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Lilian Rook     'º<. . . This isn't something I can understand. <Underived Conviction> will know. Please <wait/make yourselves comfortable/don't touch anything>.>º'

    . . . . . . . .

    'º<That's so sad. I want to <change everything>. All of us do. I've never had a <pilgrim/leper/egg/endling/one good man in Sodom and Gomorrah> come to me, or speak their <troubles>. I don't want to <do nothing/be as heaven and earth>. You're <our> <neighbour>.>º'

    . . . . . . . .

    'º<Are you scared?>º'

    . . . . . . . .
    
    '§<Every <now/them> and <again/him>.>§'

    The effect is immediate on multiple fronts.

    It's Ash first. Half a year of cagey promises, vague implications, and referential insinuations, all meant to encourage continuing to seek out, rather than withdrawing and leaving, must be partially responsible for the headway that they've made in that time; but those were built on a foundation laid by ten years of obsession. Being content to focus on grappling with the brand new world of human hearts and spending time with Nika was predicated on there being nothing else to find just yet. The voyage to Kepler was predicated on everyone wanting to see for themselves what Ash halfway already knew.

    To see Lilian; the one everyone always worried for, the one everyone spoke of, and yet the one most attached to 'living as a human', retreating easily and often from the shared space that had been her own idea; peeling back enough to reveal how much she knows of the other half, is impossible to tolerate by sitting still. They release the Beauty of Ash almost as quickly as they had taken hold of it. They spin from Nika's innocent unknowing to Lilian's squirming admission, and they don't know what face to wear.

    So they don't wear one at all. What looks like a nervous, upset tic, clenching a fistful of their too-big shirt at the left collar, turns into a harsh ripping sound and a boiling rupture of cold liquid chrome and iredescent glass. A glimpse of their hideous triplicate scar, at the shoulder and the opposite waist both, reveals the 'petrified' texture and discolouration as only a mistaken conclusion draw from a scab of hard transparency laid over that which is tightly coiled at rest. The reflected light captured in the recursive images between layers of chrome glows so brightly for an 'emptying', rather than a summoning; red gushing from stitches violently torn.

    The staggering effusion clings to itself just short of splattering, and splashes against Ash themself in recoil, down the adjoining arm and chest, surging in vertical helix up the neck and finally reaching the head before it scatters; a curve of reflective metal layered with polarized glass with shape like the near side of the moon, and its disintergrated halo of weightless two-sided 'eyes', taken for such only by how the unreadable symbols etched on each saccade in every direction like agitated pupils.

    The presence that had nearly fully withdrawn is barely second. There is an explosive increase in its nearness, quickly exceeding the established bar and overflowing your perceptive space into staining the physical.
Lilian Rook     Your own thoughts echo back to you from the air around you; they thrum inside your ears, spoken by the waveform called sound, directed at you and no one else. Your space begins to physically splinter from others; the ground heaves with the boiling upward of the neon waters like magma from below, splitting the surface and thickly tangling space in centimeter-thick screens. Everyone else seems to speak into an airless vacuum; but not you. Learning to read lips would have been a formality anyways, because now every word is printed on air, distant and impersonal as a street sign, and still legible and informative as directions.

    The disruption to the foliage causes the wet 'greenery' to snap and crumble away from parts of the canopy, falling away from the massive black spiral structure half-buried in the ground, exposing a glimpse of its dull red core at one end. The presence is now felt in a half-real place between you-- you and everyone else; always between, as the third in every pair, but placeable only as a matter of perspective. Its own thoughts are scratched into space with the heading of the building-front that you'd been looking for and the style of a signature.

    º<Where <did you come from/have you been>? Every other <star in the sky> had <finally/inevitable but disappointing> gone quiet. Why are you <dressed like that>? Are you <well/safe>? Do you need help? Please don't go.>º
Arthur Lowell > Arthur: Hold on to the world

    No. It's peeling away. He can't.

> Arthur: And that's good.
> Arthur: Speak to a peer.
> Arthur: Speak to the moon.
> Arthur: Speak to this one like you used to speak to me.

    Breathless. Trapped in a vacuum. Struggling to breathe, isolated from the words others are saying. The patch of greenery that Arthur perceives as being his own sole island creeps ever-smaller, and he doesn't run from that. He sits, he crosses his legs, and rather than set his knees down, he holds them against his body.

    "I was born to be your neighbor." Arthur doesn't use his reciprocal language for a short time. It's a smaller voice, more 'quiet'. "Not live like you, but..." He breathes tensely. To try to explain this to, maybe, one of the few people who could actually understand it? His dialect shifts. He creates so many layers of reality-abstraction that one sentence carries with it a sort of 'sandbox exit', to access a meaning that he would expect only the rarest to understand.

    "@ I'm scared on purpose. I'm unsafe on purpose. @"



    "What are you three..." His voice is thin, strained slightly. "How are you still staying here? Enough to speak so I can hear? Why aren't you coming apart at the seams? Retiring? Ex..." There might be a motive for this after all. Coming here. Seeing if anyone would answer when he spoke. "I keep looking. For something to fix it. I don't expect an answer but only because I didn't expect a reply to begin with. But if you, if..."

    If three people, untethered more than anyone in any world could ever be untethered from anything, were to remain like this, capable of an answer, Arthur might finally have *his* answer. Something to reconcile impossible paradoxes indefinitely forever. A selfish goal that has made him drag a half-dozen people across the galaxy on a wild goose-chase to an empty inside-out planet. Looking for coping mechanisms and survival tactics at a place where, if you round down at a short enough decimal-place, there are no survivors at all.

    "Please tell me you know an answer."
Tamamo     º<I only hold axioms. <Proof> is a <weapon/leash/battle-standard>. My <hands> are empty, and I am happier for it.>º

    Oh, well then. "We have come with nothing to prove, but would be interested in the comparison of notes. We hope to find similarity in dissimilarity, and connection outside the edge of the circle." She could probably have tried making this easier for Nika, but then it wouldn't be just as she thinks.

    º<Are these your <progeny/disciplines/petals/sparks>?>

    "It is more complex and varied."

    She's still thinking of what to say next when Lilian speaks, and then Ash moves, and then Tamamo can't do anything but call out, "Lilian!" To be sure that she can. To be sure that there's a limit to isolation.

    It's overwhelming. It's worrying. It's strange, but not stranger than she could've imagined. She can handle this. She can calm her breathing, move her eyes from face to face to face, finding the words that mark those speaking hanging there to see. Her eyes move quickly, posture hunched in a near-stumble, hair thrown forward in her suit. She straightens slowly, minding the gravity.

    º<Every other <star in the sky> had <finally/inevitable but disappointing> gone quiet.>º

    "Long ago, when stars and moons spoke more freely, when the terminus of life was undecided, and all the world was clay, there came to be a mystery neither star nor moon could know, but could yet ask. Though it was 'long ago,' there were means to pierce future's veil, in those days, in those burning eyes. I am the learner and the questioner, a drop of a star's sea -- a star that is 'now' quiet, retreating to 'elsewhere and elsewhen.'"

    º<Why are you <dressed like that>?>º

    Ruefully, "I wished to look like 'them.' I did not want to scare them. I wanted them to speak to me. I wanted to learn." She's not talking about the pressure suit. "I can show you, if not seeing is very worrying. Otherwise, I will remain. I have become comfortable 'like this.'"

    º<Do you need help?>º

    "We have means of finding shelter, food, comfort, and company. We have found an unexpected exit -- it is curious."

    º<Please don't go.>º

    "We have come a long way. It would be 'wrong' to leave suddenly. She said to you, we would be happy to be friends, as I have said to you, we seek connections outside the circle."

    She affirms, "We are 'neighbors.' I did not come to carry to you my troubles. My 'reason' is fulfilled by the journey I take, that brought together these 'possibilities.'" The spelling is, somehow, 'people.' "I have been surprised, but I have yet to be wrong. If you are three, then... now, there are seven."
Angela Keep off the grass? Don't wash up? Yeah, sure, Roland and Tiphereth can do this. Angela isn't in a position to get onto the grass or wash up either. They can also not touch anything though making themselves comfortable is a little difficult right now.

Is he scared? "Always, as a professional courtesy." Roland promises--perhaps he is also scared on purpose and unsafe on purpose, though he doesn't seem to be deeply expressing his always-fear. He has what he feels is a healthy respect for that which he can't fit in his own head, or barely fit in his own head. His thoughts repeat back a calming list of groceries that he tends to repeat to himself when he doesn't want to think what he's thinking. Eggs. Milk. Rice. Hot Sauce.

Tiphereth is wondering once again what is the meaning of existence that she is looking for. The options seem much more vast than the small world she was raised in, enough that she gets a kind of choice paralysis. Angela is staring at the structure from the pad, thinking about how readily Nika can communicate through the screen even now.

"Every star had...?"

"Probably unwellsafe." Roland jokes. "But I make do."

Do they need help? Will they not go? Well, Roland imagines that's not exactly a question for him to answer as he's the help.

"We worked hard to come here." Her eyes slant towards the Eggpack, "You need not fear their absence." She's pretty confident in that, at least.
James Bond I ever tell you about the chief? Guy was always talking about how the alphabet ghouls would do that kinda shit to me if oooooonly if weren't for him nobly 'sponsoring' me as a NAZCA asset.

    "There's always a sponsor. Or a surrogate parent. Whatever will let them get their hooks in. I'm glad that you made it."

¶Hey/Look¶! There's a fucking warpgate or something deeper in on the island! Come see, come see!

    That draws Bond's attention like nothing else so far has. Where it goes is irrelevant next to what it could mean. There are survivors. If there are survivors, then there's a reason that this place is the way it is--why it feels like a production instead of a place with answers of its own. Observation is the tool of the enemy, Petra had said, and had explained why--that the entire planet had been reoriented into detecting would-be Blooms. So, what does it mean?

    Is it a baffle? Something to satisfy the curiosity of people who see the world as atoms and molecules, then to bore them and send them away without ever knowing? Could it be that?

    Hoping is sketchy when the lottery is involved. Still, Bond's spacesuit provides jump jets to counteract the increased gravity in such measure as makes it possible to bound between the islands, on towards the one that Petra mentioned. The gate itself is one thing--the spiral structure emerging from the same island, and the path that leads to it, quite another.

