from her walk through the woods, alongside Vertin. Vertin's dereliction in doing her grunt-duty of managing the humans like the flock of masked and armored servants have been is forgiven instantly, because she has a raven on her hand, but his eyes are only for the Lady Druvis Weyerhauser III. He has a giddy look on his face, clapping his hands together coquettishly and completely ignoring the irate patients trying to hassle him for a potion.     "Lady Druvis! Welcome back, welcome back! Your timing is impeccable as always. I've prepared a surprise for you, so that the foul taste of this era can be more easily chased off from your palate."     Seemingly locking onto nothing Forget Me Not said except for the one word, the gaunt-looking policeman at the front of the line scoffs and thrusts his arm in front of the alchemist. "Hey, hey! Don't go talking about 'surprises' like that woman didn't just show up! I've put in the work, I've waited in line; *I* get treated before her, you hear?"     Forget Me Not smoothly turns to him, mixes up a quick batch in his cauldron that-- to the eyes of the Alchemical Genius watching-- is missing everything but the explosive reagents. He hands it to him, with a sweetly venomous, "Your thanks, for making Chicago the city that it is, officer."     All around the camp, the patients that for a brief time appeared to be on the upswing after consuming his cure start to have their symptoms rapidly recur. The transition from upright and flush-faced to their legs failing them where they stand, doubled over in pain, happens within a minute, and spreads through the significant fraction of the ill-humans who managed to get a treatment. They collapse onto their cots, onto their loved ones, or on the ground, seized with stomach pains and wooziness that makes the collective agonized moans of the field hospital swell even louder than they were at the start.
Timekeeper	The accusations come flying immediately. 'Snake oil!', 'Con artist!', 'Witch!'; the faith that the sick humans briefly had in the healing power of arcanum crumbles the moment they're subjected to their pains again. Forget Me Not's smile takes on a vicious tinge to it, and he holds out hand, palm upright. "Yes, yes, Chicago, let me hear your voice!"     The word 'bitch' is hurled from somewhere, and then, with a gesture of Forget Me Not's wrist, a worse sound gurgles beneath the discontent. First fizzling, the source of which is a sickly green smoke that bubbles out of one of the urban aristocrats under a care tent, and just a second later, an explosion from within his body. The insults turn to screams. Forget Me Not raises his voice to be heard by Druvis still.     "Mayor Thompson!" A human soldier-- the one who demanded a potion as a bribe earlier-- scrambles to pick up his gun and aim it at Forget Me Not, and his abdomen explodes too before he can. Another explosion follows, nearby where the mayor one. "The Illinois Secretary of Agriculture, and his family!"     As the panic builds, Forget Me Not throws his arms wide, beaming with pride at Druvis. More and more explosions come, spilling viscera and bubbling green potion onto the dirt. "These are the people responsible for the burning of your woods, my lady! Look, watch! They came crawling to us in their desperation, ignorant to your pleas and cries of pain for so long, and now it is us who will watch them squirm! There! The editor of the Chicago Tribune, that oversaw the publishing of that horrid article that insinuiated that *you* burned your own woods!"     The man he's referring to is trying to helplessly drag himself out of sight in the dirt, but Forget Me Not just cackles as he bursts apart too. The ill who were waiting in line are forming a mob to flee from him, but in their weakened and disorganized states, they practically push each other around more than they escape from him, and they're an obstacle to you all too in their panic. And then, completely unnoticed and unexpected, Lilian's shout towards Flamel makes him whirl around in shock.     "What? Who--?!" "Good-eve-ning, Lawrence,"     BANG     Blood spurts from Forget Me Not's shoulder where the bullet connects, and he clamps his hand over it and glares at Schneider. "You persistent little worm! How *dare* you?! Die! Followers of the Guiding One, kill her! Kill all of them!"     The scattered pockets of armored goons turn on his command to hunt down the nearest Elite once they spot them. They wield maces made out of black goo, magical bolts of deep blue energy, or helmets that open up into rows of razor sharp teeth that try to clamp around you. Forget Me Not himself takes a seat at his piano bench under the tent in the middle of the camp, rolling up his sleeves to prepare to play.
Flamel Parsons	"Whh--!?"     Flamel jerks out of invisibility, Lilian's resistance to psychic effects having given her a flicker of his form. "Lilian?!" His own free hand rushes to his temple, a match to her hand-on-weapon. They plant there, the hand clenched save the two fingers.     ---     In the Parsons Institute, the Director stares at a wall of monitors, where he sees UPE-1929 pace through halls, slaughtering masses of blood-drenched feathers with clean shots. A phone on his desk rings, over and over. Ring, ring...     ---     "I can't let them do this to Schneider." He says, teeth clenched, forehead gleaming with orange-red light. "You of all people should be hearing that call. I can't leave it un-answered anymore." That's all he has time for, before Forget-Me-Not starts speaking a little more clearly about his intentions, and eventually, Schneider decides to use a different method to really get into Forget-Me-Not's head, and sets things off fully.
Holly Asturias	REMEDIES.     From the comfort of Veronica's body, it isn't too hard for Holly to channel some of her Formae through her host; what she gleans from analyzing the remedies, Veronica also gleans, a golden hue that compares and matches ingredients and effects to things Holly already knows, equivalents, chemically adjacent herbs and fungi and drugs. If at first she sounds relieved...     "This is... simple in its execution? And yet, it can still treat the Syndrome?" Flamel, Mesmer, and many others had insisted on the psychological nature of the Syndrome, and so she'd expected a much more magical means to treat it so swiftly. But it isn't! This is a big pile of symptom suppressants, which surely can't address the cause?     "But I cannot make out some of it. This just addresses the symptoms? The mixing is perfect, but still, it... no, this would mean each Syndrome would need a new remedy?" Magical ingredients no doubt unique to this world, or techniques she's never seen, swirl in the mix too. Parts of the remedy just don't make sense, and internally she frowns. "... I can't advise drinking something I don't fully understand, no matter the relief it might bring for a moment," she sighs, but then opts to take a few as samples nonetheless.     Golden strands of blood subtly reach out of her host, and schlorp up a few of the remedies, vial and all. Not drinking them, just storing them.     "It pains me to leave all these people here without care... once we've cleared the Manus, hopefully it won't be too late."     'Once we've cleared the Manus,' she says. BANG.     "????" Agitated pulses of light indicate that Holly, even inside Veronica, is undergoing a sudden moment of CONFUSION and PANIC and OHGOD.     "Already?! Don't tell me..."     ... no, it makes sense.     Schneider has every right to that shot, doesn't she?     When the MANUS GOONS come swinging at Veronica, the Revenant bursts out of her without warning, a golden spray of not-quite-gore that reforms into Holly, rifle and all. A blackened spear crashes into her rifle, and she guides it down the shaft until it nicks her arm rather than anywhere more precious, spinning with the same motion to kick the masked man away, then to look at Veronica.     "I'll be regrouping with the others. Follow me if you're done!"     Snowdrop spins in her hands, more akin to a spear than a rifle held that way. The Manus make themselves easy to visually identify, at least, and so making a sprint back the way they came, cutting through any of the followers in their way, shouldn't be *too* much of an ask even in this chaos.     There's even an icy glow to the weapon's bayonet-end, causing frostbite and numbness to anything she manages to nick.
Riku Asakura	Riku had tried to blend in, getting a feel for the spirit of the camp and those who had come to seek Manus help.  It was going, well, not ALRIGHT, but at least better than being out in the thick of the storm.  He tries to get a sense of how people are feeling and whether they need anything besides Forget-Me-Not's potion.  Riku notices that many of the complaints are that the rich and powerful are being seen first. This seems to be par for the course when it comes to the Manus and, honestly, the world at large.  That is, of course, until the calls of 'snake oil salesman' come out.  He notices the crowd is turning against Forget-Me-Not, and he seems unbothered.  More than that, he sees Lilian, near him, talking to him casually.  Maybe that's the control that Schneider mentioned?   Things turn into a mess almost immediately.  Between Forget-Me-Not's dramatics and the explosions of people he points at, Riku's eyes widen.  Thankfully, Riku manages to duck before someone near him goes up.  He growls, pissed at this man who is just killing civilians without care.  The memories flood back to that casket sent so carelessly to them.   Masked Manus goons come for him, and he defends himself while drawing out the Fusion Riser.  He kicks one across the chest and dives in a roll just under their mace.  He ducks behind some cover when some bolts are fired at him, and right before one bites him, he shoves a chair into his mouth. "You go!" he shouts, before drawing an Ultracapsule out of his capsule holder.  He slides it into a knuckle holder while grabbing the next capsule. "I go!" He scans this one next, while flipping over some more goons trying to corner him.  He lands, thankful for the training that Lilian and Laiha had put him through up to this point.  "Here we go!"  He brings the Fusion Riser down on both capsules, scanning them.  "It's time to get ready!" he calls out, before bringing the Fusion Riser up and then over his chest. "GEEEEEEEED!" is shouted before blue and white flames pour out from the young man, pushing back the Manus and giving him the time to transform into Ultraman. FUSION RISE ULTRAMAN ULTRAMAN BELIAL ULTRAMAN GEED PRIMITIVE Seconds later, a growing giant of light starts to form on one part of the camp.  He reaches down to smash the Manus goons into the ground before running a claw-like weapon in his right hand.  He runs two fingers across the hilt of the weapon, charging it up, before pointing the weapon up into the air.   "DIFFUSION SHOWER!" He shouts, while a beam is fired from the claw into the sky.  Many points of light are created before arrows of light are raining down, accurately, across the field, aiming to impale the Manus before they start hurting any more civilians.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel looks to Forget-Me-Not with a disturbed, agonized awe. The killings start. He starts, heroically trying to tear his way towards the man to get between him and the citizens. He starts, mustering his most heroic sensibilities as a great, beloved hero of his world. "I won't let you do anything to--"     BANG!     He's knocked off his feet by an explosion from behind, stumbling, confused... bloodied. His ears ring softly as he sees the obliterated abdomen of the man behind him. Eyes widen. "Wh..." BANG! BANG! He has the presence of mind to have his shield up for the next ones. His stomach is dropping, his heart is racing. His practiced focus engages. "Holly... HOLLY! *HOLLY!! ODETTE!! SOTHEBY!!* THERE'S A GASTRAL EXPLOSIVE, NEUTRALIZE THE ALCHEMICAL...!!" He doesn't know what to do here. He has to trust the professionals. He desperately struggles to his feet.     There he is. Past wave after wave Manus combatant, between him and his target. He places both hands on either side of his head, fingers to temples, and gleams. His heroic confidence is gone. These people are dying. Over and over, dying. The psychic hazard of the Storm is rising, as their symptoms surge before their life ends. It's the opposite of his Stormchaser Procedure, a moment of incoherence and pain and insanity before the final moment of death. No closure, no clarity. Nothing but people dying in banal pain.     ...But the thing he focuses on, the one thing he can't stop thinking about, is Schneider, right there, near Forget-Me-Not. Flickering out of view, he weaves between incoming maces, bolts of blue, chomping teeth -- and focuses on lancing beams of orange to clear a path between Schneider and Forget-Me-Not, above all else. No, not to protect her. To enable her. A camper's happiness needs protecting. Like Forget-Me-Not throwing aside sense to grow something twisted in Druvis' mind, Flamel momentarily tosses aside his Stormchaser procedure to give Schneider Greco her challenging, fulfilling moment. Even if it might be for the worse for her...
Regulus	Regulus frowns. The piano looks so suspicious that it's her instinct that SOMETHING is up with it. Of course she'd think that. She thinks music is the most powerful force in the universe. But despite her instincts, the piano just seems kind of normal. But it's when she turns her attention to the cauldron... ...Oh shit. Regulus's eyes widen. Oh shit, oh shit...! People are groaning and bursting and Schneider pops Forget Me Not in the shoulder. Frustrated at her inability to prevent the civilians from bursting like maniacs, there's a brief period where Forget Me Not's blood splatters on Regulus but she doesn't pay much mind to that just yet as she aims to suddenly yank the piano bench HARD to try and get Forget Me Not to tumble over, accustomed to this cheeky sort of cheap fighting than necessarily doing the most effective thing an invisible person can do in a fight, but this is largely to keep Forget Me Not on the backfoot--or perhapds the backpedal--as Regulus's ability fades. "The potions are poisoned! It's an alchemical mix of explosives and poison to induce hemorraghing! Sotheby! You gotta mix up a counteragent FAST or everyone who drank this stuff is screwed! It's just like before at the Walden, giving people false hope!" She aims a kick at the Cauldron, trying to knock it over for good measure. APPLe, over by Sotheby, asks her, "Could you prepare something like that? We have hardly any time..." Of course, in revealing herself, Regulus is no doubt becoming a target for the Manus. She yelps as one with a hammer nearly caves her skull in. ''She's been forced to put up with a lot, out amongst the hysterical humans.'' Regulus gives Lilian a strange look before understanding lights up in her eyes. "He--hey where's Vertin?" She's assuming this was all part of her scheme to infiltrate Manus Vindictae to hold off until everyone came to rescue them. "You're an alchemist too right? We gotta neutralize this stuff before anybody else bursts."
Veronica	Veronica, with Holly riding-along, is in the thick of the field hospital, taking notes on patient conditions and reports of the treatment's chemical qualities, when things break for the worse very quickly. She hesitates as the patients' conditions worsen, unsure what besides alchemical trickery could cause the 'cures' to fail, but similarly unsure what to *do* about that. If she could find a sample of the stuff to examine directly, Holly's acumen could give a clue, but--     The patient before her distends, bloats, and explodes, showering her white nurse's outfit with blood. Then the (local-time government) nurses around her, all of whom were treated so they could tend to others in turn, go one after another. Left standing nearly alone among a field of fresh corpses, Veronica retches from the sudden stench and sight of it all. Unprotected and physically alone, she isn't ready when the Manus followers pick her out as still half-standing and move in to dispatch her and the rare few other un-'treat'-ed nurses.     Holly bursts forth to defend her, long enough for Veronica to get back on her feet. Half a plan forms in her head around her relative obscurity among the Elites - she's not sure if Forget Me Not could've picked her out of a crowd outside of Baker and Seventh - but there's no time, no opening for her to sneak closer to the Manus leaders.     Instead, almost unbidden, the hands of Baker and Seventh enfold her, covering her over in a sort of flesh-toned parallel to the Manus's own masks. Baker and Seventh's body grows in a matter of moments, this time towering to its full twenty-odd feet in height. She'd already drawn some attention, and she figures herself as better positioned than many to attract even more, on account of her EGO's defenses.     While Holly fights up close with her rifle, Veronica figures the Revenant would benefit from more room to actually *shoot* something. Raising both her EGO's fists high, Veronica slams them down to the ground, aiming to crush some of the oncoming guards and propelling the others back with a telekinetic shockwave. Once some space is cleared for Holly to open fire, she slowly pushes forward out of the field hospital, swinging her EGO's arms low to the ground to force the Manus to give further ground.
