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Foundation Scions	<B-anter> Mesmer Jr. says, growing more upset and higher pitched as she continues, "She wasn't taught better from that instance. She wasn't, and the clear flaws of her personality show through the fact that she knowingly convinced her peers to follow her into the Storm. It's pointless teaching her lessons through simple and logical methods, she's resistant and a repeat offender." <B-anter> Mesmer Jr. says, "She's responsible. I'll prove it. I'll collect the memory." . . .     Sitting (not) alone in the upper-story hospital ward that's become nothing more than a prison cell and nothing less than the entire world these past months, the slow march towards that bill's final vote is unbearable for Mesmer Jr. To the rebels, and the sympathizers, a successful vote is for new freedoms and vindication, to Constantine and her like-mindeds, a failed vote is the relief of unloosened control, and a static idea of the future. To Mesmer, a final decision either way comes with a discharge notice for the girl she's kept charge over like a favored doll. One way or another, the Foundation will need its Timekeeper back.     Anyone listening to her frantic tirades on public radios has this painted out clear for them- she likes things as they are, untouchable possession, with none of the obsessive worries that arise from hearing of Vertin's outside escapades, no unmet retributive want to stop her, and no distance to be kept between them.     Anyone listening to her desperate flailings has, similarly clear, justification to worry over what she'll do now that the vote has been called, again, for the final time, marking out in grey and white that today will be the last day for Mesmer to hold onto this status quo. It's her last-best chance to dig fingernails into Vertin's hippocampus. She's even said as much, no letter necessary from the Vice President's office to order her into grey-matter diving.     It hangs heavy in the air. . . .     Through the uncurtained windows looking into the room from the Laplace Rehabilitation Center's hallways, Mesmer Jr. is visible as she stands (not) alone over a control console switchboard, plugging and unplugging various electrodes into sparesely labeled sockets. Audible from the hallway is the dreamlike-alien hum of the Artificial Somnambulism machine Vertin's head is obscured by, the glass and chrome monster caught now in full life. Barely audible through the glass, Mesmer Jr. herself is humming a bit of a tune- "Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame..."     A CRT television on a countertop across the room from Vertin's bed, and Mesmer's workstation, televises the vote result-tally; as does a similar television in nearly any other room of the Foundation or Laplace, and where televisions aren't, handheld radio devices are clustered around. Emotions run high about the results, excitement, dissapointment, arguments heard down the halls, but despite glancing its way periodically, Mesmer Jr. barely seems to even be paying attention to its content- it's nothing more than a countdown.     She's been exactly as she is, there, for hours- passing guards outside, thinking little of it, make jesting comments as to the Mesmer's fervor- but only when Mesmer Jr. finally turns around at all to glare out the window towards hallway activity, is that ferver obvious on her face.
Foundation Scions	Her bloodshot eyes have bruiselike dark circles around them, and are held wide by force rather than naturally and easily. Poorly wiped away is a bit of dried blood on her upper lip, skin around it harsh-pink from the dryingness of rubbing alcohol, not a solitary nosebleed. A few faintly-buzzing electrical wires clip to her red headband from the consoles at her fingertips. She's trembling, and the room is filled to the brim with nearly-tangible arcane fluctuations from the procedure she's no doubt deep in the midst of performing.     Frantic, like the words catch in her throat when she sees Lilian, and other visitors, paranoia filling in the obvious intent, she calls out, hoarse, to distracted-uncaring guards, "Stay out! Security! Don't let anyone past! This is a sensitive operation! It can't be interrupted! Security!"     This is a futile effort. The dedicated guards to the room aren't where they should be, posted right outside the doors; instead, they're down the hallway, with a few more of their ilk, and nurses, clustered around a radio, cheering at the results of the vote, and largely that it happens, spiking coffee mugs, and excitedly waving Elites past, rather than stopping them-     -The vote's result, that all-important 'Passed', is slow to make itself known across the airwaves, but in conference rooms and the council hall, has been a known matter for long enough that the rebel detainees are detained no longer, free enough in this moment to do as they are doing-     But even without guards to stop the rebels and the Elites, the truth of Vertin's door being locked can. The untouchable comfort of being behind glass won't shatter so easily, not until the one Elite she's entrusted a keycard to makes use of it.
Riku Asakura	Riku hasn't liked the way things were in the Foundation, as his enrollment in the Rebellion made things clear.  Thankfully, that was behind them; the Foundation had approved the Team Timekeeper proposal.  It just came down to getting Vertin back from Mesmer Jr. herself now.  From what Mesmer said on the radio... well, he doesn't know what to expect.   Honestly, in the early days of the Rebellion, he had wanted to make for Vertin, but was held off by Regulus and others saying that it'd be bad for their cause, and also probably fail slash cause more damage.  What he sees through the window is what he feared.  Vertin is still in her coma, and Mesmer Jr. is still 'operating' on her even though the resolution passed. On the other hand, Mesmer looks like hell.  That gives him pause, because it's really bad.  The bloodshot eyes, the bags under them, the dried blood on her lip, and the other effects of sleeplessness and exhaustion.  Even when she calls for them to stay out and for the guards, all Riku could do at that moment was shake his head at the mess that Mesmer was.   Though the door was locked, Riku didn't think violently smashing it down was the answer.  So instead, he tried talking to Mesmer, "I think you need to stop. The Team Timekeeper bill passed.  She's been freed from this, and I guess so have you.  You look rough... so please stop and let us in so you can get some rest and maybe medical attention."
Holly Asturias	Emotional highs and lows don't leave Holly so unwell, normally. The sheer disgust she found within her for the Concord's surely tactical but tasteless continued backing of the Manus, hearing Forget-Me-Not's voice again, and then finding out a few details during the trial - like the letter Schneider received, for example - had left her frustrated, compounding with her usual ailments.     Thankfully, she's rarely left alone to stew for long.     Nicole, momentarily along for the ride - she insisted on seeing Holly off at the Warpgate outside the Sanatorium - seems fully engrossed in being the doctor's emotional support sounding board right now.     "So... everything went better than expected?" Nicole smiles.     "It's looking like it will. I'm going back to find out."     "Yeah? You have to fill me in when you get back," Nicole creeps closer.     "Mm? I already told you... did I leave something out? I only dropped by to freshen up, the vote should be happening right now."     "Ah, ah, right. Well, I'm sure it'll be fine. Maybe they won't cuff you this time?" She laughs a bit.     "My that'd be nice. At least I got off easy by being cooperative. I feel bad for those who had to stew in cells. I can't help but wonder about consequences too. I'm sure it won't be as easy as swiping that wonderful card the Conco..." Holly stops, and pouts, caught on the edge of 'I *should* spend their money, shouldn't I?' and 'Well now I don't want it, so maybe I'll just take the community service.'     "You need a pick me up."     "Perhaps. I suppose I am a little bit..."     "Hungry?" Nicole grabs her collar, and lowers it intently.     Holly stares. "I was going to say tired, and worried for White."     "Well *she* isn't here to do this for you this time, is she?"     "..." NOW     When Holly crosses (back) into Foundation territory, she's still in the process of wiping the corner of her mouth. She's looking much less frustrated, and as prime-and-ready as she'll ever be. She hadn't left for very long after being given the go-ahead that she could leave; barely long enough to let her staff know not to worry. But she couldn't well stay away and miss the conclusion. Doubtless they would want her there for that.     ... what she'd like is to sneak a peak and see how Marian is doing, while she's back. Maybe see how the place operates when there isn't a riot going on and all that too! Small bonus. She's curious.     It's chance, as it almost always at least partially is, that she almost bumps into the march through Laplace, as people celebrate the vote and head for the Timekeeper.     It isn't chance that she just injects herself into the proceedings with full intent to hug Vertin the moment she can, all else suddenly be damned. "You look rough..."     "Ah, now now~ she's a professional. I've found that looking rough can often be part and parcel of the job." Playful, though when she pays attention to Mesmer and her surroundings, she has to stop herself from saying 'oh my you really do look rough!' and instead offers:     "Oh so *this* is what the full-size machine looks like. It looks so complicated! You must be at least a little bit tired. Could I offer anything? I could go get you a drink?" There's probably no world where Mesmer Jr. accepts anything from Holly, but she has to at least offer.