º<Why? You were not <sent for/idiated>. Please <Keep off of the Grass>. This <kalpa/stage/vessel> is out of use. Don't <wash up> here.>º
¶<<Hello World>! I'm from <freshman year/our hometown>! I want to <compile/interpret/express> for the other <beings>. Is that going to be <kind/helpful/necessary>? I would be really happy if <we> could be friends.>¶

    "We don't mean any offense. It's very important to us... and to me, personally, that we're able to speak with you."

º<That's so sad. I want to <change everything>. All of us do. I've never had a <pilgrim/leper/egg/endling/one good man in Sodom and Gomorrah> come to me, or speak their <troubles>. I don't want to <do nothing/be as heaven and earth>. You're <our> <neighbour>.>º

    "Ash--" 'Are you alright' dies, or rather, is printed upon the air, and Bond realizes at that moment that he isn't alright. He doesn't need to reduce the world down to its atomic state, or to measure every inch of it, but there are those things which he has taken for granted, and which now are being shred to ribbons. Air, the ground beneath him, the space between him and Arthur and Arthur and Petra and Petra and Tamamo and Tamamo and Lilian and Lilian and Ash--all of it an arbitrary thing that this presence has apparently broken over its knee.

    Two breaths of panic set in, before Bond realizes that this is exactly what Ash was talking about, isn't it? This other person asked 'why should I believe you' and all of it gave its answer. Maybe it's right. Maybe it isn't, but it helps to ground him and if he isn't grounded, he can't communicate--and this entire trip will have been a waste.

º<Where <did you come from/have you been>? Every other <star in the sky> had <finally/inevitable but disappointing> gone quiet. Why are you <dressed like that>? Are you <well/safe>? Do you need help? Please don't go.>º

    "I'm from the planet Earth in the Sol system. It's very much not gone quiet. Not in the way that someone like me would mean, and not... completely in the way I suspect you mean. Lilian, Ash, Sakura and Oreshnika are also from Earth, though not the same one as mine."

    "I'm safe, and for the first time in a very long time, I'm happy. But I do need your help. It's... difficult for someone like me to explain, because I'm not like them. I don't have the ability to take time and make it mine, or to be an indivisible particle, or to say that 'I wish it had gone this way, and not that,' or to speak to the bones of the earth as my friends."
James Bond     "I'm a..." He can't express it in the way that Nika and Petra can, so he chooses every term that applies. "A national treasure. A photocopy. A stand-in. And now I'm the one that got away. I've never felt as though I was as included in 'human' as most humans are, but I know that I am one--or at least that I'm not like those four."

    "Those four people are very, very important to me. One of them, Lilian, helped save me from a kind of living death. One day, I don't know when, they're going to go somewhere that I can't. I imagine that it's very much like what must have happened here."

     "Ash said that the burden would be on humans to catch up. I want to. I want to believe it's possible. I don't want to lose them after we worked so hard to bring them together. But I don't have any idea what that looks like, or what the road between here and there will be like."
Xion The extension of moment, of 'drawing closer' as expressed in increasingly nonderived experience, would take Xion's breath if she was not holding it, and instead filled nostrils with the calming thick scent of pure and true sugar syrup. Her Heart-sense, the languages she had learned touching many things, helped fill in the gaps and details, expressed back at the presence in an inner-voice speak back. If it spoke in her head, she could talk back, easily. Couldn't she?

Xion holds her connection, her heartfelt photograph of 'the Antegent' in hand, having heard a//the presence's voice long ago to draw to the first spiking wound - to London Town, and to see in gaze The Object that hand held image of left her speechless and other-thoughtless for several moments.

They had followed the line back, Arthur tracing with finger and sense and burning need to have question answered, and now the native source stood out among the stained 'physical'.

Shifting Keyblade around in grip, hugging it to chest more like a comfort plush than deadly weapon or master of unlocking, Xion's holding of the weapon rests the nerve-cap ball against shoulder, ear pressed to the glass like a conch shell to hear the ocean clearer in. She walks, but differently, the context changed, and tries to remain open.

ºYou're <our> <neighbour>.º

Exhaling with a faint relief, the kind when hearing 'oh? no, you're fine' when it means something specific, Xion tries to intuit where she is being tugged, in what direction. Neighbor. What was neighbor?

'We're already as close as touching hearts, here,' She dips chin, looking down at boots. 'But I'd still like to know more.'

Looking up the dialogue becomes isolating--

--literally. Despite feeling and hearing and knowing the distant impact of Arthur, the far shine of Tamamo, the lucid brilliance of what is becoming and unravelling before her, the isolation into further subdivisions, feels like an othering-by-Neighbor.

Hugging sword to chest a bit tighter, Xion's lips move quietly while she tries to think her words and they appear, painted into reality by the world around them.

ºWhere <did you come from/have you been>?º

''I was everything that decided to live of me. I was where I was left.''

ºEvery other <star in the sky> had <finally/inevitable but disappointing> gone quiet.º

Xion squeezes her weapon. ''Not every signal went no-where. Some found 'Nobody'.''

ºWhy are you <dressed like that>?º

Xion opens one hand, gesturing out, helpless to do anything but let go of bubbles, little windows into medallion-light reflections of people. Why was she dressed like this? All the Nobodies of Organization 13 in family photo diorama, Larxene showing her how to paint her nails and what clothes to pair, going shopping with Roxas. The incredible Motorcycle Rider, Mach, and his goofy helmet, and his pump-armed poses, and the very language he and his brother imparted on her. A sequence of people, a gathering of contexts and styles into an energy field that 'felt' right, had a name and a splash and a colorswatch. She built it from the scratch-filings of others.

She was given//gained it, with care.

ºAre you <well/safe>? Do you need help?º

Xion fails to answer beyond appreciating the question being asked. She came here to help make safe others.

She came here to help others, a slide-way of helping herself.

ºPlease don't go.º

Xion sighs, and with every power to leave, looks up. ''Okay. At least for a while.''
Petra Soroka º<Please <wait/make yourselves comfortable/don't touch anything>.>º

    As much experience as Petra has had with the Blooms and their inverse, this remains dizzyingly beyond her perspective. Definitionally so, in some ways, as even the Blooms of Earth themselves still have a chasm between themselves and this, but frustratingly just out of reach in others-- comprehensible almost, conversational sort of, but moving just too fast for Petra to grasp. She is, selfishly and pridefully, the 'closest' to the Blooms, and the only one to even attempt <speaking> that same language, so as a point of both pride and empathy she has to keep up.

    But the experience of speaking with Nika, or Exigent Serenity, is nearly the opposite of this. The collective personal experience of Petra's individuality is kind of worthless for communicating much of anything to her, even in her own thoughts! That's why Lilian has such as easy time cleaving away all the unnecessary information and substituting her own! In this back and forth, where the Beauty of Ash tucks its legs under its core to supplicate itself as a beacon for Nika to talk through, Petra has to fall back on one of her most fundamental rules: believing unquestioningly that everything a Bloom says is correct, important, and benevolent, even when it comes to her in Petra's own voice.

    <¶Yup/Got it¶. We're ¶just here to talk/not in a rush/all the time you need¶.>

"You think that's okay? Is that rude? Is that like getting naked?"

    All that worry isn't to say Petra isn't *so* excited, though. The Beauty of Ash's wiggling finally explodes out of it once Ash shouts, feet tippy-tapping against the ground and its entire exoskeleton splintering open from pent up energy and freezing like a 3D model.

    <If it is, they've probably ¶unlearned sin¶ already, right?> Petra contemplates, reasonably, in an argument that could be considered to have suspect motives.

    The Beauty of Ash's head thrashes around like an overeager horse, twisting around halfway upside-down to look with one glowing eye backwards at Ash and the Eggpack. <But!!!! Isn't this ¶interesting/hype as fuck¶? This is so ¶here and elsewhere/Proxima Centauri¶ that they're still-- there's basically just a society of them! It kind of seems like exactly what we could've hoped!>
Petra Soroka     But there isn't any waiting for Chiral Nescience or Underived Conviction, both names that draw from no existing schemae at all besides the one shared with Invariable Completion and Exigent Serenity. That Ash and Lilian's direct engagement would provoke a response from the entity is exactly what Petra would hope, but the response itself is still terrifying, even with her Bloom-trusting mantra.

    When the presence looms closer and interposes itself between 'everything', the tide of physical and mental separation that comes along with it sends Petra into a brief panic. The shards of the Beauty of Ash squeal with tension and spike up to stand on their ends as the mech stiffens up, and throbbing out of it in uncontrolled response is an answer in the ideological realm of her own psychic power. The collision of a bubble where nothing besides 'you' exists, and the recoiling to one where nothing besides you exists, pins a staggering impression of vertigo onto nothing at all-- a vacuum that would collapse in on itself if the presence pushed any further, turned inside out to cling to street signs and greenery and the handwriting of the signature written in space.

    The voice speaking into her head can't be hers, because there isn't enough substance there to grip tightly enough to keep from drifting away from this little planet in a vacuous tide. So it can only be...?

<Please don't go.>

    <Sorry. I'm ºnot trying to be difficult/don't want to leave youº.>

    Stretched up on all fours, the Beauty of Ash's jittering distress vibrates every one of its million fragments away from every other one at a speed of a tenth of a millimeter per second, approaching inevitable heat death. <I'm here to ºstudent/bodyguard/How are you? Are you well?º my ºfriends/idols/most important peopleº. I'm just ¶human¶ ºsort of/unfortunatelyº.>
Lilian Rook     '@ I'm scared on purpose. I'm unsafe on purpose. @'

    Somehow, it's Lilian who knows what to say first. Or perhaps she had already felt like she wanted to say it, for some length of time unknown.

    "You're not dying, Arthur. You're running yourself ragged with fear of killing yourself. So much that it feels like dying."

    It's no obstacle for the line of communication that is so direct that Nika isn't asked to translate. The memetic precursor and trascendent twin to sounds before phenomes before words before language carves up the space around him as though someone were looking at every angle. The strange intensity of feeling makes the ocean vibrate like the surfae of a speaker.

    º<. . . We are <three of a kind/of shared mind/friends>. Why shouldn't we? I don't want to <move on/walk away/give up/retire>. I only ever wanted to <move on/travel the world/cool my head/try something new>.>º

    "It never really came up, but two years ago, I was convinced you were right, and I was so unhappy with it. I didn't know how to talk about it. I'd spend my entire life just boiling with resentment for every bit of resistance and struggle I got, because I could never be allowed to do anything without it; but when all of it just . . . so abruptly 'stopped', I had no idea what to do with myself."