Tamiel Luxis	The black cat meets eyes with Vertin, little specks of light in the dark, clear and vivid to Vertin's senses. It settles on the ground on its hind, tail curling around itself, before blinking once...twice.     The vision comes to Tamiel like a nibble at her finger, and her eyes momentarily glaze over as her focus through the cat's eyes, with a vague certainty that it had found 'something.' It didn't let her down. "Ah--I found Vertin, but--Druvis." She worried at her lip. "She's right THERE. We couldn't keep her off last time--and we're still in her forest--"     The cat, gives Vertin a plaintive 'meow--'     And then a gunshot goes off, and all of Tamiel's eyes turn toward the sound of it as once. She pales at what she sees. "Oh, oh, oh no..." She says, to herself. And then, the PEOPLE start to detonate around her, throwing her back to the ground, covered in visera, shrapnel from bits of silver lodged in their guts digging now into Tamiel's shoulder.     She pulls her shadow over herself, bursting out of it with a trailing iridescent scarf behind her--only for another explosion to propel her off her feet, into a tent. "No!" She called out. "What's happening to them--" A mace comes down on her head, only for Tamiel's scarf to block the way.     "The potions are poisoned! It's an alchemical mix of explosives and poison to induce hemorraghing!"     "Hemoraghing. Okay." Tamiel grabbed hold of the monster's arm, her own gloves clasping tighter to strengthen its grip--before trying to toss the monster into the woods. "That gives me somewhere to start..." She claps her hands, and light starts to emit from her hands and wings.     The fallen could explode at anymoment--but she rushed to them, anyway. "Maybe I can buy them a little time..." She can't keep out the Storm Syndrome but maybe she can keep people from exploding?
Timekeeper	When the first civilian explodes at Forget Me Not's command, Vertin recoils in shock. "What?! He hid explosives in the potions?!"     She hesitates, lightly touching her own stomach. From the wine to now, both out of stress and distaste, she hasn't consumed any of Forget Me Not's alchemical creations. Not since that first night in the Walden months ago, at least. Lilian and Druvis both have, but-- would he do that?     Where she and Druvis entered the circle set up for the field hospital, she's separated from her true allies by a battlefield occupied by panicking, potentially-explosive humans, as well as Forget Me Not himself. Once she declares her intentions to betray the Manus, she'll have to contend with the masked soldiers seeing her as an enemy too, so she doesn't right away.     The massacre playing out at the gleeful orchestration of Forget Me Not makes her grimace, but she keeps her body language steady and calm throughout it. Lips pressed together, she tries to catch anyone's eyes, or signal to Tamiel's black cat, raising up the hand with the bird placidly resting on it slightly interposed in front of Druvis. The signal, she hopes, is that Druvis is *not* a hostile target-- helped by the fact that many of the Elites here have never seen her without her Manus mask on, so she might not even be recognizable.     Then, when Regulus appears right beside Forget Me Not, Vertin gasps slightly. If Regulus looks at her, Vertin emphatically points at the cauldron right beside her.     The heavy iron cauldron is far too heavy for her to just kick over, with three stable feet, but after Vertin indicates it at a distance too far to talk, she draws a floppy disk surreptitiously out from under her coat. Sure enough, Regulus can see a glittering disk underneath the cauldron: a fireball ready to be primed, if she just hits it with enough arcane energy.
Odette Raskins	Thank to Veronica's efforts, Odette's managing to blend in with the other government aid workers present in the Manus camp fairly well. It doesn't take too long for her to adjust her language to fit in better with those from this era, and she's pretty sure nobody's going to look too closely at her actual work as long as it keeps the patients from thrashing about or dying where they lay. Before long, she's integrated herself among the workers and practically gotten it into her head that she really is one of them, intent as she is on minimizing her presence in the Manus' eyes so she doesn't get beaten to a pulp. "We need some ice over this way!" "Easy now. Drink it up slowly, and don't move your head too much." "Unclench, relax... Good. Yes, you'll be okay." Although she avoids taking any of the curatives offered herself, she does play her part to a T, even passing some of those cures out to the sick and sighing in relief at their apparent recoveries. If the Manus really is helping people recover here, then maybe they really...? No maybes. There's not enough time for her to get to the maybe before those same people start cramping up and falling over each other, horrifying the EMT and getting her to start scrambling for other medications to try and alleviate their symptoms. "They were fine a minute ago. Turn on your sides, and...!" "Yes, yes, Chicago, let me hear your voice!" Realizing at that moment that this was all intentional, Odette watches in horror as people start exploding, yelping frightfully when one of the people Forget Me Not points out bursts from the waist down just besides her. She remembers feeding them that 'cure' personally just before, too. The splatter that hits her face seconds puts her into a deeply unsettled silence, and she almost doesn't move when the armored goons begin attacking everyone. It's not until one's right in front of her that she finally snaps out of that, but there's not enough time to move out of the way. ODette gets slammed across the arm and sent tumbling across the dirt with a pained yell. The silver lining is that it gets her head back on straight enough to move again, and she upturns a table while scrambling to get back up. With that armored goon seeking her out again, she kicks the table forward at their shins to delay their approach, then turns and runs the other way as she hears Flamel's warning. "An explosive?! Neutra... Where?!" Running her ass off just to stay out of the way of those goons biting and swinging at her, Odette sucks in a breath as she sees a giant bite coming for her. Throwing herself sideways, she loses part of her injured arm's sleeve, then rams her heel into the back of the new goon's leg to get herself away again. Regulus' clarification tightens that knot in Odette's chest, but hearing the specifics gives her An Idea. "Then... W-we need something that'll get a real cure down faster, or get the stuff to come back up. I've got something for the second thing!" Frantically digging through her medical case, Odette pulls out a handful of pills from her pocket as she starts beelining for the affected civilians that haven't blown up yet. "Open mouth! On your side!" She shouts at them and stops just short of ramming the pills down their throats, desperately hoping that she can induce vomiting in time.
Regulus	Regulus isn't looking at Vertin at first as she's rearing back with a foot to kick the damn thing over with panicked almost unthinking desperation and she's too far away to hear a gasp, but Tamiel indicating she's found Vertin gets her to stop and look around--she sees her. And she sees her...take out one of those disks she saw them carting around before? And Schneider for that matter? Teleportation? She then turns and looks back to the cauldron, giving it a more careful look over while she can before her eyes widen and she runs from it, wiggling her finger around in a circle as she does so, outright FLEEING the Manus soldier following her rather as a strand of arcane energy ripples out from her fingertips in a colorful burst and impacts against the disk. Regulus covers her head and ears with both hands as she throws herself to the ground as the fireball bursts behind her, rolling across the floor gathering cuts and bruises and expelling curses. Not magical ones, just you know--the kind everyone has access to. But despite all the blood, and pain, and tears--Vertin's okay. It'll be okay. It'll be okay.
Schneider Greco	The near-delirious light in Schneider's eyes stays even as her expression darkens. Jostled just as she'd pulled the trigger-- it's nice just to take Forget Me Not's 'virginity', as Lilian had put it, but she doesn't hate him enough to drag it out. That shot was meant for his heart.      "Porca madonna. If I had my guns--" she bites out, and gestures to draw a ghost of Forget Me Not out for eaiser shooting as he staggers away.      The ghost melts away when a heavy bouncer lunges at her from the side, breaking her focus-- BANG --fired through the bouncer's knee to help shove him off-- BANG --fired at Forget Me Not, but intercepted by a lumbering drum-headed minion emerging from behind a tent-- BANG --aimed narrowly around the drum-headed bodyguard at Forget Me Not, but the bouncer is wrenching her arm aside again-- BANG --fired under the bouncer's chin point-blank, to finally get him off her-- BANG --one more into the advancing drum-headed bodyguard's neck, dropping him to a knee-- Click. --and run dry just as she tries for another open shot.      That takes three seconds. Maybe it isn't to Schneider's credit that it took her those whole three seconds to begin properly processing Vertin and Druvis's presence, or the fact that people are exploding around her, but she does catch Vertin's eye in the moment she discards her borrowed gun and swipes a scalpel from a table. 'I have to get you out of here,' her wide-eyed silent look is saying to Vertin. 'Is this really what you want?' it's saying to Druvis, a second later.      Schneider tacks right through the fleeing crowd, leaps over the crawling and the disemboweled, tangles with one more minion behind a tent and spatters its canvas with an arc of their black goop from her knife, and then emerges closer to Forget Me Not's clearing on the side of Vertin and Druvis.      She doesn't relax, there, until she's flipped over the nearest wooden table with adrenaline-fueled strength to slump behind as cover- it has room enough for all three of them; Vertin presumptively, Druvis tentatively. Then there's just a second to catch her breath.      "The things I do to catch a glimpse of your face, my-lord," she breathes to Vertin. "Ahh, this camp... is it con-se-crated already?"
James Bond	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.     Bond had assisted in seizing the Manus car, only to find himself here, proven right when he direly wishes he hadn't been. Anger mixes nebulously with disgust and a sickly feeling of vindication--undoubtedly, some of these people are responsible for what happened to this forest.     Yet, all the same, another part of him rages at the part of himself that could feel even that iota of righteous satisfaction. He's frozen, locked in furious debate with himself, having ducked behind a tent to stay out of the pianist's line of sight. Forget-Me-Not executes another, and then another civilian.     What snaps him out of it is also what ends up taking the brunt of his blistering frustration with himself. The swining mace of a masked Manus agent is sidetepped, the offending limb quickly snared as Bond's leg finds its proper place. The agent is thrown to the ground as Bond has done with countless rank-and-file, and the grisly sound of an arm pulled from its socket only seems to sour his determined grimace into a snarling scowl. The semi-automatic pistol barks, giving away completely the position he'd secured for himself--two more times than is necessary.     The pit of anger in his chest burns hotter than the gnawing hunger in him, and he can focus for just long enough to activate a recall feature on his watch. Striding out into the fray, he jukes a snapping helmet and drives his knee into the Manus henchman's stomach with force frighteningly in excess of what a man Bond's age should be capable of. The crunch is followed by a swift wheel-around and a press of the pistol's nose against the base of the neck.     Bang.     Whether it's blood or Manus ichor that sprays, he wades through the fight with one objective in mind--not Lilian, or Tamamo, or Vertin, or even the aid of the civilians being gruesomely killed, but the source of the storm inside him.     "WHY?!"     His fist impacts the throat of a charging mace-wielding manus, trading blows as the mace impacts him dead in the shoulder. Slowed down only by the uncaring force of inertia, he strips the weapon from the stunned henchman, glides past them and makes a human shield of them, turning to face Forget-Me-Not.     "Why do think you've proven anything?! You know exactly what you're doing, both times I've seen you do it. Even saints will thrash when they're drowning. You think these parasites wouldn't? Who is this for?! Everyone here has either suffered because of people like this and knew all along they'd behave like animals, or they're part of your little exhibit and they'll be dead in less than a day! At least this time you've actually got the balls to kill them yourself--disappointed that we wouldn't do it for you last time?!"     Throughout his tirade, Bond fends off the Manus, trading blow for blow and leveraging his augmented physique against the horde. He has to raise his voice, higher and higher, not just to be heard over the piano, or the fighting, but the steadily increasing roar of an engine. The Rolls Royce Silver Ghost that Bond had been assigned for this period tears through the campground, intercepting a charging Manus with a head-on collision that sends them flying.
Ein	'Lady Druvis! Welcome back, welcome back! Your timing is impeccable as always. I've prepared a surprise for you, so that the foul taste of this era can be more easily chased off from your palate.' Druvis III hadn't been ready for Chicago to pile on into her forest, burned as it was. There was no shelter here that was not for ghosts, and still, she had seen the aid camp and the begging sound of human need and been moved. Her walk had drawn her here, the sound of the forest was in empty-handed sympathy for the mass gathered, and as the representative called and walking to the site it felt to her like sacred duty. Now, finally, the people of Chicago had seen the value of Arcanum. Even at the end of things, the possibility of salvation had drawn a mass to Chicago and as a druid wasn't she to speak to them? What was it she was supposed to do? She never was told, never learned, never practiced it. Her final exam had come for 'Chicago', for 1929, for 'Weyerhauser' as a name. Lifting voice at least to speaking, as her raven has Vertin's hand clasped as perch, Druvis's unmasked expression in mourning-black dress and silver accents stands in mute shock for a moment. "A surprise?" She asks, volume adding measure and tone to her voice that she otherwise doesn't feel. The spin of the police officer causes a brief frown, as a gentle illusion in hope crumbles, built on sand. She doesn't get to words before FMN is making a potion. For the human? Druvis begins to gain an understanding short of Forget Me Not's reveling. It's the shouts, the intensification, the poisoning that is obvious by simple sequence of events and knowing the alchemist that hardens Druvis' expression. "What are you listening for," 'bitch!' is called out, and the process accelerates to its gory bubbling and popping. "Forget Me Not?" She shifts in tone deeply from before and after the bursting, cold confusion to a shock of realization. Shifting away, wincing full-body from the pop, and again for the next in sequence, dulling in physicality as they become more pronounced and numerous around her, Druvis crosses arms in center-hug, shoulders hunching in. "I thought this was a test," She molders, sick, and then unravels as her arms break and part and her voice raises in an accusation before the Walden owner brings up the Chicago Tribune and the accusations that she had done it and the haunting of her, of her woods, becomes even more strangling, and she gurgles something tight-mouthed. With potion! The liquid he so carefully and tenderly offered to cloth when she needed something! Fit to retch, Druvis is so overwhelmed that she wishes deeply that she had *her* mask back, that would at least dull the vision of it, the scent, the violent color of it, but the revenging act of it was so lurid that she felt dirtied by the wetness of it even as it happened paces away. "W-" She knew why. She knew every part of this, and after tonight it was only the sickening proximity of all the revelations that slowed her thoughts. It had never been this! Was it all leading to this? Why not ask her? Why say nothing? Why surprise? Was the final test. . . --if she wanted this, in the end? "--oh, Forget Me Not... I wish you hadn't." Druvis exhales, expression dropping. It's not even hers to take or leave, affirm or reject as she might. The decision is made, and she is merely asked to revel or face the consequences - as they are one in the same.
Ein	Then there is a gunshot, and Druvis winces once more, only to see FMN hurt, and Schneider--! Ears ringing for every reason, Druvis blinks towards the sound of the gunshot. "Schneider?!" Choked, unsure if this is also test or dream or vision. Wild-eyed, Schneider sees one answer to the last question they had gotten to at their picnic. Did she have a regret? Was it this? Unsure to shout for joy or just to shout more, shout about anything, Druvis hangs in space.