Flamel Parsons	Flamel's skulking invisibly rather than bothering Mesmer directly. But his warning to the others outside is clear: <We gotta make sure not to interrupt chaotically. I don't know the details of her work, but this is a lot more dense than the usual Artificial Somnambulism. I know you don't like breaking anyone's privacy, so I'm not going to aim for sensitive mental spots, but I'm going to target the psychic knot that Mesmer's set up and get us in there to detangle it.>     Once he's in, the Psychoportal will slip on. He's got the stealth maneuvering needed to get it under the helmet. So as soon as someone can get him through with a well-placed keycard, he can glide it under and help the others into the psychic tangle with that familiar out-of-body tug and dive sensation.     <It's not that I don't trust Mesmer Jr. But Vertin should wake up with some peace.> Is what he's thinking. <Not like this. Not recovering from deep, heavy sunk-costed psychosurgery. But... Rejuvenated. Help me out, please.>
Ein	Over a month ago, Field Agent Moissan had made her first report during the debriefing after the Storm of 1929. In it, she gave a preliminary overview of her mission, the ineffective assistance of Headquarters personnel 'Sabre Squadron' and the inflexible nature of the unit commander in the face of a developing situation and the hazy nature of the superiority of the Timekeeper's mission during the storm. In it, she was praised for returning with Sotheby. In it, Ms. Moissan is ordered to produce a full report. In it, Ms. Moissan decides for herself the report might take a while. Recently, Ms. Moissan had finally submitted her full report. In it, it was highlighted that outsiders and Arcanists were absolutely instrumental for any gain at all from the Era other than fantastical loss. Compiling the Laplace data on the lost equipment had taken her weeks of hand accounting, but the figures of lost material alone were eyewatering even as dry numbers. It was her recommendation that Laplace immediately begin far steeper austerity measures internally to not place such valuable equipment in the field where sabotage was not as critically erasing as an early Storm after the post-mortem from the engineers attached to Sabre. Prior to the trial, she was taken in for a private deposition for the court's record about the events of 1929, focusing on the full narrative. So, for a third time she was called to report upon the events of 1929. Calmly, in chair, Ms. Moissan had sat with her hands upon her lap and recited again her well-practiced truth: That working with the Timekeeper had been a pleasure, a clarity within the Storm, unlike the stiff and interconnected bureaucracy of combined commands in the field as Sabre's expedition force had overseen. Then she had been put on standby, pending the trial. For some reason - one that had left her with cold confidence each of the three times - she had known that her fate, also, hung in this balance. So, she read in a garden outside the courtbuilding when the vote took place, the third and final one, marking in her book with paper marks and adding notes in pen to the bookmarks at a steady and considered pace. She listened, slowing in her plotting through the text, alert and ready, and was already up and walking to the baliff's office inside as the vote tilted towards 'Yea'. Having released Druvis, who had made it her point to find the Suitcase at the foremost, knowing that the fight was over and she was finally allowed to stop being a soldier - at least for a while, Ms. Moissan then fetched the terminally bored Sotheby and Brave Typhon from their cells. "Why, Ms. Moissan! You're here!" Gasps the young lady Sotheby, who had already creatively constructed an entire mythos of the brave and all-powerful warrior-woman 'M' had been captured and tortured by Jupiter's wicked henchwoman, Europa (cast, of course, as Constantine) in an astoundingly vivid sense. For some reason, Europa had an energy whip that forced 'M' to eat strange and definitely poisonous (Sotheby was sure!) vegetables. The constructions were very complex, and nevertheless crushed and discarded with the reality slicing through low stimulated fantasy of an active mind. Regulus had been told about it in excruciating detail because they were in adjacent cells! She now understands how Druvis and Sotheby were introduced to each other! Isn't that wonderful? --- Now, Ms. Moissan leads Sotheby by the hand into the medical ward, having come directly from where the Arcanists and rebels had been kept to meet Vertin. Of all of them, perhaps Ms. Moissan could tell security off at the entryway with her authorities in the wake of the passed vote, but it's moot - nobody is stopping them. So the pair walk towards the glass-windowed observation room, Moissan shocked at Mesmer's state as she turns, and Sotheby...
Ein	"O~h no! Ma'-am!" Sotheby gasps, free hand going to mouth. Today, she is hatless and dressed down to a simple (for her) white affair with her hair done up with ribbons and she wears blue-black pearl bracelets with a powder blue handbag that clinks and rattles faintly. "You don't look well at-all! I've got some very critically reviewed nutritional-energy potion that'll bring you right back up to speed, you look like you're overdosing on several stimulants with side effects! I can guarantee one sip of mine and you'll feel much better! And then, um..." She pauses, having entirely forgotten what was going on, until -- oh right! Vertin! "Security? Oh, the bodyguards are close, don't worry! Though, I'll remember to give them a stern talking to, because you called them three times and they didn't answer! If I call Mr. Karson's name twice he has the *arcane ability*-" He's a human. "-to appear!" He runs.
Lilian Rook	Mesmer's private little world of tenuous calm, both in its moments of surreal peace and it's moments of deeply disturbed tension, is something Lilian has become much more familiar with than she'd like. Over the past two months, she'd become more familiar with it than anyone except Mesmer herself.     What had begun as a miserable stay in the Foundation's quarantine after one of the worst nights of her life, turned to gut-wrenching sympathy and secondhand anger which she still doesn't care to examine for Manus Vindictae's influence, had trailed out into an long and sickly haze of guilt and self-flagellation for the conditions under which she was released. Two months of her time at Laplace have been defined by the wobbly and often razor thin line she trod in this ward, day after day, between emboldening the psychoses of a used-and-abused woman clinging to the system that neglects her, and looking in the mirror to find herself exactly the sort of person she fears becoming more than anything else. The vote is a relief either way, because no matter the result, it will break this miserable, unstable calm for her, or prompt her to break it herself.     Two months of the little rituals that sustained the unlikely armistice between Lilian and Mesmer are counted in MRE sticker labels in the back corner ceiling, burned VHS tapes piled high with hundreds of episodes of How It's Made and similar television, surreal conversations that form the invisible groundwork for the particular lyrics that haunt Mesmer Jr. at the time, and . . .     The keycard that Lilian has sweat and bled for in ways that she will never tell anyone if she can help it, earned over weeks and months of hard work. Meant as a gesture of good faith; a bargain to keep things this way and no other; Lilian only ever intended to use it for showing herself in and out in the process of checking on Vertin, ensuring each day the vote dragged on was another one that the Foundation's Timekeeper could still come back from.     That keycard, now, is a blade she has to wield in another's defense. It is one she draws from its scabbard with reluctance, and employs without hesitation. Her LSCC uniform is armour. The peppy little celebrity wave she gives the guards on the way past is a parry. Her 'major find' is a feint.     'Stay out! Security!Don't let anyone past! This is a sensitive operation! It can't be interrupted! Security!'     The card sliding through the scanner and the shrill beep from the lock is the fatal thrust that must go mercilessly through Mesmer Jr.'s ribs, and Lilian wears an expression befitting it as she storms in.     'You look rough... so please stop and let us in so you can get some rest and maybe medical attention.'     "Vertin is released from treatment. Turn off your machines, pack up, and get out before I throw you out."     The words are spoke even as she waves the others in, blatantly using her access key to pour half a dozen Elites into the ward room sized for two patients and an extra staff assistant at most. "I told you I'd be checking in. 'If you've done nothing wrong then you've nothing to hide'."
Regulus	It feels weird approaching moving into the Laplace Rehabilitation Center WITHOUT having to sneak around. She's just gotten used to having her handcuffs removed and the truth of 'Team Timekeeper' being established still doesn't exactly feel real to her yet. She's heard it's gotten passed but she's so accustomed to governmental bodies never helping that it's still kind of a shock that it has. It's maybe a lesson on not being so apathetic that you don't strive and try at all. In the immediate aftermath of Sonetto's speech, she was visibly shocked by Sonetto revealing the letter and with how she shouted, in the words of another, 'Paupers fuck off!'. Her hands were cuffed so she couldn't hug her but it was with no small amount of awe that she whispered, "You were incredible, Sonetto..." to her friend, just a bit of tears in her eyes--a mixture of joy and sadness both that she doesn't quite know what else to say in the moment as any words besides that get caught in her throat and fail to get anywhere. Or maybe it's just the exhaustion in her vocal chords. Indeed, as she approaches the hospital room Vertin has been confined to, her voice is subdued and quiet like she's trying to protect herself from straining her voice any further or it has reached the point where she's been forced to. Regulus could, with enough time, get the door open through ilicit means but she's hesitant to break another Foundation rule immediately after the Team Timekeeper proposal had gotten passed and, besides which, there's another option and ALSO she is leery of busting in on Mesmer with the mob even as she's determined to ensure this is the last day Vertin has to sleep in that room for a long while yet. She stops for a moment to look at Vertin, asleep, through the windows. She does look peaceful, there, though the peace has been with her for far too long. ''Stay out! Security!'' Mesmer speaks out before Regulus so much as moves for the door. Regulus doesn't exactly look to be a picture perfect image of health either. She's got bruises on her face, cuts and scrapes across her arms, dark rings around her eyes from many sleepless nights that haven't faded from her time in lockup, and her clothing is a bit rumpled due to her not having had the opportunity to change into a newer outfit as she hasn't gotten in touch with APPLe or the Suitcase. ''Ah, now now~'' Regulus isn't so sure that she'd ever want a doctor in this condition to be looking after her, officially one or otherwise. She is at a loss of words for Mesmer. She doesn't want to say anything that upsets her further but Vertin must be freed today. Frankly, if Mesmer continues holding onto Vertin even after the discharge petition--she suspects Mesmer will be the one in trouble. She doesn't exactly like being on this side of the equation either, as she thinks about it. "Hey Ms. Moissan. Good to see you. Hope we didn't get you into too much trouble." Being next to Sotheby's cell was probably the one thing keeping Regulus from breaking down in her cell but maybe it's best if she lets Sotheby take the lead here. Even if she wasn't concerned for Mesmer at all, needlessly antagonizing Mesmer while she's mid operation doesn't seem like a great-- ''Get out before I throw you out.'' But there's something to be said for being firm and pointed, isn't there? Regulus looks over to Flamel and gives him a nod of agreement before saying, "She's officially discharged. Please, Mesmer. I'm begging here. Sotheby's potions work wonders. She can help."
Odette Raskins	The first detainment was painful, but bearable, because Odette was confident that the vote would pass. The second detainment was agonizingly long, because Odette wasn't so sure after hearing all the testimony. It's not that the testimony was bad. No, it was fantastically delivered, and she couldn't imagine anyone but the most heartless and stubborn fools would actually deny the bill after hearing everything that everyone had to say. She just couldn't be sure that enough people voting on the matter wouldn't be heartless or stubborn. Sleeping through the vote is impossible, and counting down the seconds makes the minutes feel like they're taking forever. It's only when the doors to her cell open and she's given the all-clear to step out that she finally remembers to breathe again, exhaling sharply and nearly going boneless after being tensed up in her cell for so long. She can't actually do that, of course, since there's still the whole getting-out part to do, but there's also someone else that she needs to see after all this is finally done. Looking in through the glass to see Mesmer Jr. still at work and looking like hell, the EMT takes a deep breath while nodding along slowly with what she's being told already. " Instead of rushing in after Lilian as she opens that door, however, Odette turns back the way she came instead. She approaches one of the very security guards Mesmer's shouting for, swallowing once to clear her throat up a bit before raising her voice loud enough to (probably) pull their attention away from the voting results and whatever else is being reported on following all that. "Two stretchers, any doctors you can get a hold of, and whatever dehydration treatment they've got on hand.s" She practically orders shortly before turning right back around (again) to head inside. Sotheby's assessment and offer of the energy potion gets a relieved noise out of Odette, too, given her already high outlook of Sotheby's abilities compared to her general feeling on the Foundation. "Miss Mesmer, do you need help stepping outside? Don't step too fast now, vertigo can be real bad combined with sleep deprivation." She asks while offering a shoulder, being careful not to actually touch Mesmer Jr. or the stuff connected to Vertin until she's given some kind of go ahead to do so by either Mesmer Jr. herself or Lilian.