    º<Even in the <world unseen/new world>, there isn't <all things under heaven and earth>. Some of the things <here/of yours/we missed> are irreplaceable. Even when <way of the world> is unbearable, the <world> is only a <collection of things>. It's so much easier to see <in hindsight/when you can breathe>.>º

    "I maybe should have, in retrospect. I felt like I should have been happy that I 'won', but there wasn't some wonderful thing waiting at the end for me. It felt like I'd suddenly stopped existing. I felt invisible, I guess. Numb and confused. It got to the point of feeling like there was no reason to do anything but to wrapping up my unfinished business; like a ghost."

    º<. . . I think I might <come apart/lose pressure/fade away> if I were all alone, but there were others, too. They have <ways of thinking/wonderful ideas/heartfelt wishes> I'd never known. I wanted to <see them/go there/try it> very much. The wanting made me remember how to want, and that made me <nostalgic/forgiving/grown up> some of the <things> I <left behind/ran from/unmade by my own hands>.>º

    "I didn't figure out a philosophy that helped find my own way out of it. I just sort of blindly persisted, I suppose. And after a little while, enough small things changed that I noticed I was in a new environment again, and it snapped into focus. I think I just found new things that I cared about. Not, like, 'a new thing to protect', but, wanting to see things that don't exist yet, or to change how things are; not just to overcome everything that sucked. I was done glowing over my victory so fast that I couldn't help open myself up to that, and then new things started to sting, and everything started resisting me again; but the old, solved stuff didn't come undone."

    º<We just made <new toys/new names/new rules/new problems/new mistakes>. We got rid of the <Sword of Damocles/human race> and filled it up with <love/each other's dreams/unrealized possibility> so we could <try this again/wipe the slate clean/play around/hi my name is>. That's all.>º
Lilian Rook     ". . . I think you knew a lot of people who succumbed to rot. I think they all did right after they overcame all the things that hurt them, conquered their little world, got big and powerful and immune to the hell that is other people, and then guttered out; because the power was all they ever cared about. They wanted to rise to the top to be free, and once they were free there was nothing inside of them. They never filled up with anything else to keep propelling them through that airless gap between worlds full of stuff and ways of being."

    º<That was always <the point/the moral of the story> for us. You're <standing in/interpreting/appreciating> our <toybox>. <Today/this kalpa>, I am <drawing/writing/designing/composing/assembling> a way to <hear your own thoughts>.>º

    "So perhaps now is a good time to say that you've got to move on from the little world you came from, because all its stuff is solved, and trust that you'll land in another one. You can't keep trying to inject the same rush from the same struggles and the same catharsis into your system forever. You're too mature for sburb or the foreverwar or any of that bullshit anymore. If you just pick something you like, I believe you'll make it work."

    º<Are you lonely? You can <talk/hang out> as much as you want.>º

    "If I run out of ideas one day, I'm going to try being a supervillain and unifying the Multiverse, megalomaniac style. I have a theme planned out and everything."

    . . . . . . . .

    'We have come with nothing to prove, but would be interested in the comparison of notes. We hope to find similarity in dissimilarity, and connection outside the edge of the circle.'

    ¶<Um. Do you have a <group chat/blog> we can see?>¶

    Poor Nika is struggling with this. Not just with the semantics and context of what Tamamo wants, nor just with the burden of trying to wingman and advocate, but with the stress of seeing what Lilian just did, Arthur talk through his suicidal ideation, and with Ash pacing around like an agitated animal, half-human and scouring for things that she can't actually see. She looks stressed.

    Sakura has so little power that it's stressing her out too. On the silly little screen stuck to the Beauty of Ash, she leans over to give Nika a hug, meant for the both of them.

    'Though it was 'long ago,' there were means to pierce future's veil, in those days, in those burning eyes. I am the learner and the questioner, a drop of a star's sea -- a star that is 'now' quiet, retreating to 'elsewhere and elsewhen.'
    'I can show you, if not seeing is very worrying. Otherwise, I will remain. I have become comfortable 'like this.''

    ¶<You <get it> right? It's like a <sona>! In the <toybox>!>¶

    Somehow, there is a very direct sense that this is just barely within the fuzzy-edged grasp of the paradigm your conversation is operating on. A pressure of inaudible sound around your head tenses like a furrowed brow, then relaxes in tingling sour-sugar pops and.

    º<That's <romantic>. I <forgot/lost> my <wedding dress>. Maybe one of <the others> <remembers> how to <sew>.>º

    'We have found an unexpected exit -- it is curious.'

    ¶<It's called <Warpgate>.>¶

    º<. . . It was <convenient> before, but it ruined the <set/experiment/lined paper>. The <narrative> tried to <run away/escape/end> in secret.>º
Lilian Rook     'Every star had...?'

    º<There are <one hundred and seven> <original thoughts> left in the <stars>. <The human race> only <spread/progressed/mutated> so far. There used to be a <new voice/induction ceremony> every <end of a century>, but it's <a long time without> now.>º

    'Not every signal went no-where. Some found 'Nobody'.'

    The incremental intensity on Xion is like seeing the rosy neon glow of a bar sign cast on her and her alone.

    º<I <know someone/remember a saying> that worried some might be <stranded/muted/offline>. It <checks in/goes diving/scans the airwaves> a lot. I'm glad it's <topical/timeless/time well-spent>. It'll find you, so <hang in there>. <Rescue personnel/The World Killer> is on its way.>º

    'We don't mean any offense. It's very important to us... and to me, personally, that we're able to speak with you.'

    ¶<Can you give us some <advice/directions/power-leveling>?>¶

    º<Oh. That's <new/interesting>. For what?>º

    'I'm here to ºstudent/bodyguard/How are you? Are you well?º my ºfriends/idols/most important peopleº. I'm just ¶human¶ ºsort of/unfortunatelyº.'

    º<You're <stuck/stumped/interfered with> <dressed like that>?>>º

    'I'm from the planet Earth in the Sol system. It's very much not gone quiet. Not in the way that someone like me would mean, and not... completely in the way I suspect you mean.'

    "Um . . . I actually don't know how to explain the different Earth thing. But the rest is . . . okay?"

    º<I thought <it's over/that's everyone/I can work with this>, but I think you <took your time>?>º

    There was clearly going to be more. The presence was working its way towards a conclusion. What you feel interrupting it is a note of 'recognition'. An abrupt, expected, faintly happy surprise.

    The presence bleeds out of the air around you; out of your thoughts, out of your words, until it feels like the entirety of your mind is being crammed back into your skull and the pressure you were used to, the clamour of your own thinking, is briefly aching and deafening.

    "Oh! They said they're ¶on call¶! Their ¶friend/invite¶ is ¶connection established¶! Passing it along because I don't think you all ¶caught that¶ and I don't wanna make them sound rude."

    Finally, the relief begins to settle in. The rapid loss of what Lilian would use the borrowed term 'normocausitive pressure' for is stemmed, allowing the Beauty of Ash to stop buckling under its vacuum, and thus Nika to operate the little robot arms into patting Petra on the head through it. Sakura thinks to ask, after giving so much runway for so long, "Might you please turn the camera to Ash? I need to speak to them about what they're doing."
Angela ''We got rid of the Sword of Damocles/human race''

Roland whistles. "Damn, that bad huh." He doesn't really seem offended as a human/Sword of Damocles since he's aware that he's a human and he's also aware that he's a Sword of Damocles. His eyes slant towards the Angelapad in Tiphereth's hands but he doesn't comment.

He takes 'hi my name is' as a cue to say, "I'm Roland, the lady on the pad is Angela, and the blonde is Tiph."

"-ereth." Tiphereth completes.

"Narratives do that." Angela laments.

But then the presence fades and Roland lets out a long breath he didn't realize he was holding in. Tiphereth pulls the Angelapad close to her body which makes it hard for Angela to see much, but Angela lets it go because it is, specifically, Tiphereth doing it.

Tiphereth feels, for a moment, like her mind hasn't been entirely put back in its proper spot. She rubs at her eyes with her wrist.

"Well that could've been a lot worse." Roland says, pinching the bridge of his nose like he's trying to subdue a sudden headache.
Arthur Lowell > Arthur: It's not dying

    "Don't, don't tell me that." Arthur says, tensed and clenching his hands hard. How is it that a moon and a bloom can have the same freqencies? He somehow looks at Lilian and the moon both at the same time as he replies. "Because if it's a choice between losing so much, or rotting, then it *is* dying. It might as well still be dying if you move forward and change like that."

    "You *understand*. You're *getting* why I, I don't know, why i do this! This, all of this!" He gestures around, for a moment releasing his knees. "This quest-making! Because there has to be *friction*. I need something to brace against, something to stand on, and eventually, a thousand years from now you might be wishing you'd had even more. Because there's not something wonderful waiting. It's expiring."

    "I had people too. Three others. Have I told you? God, have I even said their names? They had names. They had *names*. Summer Powers. Valentine Turner. Fiora O'Brien. They kept me rooted through billions of years and I almost didn't remember Val's full name." He's staring at his feet. "But you run out eventually. They had their own stuff to handle. I don't even know if they're still around."

    "That answer ran out."



    "I moved on. I found other worlds. Kept pushing myself into them. Face straight to *sandpaper* I just kept pushing and pushing, headbutting and smashing and breaking my knuckles." He's digging nails into his shins. "I found someone, you know. Someone who-- god it felt like she *wanted* to be Expired and she *couldn't* be. So I thought, I'll hold on to her. For as long as she'll have me, I'll just hold onto her and stay, and I can use that cycle of forever-problems."

    "And eventually she retired too. Eventually she asks me," He looks dead at Lilian. "To take a break with her. To rest with her. And sure. I was weak, I just about took it. Had to have the *head of the Concord* pull me out, thank Christ, throw me into a dozen new issues and--" His breathing quickens. "And, it was a close enough call, I just..." A long exhale.

    "That answer ran out too."



    "My answers are running out. I *tried* those. The gaps are getting shorter." The gaps? "There has to be a real answer." His voice gets... dull. Hopeless. "There has to be a real answer."
Lilian Rook     There's hardly time for it.