Lilian Rook	'Of course you may have a potion; feel better soon, Mrs. Secretary.'     The full semantic meaning of 'Mrs. Secretary' is lost on Lilian. Her head is too full of everything else; or it's 'not full enough' of everything she knew before. She stares at the moment for a moment, blinks, and politely smiles Forget Me Not's way, just to say "Whose?" with chilling conversational innocence. "You've such a manner when it comes to this~ I can't help but fondly imagine you one day having the luxury of helping just as many arcanists with it."     But then she's fortunate that Forget Me Not has to look down to read, because he might catch the recognition on her face in that moment. The realization that she's made a mistake contains a measure of frustration, a moment of worry, and a sudden flash of strange, bitter-tasting pity. It's better that she's sorted it all out be he looks up again, so she can say the words that should spare him the future she so easily imagines for herself in his position: "My apologies for the deplorable handwriting. My arm was rather occupied."     'I'll be sure to lavish her with all the comforts the Manus can provide, and perhaps we'll be able to shake off some of the poisonous barbs the Foundation has left, hm?'     Lilian sighs, tilting over until her cheek rests in her palm. "Lord knows I hope to convince her. I'd be an ideal salve for a full night of dealing with savages." she says; because now she can tell herself that it's part of the act; that it's necessary not to 'blow her cover', whatever that means. So it's okay if she says it that way. It's even okay if she says it where people can see her. If she really does hope so, then it's her responsibility to put it forward, to be convincing.     'Oh, and I hate to delay your total reunion with your wife, but you might like to stick around a little longer before returning~'     A proper spy would be presented with a test of will at that moment. Lilian, by contrast, brightens up at the excuse. "Oh my, a surprise? Aren't you the resourceful one~" she says, then laughs, as if it were all gossip about boys.     She smiles for Vertin; first brightly, then immediately faltering. Lilian is lucky that it's so easy to read as 'realizing she doesn't like Vertin as much as she did two hours ago', and the price of it is only that she has to wonder if it's true. Her pleasant expression stabilizes for Druvis, wary as it still is.     "Is this the first time I've seen you without a mask?" she says, and realizes her mistake in looking any more closely than that a second later. Deflecting that specific discomfort is second nature, though, so Lilian pushes her smile just a little, and says "Chicago doesn't deserve the picture."     'I've put in the work, I've waited in line; *I* get treated before her, you hear?'     §He's not real. He'll be washed away momentarily. Ignore it. Don't make what you've already done any worse.§     'Your thanks, for making Chicago the city that it is, officer.'     Lilian tears her gaze away from the cop, and gives Forget Me Not a questioning look, which auses her fingers to drift away from thoughtfully stroking the hilt of her sword.     'I've prepared a surprise for you, so that the foul taste of this era can be more easily chased off from your palate.'     §You'd think they were married.§     Lilian smiles to herself out of nowhere, then covers her mouth.     §But it's something I'm meant to watch as well? Is he just that proud of it?§
Lilian Rook	. . . . . . . .     'Lilian?!'     For some reason, hearing her name in that tone from this man pisses her off quite a lot. "Why do you look shocked?! You left me!"     'I can't let them do this to Schneider. You of all people should be hearing that call. I can't leave it un-answered anymore.'     "What are you even talking about?" Lilian says, but only at first. "No. Shut up. It's over. I did what I could and I don't owe any of you a single drop of blood more."                 ----------     'Holly... HOLLY! *HOLLY!!'     "I said shut UP!"     The fact that she processed Flamel screaming for the doctor before anything else had sunk in strikes Lilian two seconds after the screams and the stench of gores. The thought rings inside of her head like mental tinnitus; something blown out from the sheer impact of what that should mean, reduced to useless, numbing noise. The thunder of total pandaemonium all around her feels muffled by comparison.     'What?! He hid explosives in the potions?!'     Lilian looks around her. Humans, humans, humans, humans blood, humans humans blood humans. Dazed, she realizes that she's already let go of Flamel. She jumps back when she hears the cauldron going off, but out of a desire to protect her shoes rather than out of any awareness of what it contains. Vertin's is the only face she can find in the crowd, and even then her eyes snap to the ribbon on her hat first, then drop down. Her train of thought comes to her all out of order.     'You're an alchemist too right? We gotta neutralize this stuff before anybody else bursts.'     "That's ridiculous. He isn't triggering those at-will like before, is he? He'd have to have timed them; at least most of them. The medicinal ingredients are just a variable fuse length? He called out the names and everything." Lilian mutters into thin air just past Regulus' head, as her reply. Her hand rises to her mouth, but rather than being sick, she says "He's incredible." instead.     'He--hey where's Vertin?'     "What? You must be joking. What's the point? We're already reaching the end of the Storm. Nothing that happens to any of these people matters and they've done nothing to deserve my helping them."     'These are the people responsible for the burning of your woods, my lady! Look, watch! They came crawling to us in their desperation, ignorant to your pleas and cries of pain for so long, and now it is us who will watch them squirm!'     "Schneider?!" Hearing Vertin say it isn't the same as seeing it herself; she had only barely believed at the time. Lilian has no idea what to make of the fact that it was true, much less of the reality of the walking corpse with a stolen handgun before her, stubbornly fighting for no sane reason against someone who was an ally not long ago. The thought strikes her that Schneider hit this exact point in less than a day instead of an entire week of fighting, and has even less to gain than she herself did back then. "Why?!"     'Schneider?!'     Lilian numbly points towards she'd last seen Vertin.     'Good-eve-ning, Lawrence'     "Oh my god Tamamo--"     'Ahh, this camp... is it con-se-crated already?'     §Why didn't I ask?!§
Timekeeper	"What are you listening for, Forget Me Not?"     Forget Me Not's fangs poke at his bottom lip in his irrepressible grin. The slits of his pupils are alight with giddy pleasure. "Peace, my lady."     It's the nature of the Storm Syndrome, time and time again, that it finds its roots in the spirit of not only the era, but also the moment. Psychological stability and emotional regulation slows its progression dramatically, and panic, especially mass panic, does the opposite. Flamel can practically feel in the air how the psychic superstructure of Chicago as a whole, with its nexus right here in the relief camp, begins to crumble apart from its shaky buffering.     In fact, you can all feel it. Offworlders though you may be, the sudden reversal of sentiment in the crowd around you has the psychological effect of being surrounded by a collective, discordant scream, loud enough to rip the air from your lungs to join it. The sickening spike of Storm-induced antagonistic self-preservation hits you and every human together: none of the patients you are treating will see you as your allies, and it's hard to convince yourself why you should be theirs.     You are acutely aware, all of a sudden, of the flakes of gold Forget Me Not mockingly added to his false remedy. You feel certain that if you tried, you could strain them out of the potion through your teeth.     That everyone runs away from the towering figures of Geed and Baker and Seventh makes it easier for them to move around without accidentally catching any civilians underfoot, but it's trouble for everyone else. None of them seem to particularly care about the fact that they're bombs on an unknown fuse when they try to shove Bond or Holly or Flamel aside to run past them, and the explosions that follow catch grazing burns or concussive blasts. They're also not in their right minds enough to peacefully allow themselves to be healed, but that manifests very differently for Odette and Tamiel.     Odette is a medic, recognizably. The woman she pounces on is covered in mud and shuddering in pain, barely able to make noise besides wheezing breathes. She flinches away from Odette at the same time that she scrabbles for the medical supplies off of her body, not recognizing that they're being offered to her and desperate enough to steal them anyways. Once Odette forces the emetics down her throat, she calms down with wide eyes, then painfully vomits into the dirt.     The green-gold potion is identifiable in it, but there's also a copious amount of blood already. Odette has just enough time to recognize that, see the red and green touch, before the explosion is triggered outside of the woman's body anyways, killing her and blowing Odette back.     Tamiel, on the other hand, is using *magic*. Burned once already by Forget Me Not's betrayal, the man and wife cower from her and hide their heads under their arms, feebly kicking her to keep her glowing emanations away from them. This delays the healing just long enough-- she can identify that there's some internal bleeding happening, but that's as far as she gets before the two of them also burst into viscera right in front of her.     Holly is beset-upon in an entirely different way by the humans of Chicago. Desperate as they are, hungry and ill and dying, they see the golden gleam of Snowdrop and suddenly she has to fight through the unpowered masses *and* the Manus. The shouting layers over itself, indistinct cries of 'She has the cure!', and 'Gold! Sweet gold! We're saved!', and 'As long as we get her--!', surround her, and the cloying scent of blood is Holly's warning before they explode right on top of her.
Timekeeper	"Even saints will thrash when they're drowning. You think these parasites wouldn't? Who is this for?!"     Forget Me Not indulgently flips his coat out and over the back of the piano bench to sit properly before responding to Bond, gingering favoring the arm Schneider just shot. "It is for us, the inheritors of the next era, and of the Earth. Naturally a human fool like yourself would never understand. We who have suffered so long, endured so many indigities at the hands of humanity, deserve our satisfaction. Lady Druvis most of all!"     "What I have proven is that humans are no presupposed tyrants over the forest. Their towers of concrete and brick stand no firmer than trunks of wood after tragedy. Humanity, too, can burn at the hands of arcanists! They begged for my help only because they never learned not to expect it!" "--oh, Forget Me Not... I wish you hadn't."     "... Lady Druvis?"     Forget Me Not's gleeful orchestration of death falters. The smile can't disappear off of his face, only loosen, confused and uncomprehending. He's already performed this moment in his mind hours ago or longer, and Druvis's response then was a soulful sigh of relieving long-built tension, and then draping herself over his piano to watch the rest of it play out. "Hadn't what? Is something the matter?"     The explosion Regulus sets off under his cauldron keeps him from getting his answer immediately. The fireball blows the tent over the piano away, sending flaming canvas strewn across the campsite, and scorches the ground in a wide area. A second explosion happens in popping waves, as the splattered potion spilling out of the pot catches and ignites, mostly harmlessly defusing the excess that hadn't been fed to anyone yet.     When the smoke clears, Forget Me Not's clothing is charred, but he hasn't been completely blown away by the fireball. A writhing snake made of black goo interposed itself and took the brunt of the blast, and as his fingers methodically dance across the keys of his piano, two more rise up out of the ground behind him. His concerto speeds up gradually, and the giant snakes begin to snap at Regulus and the two giants.
Riku Asakura	It's like a scream around Ultraman Geed, the psychic backlash threatening to overtake the giant of light.  The storm-induced feelings wash over Geed, his eyes threatening to turn a shade of crimson at the edges.  The patients are seeing them as giant threats, and somewhere inside him, he's starting to see them as the same. Inside the giant of light, Riku floats in the light energy, and a shade of Geed's eyes hovers just slightly above his face.   <J-IC-Scene> Schneider Greco says, "Then, may-be, shoot the governor, and the bishop, and the chief of the police." No, this isn't right. People shouldn't have to kill others to survive.  "These people aren't my enemies...pull it together, Riku, standing around doing nothing won't get us anywhere..." he says to himself, more like a mantra at this point.  Fighting the influence of the storm, the best that he can, and trying to reinforce his views.  These people aren't the enemy...! Straining against the storm, the Manus goons can surround him and swing.  Weighted maces, magical bolts, and biting masks manage to sink into the Ultraman, causing sparks and serious-looking injuries that take a moment to close up.   Holly needed help, he remembers that!  Climbing to his feet under significant effort, he leaps.  A mound of dirt is kicked up into the air as he flies towards Doctor Holly, landing and causing another explosion of dirt to be kicked up.  He can't do anything about the bursting civilians, but he can stop the Manus from swarming her.   The Geed Claw comes up again, aiming to spin around in a circle before Ultraman Geed becomes a spinning tornado, aiming to suck up the various goons and drive through them, aiming to piece and strike at them while providing cover to Holly.   Not that it matters much, because the cures that are being used on the people aren't working.  It's becoming evident that the only thing they can do to stop this is Forget-Me-Not himself.
Flamel Parsons	"Why do you look shocked?! You left me!"     That hurt. Something in Flamel's heart lurches when he thinks on his hasty retreat from the tunnels of the Walden, before he'd had any chance to see to Lilian's safety. He'd asserted so confidently that she could get out...     "What? You must be joking. What's the point? We're already reaching the end of the Storm. Nothing that happens to any of these people matters and they've done nothing to deserve my helping them."     Flamel's barely visible in the crashing, blasting bursts of dirt, gore, death. He yells out, not some dignified heroic stance, but something more incoherent, more desperate: "Everything *always* matters! Anything that makes anyone think something! Anything that makes anyone feel something! Anything in the mind *matters* even if it's *gone* the next day, hour, *minute*!" He struggles to weave around incoming bolts and maces, mixing titanic psychic hands and shining orange bolts in his desperate counterattack that leaves him no time for Lilian -- and not much opportunity, or reason, for her to get at him.     Doesn't matter. He's got enough on his plate.     A surge of antagonism, selfishness, it washes over his mind. He's not enough of a person to truly, properly seek much for himself. But he's enough of a counselor to selfishly prioritize his 'camper' over *many* other matters. His eyes are reddened by the strain and the earlier sobbing. His outfit's a mess. And now, his mind is starting to come unravelled. The Storm is here, and for a camp counselor like him, what does it mean, to be part of this moment, this era?     He is wholly, absolutely focused on getting Schneider that shot.     "Schneider!" He calls out. "You'll survive! I know you'll survive! While you're surviving, *live*! Whatever you need to take! Whatever you need to save! *Whoever* you need to *kill*! Just get what you need! I'll be there, I'll make it work out, just keep going!" His invisibility falters, his defensive barrier wavers, his bolts and blasts don't.     A mace slams into his head, and ten rushing translucent hands pour out in a pummeling series of blows. A bolt catches his shoulder and a dozen reply. A snake wrestling with a giant crashes into the ground near him, taking him off his feet, and earning two huge hands grappling it away. But Flamel isn't focused on protecting himself. It's all about blasting an opening for Schneider.     No, not *defending* Schneider, that's different. That's distinct. That would be kindness, or at least some sort of protective instinct. What this is, is externalized selfishness. Trying to remove every obstruction between Schneider and a clear shot at Forget-Me-Not, so that she can put one in his heart, and surely she'll handle all the rest.     Why'd her gunshots go quiet? Flamel can't tell, through the haze of dirt and death. She doesn't have those pistols anymore... Is what he's doing worth it?
Timekeeper	"The things I do to catch a glimpse of your face, my-lord,"     "Schneider!"     Vertin gasps as a vented impulse the moment she's within reach, the words bubbling up frantically now that they have a place to go rather than stay silent inside. "You look so much better. But you-- still-- ah..."     The semantic meaninglessness of her relief at seeing Schneider on her feet again runs dry quickly in the urgency of the situation, a rare stumble in the ever-forwards march of the Timekeeper. Behind the table, she squeezes her hand, then grimly shakes her head. "There hasn't been any working I've seen. Arcana hasn't made an appearance either. Hopefully, she isn't coming over now."     Vertin sighs, acutely aware of what that means for everyone besides the arcanists. Her brief silence is punctuated by another explosion, getting closer as people flee from Baker and Seventh. "The secret of the Manus's ritual will have to wait for another era. We've already got so little time." "Schneider?!"     After just a moment of hesitation, Vertin pulls Lilian over to the makeshift barricade too, and then shoves the suitcase into her arms. She looks a little guilty somehow, as she draws out her little baton-wand with her now-freed hand. "Protect this, please. I can't risk losing hold of it."     It's less the turned-aside table that keeps Forget Me Not from attacking Schneider, and more that she's at the center of the orbit of two and a half loyal Manus Vindictae arcanists. His distraction caused by the fireball and Bond and Flamel can only last so long until he drags his attention back and sees, most palatably to accept, Vertin collaborating with the enemy. One of those towering black snakes whips around and crashes fang-first from above to shatter the table, as Vertin makes a break for it with Schneider.     "You! Once a bureaucrat, always a bureaucrat! If you were truly one of us, then you would never *imagine* spurning Lady Arcana's welcome for the likes of *her*!"