Foundation Scions	'I can guarantee one sip of mine and you'll feel much better! And then, um...'     "No potion peddling," is the first tailored response she has, before the circumstances of the growing crowd solidify- Sotheby is a stranger to Mesmer, not someone she's met beyond preliminarily, and flies under the haze of her current mood as 'just another gawking arcanist'- it's a moment after, stiff, that she adds, "If you're fishing for a reason to interfere, please vacate the premises- I'm healthy. I'm fine. Move along."     Seeing Lilian outside of the ward's window, here, is at the first moment, a strange relief- associated with enough back-brain networking to be positive more than scary, in this circumstance at least. First to break that sentiment is memory recall of Sakura, saying something akin to Lilian finally altering whether she cares about Mesmer, second to break that sentiment is Lilian's expression. The single moment where the keycard passes through the magnet-strip, and the impenetrable barricade of an inch of tempered glass suddenly feels flimsy, is perhaps the most vulnerable and frightened Mesmer Jr. has ever looked.     Mesmer staggers as the door cracks open, and flinches at the indicating beep, heart obviously racing in her chest. She turns as well as she can, while still hooked into the device controls, and the posture she jumps into is that of interposing herself between Vertin and the newcomers- like a hawk guarding a kill, arms out at her side. Vertin, sleeping on the cot, doesn't stir. 'Vertin is released from treatment.'     "By whose order? Show me the slip first." Sharp-frantic, verbal tone of trying to bite. Whatever stimulants keeping her on her two feet, here, make the motions of her jaw in that snapped comment wire-taught and stressed. "I can't release her until a formal discharge order; and she's in the middle of a delicate procedure. I won't let you interrupt it, discharge will wait. I'm proceeding manually, and carefully, with the excision of a critical trauma. It's a matter of safety. Cessation would leave severe damage."     Whether she's telling the truth or not is a dangerous bargain- setting up a veritable dead man's switch of this procedure is her last attempt at control. Of course she'd do something like this.     Frantic, scared, and still sparing moments to reach towards the control consoles and adjust settings, mid-confrontation, is testament to how miserably scattered Mesmer is; just as it's testament to how she's used to working with these levels of stress and exhaustion. Still, scared, leaning back over the cot, physically trying to guard Vertin's body from the incoming flush of Elites, Mesmer's blood pressure is such that, for the unknownth time today, her nose starts bleeding again. 'Please, Mesmer. I'm begging here.'     "It can wait. Please. Stand down. You shouldn't even be here!" Angry, upset, blood dripping from her face, this is the type of moment Mesmer ought to frantically reach for her K-tope Calibrator, a weapon many of the rebels are now familiar with- but it isn't even on her hip. Instead, it's left carefully on the opposite countertop. She eyes it, but can't afford to make a move.     Of course, Flamel can afford to make his move. Everyone crowding in is, of course, a crowd, but despite her body-blocking, the fact that she can't even see Flamel means it's a trivial notion for him to rush in, and place the psychoportal unnoticed, until the electromagnetic flux of the maneuver alerts Mesmer, far too late.     Exasperated, scared, gut-wrenchingly angry, as the plan unfolds before her, literally flailing, to try and bat and scratch, "No! What are you doing? You'll mess everything up!"
Timekeeper	On the bed, Vertin looks peaceful, like she might wake up at any moment, besides the IVs and monitors hooked up to her, and the glass bubble surrounding her head for Mesmer to work through. Her hat and uniform are gone, and have been for months. She's in a simple hospital gown instead, her visible hair just a little unkempt from the bed and pillow, blanket tucked securely up to her chest. Her arms have always been thin, and there's no change there, but her skin is just a shade paler than it was before.     Without the hat, the suitcase, and the confidence exuded by the 'Timekeeper', Vertin is a young, frail girl, just an inch or two over five feet, laying in a hospital bed. It feels impossible to connect the girl in front of you to the image constructed over the course of the hearing and litigated in the bill. . . .     Months of psychic prodding, tweaking, and orderly treatment has eased Vertin's comatose mind into a state like a sedate art piece rather than a living thing. The astral portal that Flamel beams into her mind is a heavy wooden door and a set of stairs that creak, leading you down into the vast encompassing dark that stretches between the entrance and destination. To get to the core, where Mesmer's procedure is working through the foundation of Vertin's mind, you have to first cross the unconscious hollows that lay just behind her eyes, which would normally be vibrantly full of every waking thought and feeling she has about the world, and is now dreamily empty.     It drags on much longer than the staircase that leads down into the Suitcase, the obvious comparison. Walking down it, all the sights and sounds of the outside room are distant and ethereally muted, not being overriden entirely with the internal architecture of Vertin's mind as they should be, but not held distinct from them, either. The cool, lightless air is broken by florescent pinpricks that float high, high above, the bulbs of the ward rendered into artificial stars, and the rhythmic beeping of the machinery hooked up to her mind softens into the ticking of a metronome.     The only way to see more than a few inches in front of your face in this interstitial void is by the ephemeral glow of ghostly mental impressions that drift in and out of reach like smoke in a breeze. Shapes and memories, devoid of context, brush by for glimpses into Vertin's psyche: a perfect circle, stacks of books piled impossibly high to form a wall, voices overlapping, speaking indistinctly. Her hat spirals down weightlessly out of the dark above, ribbon trailing behind it, only to fade away before reaching the stairs. The warmth of an unseen hand touches your cheek, accompanied by softly sang words you can't make out, distorted by the low static of rainfall.     The sound of rain grows steadily clearer as you descend, eventually bringing the smell of petrichor up with it. Taking another step down, there's an intangible 'splash' as if the rainwater had pooled into an ocean, but weightless and dry. The stairs go down past where your head submerges beneath the water's outlined surface, drowning out the other faint sensory memories that occupied the space, until a thin golden thread traces its way through the dark, spiraling down and down to lay out the path that leads, finally, to the second door.
Timekeeper	The sunlight here beats down through unnaturally spaced trees, stretching out to either side of a dirt path, suspended in the middle between wire-lined stone walls, and barbed metal fences. The Vertin here is eleven, but could pass for eight. She's wearing a stark white school uniform, a featureless dress with long sleeves and high collar, a limp grey ribbon hanging off of a golden insignia pin on its chest. Dissonant with the memory is the Timekeeper's hat, placed on her head, contorting through dreamlike logic to perfectly obscure her face from every angle even when she tilts it up to look at the uniformed adult walking next to her.     "I don't understand why. I just wanted to ask about the 'Storm'."     "Shhh, shh. You children aren't supposed to know that word. I won't ask you how you knew it, but you have to promise not to keep saying it."     "I promise."     "Alright. You'll be picked up tomorrow, so until then, think carefully on your actions, okay?"     It was surely a longer walk in reality, but in memory, the beginning and the destination are almost one and the same. Taking a step at all blurs the environment, time crunched and stitched back together, forcefully recalled by the Artificial Somnambulism into a string of recollections one after the other.     Here, it's a sensation of pervading dampness before anything else. A mundane classroom door, reinforced with metal bars, that shuts and locks, at the same time as a whole spread of unordered impressions wander around the room. Concrete walls and floors are unlit by anything but the light coming through the door's barred window, water rolling down and puddling on every surface, sapping the warmth from your body and sticking to your throat with a rotten smell.     Here, Vertin stands, the silhouette of the hat she didn't have obscuring her face as the door locks behind her. She bends down and gasps at a strange, hand-sized worm wriggling in the dim sunlight, exclaiming "Wicked..." at the intricate patterns on its carapace. In another spot at the same time, she hisses with pain, swatting at worms crawling up her leg and chewing thinly bleeding channels into her skin. In the corner of the room, she sits on a worn-thin blanket with her knees up to her chest and no worms, face hidden for any expression of trauma or triumph.     "They're Shamir worms. Critters that are naturally *marvelous* engravers, chewing incredible patterns into anything. But according to the myths of King Solomon, they're contained by wool, so if you sit here, you're safe."     Following the instruction smears the room again, unsteadily twisting perspectives like vertigo. Rather than addressing the Elites, she was talking through a improvised 'window' of broken rebar, at a young boy straining to peek his head up and over from another cell. The boy has messy red hair and grey eyes, and a metal ring the side of his head pulled over it like a headband, and the first clearly defined memory of the whole dream.     "Huh! Wouldn't you know it! Hey, hey, should we make an alliance? I've snuck some food in here with my arcane skill. Do you want to share?"