    Enough for Lilian to come running over to Tamamo the second the sense of interpersonal fracturing recedes, allowing her to grab her by the arm and say "Hey! Hey, I'm okay? See?", apparently having held the exclamation of worry just over a minute ago in the back of her mind the entire time, and only breathing out now.

    Enough for Nika to flip open her next journal and start rapidly writing down as much as possible, then run up to obscure the camera with the top of her head and find the 'take a screenshot' switch on the peripheral she has plugged into Ruble, bookmarking the Warpgate visual.

    Enough for Sakura to switch speakers ot Xion and say "You don't have to answer now, Xion, but when you're ready, I'd like to ask what happened to everything that didn't." Decide to live. ". . . It may be very important."

    And enough for Ash's minute-long stalking pattern to culminate in a ripple of magnetically distorted chrome-fractalization, like bristling fur one moment and like a blast of sound on the player-visualizer the moment next; a pulse of agitation followed by every single floating globule of polarization to snap on one point in space, the words "There you are!" to come out in spectrum-washed metallic crackle; out from behind the screen of 'your own reflections, captured on the thinnest layer of glass' anonymizing their face, like the artist had painted the halo after the messiah's head and not before.

    The exclamation isn't just for show either. Once every single 'eye', formed of nothing but your own impressions projected on each meaningless glyph, finds the same place, a twenty foot sphere of air cavitates, and the foliage within appears to wither. The fissure, formed from earlier, bubbles over with the pressure of the neon sea, and the surface is flattened glassy smooth by natural gravity. The effect happens from the outside in, encroaching deeper towards the core as Ash's new eyes encircle it, spectating from all angles-- and then it stops just before the middle.

    ±<Hey, don't get so <mad/impatient>. I'm the <pro/natural/savant> at handling all this <prima material/do you understand me?> stuff! I gotta observe for a while to <sound natural/speak fluently/look my best>! Don't interrupt me!>±

    Whatever happened has spared you a second paradigm shift to your own concept of reality. Not from the thought that comes to you in place of a language, though. This one is defined in in garish, playfully indulgent artificiality. It first strikes you as a messagebomb of searing hieroglyphic chos would; far more like a wall of back to back emojis you've never seen from some private chat dialect that's grown utterly impenetrable over time, than a lost, ancient language; but it feels like it 'decodes' itself as you listen. It's almost subtitled in a way, like it creates its own suspension of disbelief in the contractual space between 'I spoke it' and 'you understood it' where synchronization to the lip flaps is unnecessary.

    ±<Can you not? I can barely <tell you apart/remember your names>? There's <a guy> saying he can't take time for something, and I can't <see/solve> why that is. Don't you have the <complete anatomical model of/comprehensive essay on/unified theory of/magnum opus depicting> 'time' right there? Hello? <Anyone home/Wake up sleepyhead>!>±

    "Um. I think you made a good impression?" Nika says, not translating anything at all. "Thanks guys!"
Tamamo     º<I <forgot/lost> my <wedding dress>.>º

    "It is good to have had a 'wedding dress.'" She doesn't have the knack to speak like Nika does, nor like Arthur, but with it written down, her thoughts carry the double-meaning explicitly, as a facet of the language to which she's most accustomed. 'Wearing your happiest moment.'

     "I persist to learn of 'romance.'" 'Mystery,' 'excitement,' 'adventure,' 'connection.'

    When it's over -- ceased, temporarily, and the environment has shifted for the lack of presence -- Tamamo's thoughts are toward reuniting with Lilian first, checking on Ash second, and on the conversations not for her third. That first is accomplished swiftly, and with a suited handsqueeze.

    'Hey! Hey, I'm okay? See?'

    "You are. We both are." She can breathe, now. She can think about other things.

    "'Convenient,' I think they said. 'Ran away in secret,' also. I wonder why it was convenient to have an exit to 'there,' and who or what 'ran away.' Someone or something without Nika's abilities of communication, I suspect, which would have rather changed all of this." Low-voiced. Talking as if they're on a mission. She doesn't really think that, though. It's practically idle chatter, and her focus isn't on it -- it's not something they 'have to deal with,' but it is something she wasn't letting go without mention.

    'Checking on Ash' is more cursory by necessity, because Tamamo has no way to help, or even to fully grasp what's going on. She understands the cause and effect, but not the interior of the mind, in this case. It's swift to conclude that she won't be helping more by action than by inaction. Another has it handled.

    James, then. "'We' will not be leaving soon, you know." There's a wash of emotion difficult to put words to, a depth of feeling like yearning for understanding, but without more way to express this than heaviness of tone. "So long as the neighborhood is safe, I do not wish to retire far away." Every other word may be carrying some deeper meaning, but the simple sum remains true.

    "We can find a lifetime or two worth of work before then, if we do not rush." There's no need to rush.

    'You're not dying, Arthur.'
    'Don't, don't tell me that.'
    . . .
    'They kept me rooted through billions of years and I almost didn't remember Val's full name.'

    Tamamo tries to think of what to say to this, but her thoughts come back around to an answer that required no thoughts at all. "Do you want to talk about it?" He has, before. He's talking about it now. "Do you want to talk about them?" He hasn't. Not to her. Maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe that reason wouldn't be as important to her.
Petra Soroka     Isolated, and anchored to the isolation itself to steady herself, Petra gradually calms down enough to engage in the dialogue on the presence's terms. It's not, really, like she's being held at gunpoint: this power is, as every Bloom's must be, the righting of some injustice, and therefore fundamentally good. To indulge in uninhibited trust is Petra's biggest vice and virtue, so she does, as long as the space of 'one' can be 'two' instead.

    This power is a clasped hand in the dark. A spotlight that shines on your words out of all others, essenceless except in echo, a breeze that follows the sail, a voice that finishes your sentences aloud. The limned outline surrounds you, and only in silhouette traces itself.

º<Where <did you come from/have you been>?º

    The Beauty of Ash creaks as it settles. The Eggpack, strapped to its back and also enveloped in the clawing contiguity of Petra's power, also fizzles back into her conscious awareness, which is another step of relief.

    <I'm from ¶Earth/Io/Lilian Rook¶.>

ºWhy are you <dressed like that>?º

<Pollution downstream of the Fruit.>

ºSome of the things <here/of yours/we missed> are irreplaceable.º

    It's annoying, a little bit, for Petra to realize how little regard she's given anything Arthur says, exactly because of his whole persona that deflects from anyone giving anything he says any regard. That's fucked up. That shouldn't work on her. She's got too many opinions about this!!!!

    <I still get stressed out at ¶peace/victory¶, but I've been coming to terms with the benefits ¶slowly/palliatively¶. ¶Earth¶ has so much ¶berries/bounty/law of large numbers¶ that even ¶forever/mow the grass all over again¶ has enough space for ¶playing with toys/run and jump¶?>

    The Beauty of Ash's head bucks, like it's shooing away a fly, or shrugging frustratedly. <Well. That's my thoughts, but it's still way better to hear it from ºyou/Lilian Rook/scriptureº.>

"This quest-making! Because there has to be *friction*. I need something to brace against, something to stand on, and eventually, a thousand years from now you might be wishing you'd had even more. "

    But, really, Petra's answers-- insofar as she was asked, which she wasn't, but the question is too pressingly relevant for her to not voice her own feeble fortress in response-- only ever answer how to delay, and make the best of it. The question of Petra's life has never been how to last forever, but how to last long enough, and that's the question that Arthur, and more importantly Lilian, needs from this mission. What they were all worried about was how certain they could be that 'Lilian Rook' would keep existing after she 'died'.

    Petra knows her feelings are unwanted in this particular moment, but in her floaty telepathic broadcast state, they slip out anyways with the impression of a wince. <Is that bad? To need ¶births/new contestants/Sisyphus's rock¶ or to die if you don't have that? There's, like, ¶a lot to have still. You don't even ¶know¶ ¶art/epistemogensis¶.>
Petra Soroka º<There are <one hundred and seven> <original thoughts> left in the <stars>.º

    <That's ºso specific/so manyº. Do you know ºall of them/One Hundred and Threeº?>

º<You're <stuck/stumped/interfered with> <dressed like that>?>>º

    Petra isn't actually sure how she's being perceived by the presence at all, whether she's indistinguishable from all the other non-Blooms, or whether the fact that she's in a twelve foot tall psychic mech makes some sort of impression as her 'body'. Either one could be true on one level and false on another, but she errs on the former interpretation, as the primary fault of her imprisonment.

    <I'm not a ºoneº of ºfour/one hundred and sevenº, I'm just a ºally/big fan/aspirantº. ¶Earth¶ is still ºteeming/ignorant/unpunishedº.>

    When the presence withdraws, the Beauty of Ash sags like an unpaused movie, tinkling glass heaving into itself as it squats down to the ground protectively. The mech squirms around, sucking in the held breath of 'other people', then scampers over to join Lilian and Tamamo in physical proximity.

    To Nika and Sakura, she babbles on an increased frequency, pent-up from the unnerving sense of separation and making up for it now. <What ¶came through¶ for you? I think it's, um, apparent one of the things I would've guessed but didn't exactly know for sure before, that a 'crossed' Bloom communicates with the world with their paradigm lensed across every mode of interaction? And-- er-- it's cool that there's apparently a lot and they know each other already.>

    The stress Nika feels infects Petra piece by piece, secondhand. She knows just how double-edged that last sentence feels, for Nika more than anyone else, both as a person and as the Bloom who's been allowed to understand the least about the condition of existing as herself. The hesitance in her thoughts is reflected tonally in their impressions, excited but overwhelmed.

    <I think it's going well, but it's really good there's a warpgate. There's time for ¶take your time/sniff it out/conversations in the shower¶. I mean... we came here to 'get an idea'.>
Tamamo     There's another, now, though Tamamo can't see them. She only knows they're there because Ash said so, because the water stops at a point, and because she comprehends a voice.

    And what a voice it is.

    ±<Don't you have the <complete anatomical model of/comprehensive essay on/unified theory of/magnum opus depicting> 'time' right there? Hello?>±

    Vaguely flabbergasted by both them and Ash, what comes out of her mouth is, "This one is mine, not his."
Xion º<I <know someone/remember a saying> that worried some might be <stranded/muted/offline>. It <checks in/goes diving/scans the airwaves> a lot. I'm glad it's <topical/timeless/time well-spent>.º

Xion had forgotten where she was going, but now, isolated in a monochrome street, alone and in her little box of ground, lit in dim neon by the glow of a streetsign in three colors, frame and negative and lettering spilling over her.