Tamiel Luxis	"Please," Tamiel pleads, trying to draw her wings in close, make herself smaller. "I'm trying to help--we don't have time!" The family's attention was torn between the angel and the explosions around them, doing the arithmetic of survival in their head. "Please," she begged, again, urgent, shaking.     Their pause made a splinter of venom bleed through her heart. These ungrateful maniacs. She pushes out a "Thank you," anyway, when they finally decided to let her in--but she felt the feedback in her healing already. It was too late. The last thing they see is the panic of realization in her eyes--andth en the explosion throws her back, hitting the ground with a sickening thud.     Why am I even here. They don't want my help. Fuck them. She was struck, by the thought, unable to stew out her own feelings from the rush of panic and survival and WANT. They won't even let me help-- there was a sound of something stepping closer, and Tamiel felt something come down on her back, hard enough to break her if she wasn't shrouded in protective shadow.     She pushes up to one knee, glaring upward at a masked face, and making a sharp upward motion. A spear of blackness rose from the ground, like an animal eager to please, lodged its way up and through the manus monster's midsection.     When she gets up, she finds herself stalking closer to Schneider, and Vertin, and the others, her wings flaring, trying to make herself look larger, while shadow roils around her feet like water disturbed just beneath the surface, eagerly trying to swallowg anything wearing a manus mask with nothing-sharp fangs.
Odette Raskins	Being surrounded by so much death so quickly is already having a visible effect on ODette's psyche. As much as she tries to focus on her work instead of the exploding people, it's hard to ignore the fact that she had been feeding them the exact thing that's turning so many of their insides into their outsides. She almost drank some of that stuff herself just a few minutes ago, too. Would that be it for her if she did? The rush of self-preservation in the collective minds of the people here hits her like a ton of bricks, and she's quickly finding it harder to drum up her own reasons to keep caring for them instead of herself, too. Even the person Odette's able to reach in time is trying to snatch those supplies off her person, and for what? It's not like the lady could really make use of most of what's on the EMT. "Hold still, I've.. I've got you!" She almost snaps at the woman, rubbing her throat with a few fingers to help her swallow the pills before drawing her hand back to let her get it all out. Spying that liquid coming out, she does indeed catch that contact just before it explodes, and she lands on her wounded arm again with another sharp cry before rolling onto her other side to take the pressure off. "The poison.. I-it's explosive! Even if we get it out, it-urgh... It's still gonna blow! It's reacting with their blood!" With that observation called out, Odette's mind starts pulling her in two directions. Should she help these people, knowing they'll die anyway? Or should she leave them be, and focus on just getting out of here alive? "If we leave the poison in, they'll... They'll explode, but it'll be contained, and we can avoid them! But we can't just leave them to... I mean, we can, but we should.. N't?" Trembling as her conscience struggles with her Storm Syndrome-addled mind, Odette only has enough time to bring her arms up reflexively as another Manus follower drives a heavy stomp towards her. Catching it squarely on the injured arm, she lets out a frustrated scream before wrapping her arms around it, then trying to just wrench that follower down wholesale. "Get off me get off!" She shouts, not realizing the contradiction between her words and her actions. Odette starts rammin her boot into the follower's groin while fumbling around on the ground with her good arm. Taking hold of a hammer that had been left behind, she wrestles with that follower to start swinging it anywhere she can reach: At the knees, the arms, the midsection, and especially the teeth in her panicking state. "Anything in the mind *matters* even if it's *gone* the next day, hour, *minute*!" Somehow, though, she manages to pick out what Flamel's saying at that moment out of everything else being shouted and exploding around her. It cuts through that self-preserving madness that had overwhelmed her mind, even if just for a moment, and grants her just enough clarity to come up with another angle. "If we can keep that stuff from reacting with their blood... Then we can keep them from exploding at all!" That's easier said than done, of course, since she'll need a moment to whip up something to actually try that, and she's still in the middle of swinging that hammer, a saw, even a scalpel or screwdriver or anything she can get her hands on just to survive against one of these followers.
Holly Asturias	Veronica makes way for her. She has multiple people shouting about explosives, blood, potions, to *do something about it*, in the midst of being overrun despite people's best efforts to cut a path through.     Flamel is right, she needs to help Odette and Tamiel.     But the air is oppressive, and for the first time in her entire life the Revenant feels a tingle in her heart, that maybe just this once she doesn't want to or need to be anyone's doctor. That maybe this time it's okay to look after herself first. The psychic scream, and the Storm, finally make it all the way through. Gold is not wealth to Holly Asturias, of the Luxuria bloodline, who values above all things the ability to keep living, and to keep those under her care just as healthy. Blood is wealth. Ichor, too.     Money doesn't buy a Revenant anything.     Their ability to use their Formae does.     It isn't the Manus who make Holly stop, clutch her head and howl miserably. "No - no, stay back! That isn't - this isn't...!" It's the humans, hungry, goldlusted, taking her rifle out of her hands and leaving her empty-handed as the smell of blood fills her lungs, splashes against her dress, her face, into her open mouth and eyes and...     "Stop! STOP! Don't you - can't you - are you MAD?!" They are! She is, too. Would-be patients ripped away from her by arcane explosions, her rifle hitting the ground when the one holding onto it detonates too.     And the taste of blood, on her tongue, on her lips, even as she tumbles backwards from the explosions, makes her eyes gleam a brighter red, and her voice echo in her throat, deeper, more savage.     Another human leaps at her.     He is impaled, by the long, golden mechanical tail that bursts out of Holly's spine in splatters of Ichor and blood. Lifted up, before he can detonate, and the stinger at the end of the tail drains the blood out of him, his husk hitting the ground afterwards.     A golden mask forms afterwards, covering the lower half of Holly's face like an ornate golden veil over a black and gold respirator.     Her breaths are raspy, and she's exhausted. Despite feeding, pushing herself to heal Schneider so quickly had left a dent she can't recoup. She feels tiny, helpless, hungry, overwhelmed all at once.     There's one silver lining, and it's knowing who to blame.     "Monster!"     The glare settles on Forget Me Not, across the camp. She reaches for a Manus goon bare-handed, slashing with her nails to slit his throat as she starts making for *him*.     "Monster!"     Her Jail writhes, sweeping a wide arc and intercepting the next living bombs to skewer them and hurl them away, draining some blood while at it.     "Monster!!"     They're corpses being flung at her, not people. She can't possibly eject the chemicals from their body fast enough. She can only *kill*, and make it a bit faster. Like the people who turn into Horrors.     The association is made. Her blood gushes out of her hands and takes the form of a stake, which she drives through the nearest masked-man's heart, before stomping her foot down and channeling all of that blood into one powerful blast of ice, in a wide circle around herself. Protectively, a desperate wall and field of spikes. 'Don't come any closer or I might hurt you'. But it, itself, is poised to hurt a lot of people anyway. Dead men walking and Manus goons, but people nonetheless. It won't make it all the way to Forget Me Not, but it might inadvertently help the efforts to clear a path to him.
Veronica	As the Storm Syndrome ramps up dramatically, Veronica shudders with disgust and discomfort in the heart of her EGO. It's only the hands surrounding her, the support of her community, that allows her to keep going. Those people are here with her, and they may be eyeing their keepsakes a little strangely tonight, but in turn Veronica manages to hold on. The Storm Syndrome is theirs to endure together.     Marching toward Forget-Me-Not's piano, Veronica is faced with a wall of thrashing, inky snake-things. They coil around the limbs of her EGO, sinking their fangs into the brickwork. Veronica tears with concrete fists at the serpents, ripping them free of her body and stagger-shambling a few steps back to clear some space.     A tangle of steel cables snap forth from Baker and Seventh's wrist, ends crackling with arcing current. Veronica sweeps the electric scourge in wide arcs, matching the snakes' reach with her weapon's. After a few moments she suddenly lunges forward in her EGO, bringing the whip down and twisting it to snare as many of the serpents as she can get in a tangle of lethal current.
Ein	Having entered the aid camp in haste, the somewhat jovial engagement between Sotheby, Holly and Regulus had been cut short by brief stealth action segments, Ms. Moissan continuing to carry Sotheby off with the young genius' gathering of grimoires and journalbooks, and more chiefly by Flamel Parsons shouting for the Concord doctor and their brief moments of relative stealth in chaos becomes a spotlight on their action. One of the Manus bouncers standing around, turning to react to a woman carrying a child and a mallet charging at them immediately is charged down by a shoulder crash and bar-press of mallet. Sotheby, loose for a moment, realizes that she's in a Fight and stands a bit dazedly, looking around as the field agent minding her full outs someone roughly half again her size in bulk and build. Moments of struggle pass, with Sotheby fretting and clasping hands together and hugging books to her chest. On her shoulder, Brave Typhon is feverishly alive, bouncing and hopping and animated into real life like a little cartoon rat-rabbit on the heiress' shoulder. Leaping into action, Brave Typhon hops off and windmills all four limbs as stuffie lept into combat against Jupiter right here and now. Ms. Moissan is rolled over onto her back, holding goon off her with a knee and bracing now with her mallet. Borne down on, she struggles in the ashy dirt, not able to win an advantage to finish off her target. Sotheby, fumbling with her bag, keeps looking up at the fight, transfixed in the struggle and passively watching with a 'she'll win, right?' horrified on her face. The fight is not decided just by a very overworked Field Agent. While arm buckles and is reinforced of a haze of chalk dust keeping hands firm to crossbar of mallet, up on the back of the good little Brave Typhon rushes up to stab a small dagger someone had forgotten with Brave Typhon but the stuffie had not into the back of the monster's shoulder, carving into goop and meat and letting Moissan win the advantage she needs. In a tumble of rolling over, stuffie goes sprawling and Moissan straddles the goon. With Sotheby wide-eyed, Ms. Moissan lifts a hand chalked in white dust, she smashes down the fist into the goon's cyclopean eye and crunching the front of the mask like a sheet of ice breaking. Fist bleeding mixing with the clay coating her hand, Moissan scoops up Typhon and quickly hustles to Sotheby, who's on the verge of confused tears. "Shshshsh, Sotheby, lady Sotheby, please..." Moissan begins, holding weapon with bloody hand and aside while she touches Sotheby's cheek with a hot palm after placing stuffie back on little girl's shoulder. 'THERE'S A GASTRAL EXPLOSIVE, NEUTRALIZE THE ALCHEMICAL...!!' 'You gotta mix up a counteragent FAST or everyone who drank this stuff is screwed!' Blood, explosions, people dying, and the violent horror of change spreads ugly all around and Ms. Moissan draws close to insist into Sotheby's ears before she hears more. Mr. APPLe, floating there as well, brings a calm and clean tone to the plea for help: "You have to help save everyone, lady Sotheby. It's very important you use your abilities so people are helped, even if they're different from you. This isn't common knowledge, but... It's an important lesson." That she wished Mr. Karson was here to give. But she was here, and he was not.
Ein	Sniffing up the wetness in her sinuses and lifting hand to hide mouth as she does, the little impulses of a fine lady automatic even now. She nods, hand shifting to tuck away the tear-wetness in her eyes. It's not a graceful cleaning, smearing it across upper cheek, but it lets her eyes work again. "O-obkay." She agrees, phlegmy, and looks to Mr. APPLe. "Find me a big pot. The biggest you can that's clean - or at least not full of that other stuff. Big!" She insists, and then starts moving with purpose towards one of the aid tents, rummaging in her bag. The only thing she had enough of was... "Wait! I've got it! This is just..." With a sample, with a full description, she knows what she's fighting, but holding it all in her head was too much to work on a counteragent. "... a problem for my nutrition potion! The fantastic triple-strength batch will still work fine cut to one parts in ten, and then, I'll need a neutralizer..." Ms. Moissan moves ahead of Sotheby, as the little lady parks her stuff where she can and starts unpacking, mixing and finding something edibly basic. In the chemistry senses! Even without, powdering root into green elixirs, she starts pouring water and sending torched mixtures into a fleet of suborned glasses and little bowls and metal helmets off injured soldiers. She needed *cookware*! She'd confront this use of alchemy by Jupiter later.
Odette Raskins	In the midst of all her scrambling and swinging, Odette hears Sotheby's own proposal. "M-Miss Sotheby! Ca... Do you have any recipes that'll keep that stuff from reacting with their blood? Or bind the blood to something else so that... The green gold stuff doesn't!" Once/if she can free herself from the brawl with the Manus follower, Odette's next step is rushing over to aid Sotheby. She's far better at scrambling for supplies than fighting, anyway, and she's not too keen on getting her arm broken in more places than it already feels like it is.
Regulus	''What? You must be joking. What's the point? ... Nothing that happens to any of these people matters and they've done nothing to deserve my helping them.'' "Huh?" Regulus asks, bewildered. "We don't got time for that kind of talk, Lilian." And because she doesn't have time for that kind of talk she adds the one thing that she understands is real about Lilian Rook. "There's people who look up to you here. Don't let the Storm--" And that is the only answer she has for Lilian, if it could even be seen as one, because she is getting smashed into by giant snake. She's also being bitten at, but she turned just in time to avoid becoming dinner and just gets clobbered by the side of the head instead, sprawling back and bouncing even further along the ground than she expected. She hopes Sonetto doesn't see Lilian like this, she thinks dizzily, or at least--she will understand. Regulus isn't sure she does, but maybe that's because of the concussion she just took. rShe hobbles up to her feet, grimacing as she pshes on to Sotheby. If Lilian isn't going to lend a hand, she's got to rely on Sotheby. She thinks about belonging as she hobbles. Yes, the Suitcase is the closest she's ever felt to belonging, and maybe that's why she's holding so fiercely onto it. It's the first time she's had a home that wasn't on the open seas and the first time she's had a home at all that had more than three people in it. She's lived her life on the move. She always has, dodging authorities and cracking wise while she stole bread to eat and stole stages to live. Moissan is already talking to Sotheby. Sotheby is already working through it. That's a relief. "Thank Lennon, you've already begun. I didn't get to see the potion for long, but I'm pretty sure it's got mandrake root--shaved, not boiled. I'm sure I caught a whiff of that, but--slightly salted for sure. Cicada wings, grinded up--and magnesia crystal, just a bit. I'm pretty sure. Pretty sure on that." APPLe, meanwhile floats off to try and find what Sotheby is asking for, dragging over a cooking pot someone brought into the encampemnt with his two thin cartoony arms and putting it before Sotheby as Regulus grunts and groands as she prepares a fire for it, igniting the wood with a sharp burst of high-heat light. "You got this, Sotheby." Regulus assures her. "I'll bottle it up once it's ready and rush off to deliver the stuff, APPLe too!"