Tamamo	'I seemed to get... too emotional just now....'     "It was very well done, Ms. Sonetto -- the throwing in their face of that awful note, especially." Tamamo is taking the time, the moment it's physically convenient, to brush stray hairs back into place after Sonetto's outburst of witnessing. "Everything you said was true, with or without that driving force of feeling behind it."     . . .     They march toward the room, all together now. "I suppose a crowd should not be needed, however..."     . . .     'What is your relationship to the Timekeeper?'     Those words echo.     . . .     "...though I may not be her chosen confidant, I should like to imagine myself someone whose presence would be missed."     . . .'Stay out! Security!'     <...I'm going to target the psychic knot that Mesmer's set up and get us in there to detangle it.>     'Turn off your machines, pack up, and get out before I throw you out.'     Quietly, for the way it was spoken, Tamamo says, "Mr. Parsons...?" She can't help the note of surprise, delivered simply by the fact of him having prepared a response. Only then does her attention shift to Lilian, looking between her and Mesmer, the television, the tapes, the Somnambulist contraption made menacing by Mesmer's state, the...     'I'm healthy. I'm fine.'     "You are not in good health." It doesn't take long for that to turn into, "You are bleeding."     It's strange, she thinks. Tamamo's opinion of Mesmer Jr. shifted down and down over the course of their acquaintanceship, until it was, quietly, far lower than Lilian's own, more complicated relationship. It was still difficult to think of her as anything but that lowest of figures, the kind who cannot be helped, but it's this moment of sleep-deprived, hostile, manipulative jealousy that pushes Tamamo to think that, just maybe, it would be worth the try... to put Mesmer under Gwendolyn Sotheby's care and authority, instead of Petra's plan with the fleas.     Either way, she'll have to make sure Lilian doesn't fall further into this pit. A hand that would drag her down should be cut at the wrist.
Holly Asturias	"No! What are you doing? You'll mess everything up!"     "Not to worry, Flamel has poked around in my head before and it was both painless *and* relieving. Would recommend! Five stars." Despite the joking tone, Holly does produce a tissue, and offer it to Mesmer. "If you won't accept a drink, or care, please at least see to that nosebleed." She's even being normal about it! She's just fed. She's fine for a while, unless something happens. "She's officially discharged. Please, Mesmer. I'm begging here."     "Oh, how are you, Regulus? You had it much worse than I did. They did feed you, yes?" Her opinion of the Fondation is pretty low right now! She wouldn't be surprised if prisoner neglect was part of the issues, at this point. It is what it is. Vertinverse.     "Is this like an Incursion, then...?" She's never experienced one, but has read plenty about them. She'd always wondered what they were like, even if they would be strictly to discourage, on account of usually being lethal.     "No, much safer, I presume. Thank you, Flamel, though my this does feel a little bit invasive, doesn't it?" Just a bit?     Holly takes in the sights; what starts as a slow descent reminiscent of the Suitcase turns into phantoms, a hat, even a gently touch, and the Revenant smiles, a little bit appeased that the Timekeeper's mind would be as soothing as the Timekeeper themselves.     Then down into water - that part is strange. It's quickly safe, and so there's no cause to worry. The sudden sunlight, compared to the darkness on the way down, makes even the Sun-resistant vampire have to cover her eyes for a second, to adjust, to make sure her crown of a hat isn't blinding anyone.     "Is that... a tiny Vertin?"     Her voice squeaks into a little squeal, and it takes every ounce of her strength not to interfere in the memory to go give the Tinykeeper headpats. "I don't understand why. I just wanted to ask about the 'Storm'."     "Ah, but what a dark memory, I see." She remembers the insistence to keep the Storm a secret. It makes sense children would be especially protected from that knowledge. "They're Shamir worms."     Then a classroom. Is it supposed to be shifting scenes so quickly? She's sure if things were abnormal Flamel would say something. "Shamir worms...?"     She bends over, curious about the little engraving critters - and concerned for the wounds, even if they're from ages past. "Mm, just now I thought about healing her, but would that have consequences? What *are* we looking to do here, less broadly than 'awaken her'?"
Timekeeper	. . .     Sonetto doesn't make it to the ward in the LRC, not for lack of wanting. In the post-trial adrenaline comedown, the reassurance from Regulus and physical touch from Tamamo are enough to make her breath unsteady and her eyes burn, but also to buffer her to keep going.     After the vote was finally passed, rather than aiming herself towards the Laplace Rehabilitation Center, her mission turns her back to the Foundation campus yet again, with her spine straight. As the Timekeeper's Assistant, it falls to her to make the case for an official discharge for her companion-- surely, there's no argument left that needs to be made, but the slip of paper itself is a weapon and a promise, and Sonetto needs to arm herself with both to rescue the princess from the dragon's tower.
Lilian Rook	'By whose order? Show me the slip first.'     Lilian doesn't have a slip. What Lilian has is her work phone, internal LSCC issue, to shove roughly into Mesmer's hands, and say "Call Z yourself and get out of my sight."     Whether or not it really was ordered hardly matters anymore. After cementing her first real political ally beyond Vertin in this place, Lilian has already built mechanism necessary to weaponize her. From her phone, Madam Z, executive committee and director of personnel, will confirm it; and if it isn't true, it will be shortly.     'I'm proceeding manually, and carefully, with the excision of a critical trauma. It's a matter of safety. Cessation would leave severe damage.'     "Oh I'm certain you are." says Lilian, breathed in the same moment she brushes past. It's hair-raising to hear scorn in the tone of voice she usually reserves for moments of delirious disinhibition instead. "Not to worry. We have professionals with us." Lilian says, not without pleasure, dry and bitter as it is. "You're relieved."     'No! What are you doing? You'll mess everything up!'     Checking the clock is a needless gesture. From Lilian, it means nothing at all. She nods in the direction of Flamel, makes a pair of hand-signs in a similar direction, motions towards Tamamo, and then spits without facing Mesmer, "Press a button about it, you fucking witch."     . . . . . . . .     For the first time ever, Lilian takes a deep, calming breath, as though decompressing from something, inside one of Flamel's psychoportals instead of after getting back out of one. There are a million and one things she could think to say, and a good many questions that would be reasonable to ask her, so to escape both of them at the same time, she strides down the ethereal stairs at clip deliberately too fast for anyone else to keep up with, only slowing once she realizes that she's making it difficult for Tamamo to follow her too.     On any other day, the void between waking and dreaming would be something she finds disturbing, but seeing the Artificial Somnambulism rehabilitation ward fade away into the dark sky like the surface of the ocean after sinking is an oddly relieving one, in the mood Lilian finds herself in. Distancing herself from it feels good. The quiet allows herself to hear the throbbing of her heartbeat in her ears, and calm it by deliberate will. Shortly after, she can hear her own thoughts, too, loud and busy enough that Lilian jumps at the touch on her cheek two and a half seconds delayed, turning to look at Tamamo, wide-eyed, for a plausible explanation.     She reaches out to catch the hat as it falls, and slowly curls her fingers shut again when it fades just before she can touch it.     . . . . . . . .     'What *are* we looking to do here, less broadly than 'awaken her'?'     "If you can't figure that out then you shouldn't have tagged along in the first place." says Lilian. Though she has to be a little snappy about it, she at least sounds more or less back to normal. She either hasn't noticed or hasn't deigned to comment on the mundane triviality of losing her LSCC uniform through the door and ending up in a crisply remembered rendition of the one she'd put together just for Vertin instead. "Find whatever nightmarish little dirty bomb Mesmer has been building inside her brain and dismantle it before she can use it."     "And. Leave her memories alone. She's endured enough fiddling by now, and I'm sick to death of hearing them relitigated."
Flamel Parsons	Invisibility is no defense for literally flailing. Mesmer's functional bet that she can do *this* with her arms and if Flamel gets hit then it's his fault does functionally come true. However, he has wrapped his arms in several blankets and held them in front of him before coming inside. "Ow. Ow. Ow, ow, ow." He says, flickering out of invisibility. "Everyone get in there, please...!"     This risks Mesmer Jr. coming along for the astral projection, in one state or another, in one fragment or another.     In any case, the gang *are* getting in there. "The high-activity area is really deep." He explains, on the way down the staircase. "So focus on finding access to inner areas. We shouldn't wind up in any *secret* areas, but we've gotta go to a *low* depth..."     He's walking through the dirt path. He's looking more at the adult speaking to Vertin than Vertin herself. "Outer layers. We need a bit deeper." He's ducking under metal bars and examining an insect alongside her, muttering, "Closer. This is a smell-rooted memory, so we're getting nearer. Is there a touch-rooted one?" He walks across the room to the next exhibition in the museum, to where Vertin is being chewed up. "Better. Less complexly associated. Let's try to follow this one." He aims for the spot that got instructed, into another smear of the same cell...     "Hi!" He pipes up to the boy. "I'd love something to eat. Can you find me something that *tastes* good?" He's looking for a route through a high-intensity flavor-spike sensation. He explains Holly as he works, "We're trying to navigate the memories. You're looking for spikes of high viscerality, or repeating patterns with strong associations. Healing might well have some ways forward, if you can get the right angle!" He fidgets with whatever he can get from the boy, if anything, trying to sort of spread apart the psychic stack of flavor profiles in his hand like he's spreading out a deck of cards. "Come on, where's a good *grip*..."     He does peek up at the mysterious figure offering the way forward. "What's your name?" And he presses the boundaries of the memory a little, making sure to lean on all of the stagecraft to find a way backstage, so to speak: "What happened to you?"