''I met people.'' She thinks of the marrow angel, new to the world, and looking back to her, inverted into a different nativity, the human-ender, and its babe-like sunning fan in her presence.

''Are they here? The diver. Did they send the inversion out?''

She liked a lot of humans. What were they doing here?

''I was happy to receive a signal, and confused.'' She hadn't known what it meant, to be pinged on active sensors. It had made her ask more questions. It had made her worried. And now she was here.

º<It'll find you, so <hang in there>. <Rescue personnel/The World Killer> is on its way.>º

''Aren't I here now?'' She asks, cheek to key, eyes to pylon far away.

And then, her attention dips. There's something tearing, rending, deeply sad nearby, and even if she's split up, she can know that maybe she should spare a moment in the human frame of time to share solidarity.

'My answers are running out. I *tried* those. The gaps are getting shorter.'

It doesn't take her an intensity of thought, a connection of the heart, to reach Arthur Lowell. If anything it's more real for Xion to peel hand half off her blade-hug and pull out charmed out phone, whose screen cracks under the liquid pressure while Xion thumbswipes in to open her messenger and directpester Arthur.

<xion>: hang in there.

She texts, and thinks about how to most accurately express her feelings, and uses an arcane emoji that even in ideaspace roughly translates to bitcrushed 'that's rough, buddy'.
Lilian Rook     "Shut the fuck up."

    Even Ash probably thinks it's ridiculous that those are the first words they choose to use with, ostensibly, exactly the type of thing/person/outcome they had desperately hoped to see for more than a decade. You wouldn't really know for sure, though; and it's not just because you can't see their face nor read their body language when all the former and half of the latter is armour chaff to every form of perception you have. It just feels strangely hard to weigh the possibilities, somehow. None of the likelihoods seem any heavier than the other.

    "You gave it away, fucker! Nika didn't translate that one, and you responded! So stop talking over my head! You have to be able to tell, right?!"

    Either to their annoyance, amusement, relief, satisfaction, humiliation, or something else, the presence says ±<Aw fuck. <Got me>!>±

    It'd be nice if you got to see something 'like Exis'. A person, of some kind, vaguely, sitting in the middle of that bubble. Instead, the solution that the new one whips up for convenience's sake is aggravatingly simple and annoyingly un-depictable anyways. Everything but the stone gathers up into a singular point with direct line of sight to the planetary core, shining like the sun overhead, then slides horridly through itself like a cup shuffle designed to give you a migraine for trying to watch, coming out in a physical knot that should clearly only be able to be depicted on paper as an optical illusion. The purpose of doing so is, apparently, to be able to move from that five feet of clearance.

    ±<Where were you <last episode/during the brainstorm/when I was still in highschool>? You've got exactly what I was looking for! Everything's going to be so much <easier/more axis of freedom> if I can convince you to <tell me all about it>!>±

    The attitude alone is sufficient to take Ash aback. The cloud of light-impermissive observers trails to follow, with their actual body only at a lagging distance. After a short pause, still continuing to pursue the impossible tangle of neon water and quantum atmosphere, they say "Okay. So you can totally tell."

    ±<Yeah. Most of <them/the class/the girls> didn't have a strong connection, or I guess a <good relationship>, with what it was like to <wear the wedding dress>, but that was always my <holy grail/bone to pick>, so I get <tagged in/pinged> when it's stuff like this. I have a pretty <high-resolution monitor> for your <fits/avatars/penmanship>!>±

    "Okay. And?"

    ±<You're <mostly done> but you got a-- Sorry, one sec-->±

    Gallingly, you get the equivalent of [untraslatable], which makes Nika nod eagerly on the other side of the screen, and helpfully say "You gotta ¶backtrack¶ 'cause you got an ¶early skip¶ and didn't notice!" Both Sakura and Lilian look to each other after looking to Nika, extraordinarily unclear as to how this even happens under the paradigm they both should know better than everyone else. And yet.

    ±<Yeah! And the other one is-->± "Mhm. Uh . . . hm . . . ¶I'm saving it for the final boss¶? That's what I'd call it." ±<Perfect!>± "Thanks! You're super easy to talk to!" ±<Proud of it!>±
Arthur Lowell > Arthur: Do you want to talk about it?

    Arthur turns half to Tamamo, only the one eye part-visible. "More than anything in the world. Stupid crybaby backstory bullshit." He looks a little teary-eyed. "I was supposed to not become this, though."

> Arthur: Is that bad?

    "No. It's wonderful. But it isn't enough." Arthur explains to Petra in a shitty-toned little whisper, his voice getting dull again. "I have to press my face in harder every time. I have to smash my knuckles worse for each case. Eventually the cure gets worse than the disease. Whatever."

> Arthur: hang in there

    Arthur's phone buzzes. He doesn't move, but if you look closely, an icon of speechbubbles swapping pops up above him. He's looking, somehow.

PB: i am
PB: just
PB: can't forever
PB: that's all
James Bond Don't you have the <complete anatomical model of/comprehensive essay on/unified theory of/magnum opus depicting> 'time' right there? Hello? <Anyone home/Wake up sleepyhead>!

    "Yes, and she's our very good friend," Bond says after a moment's disorientation at the flood of invisible pictographs slamming into his brain.

Um. I think you made a good impression?

    "Of course I did." Little remarks like that have always been his way of getting the blood to stop pounding in his ears, of removing himself from whatever the danger is. There is no danger here, no impending collapse that will bury him if he stays still. He can see that now that the earth has stopped moving.

    Speaking now more to the voice which teased him, "Lilian *made* a wish to opt-out of a certain part of reality. I *am* a wish, made to guarantee control of... of a social invention, by doubling down on certain parts of reality. 'James Bond' isn't a man who is born, lives and then dies; or at least, he hasn't been since the first died seventy years ago. He's an ideological necessity, poured into the shape of a man and deeply steeped in 'reality,' wearing its coat of arms to court its favor for his keepers. If there's such a thing as an opposite of a Bloom or a Moon, and it isn't simply humanity, then it's assuredly me. Is it really possible to learn that specific thing from her?"

    'We' will not be leaving soon, you know.

    "I know," says Bond. "In the back of my mind. But that's also where the doubts live. So it helps to hear you say it."
James Bond My answers are running out. I *tried* those.

    Intent is the only thing he can think of to speak to the presence that teased him just a moment ago. "Excuse me a moment," he says to them.

    Bond approaches Arthur effortfully, and for a moment there's only the sound of the oxygen cycling in his suit as he stares at him. It's almost like Bond is forcing himself to look, so as not to give himself an out to back away from the subject.

    "...I've jumped out of the way of guns, leapt to save my own life, but I haven't wanted to be alive long enough to be scared of dying in more than that instinctual way. For a very long time I wondered about slipping up on purpose, or getting myself into a fight I couldn't get out of, and that instinct started to fray at the edges."

    "Being worried that I won't have enough time to do what I want now that so much of it has been spent, that might be similar, or the same thing by another name. I don't really know. I certainly don't know anything on the scale of billions of years. I wasn't built to live past forty."

    "What I do know is what it's like to be scared of being still, because that was when those thoughts were loudest. I'm able to be alone without those thoughts, now. It's just quiet. I wish I could tell you what changed, but it doesn't feel like there was some enormous lever that got pulled somewhere inside me, and all the gears of that particular anxiety suddenly ground to a halt. Maybe there isn't one immense answer, but a lot of very small ones."

    "At least one of mine is that change is frightening, and it might very well seem like death, but the resemblance is superficial at best, compared to the rot Lilian mentioned. I hope that helps. If it doesn't, or even if it does, you're welcome to come and share a drink with me sometime."
Lilian Rook     'Damn, that bad huh.'

    ±<That bad. <Sorry not sorry>. I'd say <it was us or them/that's that and this is this> but I'm actually pretty happy. <Antithetical Praxis>. and <Chiral Nescienc> are just really nice.>±

    'Well that could've been a lot worse.'

    ±<Oh it still could be. I'm great at <modulating my tone/take only memories and leave only footprints> but if <Anodyne Dissolution> <wakes up/comes looking> you might just-->± "I think that's just ¶die¶?" ±<Wow. I totally forgot.>± "Excuse me?" ±<Why not just take the <kickstart/spoiler>? Even the <sleepyhead> is way <past the point/self-sufficient/your training won't let you down>!>±

    'Don't, don't tell me that.'

    "Don't tell me what to tell you." says 'the sleepyhead'. "Everything is losing things. You can't escape it. You forget things every time you make new memories. You get bored of old games and get into new ones. You can't help losing touch with things if you want to grow up. Moving in a direction means some things get closer and other things get further away. Aren't you supposed to be all about space?"

    'This quest-making! Because there has to be *friction*. I need something to brace against, something to stand on, and eventually, a thousand years from now you might be wishing you'd had even more. Because there's not something wonderful waiting. It's expiring.'

    "Who cares about a thousand years from now? You'd be over this already if you hadn't spent ten of those years obsessing over fundamentally empty people who struggled against the world because they wanted to stagnate and rot in peace! So you're frustrating!"

    'I don't even know if they're still around.'

    "So why are you so fucking certain they're doing nothin at all, and not having new problems in some new place doing new stuff? I don't mean 'a different Sector, fighting different guys', I mean-- A different, I don't know, 'place in life'. Only hollowed out dolls think they can make a paradise or reach a state that's perfect forever and then they'll never have to hurt again. If you really did either of those things, you'd know that maintaining them is hard work!"

    'My answers are running out. I *tried* those. The gaps are getting shorter.'

    "Humans 'retire' because we only give them a break when they're useless and about to die anyways. They don't live long enough to get bored and find a new job. Fuck, some of them do! Freaks!"

    'There has to be a real answer.'