Lilian Rook	The wards only render Tamamo hard to notice, not actually impervious to what's going on. That's the first thing that makes it through the ringing in Lilian's skull. The second thing is that the Elites she can make out in the crowd are scurrying all over in a mad dash without any semblance of coordination, trying to treat people as they try to fight Manus Vindictae as they scramble for Vertin even before anyone knows if the forest is actually Storm-proof at all; it jolts her Chevalier field leader instincts to see that only Schneider seems to be playing to an out. Both of those things combine to make her finally remember the Paladins issue comm that she still has, tuned to the operational frequency that she was on two hours ago.     The urge to step back and turn it on is more of a morbid fixation than it is compelled by experience or intuition. Almost as much as she hopes to tell everyone what's just happened and whip the haphazard strike team into shape, Lilian hopes to hear the dead line that means they've already changed the codes the minute she left their sight. She smothers the hot coals of that bile hope in what amounts to her bare hands. Praying that they gave up on her easily is only whitewashing that she's praying for an excuse to give up on them first. She forces the button down, and feels the forest spin when it connects.      <J-IC-Scene> Regulus says, "Schneider ... what would you do, if you were the master of the city? Paint it however you like." <J-IC-Scene> Schneider Greco says, "Mmmh... take enough food for my-self, and all-my friends and fam-i-ly. Fine wine, too. A nice house. Make-sure no-one dies on those cold nights." <J-IC-Scene> Schneider Greco says, "Then, may-be, shoot the governor, and the bishop, and the chief of the police." <J-IC-Scene> Schneider Greco says, "But Lord Forget Me Not... he wants to kill more than he wants to eat, you know?" <J-IC-Scene> Regulus says, "Yeah, he's got the order mixed up." <J-IC-Scene> Riku Asakura | Ultraman Geed says, "I couldn't kill anyone, I don't think that will change anything if a system is built on the blood and bones of a old system..." <J-IC-Scene> Odette Raskins says, still struggling to sound calm enough to be understood "The poison.. I-it's explosive! Even if we get it out, it-urgh... It's still gonna blow!" <J-IC-Scene> Odette Raskins says, after a longer and more pained noise "It's reacting with their blood!" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook meant to join the band to try and coordinate something, or to ask a very important question, or even just to shout at everyone and tell them to get lost, but she's struck by something else instead, and the first thing she does is to laugh incredulously, and say, "The *order*?" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Everyone knows you have to kill in order to eat." <J-IC-Scene> Schneider Greco says, "Then, may-be, shoot the governor, and the bishop, and the chief of the police." <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons, more than a little Storm-affected in an odd way, "Then I'm taking my camper *hunting* and she can *kill* until she's *full* for once!" <J-IC-Scene> Riku Asakura | Ultraman Geed says, "You don't need to kill /people/ to eat though... or at least you shouldn't have to!" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook laughs, again. She'll claim it was the Storm Syndrome later on. "And yet, all of them do." <J-IC-Scene> Riku Asakura | Ultraman Geed says, "It's not right and you know it..."
Lilian Rook	<J-IC-Scene> Regulus says, "Lilian, c'mon love, they might survive if we help them." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "How? Why?" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "I recall you having a very different opinion when it was the Foundation sallying forth to rescue wealthy socialites from the wrath of the masses." <J-IC-Scene> Veronica says, "Mayor or Secretary of Agriculture or the damned Head - they've built a world where we're killing each other to survive. We have to believe it's not the only way people can live." <J-IC-Scene> Regulus says, "Well ... cause of Sonetto." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Really? Or are you just fine with it when the wrath is arcanist and the wealth is human?" <J-IC-Scene> Regulus says, "And, well, being honest, you too." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "If every one of those locusts chewing the copper from Sotheby's telephone wires had exploded just like this back then, I'd have given it a standing ovation." <J-IC-Scene> Riku Asakura | Ultraman Geed says, "...it's not right" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "I said so last time. Where I'm from, they'd have been shot like dogs." <J-IC-Scene> Veronica says, "That's *true* but it's not *right*. Not always." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Of course it isn't right you little *boy*. But when they do it to us, nobody bats an eye. At most, you grimace and say 'that's sad' and move on with your lives. It's only when we do it to them that people start talking about right and wrong." <J-IC-Scene> Regulus says, "This isn't about them." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Isn't it? You've stopped having anything to say about the killing Schneider gets up to as soon as she started being 'less of an arcanist about it'." <J-IC-Scene> Odette Raskins says, "If we can get... No, if we can stay away from them, then when they blow up, we can-No, we have to... Dammit, dammit, dammit." <J-IC-Scene> Schneider Greco says, "When did I do that, my-la-dy?" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "If it's not about this, then none of it is about anything. The Storm is already happening. You should be worrying about your own lives, not strangers who'd sooner shoot you than thank you." <J-IC-Scene> Riku Asakura | Ultraman Geed says, "We came here to rescue you and Vertin too. From the Manus..." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, a little differently, "When you ran out of mayors and bankers for a moment." <J-IC-Scene> Regulus insists, "It isn't. They look up to ''you''. I know how 'people' are like." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook snaps at Riku. "Shut it. No you didn't." <J-IC-Scene> Schneider Greco breathes out, almost like good-humoredly. <J-IC-Scene> James Bond says, "You're one of a handful of reasons that I see any reason to keep on living." <J-IC-Scene> James Bond says, "I don't want to lose two of them to this stupid man." <J-IC-Scene> Riku Asakura | Ultraman Geed says, "/YES/ we did!" <J-IC-Scene> Regulus says, "They look up to you, those arcanists that are being deprived and hurt." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "You came here because Vertin has the Suitcase and you'll all die if you don't. I bet you didn't even think about that either; I'll bet Schneider was the one thinking of survival and you all followed along when she told you to." <J-IC-Scene> Riku Asakura | Ultraman Geed says, "It's all we all could think of every sense we were seperated. We were afraid for your well being and had a plan to get you and Vertin out of there. Schneider told us the way, but we came because we /care/!" r<J-IC-Scene> James Bond says, "I had to stop him from transforming and stomping after you."
Lilian Rook	<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, ". . . I'm sorry James. It's not your fault you were born one of them." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "In a perfect world, they'd see you more clearly." <J-IC-Scene> Schneider Greco says, "I *am* here to save my own life, my-la-dy Rook. And theirs. You, I know- being loved by the Manus, now- could live ei-ther way." <J-IC-Scene> Riku Asakura | Ultraman Geed says, "'One of them'. What do you mean by that?" <J-IC-Scene> James Bond says, "From the moment the word 'human' was first spoken in any language, it was never about who *is,* but who *gets to be,* Riku. If these people had found me a few years earlier, I would have buried what was left of me under one of those masks in a heartbeat." <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons, letting the Storm dredge up something truly awful out of his heart: "And what even makes you think the Manus will love you in the *next* Storm?!" <J-IC-Scene> Schneider Greco says, "But there is... a limit, I think... to how much one can drink of vengeance. Forget Me Not, he has none. And so you see him... rich and powerful, among arcanists... avenging himself on the human sick and poor." <J-IC-Scene> Schneider Greco says, "Do you belong here?" <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "What makes you so much better than Schneider, that they'd *throw her away* and *not you*?!" <J-IC-Scene> Riku Asakura | Ultraman Geed says nothin, truly feeling awful for what kind of life James had lived. "I'm... sorry James, that you've lived a life where that'd happen to you." <J-IC-Scene> Veronica says, "Schneider's right! Why is 'us' and 'them' about anything other than who has the money and position to kill with impunity!?" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says to Schneider, summing up all of the feelings of condemnation and scorn she can feel for her myriad reckless actions, past and present, "I wish you wouldn't call him Lawrence." <J-IC-Scene> James Bond says, "It was by design. Which Forget-Me-Not is sharp enough to realize, only instead of tearing it down, he wants to be at the helm." <J-IC-Scene> Schneider Greco coughs up a little disbelieving laugh. <J-IC-Scene> Riku Asakura | Ultraman Geed says, "Veronica is right, it shouldn't be about 'us' and 'them', it should be about people. People loving each other and not about have or have nots, or about any sort of division..." <J-IC-Scene> Schneider Greco says, dizzily disoriented about her rudeness to the man who had her shot, "My-la-dy, please, I on-ly say that to his face." <J-IC-Scene> Veronica says, "There is a 'them', Riku, but it's people like Forget-Me-Not *and* it's the Mayor of Chicago. The world has to change - the Manus aren't the people to do it. Arcanist, human, everyone dies if they don't have the money to eat. And everyone kills if they have the money to get away with it." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook hesitates on her question entirely too long. "I don't know. But no one else is eager to explain to me what 'belonging' is meant to feel like." <J-IC-Scene> Regulus says, "Well ... for me it feels like the suitcase. Or at least mostly. I don't know. It's the closest I've ever felt it." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook likes Flamel's question much, much less. The hesitant lull in her mood abruptly boils. "If they throw me out *tomorrow* then it'll be the longest anyone's ever waited. I don't want to hear about faithfulness from a man who'll betray anyone if the wind blows him hard enough. You even *just* betrayed them!" <J-IC-Scene> Regulus says, "She's got a point, man."
Schneider Greco	"Mmmh, my-lord, I think we both do-not look our best...?" Schneider grips Vertin's hand behind the table. She squeezes tight. It barely shows in her eyes, but her fingers shiver and slacken when Vertin tells her that there is no safety from the Storm here.      Every native human in this camp, a dead man walking.      Somewhere out there past the tables and the crowd, Achille and Cosimo are tussling with each other just for a mouthful of someone's dropped gold jewelry. They're succumbing in earnest. Schneider's eyes linger on them while her stomach is in her throat. Why not just let them eat? They'll be dead soon, anyway. Almost as a fidget, she does her palm-drop divination-for-death. Lilian comes behind the table, then, and Vertin gives the Suitcase-- "To her??" Schneider is struck for a moment. She weighs whether to object or throw her weight around. But...      "... I do-not know, what belonging is supposed to feel like. My family, I love them, but you know I don't 'belong', right?" Little uneasy, soft-eyed smile. "I like... Lady Vertin. And Holly. And Lady White, and you. And Druvis, I think, though I don't-know if she likes me..." A little sobered glance around the corner of the table, to see if Druvis is there.      "... In the Walden, you tried to save me. That made the fourth or fifth time, I think, in my life. I tried to save you, too, on my back. Which time was that for you?"      "So... I don't know, my-lords. Maybe it feels like that." A disappointing answer, probably. 'This' is not as intoxicating as the Manus, or as solid as the Foundation. But that's as good as she'll get. She stands, just as her safety's running out.      Schneider catches the giant serpent's lunge against her chest, lets it hurl her backwards, stabs her scalpel up into the roof of its mouth, and then lets the momentum drag the knife through the top half of its head as she skids backwards along the dirt. That should probably break ribs. She doesn't notice. E "Vertin! My guns, do you have them?! Managghia, Achille, Cosimo, look at yourselves! Get up and shoot!" "But--" "He stole--" "Giant snakes! Shoot!!!"      Flamel is, for a moment, giving her the opening. All Schneider has is a medical scalpel. Forget Me Not puts revenge above life; Schneider puts life above revenge. But he tells her to be greedy, to reach for catharsis. And so while her men open fire on the arcane constructs, Schneider rears back like a pitcher and hurls the blade fifty feet at Forget Me Not directly. May greed guide it true.
Lilian Rook	<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "What does *better* have to do with any of it?! Nobody belongs anywhere because they're *good*! No one bases *loyalty* on whether or not someone *deserves* it!" <J-IC-Scene> Regulus to Lilian, "Look I don't wanna fight, if you think Manus is the place you want to be, then that's cool." <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons rants, "They *turned* on *Schneider*!!" But he's gassing up for something worse, you can hear it in the inhales after that if you've ever spoken to a certain kind of parent. <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons, still too-sincerely pulling up things from impolite zones of the mind, "*Belonging* isn't lots of loving promises for a better world! You don't go to where people say they're going to make things fair, make things gentle, give you *closure*! That love isn't real! It's *nothing*! The world doesn't change! It *blew away in the Storm* and it still didn't change!" <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "Belonging looks like spending every single day having tiny little feuds and arguments with people you don't understand, who are nothing like you, who you *trade* with to *get by*!" <J-IC-Scene> Regulus says, "But I'm gonna try to save them because that's what I think is right. Peace and love is my Code. And sometimes that means I don't get to belong." <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "It's shouting across pits you can barely hear across, and never getting any solution to the problems that keep growing, until thirty years later you don't speak to each other! Because at least that's better than thirty days of promises!" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "They turned on her because she was using them and they found out! Do you think she didn't know the risks?! This is *still* all another *exit plan*! Are you *stupid* or just *cruel*?!" <J-IC-Scene> Regulus says, "Thanks for giving me the business those times." <J-IC-Scene> James Bond says, "Please don't leave." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Who *cares* if it's arbitrary?! Why should I mind that it's because of my *blood* and not something else?! It's not as if my ancestry is going to get up and walk away!" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "You don't *belong* if you have to *argue for it* every single day you noxious fucking--" <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons, furiously dredging something yet more raw: "Because nobody belongs *ANYWHERE!!* There's NO SUCH *THING!!*" <J-IC-Scene> Riku Asakura | Ultraman Geed is hit in the heart by that last one from Flamel. "That's..." <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "I've been in a thousand minds! I've seen a thousand *homes* and *places to belong* that live in people's *hearts*! And they're *all in your head*! Nobody gets to them! Nobody reaches them! Nobody has *ever* gone to somewhere they *belong*! No landmass but *islands* and no connection but *messages in bottles*!" <J-IC-Scene> Tamiel Luxis says, "Shut UP!" <J-IC-Scene> Veronica says, "Islands are connected under the water. There's a layer between the us we see and the us that can really be *one* like that. But it's there, and it's real. The Light showed me that."
James Bond	... Lady Druvis?     Congratulations. You've proven air is breathable to someone bleeding out. The anger, the vindication, all turns to ash, and Bond is now more aware than ever how hungry and tired he is. "You stupid man." His grip on the Manus-shield he's taken tightens and he aims for Forget-Me-Not's head.     The explosion catches him off guard in a moment of raw emotional exhaustion. Were it not for his hostage he'd be dead--the husk struggling in his grasp struggles no longer, falling limp to the ground as Bond himself is thrown against the car. His back hits it hard enough to rock the frame, and his forehead is split by the sharp edge of an upturned stone.     His gun is a hazy, recent memory, the familiar heaviness gone from his hand. The screams of the fleeing civilians are muddied by the persistent ringing in his ear, and every few seconds, their panicked flight sees a carelessly placed foot trample or kick him.     Something old and ugly stirs inside him, stoked by every errant kick, as his blurry vision focuses on Flamel. I could do it. A plan begins forming, hateful, unhelpful; just get to his feet, into the driver's seat, a little gas, a turn of the wheel and I could let the guns rip him to pieces. He's only been a liability, only ever hurt-- Lilian.     Bond drags himself to his feet, grunting in pain, then hurls himself over the Ghost's driver side door to collapse in the front seat. His blood smears against the floorboard as he tumbles into it, the tall and stubborn gear lever of the era jutting painfully against his abdomen. Gritting his teeth, he forces himself upright, head lowered to brace another explosion, eyes forward and locked dead ahead.     His thumb flips a switch under the dashboard, then his index fingers find now-revealed buttons on the wheel. The Rolls-Royce's headlamps swivel into their housings, and two pitiless barrels emerge. Pointed right at Forget-Me-Not, the guns erupt in a deafening hail, muzzle flashes spitting from the barrels like the fiery breaths of dragons.