Lilian Rook	Of course, the horrid, dank little cell falls far short of making no impression on her. Lilian has only once had the 'pleasure' of visiting anything remotely similar to the inside of her own memories, thanks to the violently torn firmament of Lampport, and even that distant facsimile is enough to prime her expectations for the worse before she sees it. Lilian wipes at her face and shoulders to try and removed the perceived condensation, then compulsively pulls down her cuffs, tightens her gloves, and holds her arms close to her chest. Clearing her throat twice doesn't remove the unpleasant smell, now does squinting in the dark make anything clearer.     But she'd taken the half-remembered childhood walk to this vile little spell of detention at a brisk, breathless clip, and finally let herself exhale again when she hears Vertin's voice. She may have been literally holding her breath since the moment she saw Vertin's hat obscuring her own face in her memory.     "The fucking worms again." Lilian hisses, keenly remembering the conversation that lead to her knowing about them, and free of Sonetto's attention for the time being, thus being unable to upset her. "I can't believe I spent two months cooperating with these people. I want to burn this place to the fucking ground all over again." Free of anyone associated with the Foundation, Lilian is perhaps too aware that she can't upset someone important at all. "Build a new campus. Inside the Suitcase. Take anyone with a clue, fuck off across the globe, and leave the rest to rot. Leave them to--"     What takes everyone in the end. The Suitcase only takes arcanists, and even then, only a narrow definition. The sobering memory trickles down Lilian's spine like cold water, and freezes the bile heat of every word she hasn't said in her throat.     Lilian takes several slow breaths, reaches for where her earpiece should be, and . . . <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "She's been rearranging all of this into a museum. *Great* artistry, but those aren't a good psychic stack for someone awake and thinking." <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "If I understand Artificial Somnambulism right, she could then have Vertin's internal perspective walk through the memory arrangement and re-process it the 'correct' way. It's sort of, uh, an art theory type of thing." <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "Or, maybe 'art curation' makes more sense. Anyway, we're in a bad situation because we're inside the paintings and the sculptures, so to speak. We need to jump from exhibit to exhibit with the right sets of associations and interpretation principles." <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "You're looking for spikes of high viscerality, or repeating patterns with strong associations. That first couple of relays was easy, but we need to hop to a new museum-wing, metaphorically-speaking." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "I almost wish that snake oil peddler had actually accomplished anything. Then I'd at least have seen the process before." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "So it's the rain to the memory of saying 'Storm' to the punishment for it, is it? I suppose it's rather obvious what memory Mesmer was trying to redesign to her liking."
Riku Asakura	'I'm healthy. I'm fine. Move along.' "No, you're not; you are anything but healthy right now, Mesmer.  Come on now, just listen to Mrs. Rook," a pause, "Both of them."  He pauses to shake his head. "Also, Ms. Sotheby is an amazing alchemist; she can easily prepare you something to help with your... symptoms."  He's still trying negotiation, but one thing keeps ringing in his mind.   <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons thinks, <You can give her the offer, but nobody can give her the choice. Nobody has ever made an actual choice with sleep deprivation like that.> <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons thinks, <When you're that sleep deprived, things just happen arbitrarily.> He's starting to become very afraid of what might happen if Flamel is right, that his method is the right call here, and if they don't get Vertin to safety, that she might be further harmed by Mesmer.  He made it clear he didn't like Mesmer's methods but... he also just can't go using violence on her either.  She is obviously mentally stressed out and physically unwell.   'I'm proceeding manually, and carefully, with the excision of a critical trauma. It's a matter of safety. Cessation would leave severe damage.' "They're right, the proposal has gone through.  She needs to be woken up.  So stop this..." but it's already too late.  Flamel moves forward with his psychogate.  When she tries to flail at anyone, he moves in front of her to try and take it himself.  It's not going to put him in any danger, but he doesn't want anyone else in harm's way either.  Better him than someone else, right?
Riku Asakura	Riku also takes a moment to appreciate how... frail Vertin looks on the bed.  To think this woman could move people, and how confident she is in dealing with the world.  Sure, he can grow really large and fill any room, but he feels like few people can fill a room with the confidence she does. The gate opens, taking Riku and the others on a trip inside Vertin's mind.  The room itself is... odd, like walking through a night sky rather than having one above you.  He takes his time down the stairs, which seem to lead nowhere.  Eventually it turns into rainfall, which... makes sense given the importance of the storm on Vertin herself. He wants to say something, but can't think of anything.  Eventually coming to a brief stop at where the stairs turn into walking underwater.  "I uh... can we breathe under there?" he asks, but is probably pushed by someone else who travels first.  He shrugs and steps down to eventually be enveloped by the water and stairs too.   Things come to a door, and once open, Riku steps through.  It leads them to an earlier time in Vertin's life.  Her hat obscures her face, but also identifies her as Vertin.  He listens to the conversation between Vertin and the adult, whom he assumes is a teacher.  "Why would they hide the fact of the Storm from them?" he asks, how long has the Storm been a thing they have known about? The mental landscape changes to the... dungeon?  It feels like a medieval dungeon.  No light, except what comes through the windows.  This place feels /invasively/ cold, and he narrows his eyes.  "Is this the guardhouse that Mesmer was talking about?  Then..." he starts to look horrified when things change to the worms.   Riku looks visibly sick at this, because hearing about the worms and actually /seeing/ them are two different things.  He looks both sick and deeply unhappy.  "I still can't believe they do this to children..." he's still horrified at this.   Things become even more dire when the children talk about sharing food they /snuck in/.  He shakes his head, but doesn't say anything out loud.  Still... to him, both the Manus and the Foundation are guilty of deeply unconscionable crimes.  It wasn't about them right now; it was about trying to help Vertin. "Hey..." he says to the two children, "We're here to help you. Have you seen where they maybe keep the keys to these... cells..." he really hates the idea of children being locked up like prisoners.
Foundation Scions	Mesmer Jr. herself isn't present in Vertin's dreamscape- she isn't astral projecting, and she isn't undergoing symmetric Artificial Somnambulism. It's surely a relief that her resistance and screaming-flailings stay in the actual world, outside, on the other side of the heavy wooden door.     Unfortunately, wherever it's happening, here in Vertin's dreamscape, Mesmer is doing something. 'Shamir worms...?'     There's a strangle sound-played-underwater texture to Mesmer's communications, across the medium of electromagnetism and oneiric fluid. It's present as an ambient noise, a sourceless intercom, like somewhere, she must be talking into a microphone hand-set, but that's highly unlikely- more likely, she's pressed a gadget of sorts to Vertin's temples, or a fingertip, and this is a simple part of her own techniques.     <I *despise* Shamirs. Disgusting critters, I don't appreciate being made to see this again, not through Vertin's eyes. Mine were enough. Preservation for their usefulness in manufacturing isn't worthwhile. They should be culled, eradicated, and left to history. You're lucky that they can't bite you, doing whatever it is you're doing.>     That Mesmer can communicate here shouldn't fully be a surprise, but she's only doing so to the Elites astral projecting- she's nothing but an observer in this regard, the dream is what it is, a memory that happened however it did.     <Parsons. Asturias. Raskins. This is medically reckless, and deeply unpleasant. Please do what you can to convince the others to vacate these premises. Nothing here is for you to find. I'm *trying* to be civil.> Her broadcast-tone is less frantic, more measured, translated through the means she has; it's sheltered at least from the physiological stressors, and tamed by their lack. <J-IC-Scene> Flamel Parsons says, "She's been rearranging all of this into a museum. *Great* artistry, but those aren't a good psychic stack for someone awake and thinking."     <I wasn't expecting an audience to my work. I don't particularly appreciate it. Artificial Somnambulism therapy and consciousness-adjustment isn't intended for those who are awake, for that matter.> There's a sick pleased note; you can just tell she's crossing her arms in reality. 'Huh! Wouldn't you know it!'     With the same distant warbling, <Wouldn't you know it,> is echoed by Mesmer, with a strange throat-hitch and irritation. 'Leave her memories alone.'     <You should leave them alone. You're adding complicating factors, and endangering things. Please. For Vertin's good, this is *extremely* dangerous. I can't predict what will happen to any of you should you not cease this meddling, when I complete the excision.>     Pivoting halfway, with a newfound electromagnetic-buzz tone, <If you don't, it isn't my fault what happens. It won't be. It can't be. I'm doing what I have to do, and nothing more or less. I won't risk Vertin's treatment to safeguard even a single one of you.>
Regulus	Regulus looks more exhausted and unhappy than triumphant. She can easily imagine those looks on Foundation guards with orders to follow and she's feeling uneasy about that but she's experienced those same loyal officers find their ways to show their humanity, to twist rules and regulations so that they could be kind. Sonetto was allowed to say fuck and together they changed the game. She had hoped Mesmer would just accept the 'logic' of the Foundation but seeing her in person after so long lays that hope to rest. She thinks of her last big conversation with Odette. She suggested to Odette that she try to see the world through the eyes of a medic so that she could feel at ease. She senses that advice in action as she moves to 'take charge' of the guards. Whatever comes of that, Regulus is quietly impressed with the change. Of course, this actually is a medical situation so she has the advantage there. ''hOh, how are you, Regulus? You had it much worse htan I did. They did feed you, yes?'' "Huh?" Regulus is surprised to being addressed in the moment. "Oh, uh," How DOES she feel? Yes, her heart is much lighter now that her work is done but she is also worrying over Mesmer and especially worrying over Vertin. It feels too early to be celebratory and too late to be in an emotional pit of doom and gloom so she's not exactly sure HOW she is feeling. She struggles to think of the words and eventually admits, "Like a weight's been lifted but I can't rest just yet." Regulus settles on. In truth, seeing Sonetto speak out like that would have been worth at least another week in the clink if the circumstances leading up to it hadn't been so tragic. It buoys Regulus's heart while her body is failing. ''You shouldn't even be here!'' "She's my friend." Regulus is still unaccustomed to really saying 'boss' here even if it's now not just effectively true it's officially true. And she could just wield the rules of the Foundation against Mesmer, slip or no slip. So instead of speaking about the rules she speaks from her heart. "I'm not letting the past be her cage anymore." And so she joins Flamel and... She walks. This feels much different than when she entered Flamel's mind, but she has little choice but to trust that Flamel knows what he's doing and she meant what she said. There's no need to litigate the past because it isn't the past anymore. It's the present. And if Vertin and Regulus are identical in any respect it's in their determination to make 'the future' a reality once more. She pays attention, almost not even being a Regulus with the amount of focus she gives each and every brief image like they're all critically important. Kid Vertin IS adorable, but so is Adult Vertin. She doesn't really want to see with her own two eyes all the ways that Vertin has suffered in this school. "Take it easy, Holl." She says, warning. They aren't here to gawk. ''Leave her memories alone.'' "Yeah, it might feel tough to do that--but Lilian's right. Please just ... be strong a little longer." She looks to Flamel. "How much interaction is safe though? Hit me up with Psychonautry 101 real quick." ''I want to burn this place to the fucking ground all over again.'' Regulus cracks a smile at Lilian, still tired and subdued. "Thanks Lilian." There's no need to say 'but Vertin wouldn't want that' they all know the score. "Children are the easiest to be cruel to, hate to say it, Riku. This isn't the only place that's true, it's actually true most places." Except, perhaps, Sapient Heuristics but who knows? Maybe it's just a different style. ''It isn't my fault what happens.'' "I won't blame you." Regulus murmurs. "I'll leave all the blame with me, you can count on that."