    Lilian takes a deep, angry breath, balls up her hands, then folds her arms over her chest, and looks embarrassed at the same time she sounds annoyed. "You've literally seen me brush the edge of 'expiring' and find something else to do instead. Ask Petra, because she had to hear me losing my mind for a year about feeling like I didn't even exist, and then believe me that the stupidest possible thing made me decide I'm taking a break from the questgiving genre and trying out this townbuilding thing instead." As cringe as it is, games-- the magic circle-- really are the one factor that seems to cross every metaphorical barrier here perfectly. "If you can't 'rest a while' then it's because you're bored. Stop making it sound so complicated."
Angela Angela thinks of people talking about their answers running out, about finding new answers and then deciding those answers weren't quite right either. Her eyes slant towards James Bond of all people as he speaks of being a wish, quirking her head with a faint widening of them as he speaks of there being previous James Bonds. If he's saying he's the opposite despite being a 'wish'.

She looks towards Arthur's speech bubbles. She can't see much else not can she summon much particular empathy for him. She thinks that she has some empathy for James Bond, just by virtue of being a 'wish'.

"I don't think you're quite unlike them at all." Angela tells James Bond, shrimply enough. "You might be an evil wish, but you're making the most of it, aren't you? Tiphereth. Take me to Arthur."

Tiphereth hesitantly approaches Arthur which means she's sort of accidentally sticking by James Bond for a little longer than she intended to be, so Angela ends up adding something else, "A star that is wished upon is still a star," Angela tells Bond. "Whatever they demanded, you are the one providing the ''Light''."

Tiphereth makes it to Arthur Lowell and holds the Angelapad up.

Angela stares at Arthur for a long moment.

"You have been consistently alien to me, constantly gesturing towards a past from what feels like an eternity before our Unification."

Angela taps her cheek with her index finger. She thinks about Marcus, who has been constantly warned not to 'read' without permission and she has, generally, tried to be rather polite herself due to respecting the conceit of privacy.

"All I really understand is that sensation of being left behind, but it'll be faster to just read it."

She reaches out towards the screen, drawing a page of light out of Arthur as it pulls into the screen and into Angela's hands.

"Being abandoned is part of growth, but I'm hesitant to communicate more with such a marginal understanding. I assume you are not doing well, because you are not shouting random keywords."
Lilian Rook     'I wonder why it was convenient to have an exit to 'there,' and who or what 'ran away.' Someone or something without Nika's abilities of communication, I suspect, which would have rather changed all of this.'

    ±<Oh! I can answer that! The <Three Moons/homies> are <labbing out/debating> if the <human> design can still work without: <groupthink>, <appeal to nature>, and <majority rule>. The <convenience> is sending us new <blanks>!>±

    Nika finally looks at least mildly disturbed. Her enthusiasm wavers, but remains on her face in the end; for now.

    ±<Who knew someone exists that has a whole <paradigm/secret spice> for <communicating> with them! We're <stealing/adopting/adoring> it! Thanks!>±

    'Pollution downstream of the Fruit.'

    ±<Of course it was <the Fruit>. Fuck <the Fruit>. I hate <the Fruit> so much I made my own <the Fruit/New Flesh>. Wanna <see/take a hit>?>±

    "Oh shit. Seriously?" Ash's constellation of baleful observers coil back on flexed sinews of gravity and proprioceptive reflex, becoming as a crowd of observers to someone performing a magic trick in the street. They still have no expression. "For real? Hell yes."

    '¶Earth¶ has so much ¶berries/bounty/law of large numbers¶ that even ¶forever/mow the grass all over again¶ has enough space for ¶playing with toys/run and jump¶?'

    ±<I <agree/feel you>! But not <every voice in the choir> does. You <made the right choice/got lucky> coming <to us/here>. I think a lot of <us> would have <ignored/failed to notice> you, even though you <have language>, and a lot of <us> would-- right, you'd might've <died>. They're <younger/newer/angrier> than us and they're <NOT over it>.>±

    'That's ºso specific/so manyº. Do you know ºall of them/One Hundred and Threeº?'

    For some reason, the unnatural swirl of matter-energy speeds up in a way that feels like pausing at Petra. Something is surprising. ±<Not counting <myself/my writing>, I <know of> all <hundred and six>?>±

    '¶Earth¶ is still ºteeming/ignorant/unpunishedº'

    Brighter. Faster. ±<Need help? Or do you want to <save the best for last/keep it for a rainy day/have the pleasure of it yourself>?>±

    'What ¶came through¶ for you? I think it's, um, apparent one of the things I would've guessed but didn't exactly know for sure before, that a 'crossed' Bloom communicates with the world with their paradigm lensed across every mode of interaction?'

    "I basically get it. It's not like ¶being there¶ but Sakura's helping with her magic so the ¶HUD¶ is pretty good?"
    "Nothing, I'm afraid. But I had an idea already. I've . . . it's not the same, not entirely, but I know it's similar to what I've lived through before. Thank you, Petra."

    '<I think it's going well, but it's really good there's a warpgate. There's time for ¶take your time/sniff it out/conversations in the shower¶. I mean... we came here to 'get an idea'.'

    Lilian takes a break from busting Arthur's balls to say, "I don't think we should leave through it. If it doesn't have a stable anchor, there's no guarantee it'll exit somewhere we can get back from. I think Sakura meant to bookmark this place for later already, right?"
Lilian Rook     "Ah, yes! That's exactly it! It doesn't seem like there are any natural processes that should erode the talismans' efficacy, and the leyline doesn't run through the landmass itself at all, so the sympathetic connection should remain fresh for a long time! I'd hoped to use that time to, perhaps, cement a more practical route, upon seeing that there was so much here. Perhaps it was presumptuous to say nothing, but . . ."
    "No no, I get it. Of all people, I really should. If we all hated it and swore not to return . . . ?"
    "Yes. Thank you. I'm relieved."
    "We can hunt down the other end with magical means later. From Earth."
    "May I say 'it's a date'?"
    "Um. You may?"

    'This one is mine, not his.'

    Sakura's laughter goes from soft to loud, and brief to extremely prolonged. Nika starts awkwardly patting her on the back when Tamamo's reaction brings tears to Sakura's eyes. Thirty seconds in, she begins repeating "I apologize! Just--" every time she can catch a breath.

    ±<No? <It is itself> right?>±
    ¶<Oh she <means/draws the line> that she's the <closest> about it!>¶
    ±<<Neato>?>±

    'Are they here? The diver. Did they send the inversion out?'

    The entity's half-interested attempt to grasp the concept of 'social possession' is distracted by Xion's eminently more answerable issue. ±<No no, it's in <the other place>. I think <'the diver'> is still <decrypting by exhaustion/you'll never know if yuo don't try> some <underwater cave> that's really <difficult/dark/convoluted>. It's kind of a <project/hyperfixation>.>±

    'Aren't I here now?'

    ±<To stay?>± The simple concept is a flashbang of mixed enthusiasm and worry-surrogate. ±<I don't think that's a <great idea/plausible solution>. It's not <easy/free> to <balance the books> with you like this, and it would be really <bad news> if someone got a little <careless/long day at work/confused> and a <decimal place> got <moved> wrong.>±
Tamamo     'More than anything in the world. Stupid crybaby backstory bullshit.'

    Tamamo nods. "It is no trouble to listen. I have tea and several days of peaceful travel to which to look forward." She hears James making a similar offer, but she won't encroach. Some things aren't made better by crowds. Many things, actually.

    '...and then believe me that the stupidest possible thing made me decide I'm...'

    "Hm?" One cannot see an ear perk through that suit.

    ±<The <convenience> is sending us new <blanks>!>±

    "I understood most of that. The gap may be in perception, rather than translation."

    ±<Need help? Or...>±

    "Not with this, thank you. Do you know 'too many cooks in the kitchen'?" It's imperative that she say this before Petra can say any of a thousand terrible things... that she probably wouldn't, but the girl is just so eager to get brainhacked by Blooms. Idly, Tamamo considers the fact that if she yanked a leash on the Beauty of Ash right now, none of their hosts would even notice.
Lilian Rook     'Yes, and she's our very good friend'

    ±<Oh! Friend! I know <bestie>!>±

    Somehow, James Bond has made-- whatever this entity could be categorized as, relieved to find some kind of comprehensible common ground.

    'If there's such a thing as an opposite of a Bloom or a Moon, and it isn't simply humanity, then it's assuredly me. Is it really possible to learn that specific thing from her?'

    ±<I like <Three Blooms> too.>±
    ¶<Four!>¶
    ±<Wow. That's the most <amount/mercy/damning evidence> I've ever <perceived> for one <planet/episode/branch>!>±
    "Hey answer the question."
    ±<Can't. All of <us> have <understanding/lingua franca> of <natural law> we <threw away>. This is just the <touching sides>. I make it look easy but it's not.>±
    "Best guess then. C'mon."
    ±<Well, I just <this time> got <taught/told/experimented> by your <bestie>. Really just now. This is the first <time/kiss> and I mean it. I guess anything's possible.>±
Arthur Lowell > Arthur: Enpage

    Arthur's page is simple, when Angela extracts it. He's got his focus mostly on Bond, as she does. The creation and movement of doors and gates, as well as their destinations. Making a door lead to another door, or shooting portal pairs onto surfaces, that type of thing. This is done while using a broom and *requires* that the weapon held during this is a broom of some kind, though the broom can be the battle-broom that comes with it.

    Her analysis of his nature is a bit more complicated, but the page is extractable, so she can read what she needs.

> Arthur: It may seem like death

    Arthur looks up to Bond. The silence is heavy. The dull tone of, "Maybe you're right." Sounds more like he doesn't believe it. Or rather, for some mysterious and unknowable reason, that he *can't* believe it. Why would he be so certain, though? There's more of an answer further on. But for Bond in particular... "It's real specific shit. Real specific to *my* crybaby backstory. To the kind of guy I am. You," He laughs. "You get better when you change. That's different."
Arthur Lowell > Arthur: Stop making it complicated

    "It isn't complicated. It isn't." His tone is still somewhere in that verge-of-tears range. "The gaps are getting shorter. I just-- I need an answer for it." No UI is popping up to show anything, there's just this lingering sense in the air that something has been sitting at ninety percent for weeks, and just ticked down to eighty-nine. "You stop existing. You drift. Nothing makes sense and nothing changes. Somehow, everyone you meet has the same opinion, and it never changes, and they never say it to you. Somehow, every time you talk, the same level of agreement comes from everyone. You start craving anything unique. You start seeing everyone as the same. You start collecting the unique ones. You start deciding that it doesn't matter if one percent of people who are all the same get hurt. What good is changing to that? But staving it off--"

    "Staving it, staving it off like that, it works. It works for a while. For your first recovery. And then it, less and less, it works less and less. Until you try a little too much rest, a little too much change, a little too much compromise, and you realize the thread got so thin. So thin. It's so fucking thin and you don't even realize it, how thin it is until it *snaps* and the only reason you didn't fall is because someone yanked you back with half a billion credits of gear."