Tamamo	'Always and forever, love.'     Those were the last words left, before Lilian goes to stop Flamel. A minor pity; Tamamo would have been interested in seeing inside his mind, even if she had to trust in psychonautry to reach it. A strange practice with which she, thus far, little experience.     The gunshot doesn't surprise her. Bloodshed was the likely result, even if vengeance weren't involved, and she knows Schneider is doubly justified, in this case. By the time Forget Me Not has moved to the piano, Tamamo has already quietly left the area, peeling away one of her talismans to quietly break the barrier as she goes.     'Yes, yes, Chicago, let me hear your voice!'     Pandemonium, as promised and foretold. In another time, and another place, Tamamo had wondered the purpose of easing the suffering of lives that could not be saved, and Vertin had insisted. She had wondered, too, of the purpose of heightening their suffering, of driving death by violence just before it would be done by unraveling, and this--     'These are the people responsible for the burning of your woods, my lady! Look, watch! They came crawling to us in their desperation, ignorant to your pleas and cries of pain for so long, and now it is us who will watch them squirm!'     --is the first she has heard of a cause. Vengeance, again.     She wants to save them -- rather, that's the thing she 'should' be doing, isn't it? A 'good' person would seek to at least ease their suffering. Yes, let's--     She's rebuffed. Tamamo-no-mae, in her many-layered robes, three tails swaying behind her in not-quite-real form, golden-eyed and long-eared, is not of humanity, and certainly not of Chicago. There was never any way to claim otherwise, any choice that might be made to make her one of 'them.' They see her for the outsider, for the mystic and the witch, and having been just betrayed by one of the same, she hears the screams and the insults. How could she get close enough to find and neutralize the poisons in their gut, already eating away at them, driving to greater pain and fear?     The explosions continue, and she shies away from the blood that flecks her robes.     'Gold! Sweet gold! We're saved!'     Such words are said to Holly, but she is not the only one adorned. Those whose fear is overcome with hunger rush, not quite dead, but close and dangerous, and Tamamo's spirit plummets, as does her voice. Her eyes flash, and she speaks, "Sleep."     They do, all energy of thought robbed in a moment. It is the most mercy she can give them. Those who have taken the potion's aid will still die, as will those unlucky enough to fall close beside.     Failure after failure. Why are all of these people here, after all? What was Flamel thinking, sending them to an only more gruesome end? Every human here, even those two goons of the madwoman...     Surrounded by an uncomfortably narrow ring of grass, and after it, a less stable ring of bodies and gore, eyes downcast beyond a snapped-open fan, Tamamo focuses upon what she should have done in the first place, rather than reach her hands out to these people. Her eyes nearly close, as if drowsiness is taking her, but her head turns, searching. There... there... there...     Nowhere.     The wards, familiar by having seen them the once before, are missing.     "There is no safety, here."
Lilian Rook	<J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says to Bond, "Don't tell me not to leave after you've already seen my leg give out and said 'don't worry, she's a great crawler'." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook then says, more generally, angrily, "And don't go telling me there's 'no us and them!' the very moment 'them' starts looking strong for a change!" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Where was all of this earlier?! Where was it the day before?! I didn't hear a *word* of this from you in the last six *months*, and it's not as if *humanity* was ever silent about it! In fact, I'm fairly *fucking* certain that the *last* time I heard that line was when your predecessors left me and ignored me in the *exact same way*!" <J-IC-Scene> James Bond says, "I said that so that Riku wouldn't kill himself trying to go after you alone." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "You mean *Vertin*." <J-IC-Scene> Regulus says, "Why's it so hard to believe we like you?" <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook reaches a point of such livid, blinding replay from having to listen to Flamel that she tries to remember what it was that she even wanted to share with everyone first. Feeling only an empty space, she makes a sound of caustic disbelief, and replies, "And money can't buy happiness." before terminating the connection.     Lilian steps back towards cover by instinct. Everything feels hot and sick and the air stings in her lungs and her knuckles hurt from how hard she realizes she's been gripping her sheathed sword. The fact that she hadn't successfully managed to say a single thing she meant makes her want to throw up.     'Humanity, too, can burn at the hands of arcanists! They begged for my help only because they never learned not to expect it!'     When she looks at Forget Me Not, Lilian remembers two months in that house, waiting for her resignation to clear, avoiding explaining anything to an increasingly more worried Tamamo, even as the obvious signs built to an undeniable storm. Remembering what she thought back then, and the ever-so short list of names that had awaited her at the end of that tunnel, brings her all the way up to gagging.     'You look so much better. But you-- still-- ah...'     Tearing her eyes away from Vertin, Lilian tries to swallow down the rising sickness with fury instead. Whatever promise she made the Timekeeper was always only ever going to be a backup. Vertin always plays to her outs. It's something she actually respects about both her and Schneider. The sting of being an obsolete fallback-- a rebound-- helps Lilian turn back to the sunshade, and find her voice once more. "Tamamo! We're going back to the Walden. It's not safe here, and they're clearly going to fail anyways. We--"     'Protect this, please. I can't risk losing hold of it.'     Lilian has never once let go of her sword by reflex in front of Vertin; only taken hold of it. The fact that it takes both of her hands to keep from dropping the Suitcase is so simple, so incidental, that it doesn't cross Lilian's mind at all that she did. When she looks at Vertin instead, she hears her own voice playing back at her.     'PHONE: Phoning Timekeeper, Lilian Rook slowly releases her arms, then presses her hands to her face, sliding down until they just cover her mouth. "You wouldn't do that at your breaking point. Neither would Sonetto or Regulus. It's only me. I wish you all the luck in the world, I really do, but I don't belong in a unit of anything, much less in the Suitcase." She grits her teeth behind her fingers, but it changes the sound of her voice anyways. "There are *children* there Vertin."'
Lilian Rook	'... In the Walden, you tried to save me. That made the fourth or fifth time, I think, in my life. I tried to save you, too, on my back. Which time was that for you?'     "Second." Lilian says. Her throat closes up after only one word.     'Vertin! My guns, do you have them?!'     In Lilian's haste to rejoin Tamamo, she drops, or, no, Schneider must have stolen the sidearm from her thigh holster when she turned around.     'There is no safety, here.'     Lilian hefts the Suitcase under one arm, keeping it braced against her body by rejoining her grip with Night Mist on her left side, just so she can take Tamamo's hand in her right, and says "One stone unweathered, right?"
Ein	Lilian had been stunned by a question Druvis had asked, ready for anything - but not that. 'Is this the first time I've seen you without a mask?' Druvis thought herself ready for what Forget Me Not was bringing, and she thought herself ready for what Lilian was asking, and she was wrong twice. "Yes." Druvis blinks. "Broken, I found it unsuited. So I've left it behind." Her eyes, open, fall and roll to the side of her eyes, to shift onto Lilian at off-center cant. There's no bramble, no face of feline bark to be imposing. She, too, is weary, and bedraggled in a way someone who clearly trims their own hair and not that well, cut with an asymmetrical tail down past her collar at her right shoulder and curling in. "Chicago is here anyway." Druvis observes, sigh implied into her voice. The officer who speaks to her isn't even real to her. Forget Me Not is doing something with them. It's a blur. 'Peace, my lady.' Druvis only grows sicker as the moment moves to its culimation, a climax, attended finely to view the peace brought by Forget Me Not's concert. '... Lady Druvis?' "Please," Escapes Druvis' lips as her eyes half lid and she gathers her strength. 'Hadn't what? Is something the matter?' "Even I know," Druvis' voice creaks. She had been denied so much and even in this wretched America did she find the scraps of some truth. Trying to summon them, to use arguments and feelings and ask him off this while he's attacked is even harder! His cauldron explodes and Druvis flinches, loyal wand snapping to attention under hand and glowing beneath palm as she shields herself, only to be relatively unharmed by the distant fireball. And what was her statement? That she should have been gently walked through the forest by Forget Me Not and they had happily escaped into the future? What was her call of action to Forget Me Not? "I wish you had let me decide whether to crush or release this pain, Forget Me Not!!" Druvis shouts, fists closed, voice breaking as she says his name. It hurts her, hoarse to say, to shout over explosions and music and all. Druvis is there, still near Vertin, her raven perched on the Timekeeper as a kind of ward or signal that had remained useful - or the bird simply had no more treats to chase and no reason to flutter away from Vertin and Druvis yet. The sound of gunfire, still, and Schneider speaking to Vertin, awakens some part of the taller woman who turns from her shout, wild, to see Schneider fully and have a moment of 'you're alive? you're alive!' play across now-revealed expression.
Tamamo	Lilian finds Tamamo past the bodies, those lucky few who will still be sleeping, too exhausted to even dream, when the end takes them. Flowing hems are marred by tiny bits of aerial viscera, and there is a streak of blood over her fan, but her face, at least, is clean. Her look is distantly haunted, yet her smile returns, fan lowered.     'One stone unweathered, right?'     "A foundation unbroken, like the roots that survive the winter." She takes the offered hand, eyes flitting to the suitcase. "Have you said all you must?"     She doesn't ask where they're going, now. Anywhere will be fine.
Timekeeper	"Monster!!"     Holly's shouting brings a momentary pause to the flailing of Forget Me Not's snakes, and accordingly, a thoughtful ritardando to his music. One snake cups its head under another's chin, like folded hands aimed towards Holly. She, the vampire masked in liquid gold, haphazardly spearing every human within reach of her vicious tail and tossing them away like rags after feeding on them.     "As are you, Doctor." The 'my lady' is gone now, naturally. The bitter tone of his betrayal makes him seethe in revenge rather than revel in it as he spits at her. "In the Age of Man, humanity has no more need of its monsters. Here, you were accepted, exalted, by the Guiding One herself, but you still chose to fight for your own obsolesence. What a pity, you tamed dog." "Mmmh, my-lord, I think we both do-not look our best...?"     "No," Vertin disagrees immediately, rambling with one trailing breath while squeezing Schneider's hand. "You're alive." The way she says it is the superlative of 'beautiful'. "To her??"     The time on Vertin's wrist ticks down to 0 1 leading the hours as her grip leaves the suitcase. Even believing as firmly as she does in her course of action, the choice of 'releasing' makes her hand tremble a little, but her expression is resolute. Her fingers brush over the clasps and she murmurs, "Ne iru milde en tiun bonan nokton," so that it can open in Lilian's care too.     "Yes." Vertin knows the details now, of just how easily Lilian could teleport herself and Tamamo to the safety of the Walden nearby without any risk of the Storm. But that's exactly why this second is the only one she has to make this choice. "Who else?"     If Schneider couldn't safely turn to the Foundation, if Lilian couldn't safely turn to the Suitcase-- an organization is defined by what it allows to slip through the cracks, and the bucket at the very bottom can't tolerate a single lost drop. For the Suitcase to ever be the community Vertin promised, Lilian *has* to be accepted into it, unconditionally.     Vertin did actually need her hand freed too, for real. Lilian has given Schneider one gun, but tucked securely against her body, Vertin has another one for her. A pair of gunshots drive through the neck of the snake that slams into Schneider, and when it's driven off, the other of her guns is thrown to her. "Forget Me Not-! He hardly notices if the snakes are hurt!"     The number of Manus henchmen here was only ever finite, and from the start, you could see nearly all of them. They're mowed down in droves by Bond's car, Geed's claw, Tamiel's shadows, Moissan's mallet, and the own undirected chaos of the humans inflicted with Forget Me Not's potion. While they throw themselves at everyone on Forget Me Not's command, and land hit after hit with their maces and arcane skills, each one that's beaten is beaten for good, and the crowd thins as they want to be anywhere at all but here-- the fog pens them in as it would hold them out.
Timekeeper	What's left, then, is Forget Me Not. Spreading outwards from his piano is a baby blue flowerbed of his namesake, each one popping out of the ground fully formed and in bloom. Their petals shear off and wither when struck by any of the violence flying around, whether it's Flamel throwing a Manus servant aside, or the wheels of Bond's car, and the shriveled black petals float gently in an imperceptible updraft.     At the center of the soft scene of flowers in regally wounded decay, is a man becoming increasingly mad. He slams his hands on the piano keys in a furiously building crescendo, hair tangled with sweat and blood and spilling in front of his face. The snakes conjured behind him rear out of the ground and flail wildly around, battering against his numerous enemies; one is caught by Baker and Seventh and garotted with electric cable, but the head that splashes to the ground and the black oily neck it was severed from rejoin within a minute, goo crawling back out of the stump to regenerate.     From the ground, more snake heads emerge, in hectically variable sizes. Small ones are crushed under Geed or Bond's car and snap at the healers and alchemists, and one larger than all the rest starts to form out of magically bubbling crude, ringed around Vertin and Schneider.     "I wish you had let me decide whether to crush or release this pain, Forget Me Not!!"     Forget Me Not gasps as if he's been shot, fingers slipping across the piano keys to fumble a chord. "But they-- *are* your pain, my lady! These bigots and lawmakers! It is their *fault*!" Where he frantically gestures with his hand, the feeble patients have mostly fled. None of them are distinct enough among the frightened and crying crowd to be a 'secretary of agriculture' anymore.     "Like this, your woods are watered with their blood! This is the final, only repayment Chicago could ever gift you! What else is there to want?! To walk away?!"     The snakes throw themselves in front of Forget Me Not, torn to pieces by the spray of gunfire from Bond. Suicidally, they hurl themselves to bite even at outstretched weapons, dying to draw a drop of blood, while Forget Me Not raves.     "These people are nothing! Less than nothing! If one hundred conspire to trespass against one of their betters, then a *thousand* should die in exchange! In Lady Arcana's world, we will be kings and goddesses, and you all side with *corpses* instead?! All because you've been *lied* to!"     With a grating-sounding chord, the massive snake fully takes shape and erupts out of the ground to throw back anyone standing near it. In its death throes from birth, it gurgle-hisses and lunged to try to swallow Schneider and Vertin whole.
Tamiel Luxis	Her focus away from the humans, Tamiel's whole attention is turned toward the assault. With upward gestures, blades come out of the earth as if from nowhere, and with Arcana nowehre to be seen, there's no one to call her sovereignty over it into question. She turns her attention toward Forget Me Not--     And ran headlong into his snakes.     The lag between her gestures and the dark coming alive wasn't much--but it was quite enough for his serpents to anticipate, throwing themselves in the way. The crushing waves of shadow was beat back by bodies of serpents--and then, one of them came right for Tammy. Her scarf pivoted in the air, to block the path--     --only for it to slither around and out of the way, ripping into Tamiel deeply, screaming, before it slammed her against the ground. Some of her feathers shattered around her, and she skid across the ground.     Her armor, spun together with magic, dissolved away, leaving her trying--trying--to push back up to her feet. Not much of an angel. The noise she made was strangled, either a laugh or a sob, as blood stained her white tunic red. She grabbed, feebly, at her throat, only to find emptiness and flowing liquid where it should have been.     Oh...     "Can't even protect m--" Her eyes rolled back into her head.     Tamiel's body slumped, boneless, to the ground.     'Cats' gathered around her. Listless. Quiet.