Holly Asturias	"Find whatever nightmarish little dirty bomb Mesmer has been building inside her brain and dismantle it before she can use it."     "That sounds positively unwanted. Are you sure she would subject poor Vertin to a... bomb?" Holly doesn't mind snappy. This is a medical procedure, and snappy can be a very helpful tone for those. What she lacks is Lilian's insight on Mesmer, and maybe she'd not want that if she had it. "Ah, but very well. I'll abstain from touching the memories unless prompted to." "You're looking for spikes of high viscerality, or repeating patterns with strong associations."     "So 'trauma' then?"     Conflicting instructions, though! She trusts Lilian's take a touch more than Flamel's, enough to leave interfering off the table for now. "You keep describing this as... angles, grip, flavor. Are you seeing or sensing something we can't, or is that just..." It *is* how he talks, isn't it? It was like that at in the hot springs too. "Build a new campus. Inside the Suitcase. Take anyone with a clue, fuck off across the globe, and leave the rest to rot. Leave them to--"     "Mm."     Few people deserve being left to the Storm. And the Suitcase didn't impress Holly as a judge of character. Yet she's no room to correct Lilian's feelings when she's made it so crystal clear at the trial she thought the Foundation had failed everything it set off to do. Or everything she's been told it's meant to do, at least.     "What was it you told me about revenge?"     Her voice isn't prodding, or trying to be coy about it. "Though... it's taking quite a lot of effort not to agree completely. I wish we could trust the Suitcase more. Or, rather... understood it better?" "Parsons. Asturias. Raskins."     "Reckless... no, with this many experts on-hand, it's likely the least reckless recourse. I have complete faith in both Lilian and Flamel's guidance, and I can adjust my scalpel hand to follow instructions. We will be fine!" She is missing the point. "Is it safe for you to be watching? You sound as though you have your own traumas, and this is making you relive them. Take a break! We'll be done by the time you're back." "Like a weight's been lifted but I can't rest just yet."     "Isn't it always like that." Still, she's glad the pirate has all of her spirit, and has surely been fed. "Remind me to make it up to you that I missed the big confrontation. I may not have made a difference, in the end, but I should have been there."
Odette Raskins	"Your nose is bleeding. You're not in any condition to be working like this." Odette states somewhat sternly to Mesmer Jr. with a quick nod in agreement to Tamamo, the sight of the blood and her haggard state being more than enough to put Odette into a more work-focused mindset. "In this condition, you're likely to cause more trauma than you're trying to fix. Come on, a little nap and an IV should perk you right back up to finish up." She's not sure if Mesmer Jr. is lying or not, and Odette's not even sure if she herself is lying or not. Whatever Flamel's planning on doing might reverse what's happened, finish up what was being worked on, or any number of things that Odette can't even begin to guess at. Holly sure does sound like she trusts Flamel to pull whatever it is off well, at least, and Lilian isn't doing anything to stop him, so she can put her faith in their judgment while physically putting herself between Mesmer Jr. and the psychoportal setup. Just in case, however, she puts out one more call to any Foundation staffers nearby to hurry up with those stretchers and dehydration treatments. INSIDE THE ZONE, Odette once again gets hit with things she's not quite sure how to parse right away. The place is peaceful, if a little sedate and sterile, and kid-Vertin gets a high-pitched squeak out of Odette on sight. "That IS a tiny Vertin...! Oh, hoh." Deep breaths. Fighting the urge to squeak, Odette grabs onto Regulus for a moment like she's hoping for something or another to get her senses back together, then slaps herself on the cheeks. "Okay, sorry. I-I'm good.. Er. Wait, can she hear us? Can..." She holds her breath for a moment, looking around at all the voices in the memory. "Can any of them hear us?" She asks, looking over at Flamel and Lilian to get their read on the situation. "What would a dirty bomb...? Hmm. I'm sure we'll recognize something out of place in here, even if this is in Miss Vertin's memories. Something shinier and newer, maybe?" She suggests with a glance to Lilian despite the term 'dirty bomb' being used, looking over at Flamel next when he mentions the layters. "Smell-rooted, touch-rooted... If we're going through the senses and looking for something that spikes, then a loud noise could be a hint. Or... No, not just loud." It takes Odette a second, and then she continues that line of thought. "Something about the Storm, maybe. That voice was already saying something about not saying it, so if we hear more about the Storm, that could be our repeating pattern to follow." Mesmer's voice coming in through... Everywhere? Nowhere? It's actually not as jarring to hear Mesmer speaking to her directly as she would have expected, and Odette dwells on that for only a moment before looking up like that might help Mesmer hear her better. "I know it is. Er. Sorry. It's not something I'm really trained for, either, but I've seen a lot of the people here working before in even weirder conditions. It's not that I don't trust that you'd know exactly how to handle this kind of thing, but... I trust them more." She starts moving along while keeping her eyes and ears open, but pauses again to look back up once more. "... Do you really think I'd have a shot at convincing them?" She asks, looking and sounding kind of flattered.
Tamamo	By the time Lilian motions, Tamamo has gotten over her surprise. Other thoughts can wait.     On and on and down and down...     . . .     Despite her unfamiliarity with Flamel's work, Tamamo expected a door, stairs, darkness, and drifting memories. Visually, at least. Scent-wise, and aurally, also, to a lesser extent. Touch, less so. Hurrying to keep up with Lilian in her heels, she shares that look of confusion, saying, "That was not mine," while raising a hand to her cheek. "A shared tactile sensation, like rain...?"     . . .     Wait, she's not wearing heels. She's not wearing her gray-and-white Foundation-alike wear at all. She's dressed in her seven-layered robes, rich in blue and gold, her geta adding even more inches than those office heels, while somehow offering finer balance. She tilts her head, eyes sliding to the side, and her headdress makes faint sounds as golden flowers and butterflies dangle on chains.     "These are only memories, yes?" The answer comes that they are. "We cannot find 'her' here, in that case, just as we cannot -- should not -- change what is here. No, no good would come of changing the 'way it is remembered,' to one no more knowing of its truth. That much is obvious."     But they have to do something. Flamel sets a path forward, and Tamamo begins looking for something similar. Some strong feeling...     'Mm, just now I thought about healing her, but would that have consequences?'     'Healing might well have some ways forward, if you can get the right angle!'     ...oh, what a terrible thought. And yet...     Tamamo goes over to the self-memory on the woolen blanket, and asks, "Can you show me? Those engravings they began to make."     She reaches down. Unfortunately... "...this is not a time for numbing. There has been too much of that, already. All dreams will fade to mist when wakening, even if some pain remains. A little more, a little less, but that which passed will not be erased." She finds a wound to press, not without care, but still, to follow the pain.
Ein	Of the two arcanists that join the press in, Ms. Moissan does her best to press in and then divert once inside to allow more people in and to avoid Mesmer, and then, Flamel's mindportal is so directed to that the Bavarian woman just hustles on in without thinking much further. Abandoning opportunities in the field was a swift way to let operations slip through your fingers, certainly - but it was presented as the direct way to help! Having been benched for so long, even gentle Moissan craved to help if she could. Meanwhile . . . The second arcanist, however, has another mission. 'Sotheby's potions work wonders. She can help.' "Exactly! I'm not peddling, but proscribing!" Sotheby insists, ducking head on instinct and weaving around the door to enter the waiting room herself and immediately roundabout to hit the nearby sink and wash her hands! Picking up some gloves from besides the sink after wiping off with paper towels, Sotheby does her best to scrub in, though a very well-loved stuffie does rest on her shoulder rendering Some of the cleanliness moot. However - baby knows how to scrub in to a workspace! That's not common sense, that's alchemy. "Miss - Mesmer, isn't it? My name is Gwendolyn Sotheby, of the Sotheby family of alchemists," She speaks as if it is calling card and apparent credential almost as much as Mesmer touts her own name as tool. Even without that context, she's right there with Mesmer! And then... With a grace of a ballet dancer or a princess in staged opera, she mounts a rolly chair and glides towards the room towards Mesmer as everyone else runs off, fingers steepling as she slides into those DMs (desperate Mesmers) for a near-in diagnosis. "And I'm seeing several clearly apparent symptoms of chemical overdose that we must treat if you're to perform this operation correctly, aren't we?" Sotheby asks, having lost the thread in the haze of afflatus. There was a problem, here, a problem with and of and cured by potions, and she was the vector by which that truth would be realized. She had *just* the potion for it! "I'll be brewing you a special version of my number seventy six batch thirteen potion today, which is a rigorously tested variant of my nutrition potion for targeted chemical store refreshment. You're in fatigue, Miss Mesmer! A deep, deep state of full body fatigue, and so there's nothing for a less specialized stimulant to tap. By introducing new agents of fresh energy into your system as a slow release, my essential nutrients will affixiate to your tired and overworked sites and signal rapid restoration to your mind! Chemically speaking." She assures and pitches, not 'peddling' also because her cures are perfectly free (baby has no idea of the value of money). With care, she unlatches her bag and pulls out two vials, though one contains a dried flower of spectacular value. Alchemists and botanists would know the stem as the head-stem of a mandrake, and the flower a deeply storied cure-all along with the tamed (extracted via dog or more humane process) root. The most-active ingredient, the crushed petals of the flower, were what Sotheby began to fish out with tweezers and drop into second vial with bright green Concoction, causing an immediate and sparkling (dangerous) color change to an iridescent blue. "It's a shame it's not fresh from mother's garden, it'd be much stronger...!" Sotheby sighs, casually talking about arcane materials in the 'a single petal is a sizeable investment for a powerful elixir' sense as something she's apologizing for the freshness over.