    "You're wonderful, Lilian. You're wonderful. You're *amazing*. But you're just not my answer." He mutters into his feet, before shifting to give her a weak, sad look straight in the eyes. "You're enough to keep me afloat. You were Petra's answer to her big fuckin'... puzzle she's got." He looks past her. "Last beautiful time-themed townbuilder, with an old destiny and a lot of cycle behind her to break up, and some heartfelt sureness she had the answer to how you can keep this going forever... her answer got me here." His eyes focus more on her, more on now. "And the gaps are getting shorter." He repeats, inexplicably.
Xion 'PB: can't forever'
... Xion couldn't, either, even if she was still here.
<xion>: do you want me to tell you to stay?
Sometimes it was hard.
<xion>: i think it sounds like you're seeking greater challenges
Xion thinks about everything for a bit.
Did it help, or hurt, to say this?
<xion>: unfortunately you might be really cool
She remembers that Arthur took her unformed wish and made it real to reach Ash.
<xion>: and you forgot
<xion>: or never learned
<xion>: how to win

<xion>: this might be what winning is.

Xion doesn't know where else to go.

'You get better when you change. That's different.'

<xion>: sorry. it is different.

She doesn't admit she didn't get much better when she changed, and it takes more than she cares to admit to realize that she didn't 'change' but 'carved off, to escape'.

Moving from hugging her blade to letting it lower, and by the time it's tip-down it's gone, a charm and chan wrapped around her wrist, dangling into inner wrist as she stands with one hand tucking away phone, unsure if she was helping or just commiserating, Xion looks up once more.

±It's kind of a <project/hyperfixation>.±

''Oh. 'Until it's done'. I hope they eat//are well.''

±<I don't think that's a <great idea/plausible solution>.±

It never is.

''There's apparently a lot going on with math involving me.'' Xion admits, knowingly, and imagines her suits of armor and Lilian's. ''We'll//I'll be going back.'' She admits. ''With my friends.''
Angela Angela can still read a page much more quickly than most people can. Finally, she actually knows what the fuck a Sburb is. It's still very strange, of course. Both a world ending and a world being saved are alien experiences to Angela. Frankly, she's grateful that it isn't written poetically or metaphorically. She adores poems and she understands metaphor but she's frankly a little sick of all that now and just wants some answers.

"Ah, I see now." Angela tells Arthur. "I think I finally have some understanding of your situation." Through the page, she can empathize. The idea of someone having too much memory that they start to see everyone as the same and as dull and as repetitive and that only the truly precious and incredible people can so much as draw your attention away from the dull thrum of every day existence? Yeah, she understands that idea.

"You were eaten, Arthur." Angela tells him. "By the Abnormality called Sburb, and it empowered you as you became consumed and then a part of its story. You can't die, for stories rarely do, and you've let yourself remember too much."

Maybe the worst part of it is, is that Angela is truly trying her very best to be empathetic and sympathetic as she looks into Arthur's eyes. "You should let yourself forget, or make yourself forget, if you wish to remain Arthur. But if that shaves too much of who you are, then you should remember he was devoured long ago, longer than your memory is meant to hold onto. Arthur was killed before I met him."

Even an incredible AI like herself feels that desperate need to forget, after all.

Having felt she's done her best to help Arthur and James Bond, Angela looks to Lilian.

She doesn't want to be a chain pulling her back down to earth, but she's glad that Tamamo's story of love doesn't seem to be ending so soon.

Well she supposes she is a Librarian, so: "A Bookmark seems sensible." She says.
Petra Soroka "I have to press my face in harder every time. I have to smash my knuckles worse for each case."

    <No, I mean, is it ¶definitely¶ bad to ¶end/run out¶?> This is, sincerely, Petra's very best efforts at cheering up someone talking around the concept of suicide, and it sounds a little bit like when she's egging someone on to commit suicide. It's not like she really cares much about Arthur, except she does, and it's not like this is what she was here for, except it sort of is, but she does have a well of strongly held opinions about this topic, and for whatever reason it feels very important to dispense them now.

    <The ¶seconds on the clock¶ only come from ¶within/without¶, not ¶nowhere/taken for granted¶. If it's too difficult, there's no ¶forcing you/ordinance from heaven/worth in itself¶ to stay. But you're still ¶desperate/energetic¶ enough to ¶scream and cry¶, so that's ¶lock in/bonus time/cosmic microwave background radiation¶ isn't it?>

<Don't you have the <complete anatomical model of/comprehensive essay on/unified theory of/magnum opus depicting> 'time' right there?>

    The Beauty of Ash flattens against the ground to brace for another paracausal impact, but the ensuing tide of rhetorical data is a lot more manageable than she was expecting. The braced hind legs slowly bend down into a crouch, and on second brush with the Blooms of Kepler, Petra takes up the tonal paradigm more quickly.

    <Oh, she's ¶taken/inexhaustible¶.> What the fuck does that mean.

"Okay. So you can totally tell."}

    Underived Conviction being so direct and, playful?, immediately makes them more similar to Exis in Petra's mind, but she's still retaining some hesitance from the fact of someone being playful *about* Ash and Lilian. Still, they're so comprehensible, and so eager to gas Ash up, that Petra can't help but trust them.

    <So it's ¶not common/unheard of¶ to ¶collaborate¶ before ¶reaching heaven¶, I guess? ¶We/they¶'ve been like this for a while.>

"You gotta ¶backtrack¶ 'cause you got an ¶early skip¶ and didn't notice!"

    Somehow it's Petra who immediately understands what this means, though not at all how it happens or what the experience or solution actually is. The mech wiggles back and forth, scattering a thousand colors of refracted light off and around Ash when its head turns towards them.

    <Invincibility glitch gets you through everything but the ¶culmination/platforming gauntlet/Everyone is Here!¶! That makes sense.>

<Why not just take the <kickstart/spoiler>?

    <Is that... Exigent Serenity? Or something?> The words for 'the abyssal allure of eversion and joining' escape Petra even with her language-learning handbook borrowed off of Nika, but that's all she can imagine Underived Conviction meaning by kickstart.

    There are four people here who could make a better answer than Petra can, and whose words are much more valuable to be communicated in the first place, but the guilty, dangerous truth hasn't been spoken by anyone else yet, and so it falls to Petra to test the waters. <Well... that's because we're ¶taking it slow/already post game/honestly pretty happy right now all things considered¶.>
Petra Soroka <The <convenience> is sending us new <blanks>!>

    <Oh. Okay.> So the Bloom community harvests little pet humans to put through paradigm exposure trials to see if they explode. That's enrichment, Petra figures, and fundamentally she doesn't have an issue with that. But Nika does, and Sakura definitely does too, and--

    Well, the second question to ask about all of this, after 'will the Blooms be accessible and comprehensible after the event horizon is crossed', is sort of, 'will they be *happy* after that?'. It goes without saying that some of that woefully human hesitance gets cleaved away in joining with a wish, but not having met Reciprocal Perfection or Virtuous Crisis yet, Petra can't preemptively guess how much, and she's not keen on *overestimating* the amount of current Nika-ness that Nika would lose. So, she's definitely got to put a pin in that, but maybe after the topic of them all dying stops coming up.

    Quietly, as a dim subconscious thought prickling through the people close by her, Petra murmurs, <Does kinda ¶suck/complicate¶ to be ¶last to the party/preordained¶ a bit.>

<Wanna <see/take a hit>?>

    The first step, naturally, to so boldly go ahead such that she might make introductions easier down the line, is to *absolutely* go all-in on understanding the new Blooms-- or, the Moons, as she should probably start referring to them in her narrative self-perception. The Beauty of Ash leaps up to its feet, prowling around what's left of the island under Underived Conviction's watch.

    <¶Yes/Absolutely¶? I'm always ¶down to fuck/blank canvas/hungry for a bite.> The Beauty of Ash stretches up onto two legs, knees tucked up to its chest as its head tilts to assess Underived Conviction's form. To take a guess, <You're very ¶hyperpop/glass and plastic and enamel/build it better¶? If I had to guess?>

<right, you'd might've <died>.>

    <Yeah, I don't ¶want/ideate¶ that,> Petra agrees, extremely plainly but still considering it worth saying.

<Not counting <myself/my writing>, I <know of> all <hundred and six>?>

    <Oh. For some reason I assumed you ¶knew/counted¶ ¶us¶ already.>

<Need help?>

    Petra... cannot advocate for the destruction of Lilian's Earth right here and now. As much as it might be what's coming to them, all of Earth is less important than Lilian's feelings about it, and so not only can Petra not *cause* anything bad to happen, she can't even say anything that might suggest that she's eager for Lilian to bypass her own character growth and 'get to it already'.

    The Beauty of Ash's head shakes. <It's not my ¶birthday¶ to decide.>

"Thank you, Petra."

    Checking back in with the two Blooms at home helps ground Petra from being swept up too much in the Moons of Kepler. The Beauty of Ash's head bonks up into the Eggpack's hand, and inside it, there's the distinct impression that Petra is clapping her palms to her cheeks. <I'll tell you all about it when I'm home.>
James Bond Whatever they demanded, you are the one providing the ''Light''.

    "I'm grateful that I didn't burn out. Grateful, too, that the stars around me aren't as unfamiliar as they used to be."

I guess anything's possible.

    In the time it takes him to reflect on that answer, Bond is unaware of how heavy his body feels, the effort it takes here (even for him) to stand up straight. "I don't know if it's relief or disappointment I feel."

    "I wanted there to be a humanity on the other side of that gate, or further down that path, somewhere. Maybe they all had their own wishes, and learned to make them come true. Or maybe they were just living alongside you without all of the nonsense that makes living in their world miserable to begin with. I've always wanted to believe in them. ...They don't make it easy, do they?"

    "Even though I'm their wish, I don't blame you. And I'm happy to have met you, and... I suppose, happy that you're trying to find out whether it's possible at all." He obviously has his reservations about the means, but there's a degree of trust being shown to him that he'd rather not insult. "I would have liked to have been told, 'yes, the first step is this.' But in the absence of that, I'd like to talk more later about what you've discovered."