Veronica	Veronica grunts in frustration as the beheaded serpent reattaches its head, then again as it lashes out at her. She catches its head with one fist, then plants the other on the construct's jaw, and forcefully slams her hands together. The snake's head splatters entirely, this time, so it'll hopefully take longer to regenerate.     All the while Forget-Me-Not's concerto plays on through the chaos and carnage, and the tune worms its way into Veronica's attention. If he's controlling the snakes with his music... To destroy his piano she'd have to get past the whole field of serpents, but as they gather together into a titanic ur-snake an alternative plan forms in her head.     Barrelling forward, Veronica positions herself before the largest serpent, dragging several latched-on smaller snakes along with her like a football running-back forcing themselves across the touchdown line with tacklers in tow. There she turns Baker and Seventh to face the onrushing wall of fangs and goop, and wills her soundsystem to dial *all* the way up.     The blast that emanates from her EGO in the next moments is utterly deafening to everything in front of Baker and Seventh, a wall of rumbling energy like point-blank thunder more than music. Her hope is that such an immense disruption to Forget-Me-Not's performance will slow the snake long enough for her to grab its head and hold it, or at least slow its approach long enough for Vertin and Schneider to get clear.     "Somebody!" she blares over her speakers, loud enough to be audible even in the aftermath of her maximum-power blast. "*Now*!" She doesn't have the power to stop this on her own...
Holly Asturias	"As are you, Doctor."     "You've made corpses of them!" Holly argues with Forget Me Not, who may as well be her own conscience. Even as she says that, her Jail is wrapped around a man's torso, stinger a fraction of an inch into his neck already.     She stops, rasping, and the ringing of the dozens of arguments hammer her skull all at once. Lilian, matters of belonging, the Storm, safety, leaving these people to their fate, the lack of time to do anything else.     What singes the most is the taste of blood still in her throat.     'But it was self-defense'.     'They were already dead.'     'Mercy killing is part of my functions too.'     'It was because of the Storm Syndrome.'     She coughs, spitting blood back out as her black and gold respirator disintegrates and her Jail goes with it. Whether the freed man detonates, or runs, doesn't matter to her now.     It doesn't even matter if the Storm takes them.     "... a monster to kill a monster is a fair trade, isn't it?" She'd always rationalized it that way. It's why no one else at the Sanatorium is even allowed to perform the final rites. It's her job. No one else's. Then when they find a cure, she'll be the only one who needs to make amends.     The crowd has died down. Forget Me Not looks open for a split second. Holly makes for him, a beeline, Jail tensing up like a spring ready to cover the gap between them in an instant to impale him through his piano.     So focused as she is, the massive snake clips her trivially. Her Jail lunges, and from Holly being flung away, only manages to catch the edge of Forget Me Not's seat, before liquefying into a slurry of golden blood and Ichor.     Holly rolls and tumbles and comes to a stop, barely able to lift a muscle anymore. "Damn..."     She's struggling to try standing at all. Her right arm refuses commands completely under the weight of her family blight.     "What a hero I make..."     The hunger flares up with a vengeance, despite having just fed, and fed, and fed. A bit more, surely, would get her right back up.
Riku Asakura	<J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons, furiously dredging something yet more raw: "Because nobody belongs *ANYWHERE!!* There's NO SUCH *THING!!*" If this were said at any other time, Riku probably wouldn't have been hit as hard as he is right now.  The madness of the storm, with exhaustion, with his worry for his comrades, and the mass murder of civilians has widdled him down at this moment.   There is a moment in his mind, a young Riku, standing in a large gathering of people.  Ignored, and crying because he was alone, no mother or father there for him.  He was /alone/ and that itself made him feel no connection to the world around him.  Riku now does anything to feel like he belongs.   The gem on Geed's chest turns red and starts to flash, indicating he's running low on energy.  Between that comment and Lilian's words about this situation, it's /increadibly/ hard to deny the selfishness in his heart right now.  How alone he feels in this world, despite the people next to him right now.   Even as shadow snakes are crushed underneath him, internally, he's so off of his game that others wrap around him, crushing and biting at his body.  He struggles, fighting the snakes as he notices a large one closing in on Schneider and Vertin.  Sparks fly off his body, and light is ripped out of him.  It's dangerous, and it looks like he might actually lose here.   Allies are going down; the crimson is leaking from the outer parts of his eyes into the bluer parts.   'Somebody!' Geed notices Veronica's situation with the giant snake.  The red creeps back out of his blue eyes, and he tears himself free of the snakes that are on him.  Dangerously tearing bits and pieces of himself at the same time.  Geed runs towards Veronica.  His body is charging something... In fact, the blue in his eyes seems to shine outward as black and red energy crackles along his body.  He roars as he slides in energy, slowly gathering throughout the entire giant of light, before he aims the beam vertically, aiming it so that it'll fire at the base of the snake from his hands, which are in a plus shape.   The beam is a straight line through the snake and right towards Forget-Me-Not.
Regulus	Is she a hypocrite, Regulus wonders as she works, because she's standing up for these people? Is Lilian right that she's 'just fine' with SChneider now that she's being 'less of an arcanist'? Regulus never questioned that Schneider was an arcanist. Why would she have? And she never really thought twice about joining the Manus. But they offered her a mask, and she sees no such thing on Lilian's face. She's been an arcanist her whole life, and she's been kicked around and distrusted and yelled at and imprisoned because of who she was and what she did, moving in and out of detention centers for her whole early life and in and out of prisons afterwards. But now she feels like because she doesn't want to let a bunch of people die in agony that she's even losing her claim to being an arcanist. That because she's working for Verttin and thus indirectly the Foundation, she no longer gets to call herself one. Like, she's some kind of hypocrite for helping the status quo over those disturbing it. But to her, this isn't helping the status quo. To her, this is being Regulus. What kind of rock and roll pirate goes around letting a bunch of people suffer and die just because they'd let her suffer and die if it came to it? Give peace a chance, John Lennon said, and she believes in that line, she believed in that line before John Lennon wrote a song about it. Because what else can she do? She's used to humans calling that line nonsense, telling her that's not how the world works, and now arcanists are telling her the same thing. She thinks of James Bond saying that even saints flail in water while drowning. But she knows the people here aren't saints. And it's a lesson she's seen again and again before Forget Me Not started shoving it in her face. But the reason Regulus can't leave them to suffer and die has nothing to do with them, in the end. In the end, it's because Regulus can't be Regulus if she does that. She can't be the person who took the name Regulus. Her Code is Peace and Love and while it seems like it's been bouncing off of deaf ears all day, it's still what she believes. And it doesn't matter if arcanist and human can't hear it--at least Vertin did. At least Schneider did. Maybe even Sonetto did. And she feels like Lilian did, didn't she? She hiccups and sniffs as she tries to obscure her frustrated sobs. It feels like every step the way today her values have been trounced on, stomped on, and kicked while in the dirt. First with those men rushing after Lilian to beat her down at Forget Me Not's insistence, then when she learned she wouldn't be able to do anything for Cosmio and Achille, then again when the Manus threw Schneider's 'corpse' at her, and now again here. Why, WHY is everybody denying the truth right up to her face right now? Do they expect her to go to war? To pick up a gun and start killing too?
Regulus	She collects a number of vials from Sotheby and runs off. She can't let Sotheby run off to deliver the potions herself when they might explode right in front of her. She rushes over to the patients, only for a snake to slam into her bodily, causing her to tumble and a number of the vials to go flying. "Shit!" Regulus shouts. She extends out her hand summons a slew of magical notes flying through the air, bouncing the vials into the air so she can catch them before they hit the ground. Now, a bit more fumblingly, she continues her run--more of a hobble now, and starts forcefeeding the writhing humans she can get to Sotheby's neutralizing draught. If they try to stop her, she forces them anyway, putting her foot on their arm so they can't beat her away and forcing their mouths open so she can pour the kale green bubbly group down their throats. Peace and Love, assholes, if you can feel even a little bit of shame. But really, she hopes that least, now, they can recognize help for what it is. That for once, the people she's trying to help won't shoot at her. For once, it'd be nice if her stupid crazy arcanist beliefs that are so stupid and crazy most arcanists think she's nuts are proven to have something to them after all. But if not, she'll make it reality her own way anyway. Like she's always done.
Schneider Greco	'I am alive,' her smile had said to Vertin, chin down and eyelashes fluttering for a precious quarter-second.      'I am alive,' it said later to Druvis, breathless and spotted through the snake-coils. "Cosimo, get the angel up! Achille, Holly, see what she needs!" "Why should I? Just let us rest--" "You want to let this man say he killed you?" "Shit. Come on."      It takes her a second to process the sudden weight of Winter Crow in her hand; eyes dropping to it, then jumping to Lilian, and then digesting the bleak word 'Second.' a moment later. The gun feels heavier, just now, than in the instant before she understood that word. "Ah... thank you, my-la--"      A giant lunging snake has a way of snapping one back to the present, though. Familiar-timbred gunshots follow; Schneider catches her other gun from Vertin, 'dismisses' it magically into a swirl of sharp black feathers, and snags the lunging snake on their whirl like sheet metal bouncing off a buzzsaw. "Look. My umbrella for you, right? Mhmhm..."      That can fend off the snake's lunges, but it won't kill it; she can't assume Winter Crow has more than one shot in it, the snake is in the way of Forget Me Not, and morphing her gun back to finish off the snake with bullets would leave them defenseless. Could Vertin shoot Forget Me Not? No; Schneider is the one who kills with borrowed guns, she can't ask that of the Timekeeper.      So, between sawblade screeches...      "My-la-dy Druvis," she says. "I'm sor-ry. I know, he has been kind to you. Gentle, when most were not."      The sound is awful. Thank god it isn't constant.      "I've asked a lot of you. Wands, a visit, silence. I haven't... done much, in return. A little cooking; I wish it was more. I did-not know what could heal your pain. There was time, I thought..."      Another whirling shriek-gouge. She can still hold position; she still can't get the shot.      "But this is all Lord Forget-Me-Not knows. To water with blood. It is all his kindness will ever mean. If that does-not heal you... please." Take this step out of the ash and the blood.      Schneider lunges to the side, jerking Vertin with her, to get a bead on Forget Me Not around the snake. Her gun becomes a gun again, and stops being a whirl of feathers; she gestures with it at Forget Me Not, and blurs his ghost out of him at the edges- bigger target.      In the second that pulling the trigger takes, she can shield Vertin from the serpent with her body. And Druvis, she only hopes, can shield her. BANG Winter Crow's alchemical firing array answers to her. The gold casing ejects.
Odette Raskins	Although Odette fares well enough against one person, getting piled on by multiple people at once is not something she's well equipped for. The fact that they're getting blasted away, beaten back, or gunned down by her allies does ease some of the pressure on her, but she's not having a good time at all even before considering all the mental damage she's taking from everything going on. The snakes do not help at all. Even if it's mostly the smaller ones coming after her, Odette doesn't have the mental or physical bandwidth to contend with snakes and treat the sick at the same time. She certainly tries to do so, of course, and she's trying her ass off to do that. The temptation to not bother, to just heed Lilian's words about just worrying about herself and leaving the doomed to stay doomed, to heed Flamel's words about nobody really belonging still ring fresh in her mind. She really would have a better chance at surviving if she just takes cover by Vertin's suitcase and waits for things to blow over. It's not like she has fancy powers or money, and would anyone here really miss if she hid somewhere? Would any of the wounded really matter after another hour or three? "it is worth fighting to get five more hours, right?" "We can't let their last moments be writhing in agony and used up like bombs." Schneider's and Regulus' words keep pushing her along, just a little more. Just another person, just one more mind soothed from their predicament, even if they won't exist an hour from now given what Tamamo's told everyone. Odette races for another person that's probably closer to exploding than not, desperate to keep just one more person from blowing up. As Odette's busy chasing after another patient, one of the smaller snakes catches her across the face. While she's occupied tangling with and prying that snake off herself with blood spurting out of her face, one of the larger snakes clips her across the front and launches the EMT into a slide across the dirt. She has enough wherewithal to smear a patch across her arm and slice into the snake, but the piled up damage across her body isn't going to let her get back up anytime soon.
Flamel Parsons	Snakes swarm, smash, crash. The titanic serpent lashes out, and Flamel is sorely, *sorely* under-defending. Amid all this smashing and crashing and all this yelling, it's all a bit undercut: He isn't paying attention when the flank of the beast slams into his side, sending him flying. Nothing comedic, nor dignified, here. He just slams, once, into the ground, then skids hard through a remaining tentpole with a wet, brutal crack.     ---     The Director walks through the halls of the Parsons Institute, eventually reaching a central chamber eight storeys tall, surrounding a massive, still partially-infected orange tree, bigger than any would be in real life, that soars up and up. It's still withering after the outbreak. Walkways and smaller planters encircle it, and corpses hang over those. Members of a cleanup crew slowly decontaminate the structure, carting away corpses for incineration. UPE-1929 sits, placidly, among those branches, examining the gun in her hand. The Director approaches.     "The Storm will be here soon." He says.     "..."     "The ground isn't concecrated."     "..."     "You have to know what to do. You always survive."     "..."     Flamel Parsons' mental image of Schneider Greco stands. She plucks a horrid-looking, infected orange from the tree, wrenching it open. "You know we have better food for you." The Director says, gesturing around. This whole institute is his. Can't he give her something?     UPE-1929 begins to gorge on the orange. "Wait-- Wait, stop." The Director says, firmly. "If you want something to eat, you know you only have to ask." She won't stop eating that rotten, infected flesh, though. The Director signals to subordinates. "Get some food here for her. And something to bring her down. UPE-1929, wait. One nine--" He starts.     Red feathers bloom from her back, as if she'd just been shot. She staggers, starts to stumble in pain. "Twenty-nine-- Schneider! SCHNEIDER!!" The branch shakes. She bites into the infected orange more. She tears at its flesh. Bullet casings rain, the leaves of the orange tree descend as thousands, tens of thousands of dollars. "Stop! Wait!! We're going to get-- What am I doing wrong?! You always know how to survive, why aren't you telling me how to make things better for you?! Why are you still, why are you still hurting like this, putting yourself on the edge like this?!"     His greed surges. His selfishness rises. "I changed the tactic! I adjusted my approach!" Those red feathers descend slowly around him, mixed with the dollars, and the raining bullet-casings. "You were supposed to be the time it finally worked! It always works for the campers, why, why is it, why are you doing this?! Let me have this! Just, just become better, when I give you *help*! I've done enough! I've DONE ENOUGH!!" But no reply. No matter the shouting, no belonging, no connection. The camper leaves the artificial space of faux-support that can change nothing, affect nothing. "SCHNEIDER! SCHNEIDER!!" UPE-1929's footing grows more and more unsteady, and--     He is yelling at a bodybag. The eyes of the technician wheeling it away fall on him contemptuously. "Director." She says. "Do we dispose of this one? Or do plan to *use* it like the *others*?" The Director's breath chokes. He swallows, opens his mouth to speak words that come slowly...     ---     Flamel Parsons jolts awake. "Sch-schneider..." He chokes out. Barely moving, face-down in blood and mud and death. He starts to struggle to his feat, certainly out of the fight. But still, he stumbles and staggers to approach her. "One... last thing." He whispers.     He won't reach her before this Forget-Me-Not stuff is concluded.