Ein	Sotheby's potionmixing stoppers and stows her vialed remainder of flower, leaving her with hand enough to bring out a hand torch and start applying sparked-open flame to the bottom of the vial, setting it to practiced swirl. The color shifts more, flowermatter leaving trails of iridescence through the mixture as it dances within the solution. "You should sip this steadily, while hot, until you finish it. It should pour like a syrup, and coat like an oil, but bubble a bit like carbonated water. The bubbling is important - try to let it lin-ger where it bubbles!" She advises, clinically cheery, before offering vial to Mesmer without presumption beyond that Mesmer will simply see the grand opportunity Sotheby is providing! "If you'll be helping Miss Vertin, you should be at your best!" Sotheby chipperly adds, perhaps the single creature Tamamo could genuinely trust for this purpose.
Timekeeper	"I'd love something to eat. Can you find me something that *tastes* good?"     It's impossible to say just how 'unaltered' the recollection of Vertin's memory is, viewing it like this-- it might be what Flamel's always said before, that there's no such thing as unaltered recollection, and each recall imprints a faint impression of the present onto the past. Whatever the case, right after Flamel suggests that to the boy, the young Vertin says--     "You've got food?! Do you have any of that tasty stuff from the Canteen?")]     The memory smears again a moment later, from impulse to outcome in a hazy, timeless jump. Now, on the upraised concrete ledge of the windowsill between the two cells, both of the children have dragged their wool blankets close enough to create a bubble of shelter where they can talk safely. On their makeshift table, carefully balanced on either end of the rebar that separates them, is a pair of aluminium takeout containers, with beige but barely-warm fried fish and steamed vegetables in them. Vertin squishes up the foil cover into mimicries of utentils, hungrily scooping the food into the shadow under the brim of her hat with an eagerness that you've never seen her eat with in the present.     "This is amazing! How'd you get it in here?"     The boy had been eating with his hands, but quickly copies Vertin's technique with the foil. Lifting up a finger to show Vertin, he spins a small metal circlet around it expertly, and the hoop magically grows and shrinks while it spins. With his mouth full, he explains, "My arcane skill can catch *anything*. When I hear someone passing by, I toss it right at their shoes, and they bring it right to the Canteen." "What's your name?"     The response feels perfectly plausible in the memory's context, indistinguishable whether it's prompted by Flamel's question or by Vertin having asked the same in the past. The boy swallows a choke-inducing mouthful of fish, then says in his heavy Scottish accent, "I'm The Ring!"     "Cool. I'm Vertin."     "That's right, you're in the year younger than me, aren't you?" "The fucking worms again." "Have you seen where they maybe keep the keys to these... cells..."     "Do you think that'll work?"     The memory lurch here feels unsteady, lacking in immediate prompt context like Flamel's questions had. After blinking, both of the children's tins are empty, and they're leaning up against either side of the window to conspiratorially whisper without the guards outside noticing.     "Yeah. Toss your ring over here and capture one of them, and then I'll use my blanket."     With a clatter, the metal hoop hits the ground in Vertin's cell, then rolls perfectly around one of the Shamir worms, and tightens around its body to hold it still. Vertin hastily steps off of her protective blanket, baiting the worms to start crawling up and chewing through her legs again, but she lunges and wraps the ringed Shamir with the blanket and lifts it up to the lock on her door. With nowhere else to go to escape the wool, it chews through the padlock, and the door swings open for Vertin to scamper through after checking both ways for guards in the hallway.
Timekeeper	"I'll leave all the blame with me, you can count on that."     "I don't think you should do that," Vertin insists to The Ring. They haven't staged some grand escape together-- instead, both of the wool blankets are gathered in The Ring's cell to make a twice-wide shelter, waiting out the night in imprisonment together. It feels like it's the middle of the night at this point, with the damp settled into every inch of clothing and skin, intolerable to exist in alone as the temperature drops outside.     "Just because you've already been in here for three days doesn't mean that breaking a padlock would get you less punishment. Won't another infraction make it even longer?" "Something about the Storm, maybe."     The Ring's eyebrows disappear behind his hair, and he laughs out loud. "You said the *S-word*?! Hahahaha! They must be *pissed* at you!"     The baby Vertin nods a couple times, but without seeing her face, it's hard to tell whether she's pleased, upset, confused, or anything. "I don't understand! They told me to ask any question I wanted. ... I heard it from someone being hauled out onto one of the busses, shouting 'The Storm is coming, the Storm is coming'. But what does that mean?"     "Ah!" Excited, The Ring flicks his ring to the opposite side of the room, and it excavates a crumpled-up fistful of papers that were securely stashed in a crevice in the wall away from the Shamirs. It rolls across the concrete floor carrying them back, swerving to dodge the hungry worms like a car in a racing game. "They're hiding information about the outside world from us. I knew it. I found these newspapers about it with my arcane skill."     He flattens the papers against the carpet. With a big headline reading 'WORLD CHANGING STORM', that's what Vertin and The Ring's attention is drawn to, but the Elites might notice the smaller, fainter text, with the words 'Manus Vindictae' buried in the body of the article.
Riku Asakura	'I want to burn this place to the fucking ground all over again.' Riku can't blame Lilian for her anger at the Foundation.  In fact, he almost feels the same way she does; the treatment of /children/ like this gets to him in a way that little else does.  "I don't know about burning it to the ground but... certainly removing the people who think that this is the way to treat children..." 'This isn't the only place that's true, it's actually true most places.' Riku sighs, having gone through Japan's adoption system himself; he actually got off quite easily considering how much orphans are treated.  "It makes me want to get through to running an orphanage much more desperately.  Children need places to be..." 'I won't risk Vertin's treatment to safeguard even a single one of you.' "You should worry about yourself instead of us.  Take this time to stop doing whatever it is you think you are doing before you end up hurting Vertin even more.  You're not in any state to be doing this." Riku seemed only to be able to prompt memories.  Well, any of them only seemed to be able to do that.  The jumps in memories were a bit disorienting, but nothing he couldn't handle.  Instead, he relies on listening and watching the memories as they happen.  He has never heard of 'The Ring' in the Foundation.  Did... something happen to him? "So they used the worms to break the locks on the cells..?  That's pretty clever," Riku admits, surprised that the worms just don't eat the entire building down.   'I heard it from someone being hauled out onto one of the busses, shouting 'The Storm is coming, the Storm is coming'' "Did... the Foundation know more about the Storm before it happened?" Riku wonders aloud.  That doesn't mean they know what started it, though... but they did know about it and tried to keep it secret.  That's still pretty bad. Riku looks at the paper clipping itself, trying to read it.  He sees the words 'Manus Vindictae', but what else did it say?
Regulus	''Remind me to make it up to you that I missed the big confrontration.'' "You don't need to make that up." Regulus insists. "We aren't here for the opportunity to get struck by truncheons. Leilani made it in the end." It's in the past, even if not so direly in the past as before, but it's just enough that Regulus doesn't want to dwell on it. The proposal passed, the suffering it took doesn't matter any more except in so far as they all deserve a vacation. They won, and they just need Vertin to be okay and then they'll really be in new territory. She can't really worry that Mesmer's right and they'll screw everything up, but she is still ambiently worried for her friend. She can't help but wonder if Holly could've saved Schneider in that moment, but she is here now. And maybe that'll mark the difference. She's mostly relieved that Sotheby is outside. She actually was sort of hoping that Sotheby wouldn't come down here to see the worst of the SPDM all in one swoop. She's gotten more admiring of just how tough she is through the course of the rebellion but her potions are more useful in reality and she doesn't need to see this shit. Frankly, she'd have asked most everyone to stay out and keep it to a small team if everything hadn't happened so fast. It barely feels like she's no longer a prisoner anymore, she's been a prisoner of various stripes for so long that it's kind of weird not being one now!! ''I'm The Ring!'' The facts that Regulus has never met a The Ring in the Suitcase fuels a growing pit in her stomach. Will The STorm in Vertin's memories wash them away too if they reach that point? It feels distressingly plausible. ''I don't think you should do that.'' Hearing that from Vertin so quickly after she said the words startles Regulus and she actually jumps a little, placing a hand on her heart as it races from the shock. She smiles. "Look who's talking. Always had the knack of drawing people to your side and making them feel safe, huh?" This is as much rumination to herself more than a direct attempt at communication, though she's looking at the baby Vertin as she says it. ''You shouldn't get to see this.'' She didn't want to. "They hide information," this is to Flamel. "So it makes them want to seek the truth. They probably get escape attempts every year." She murmurs, examining the newspaper. ''Did... The Foundation know amore about the Storm before it happened?'' "This wasn't the first Storm so they knew about it." Regulus tells Riku. "I don't know if they knew about it before the first one though. It makes sense they wouldn't tell everyone, but..." But there's a cost to that, especially with these kids. ''The Storm is coming, the Storm is coming'' So she didn't hear this part, at least, from the Manus.