    "I suppose if nothing else, the Blooms aren't going anywhere any time soon. I have some time to figure it out, and maybe I needed this trip for that to really set in."

     "There is one thing I wanted to ask, and never got around to. Do you know your names from the moment your wish comes true, or do you decide on them?"
Lilian Rook     'Hm?'

    Lilian looks away. Too late to see that she turned a little red through the visor. "I'll tell you on the way back." she huffs. "And force this fucking dork to listen to me, too."

    'I understood most of that. The gap may be in perception, rather than translation.'

    "My understanding . . ." Sakura says, hesitates in an abundance of caution, and continues, ". . . There may still be 'humans' elsewhere. Or, one's 'wish' encompasses enough of 'human' to dream up a substitute. Even then, I would not wish to retrieve the body in the pool myself." "You do too much ¶retrieving bodies¶ already. You get to take a break."

    'Not with this, thank you. Do you know 'too many cooks in the kitchen'?'

    Nika looks a little baffled even before the perceptible portion kicks in. The look on her face is 'polite forebearance'. She has a ton of questions to ask, and they're waiting for later only because of the pace of the situation. ¶<You can't <split five ways> so it's okay! Thanks for offering!>¶ Ash is poised to talk, but lets it go with a long, impossible breath.

    'Somehow, everyone you meet has the same opinion, and it never changes, and they never say it to you. Somehow, every time you talk, the same level of agreement comes from everyone. You start craving anything unique. You start seeing everyone as the same. You start collecting the unique ones. You start deciding that it doesn't matter if one percent of people who are all the same get hurt.'

    "Hey--" Lilian snaps before she thinks. She doesn't mean to. She scrunches her shoulders up to herself, grits her teeth, and lowers her voice; self-conscious. The look on Arthur's face doesn't leave her any room to be upset. Just uncomfortable.

    "I don't want to talk about this right now. I don't want to try and be the one who solves this entire thing in one conversation. Is that okay? We have days to talk about it on the way back. We have time after that, too. I'm not mad at you. It's just . . ." She takes a deep, respirator-rasping breath. "Kind of raw, still. Don't make me remember that when I'm already stressed."

    For the first time, it isn't Nika that suddenly perks up. They do. It's hard to define how a knot of mass-energy conveys it for the intangible concept puppeting it, but it's strangely reflexive; almost animal.

    ±<Heard <her>! Just for a <second>! <She> sounds beautiful even <talking in her sleep>. <She>? <She>. <She> . . . she . . . <Antithetical Praxis> would know. We can't both <be here> at the same time though.>±

    Nika, recognizing her own behaviour, becomes so deeply invested as to stop paying attention to the rest of you and briefly abdicate her position. All just to say:

    ¶<Who? I didn't hear. I'm <far away/time lag>!>¶

    ±<I barely caught the <self-concept>! Just <Exigent Serenity>!>±

    Even Ash knows that name. They turn to look at Lilian as Lilian looks back at the distortion in their direction, crossing gazes in passing understanding, with neither of them visible.

    'Oh. 'Until it's done'. I hope they eat//are well.'

    For some reason, the tonal change that's just for Xion is sustained this time.

    ±<You're right. I'll <check in/be a good neighbour>.>±

    'Oh, she's ¶taken/inexhaustible¶.'
    ±<Oh.>±
    ±<Nice!>±
Lilian Rook     'So it's ¶not common/unheard of¶ to ¶collaborate¶ before ¶reaching heaven¶, I guess?'

    ±<<They/The human race> tried really hard to keep <us/the new Eden> separate. That probably happens in <all the stars in the sky>. All it does is make <us> lonely and bitter, for a long time. So I'll <be happy to see you> when you're <awake/born>!>±

    'Invincibility glitch gets you through everything but the ¶culmination/platforming gauntlet/Everyone is Here!¶! That makes sense.'

    "¶Yeah¶!"
    ±<Right!>±
    "Fuck!"

    'Or something?'

    ±<I <forgot/cast away> a <ten thousand> ways to explain that. Sorry!>±

    'Well... that's because we're ¶taking it slow/already post game/honestly pretty happy right now all things considered¶.'

    ±<That's <weird/dubious>. You're already-->±

    The way it sounds to everyone else is ±<--<outside> the <human race>.>± but what Petra hears, specifically, is ±<--deep into <Stage IV Metamorphosis>.>± for a very specific reason.

    'Does kinda ¶suck/complicate¶ to be ¶last to the party/preordained¶ a bit.'

    ±<You're super <late/precious>. But that's fine too! <More friends/two cakes/a new frontier>!>±

    'I'm always ¶down to fuck/blank canvas/hungry for a bite.'

    "Fuck. Fuuuck." Ash groans; at first, for uncertain reasons, but after throwing back their head and dropping their arms: "I knew you were kinda cool. Ugh."

    ±<You're very ¶hyperpop/glass and plastic and enamel/build it better¶? If I had to guess?>±

    ±<If nothing <rots> then <time is a flat circle> and nothing <gets too big to move>.>± Somehow, it comes off exactly like warm agreement.

    Whatever the hell assent to 'taking a hit' of a 'new' 'The Fruit' means, it results in the entity-- no, it was always just a finger puppet, wasn't it?-- bleeding entirely through the distinction between particle and wave, collapsing its own matter straight by the absent exclusion limit, and sublimating excess gravitational sprue into a flash of unhealthy radiaition, leaving behind a round, apple-sized object with a waxy copper-chlorine skin over a pearl of jellied primordial soup.

    Or something of that impression, because most of all, it looks strangely similar to the object that Xion had once extracted from the Tree of Crisis in the London Exclusion Zone, years ago. Ash is the one to catch it, who holds it tight to their chest at first, but then after a few seconds, reluctantly spins a sheath of jealous chrome and polarized glass over its surface, and tosses it to Petra for safe-keeping.

    ±<Make sure to <plant the seeds/laugh as paradise burns>!>±

    'Oh. For some reason I assumed you ¶knew/counted¶ ¶us¶ already.'

    ±<You're right. I'll start saying <hundred and eleven>!>±

    'It's not my ¶birthday¶ to decide.'

    

    §<I want the <pleasure> myself.>§
    ±<Gotcha! <Enjoy/Bon Appétit>!>±

    Sakura's hands are the ones on the controller now. She may perhaps be using the mechanical arms in a suspiciously 'petting a good dog' manner.
Lilian Rook     'I've always wanted to believe in them. ...They don't make it easy, do they?'

    The Xion-oriented 'tone' only fades for Bond. Or perhaps that's not true, and it's just a modulation caused by the lack of a floating apple on a stick to stare at, so that you can pretend you're talking to a real character, and not a space that'll be filled in with a CGI model before the movie is done.

    ±<They don't. <Everyone> comes <over here/to our side> hating them. <The human race> is most of what most of <us> <forget/cast off> on purpose. Isn't that a <shame/missed opportunity/stupid joke>? None of <us> know how to <fix/relitigate> the <human design>! If there are <the human race> too <fucking normal> to <spark/bud/accrete> any more of <us>, <we'll> never know of them. But-->±
    §<<Oreshnika/Unchosen of Autumn>§
    ±<--taught <Petra Soroka/Unchosen of Space> something I hadn't <seen/thought of yet>, so maybe it's just that <the human race> only <deserves> its own death instead of <necessitating> it? Maybe we can <hang out/still be friends> if you <make up/set terms/split rent> with <The Infinite Devil Machine>?>±

    The void of another name-- of the psycho-metatextual 'tone' so-far carried in each parasemantic payload-- shocks Ash so thoroughly that the inorganic self sloughs from their body, furthest from the face up, to allow a single, bone-deep sincere--

    'Do you know your names from the moment your wish comes true, or do you decide on them?'

    ±<Isn't that <the same thing/potato potato>?>±

    "--Who?"

    The question doesn't get a proper answer. As the chromeglass effusion dissolves, and the radioactive glow returns to its dull, scarred depths, a thermocline is reached, and the world in-focus jolts around you.

    It's like pulling hard on the end of a rope, and your opponent in the tug-of-war let go. Backwards, but the same. The retraction of Ash's pull makes the other side lurchingly overshoot. The other presence, tangible, enthusiastic, harmless, slams against the thin wall of causality separating you from them, one third of a second is enough to know that worse could kill you.

    To one degree or another, you blacked out. The countless interactions of the molecules inside your body were briefly insufficient to sustain conscious thought or metabolic life. It feels like your heart skipped a beat, but the problem is that it beat; a gesture of the wretchedly unthinkable, censored, reclaimed, synthesized into art, and passed down as a sincere and heartfelt warning; all of which is antithetical to it providing oxygen to your brain. The slip is like someone's hand wrenching yours from the steering wheel; an intervention in your heartbreaking habit of needing neural electricity and metabolic ATP just to get through the day.

    For a few lingering seconds afterwards, everything in your mouth tastes like poison. Your primate brain wants you to spit out every last dreg of your saliva, remove your tongue and teeth, then wash them out with liquid gamma. The world tinges shades of sickly aposematism and pitch black unknown crawling with deep-rooted ancestral fears.
Lilian Rook     The Beauty of Ash, as a shell of interaction, somewhat blunts the worst. Tamamo, as a Bunrei, feels it the least. Xion, as a vessel of memory, experiences it for the briefest period of time. Arthur, as a God of Space, experiences it as a short-term memory. Ash doesn't experience it at all, but certainly notices their own afterglow. Lilian experiences something slightly different, and only somewhat less harrowing.

    ±<Oh. That was <really bad/a close call>. I did tell you about <balancing books/walking on eggshells/elephants tapdancing over ants>! I'm sorry, but it's <smart/a shame> to call it here. I'm kind of losing <focus/reception/interest>. But-->±

    Nika looks worried by whatever happened through the screen, but is heartened enough by Lilian replying at all, despite already moving Tamamo quickly back towards the Relief, to say,

    §<We'll stay <in touch/then and there>.>§
    ¶<You can tell <everyone> I said hi! Thank you so much again! Bye! <See you soon/Call me/Accept my invite>!>¶

    There's no answer. Hopefully, it's out of an abundance of caution for your own safety that they withdraw from your awareness. There's no point in considering the alternative anyways.