Ein	It had taken ten years, It had taken one day,             but with two intruders into the peace of her grief - Vertin and Forget Me Not, opposite - Druvis Weyerhauser III was forced to confront the whole of it. Making Druvis peel away the cloak and dusty cobwebs of spirits gathered of burned leaves, and seeing what was underneath, as well as confronting the branch in stasis at dinner and the questioning that came after all was done by Vertin and guided by gnostic intuition. Forget Me Not's review was more pointed, more damning. When she was violent and bitter, angry and hot to her hate and with the taste of fresh ashes in her mouth she would have draped across his piano and rolled in it, happy for someone, anyone, to do it. To get her satisfaction. But today, killing was a test, and she had failed. But today, killing took from her, a burn that couldn't be taken back. Druvis exists in a circle of safety of her own, her 'snakes' a bed of roots that burrows into a knot beneath her feet and radiate from her. Walked to a place of honor and left there as giant attacks and beam vreems crash around her. She repositions slowly, bringing and gathering a foundation of fibrous material underneath her, like each root sought her specifically in their craving spread, and exterior parts lift from their radials to bind in and block danger or dome together in the case of the Wrecking Burst such that when it is done, she emerges from her own cocoon of safety and grimaces, holding cane staff in casting-raised pose while breathing heavily from stress and from simply forcing standing in the same place and stubbornly not moving in her forest. It was still hers. She had to stand there, and hold her ground, and be invincible for another hour. It was all still hers for another hour. "Yes! It is their fault, Forget Me Not!" Exasperated, angry, knowing she won't get a second bite of this apple or burn of this branch. "It is the final, only repayment for what they did to the forest, to the rowans and the oaks!" She gestures out, closed fist, to point at the exploded mayor. "He can give *me* no-thing else, Forget Me Not!" Frustrated, she's not saying it right, she's pre-empted by Forget Me Not's raving. 'and you all side with *corpses* instead?! All because you've been *lied* to!' "Don't." She warns, cracking like a bolt-broken branch. "Don't *you* do that to me." It's almost the classic impasse, but it's not the classic reason. "Do you think it's about that? You're *leaving* me, Forget Me Not! You've *left* me, left me nothing at all!"
Ein	Arms wide, open, taking in everything as wand floats before her vertical and brightly aglow, Druvis shakes her head and resumes shouting. "The fire chief, the mayor, the men from the paper - who am I left at all of my pain to visit or release for myself? Who, Forget Me Not?! Name them!" Panting, frantic, just as raving, their relationship crashes into the ground with them screaming. "You could have *walked with me*, Forget Me Not! You didn't even ask me before you lit the fuses and burned the candles! You've thrown me a party, and smiled when you ate the cake, how am I to even feel about it when it's my life and *my* grief you've stolen and spilled on the ground and asked if I liked it?" "Forget Me Not, I don't like this because you've made my pain about you and I'll never get *that* back! *You*'ve become my pain, and what am I to do!?!" Her arms drop. Her voice cracks, and her teeth click shut, and she balls her fists at her side. "What am I to *do*, left with hating only you? What have you left me with?" She asks, because the answer to her question isn't 'can she side with the humans'. Druvis Weyerhauser III doesn't know if she can forgive her oldest friend. And if she can't, she certainly cannot stay.
Ein	'I'm sor-ry. I know, he has been kind to you. Gentle, when most were not.' Shuddering as she breathes, Druvis rights, knowing she's expended what she has and there's not... 'more' to be said, simply the same things again. The acknowledgement Schneider gets is clearer than when Druvis wore her mask, a cant of the eyes following the duelist's address. "Many ask things. Some receive." 'I did-not know what could heal your pain.' "It was not known." Druvis answers, shaking her head. "This isn't all he knows." She's certain. She knew him - ten years of him. Had ten years been lies? Was she being groomed for this, constantly, the entire period? It was unthinkable. Not over a single day's doubt, no matter the era-ending events. 'It is all his kindness will ever mean.' Druvis has no answer or counter for this, frown deepening. Everything that this setup had accomplished was usurping her original pain and reason for joining, by her original recruiter, for his jollies. The immediate massive tilt towards Lilian after exploiting her abilities to capture Vertin and Schneider with Lilian essentially unharmed and available for cult indoctrination culimated in . . . her being deconsidered and ignored and then set up and farmed for points? It wasn't praxis and it didn't make sense from any perspective *but* betrayal. And so, like in the tunnels, Druvis defaults to seeing Schneider in trouble by an autonomous attacker and her readied wand and the forest at her beckon draws down on the gnosis in the air and cracks apart the arcane working that Druvis had placed on the forest so long ago. From seeds, dormant in the ground, a burst of wild plants rises up, growing immediately tall and oppressive and giving a full hedge of cover between Schneider and the Snake, thorned bushes and vibrant foliage with thick stems frustrating any parting. The raw force of the exposed life is the first real sigh of a scab coming free with relief, the zipper peel of the working along the breakpoint of Schneider's salvation and Forget Me Not expanding along a long crescent that would, if followed, be part of a large set of buried circles holding the whole forest taut in a single moment, the thick chains of one day's grief coming apart in one night - a far more equivalant exchange. As hedge closes though, there is a final exchange, between Schneider and 'Lawrence': BANG, barks a different wand as grasses and small shoots break in radial waves through the forest. It cannot possibly get back even a little bit to the majesty of before in the scant time left in the world, but life remains abundant.
Timekeeper	The little alchemists' circle surrounding Sotheby isn't the primary target of Forget Me Not's assault, compared to the insufferable heroes shouting at him, but they're caught in the crossfire regardless. Once the field of forget-me-not blossoms reaches the semi-noncombatants, the vicious black snakes sprout out of the ground like garden eels and snap at them in undirected, vindictive violence. Odette and Tamiel are caught and downed, but Moissan, Regulus can still assist brave little Sotheby to the completion of her remedy.     To Sotheby's interpretation, Forget Me Not's 'healing potion' consists of fast-acting healing reagents, that both improve the patient's condition with regards to their illness and counteract the other parts of the mixture. Once they've worn off, a biological acid eats holes through the drinker's stomach lining, introducing blood into the gut, which catalyzes the explosives to go off. Thus, the little lady finds the process to neutralize the entire disaster quite basic!     And Regulus sees it in action when she delivers the first curative to the closest patient. Lying on the cot, the young girl doesn't immediately hop back to her feet like Forget Me Not's potion allowed for, but the more holistic nutritional-medicinal approach slowly, steadily eases the pain that wracked her whole body. And also, the synthesis of healing base and hemorrhaging acid gurgles and pops, and in proper Sotheby fashion, the cured humans begin burping up bubbles as they recover.     Forget Me Not, on the other hand, is having a terrible time. What should have been an indulgent moment of triumph and celebration at the height of the Manus-- and his, and by association(?) Druvis's-- success, has instead gotten him shot, and worse, scolded. Where his piano concerto began as an elegantly smug musical titter over the suffering of his victims, it's become a frenzied extension of his desperation and frustration.
Timekeeper	"Don't *you* do that to me."     Druvis's unexpected retort makes his hands seize up, slamming a discordant mess pedaled to sustain like a skipped heartbeat. He sharply inhales, eyes wide. "To *you*?! Lady Druvis, I--!" "You're *leaving* me, Forget Me Not! You've *left* me, left me nothing at all!"     None of the oil-slick snakes have even gotten close to striking Druvis, and Forget Me Not would sooner preemptively kill one of the humans running around in panic than risk their explosive charges going off anywhere near her. That carefulness, and all the affection and fawning service and praise he's shown her beforehand, doesn't correlate to him being emotionally submissive to his most highly-regarded comrade and friend, though. If anything, the way he snaps back at her is *more* emotionally turbulent for being directed towards Druvis rather than Schneider and the Elites who he's in active conflict with.     "How could you think I would speak to *you* like that?! I would never! One sniveling bureaucrat whispering in your ear and one dead traitor," His hands slide in a sharp glissando across the keys, and a snake rears up behind him to bite down on the hood of Bond's car to disable the guns. "And now, when I speak of 'them', you count yourself among them?!"     He swings his hand in frustration, and a snake follows the movement to whip across the battlefield in a frenzy, swiping through civilians and fighters alike. "Druvis, I hate them *for* you!" "*You*'ve become my pain, and what am I to do!?!"     "And what would you have done instead?! Wait, I assume? Delay and deliberate, until the Storm sifted them out unchallenged?" The politicians and people of Chicago are gone now, so when Forget Me Not reaches for some vessel of sin to take his frustration out on, his metaphorical hand swipes through empty air. Instead it's Holly, already down, who takes a demonstrative beating when he pounds his fist on the piano. "This is your moment! Your catharsis! Your pain will live on forever in the scars those *reprobates* inflicted upon your woods! How can your hate have nowhere to belong, when it's still all around you!"     There's nothing more he can say, when Druvis shields Schneider from his attack. New green shoots erupt out of the ground, and cast in the rejuvenating light of arcanum, Forget Me Not's corpse-pale face seems even more static and lifeless than usual. His sullen look shifts from Druvis to Lilian, holding the Suitcase of the enemy and doing nothing to combat Schneider or Vertin, and comes to a defeated conclusion all on his own.     When Vertin steps towards Druvis under the shelter of her plants, the blue blossoms made by Forget Me Not underfoot wither and die in a dramatic upheaval of decay, while the wildflowers in Druvis's thornbush stay vibrant and alive. "Miss Druvis. All you've ever wanted is what's best for the woods, right? And in nature and within your heart alike, these scars may be painful and suffocating, but the growth that lives within cannot be suppressed forever."     Without the Manus, the trees of the forest will soon be erased by the Storm, leaving Druvis alone in all the world. Vertin and Schneider together, she hopes, can be the seeds of a new era, one not defined by pain. "I have a wilderness that I care for too. I hope I'll be able to share it with you."
Timekeeper	The flash of light that signals Sonetto's arcane skill ripping through the combat sears by Druvis's plants, blasting through the snake held captive by them. A few seconds later, the Chief Investigator herself, finally having fought through the tides of enemies, hurries after to race towards Vertin and clasp her hand in both of hers.     "Timekeeper!" Her eyes find the bloody wound on Vertin's shoulder, as well as the accumulated scuffs and scrapes of the past long hours. "Ah... you're hurt.... I am sorry that I failed to protect you, even after you...."     Vertin pats her hand soothingly. "It's alright, Sonetto. It's okay. I'm safe because of Schneider's help."     Sonetto swallows, overwhelmed with emotion, and turns to Schneider like she might throw herself into a bow. "Th-that's right. Schneider, I-I...." And seeing that she's about to cry, Vertin lightly pats Sonetto's head to recenter her. "There will be time later. We're all together now. Let's get to safety, first." BANG     The alchemical array flares to life, and Forget Me Not's spirit floating above him is drilled through by Winter Crow's shot. Forget Me Not's eyes bug out in indignation at Schneider and he accusingly points before the wounded ghost slams back down to reunite with him. "How?! You pretending--"     He chokes on the pain, and blood spills out of his mouth and down his chin. Wheezing, he wipes it away, and shakily stands up from his piano. Surrounded by enemies, even the allies he had, he's lost this battle and he knows it. Before retreating, his slit-eyed glare rakes across the exhausted Elites and arcanists, and he bitterly plucks one of the grey roses around his collar, and crushes it to powder in his fist, like Hamlet's skull.     "Ah, what ceremonies of innocence you hold to await the blood-dimmed tide. Lady Arcana is inevitable. The Manus Vindictae is inevitable. The return of the arcanists, of paradise, is inevitable, and you will not be spared in your ignorance." This line, and this line alone, is directed towards Druvis and Lilian when his eyes find them. "Forever will not be troubled by its delay."     When he leaves, the blue-black piano stays behind. In only a couple hours, the rain will fall, and nothing here will remain besides that piano and the suitcase held in Lilian's hands. Right now, the crowds of sick and starving have exhausted themselves in the clearing, and as the clouds begin to release a slow metronome of raindrops, there's no obstacle left to distrubuting Sotheby's potion to ease their last hours on Earth.
Schneider Greco	Schneider advances after the snake, firing off several more shots from Winter Crow-- BANG BANG BANG --because of course she does. But every step she takes after Forget Me Not is a step further from her allies, and from safety. When he breaks line-of-sight, Schneider hesitates, and slows, and droops.      Which is more important? To avenge the past, or flourish for the present? She has always known her answer. It is better to live than to kill.      She stands like that, gun lowered and shoulders slumped towards the Manus retreat, for a few more seconds.      A long rattling breath escapes Schneider. It's a release of a whole day's tension and adrenaline. It sounds like it could bring up the last of the blood from her lungs. People are talking behind her, and she owes them thanks, so she resists the temptation to drop to her knees.      Druvis has made a similar choice. Schneider dismisses her gun, holding Winter Crow loosely still in her other hand to offer it back to Lilian, and offers Druvis her empty delicate hand to squeeze a moment.      "It's beautiful, my-la-dy," she says, wearied but sincere, about the new life. "Mmmmh, the dulci corviddu, we did-not scare him off too bad, I hope? I think... he would like to see."      Morbidly, Schneider wonders if the Suitcase saves animals; if it's humans alone who it leaves to die.      To Sonetto, and Vertin: "You did-not fail to protect her, my-la-dy." Not 'old hag', for once. "You entrusted her to me, right? I'm sor-ry that... there was all this mess, anyway. Marian, she is safe, but I- mhmhm, I am not much of a protector, I think."      Achille and Cosimo both have cleaned up Manus minions and tended to fallen allies, in their clumsy way (mostly, they put pressure on bleeding and yell 'Over here!' to Odette). Now they re-emerge near Schneider.      She stiffens, with a bit of guilt, and tears her longing eyes from Vertin. "... So what now, boss." "I do-not know." "Way I hear it, you might as well put a bullet in us now, huh?" "No." "Well why the fuck not? We're human, Storm's gonna get us either--" "Because you still have an hour, Achille, and you are going to live that hour, right?" "... Look around, boss. It's all a mess. Messes and bodies. Not gonna be my best hour, I'll tell you."      "... My-lord." Schneider casts a look back at Vertin; and at Tamamo and Lilian, past her, with the Suitcase. "Why don't we... let these people into the Suitcase. Everyone. Let them eat, and drink, and be happy, somewhere nicer. For a little while. Right?"      "If they can-not live this bit of life... it's too sad."