Foundation Scions	. . .     It's so unexpected that a new veritable-stranger is one of the only on-rushers to not be whisked away into Flamel's psychoportal, that when Mesmer, in sheer distress, turns away from the vanished group, flailing-hands unsuccessful at preventing what occured, she makes herself blink to clear her eyes of what must actually just be some illusory-shadow of a person, rather than Sotheby, sitting there, in the ward room. 'And I'm seeing several clearly apparent symptoms of chemical overdose that we must treat if you're to perform this operation correctly, aren't we?'     "All human medicine, taken in moderation." Yes, perhaps a moderate dose of Benzedrine, a moderate dose of caffeine, and a moderate number of doses of cocaine. not to mention at least trace amounts of nicotine. She's wild-eyed and frantic as she watches Sotheby scrub in, obviously mouthing-along the required seconds of hand-scrubbing for sterility, uncertain what she's even going to be doing. 'I'll be brewing you a special version of my number seventy six batch thirteen potion today,'     "I don't consume alchemical concoctions. What is that? What's the active ingredients, and it's ratios?" She wants to deny her outright, but the nutrient-store depletion has a mind of its own, and she can't push back as far as she wishes. "Is it safe? Any side effects in your studies?"     There's bitten-back words where she'd otherwise ask Sotheby's credentials- from A Mesmer to A Sotheby, no matter how upsetting, or irrational it is, it's simply true that a bloodline can stand in.     Mesmer doesn't stop her work just because Sotheby is here, though. As potion-ingredients come out, she's operating consoles, dialing-in instruments, tapping thumb-and-forefingers to the side of her head and the side of Vertin's, manipulating layer after layer after layer of magnetic fields, and jockeying Artificial Somnambulism presets, in this dream-state induction. She can't afford to pause. 'You should sip this steadily, while hot, until you finish it.'     "It isn't poisoned, is it? Will it incapacitate me? I won't consume it if so. I won't fall for that." Any promise otherwise, and she takes it, nervous but back-of-brain desperate at the promise of chemical stability.     Only just noticing, there and now, that her face is bleeding, Mesmer quickly rummages for an alcohol wipe to rectify the issue, jamming it halfway up a nostril despite the sting. "I'll be able to tell if it's altering my consciousness. If it does, you're putting Vertin at risk."     At that, as-instructed, against her higher judgements, Mesmer takes the nutritional curative, with an automatic little thankyou-nod. . . .
Odette Raskins	Odette has to focus a little not to gag at the memory jump throwing off her sense of balance. As used as she is to sudden weightlessness and other sorts of gravitational weirdness, seeing things just shift around abruptly inside Vertin's mind and suddenly having the bars of a cell right in her face nearly have her jerking backwards to not get scrunched up against it. "T-too close... Hn. So this Ring kid... He's got to be important, but why? And I don't think I've seen him around, so maybe-" Odette starts, looking between Vertin and the Ring, suppressing another giggle at their blanket fort. "-he's an employee now? There were a couple of guys with hair sort of like his around, I think, and he does know..." A lot? "Enough about things that he shouldn't that it can't be a coincidence that we're seeing all this." She continues, stepping over to peer at the newspaper fragments being revealed. The headline makes it obvious enough that a lot of what's being revealed in the memory must have something to do with whatever Mesmer was working towards, and Odette's attention to visual details helps her spot the buried words in the article. "... The Manus is mentioned here. Hold on, what does it say?" She leans in closer to try and absorb as much of that surrounding paragraph as she can first. As she does, however, she can't help but nod slowly at Lilian commenting on burning the place down, and Odette feels an itch in her hand that she hadn't felt since the recent end of the rebellion. "The Foundation had to know about the Storm, if they were already hiding it like this. But-" Odette sniffs once, and she resists the urge to look back up as her prior signal that she's trying to address Mesmer in particular. "There's still a 'critical trauma' involved in all this. If we're seeing all this already, y... Mesmer could help us brace for it." Part of her still wants to believe in Mesmer, even if her tone makes it clear that she's wavering already in trying to give her that benefit of the doubt. "I-if we know what to expect, we can pick out whatever else might be important in here that could help Vertin be.... Healthier?"
Holly Asturias	"...this is not a time for numbing."     Flamel did advise looking for... visceral memories, but Holly still has to wince at Tamamo's methods. Memory or not, that's... still Vertin, right? They'll remember this, if they make it worse? Blanket shelter.     Ah, but how cute, if it weren't really to hide from the monsters under the bed. The worms under the bed. "Did they really think this would teach children anything...? Days of this? An hour, to teach a lesson, maybe, but this is... going on and on. This isn't *humane*," Holly protests, to no one, biting bitterly on the increasingly uncomfortable feeling that Lilian had more and more of a point wishing to burn this place down. The worm and the padlock.     "Even as a child they were this resourceful, ha. Though they seem... a bit more animated than usual? No, no... now that I think about it... if you consider that they staged the very rebellion meant to free them from here... they've barely changed at all. I suppose that makes us the worms, and Mesmer the padlock."     But did it even go anywhere? They're waiting it out. It's night now, and they're still just waiting. 'The Storm is coming, the Storm is coming'.     "... a bus? Do you know where they were taking them?" "You don't need to make that up."     "Perhaps not, but..."     If only Regulus know how much Holly has wondered that herself. Assimilation might have done it. *Turning* might have done it, even if that would be illegal. But it was too late either way. And the latter... would have forced Schneider to become something else. She might not have wanted that.     Yet she wonders.     Being blamed for turning her and saving her sounds less heavy a burden than failing to act, in the end.     "Do allow me to do something nice for you, sometime. Even if it's just tend to your wounds, or cook you a meal. Do you like mushrooms?"
Lilian Rook	'A shared tacticle sensation, like rain...?'     Lilian shudders at what she already really knew.     'Preservation for their usefulness in manufacturing isn't worthwhile. They should be culled, eradicated, and left to history.'     Lilian pinches the bridge of her nose, squeezes her eyes shut, breathes very deeply, and counts to an arbitrary number. None of it particularly helps. "I'm so sick of hearing that sentence from you." she says, out loud, having no idea if Mesmer can even hear, which neither helps her fragile sense of calm, nor anyone achieve anything they set out to do here. Another count passes, before she says "I should have locked you out of the room first."     'Please. For Vertin's good, this is *extremely* dangerous.'     "I don't want to hear that from you. Can't you just leave it at one pair of legs?"     'Thanks Lilian.'     Lilian sighs, and lowers her voice once again. "For the Bill?." She blinks. "Oh. Then thank you for the Rebellion. It's hardly appropriate to say out there, but in here, you made my job about half as difficult."     'Children are the easiest to be cruel to, hate to say it, Riku.'     "The easiest to get away with being cruel to." Lilian says, like an objection, and then fruitlessly tries muting her earpiece.     'That sounds positively unwanted. Are you sure she would subject poor Vertin to a... bomb?'     "Vertin in a coma is as close as she'll ever get to being loved, so yes." Lilian hisses, then instantly regrets it. Pressing her hand to her face, it slides down over her mouth as she turns away and stares at a musty concrete wall. "Beg pardon." she says, hoarse and hushed. "But you saw the hurry she was in. Why do you think so?"     'What was it you told me about revenge?'     "That it's the second-most poisonous obsession next to closure." Lilian says, losing energy by the second. "But you know, they also say that the best revenge is living well. Perhaps that's why it seldom seems satisfying except in retrospect."     'I wish we could trust the Suitcase more. Or, rather... understood it better?'     "Wouldn't we all." Lilian sighs. "But if anyone knows anything about it at all, it's Arcana. So . . ."     'I don't understand! They told me to ask any question I wanted.'     Lilian squeezes her hands into fists by her sides. "Lock me up for terroristic sympathies." comes out of her mouth as bored as repetition.     What good timing for the name to come up in the paper. Lilian's attention is ripped from blandly considering the aftersmell of lukewarm fish and chips by the paper; first at Riku's out-loud contemplation of what Arcana had already insinuated to Lilian and Vertin alone, then at the words she catches before anything else at a glance.     'Look who's talking. Always had the knack of drawing people to your side and making them feel safe, huh?'     "I'm relieved, frankly." Lilian says. "If it were only a skill she cultivated later on, I'd feel a bit ridiculous." Huh? "But I think Vertin is the only one who'd seriously try escaping. Even if it seems obvious to you, Regulus, children almost always default to trust whenever they can, and are easily dissuaded from things that are frightening and difficult."
Lilian Rook	". . . Even for girls like Vertin, it's not something you can make yourself do just because you want to. Certain people just learn very on, how to play to their outs."     Seeing the others crowd around the paper, discussing topics of grievous importance, Lilian herself inexplicably finds everything there is to say about the Foundation, exposed for what they don't even bother to hide, all so very dull and childish. What occurs to her is Mesmer mouthing along the words with the Ring, and what she heard in the ward just minutes ago. Wracking her short term memory, Lilian lets her eyes roam over the paper, and repeats, "Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame?"     'I suppose that makes us the worms, and Mesmer the padlock.'     "I bet she'd taste like shit." Lilian says, out loud, for no reason other than being an esoteric avenue to put a few more bullets of cortisol in Mesmer Jr.     'The Foundation had to know about the Storm, if they were already hiding it like this.'     "They know about the Storm right now, and still hide it, every single day. Do you think anything's changed?" says Lilian. "Of course, hardly anyone out there would believe it. But what do you think happens when employees and field agents throw about that word on the streets? Do you think this year's batch of children at the SPDM know any more than they did back then?     '...this is not a time for numbing. There has been too much of that, already. All dreams will fade to mist when wakening, even if some pain remains.'     "I'll apologize to her when she's awake."
Tamamo	Tamamo doesn't really comment on Lilian working through her feelings, except to give an "mm," of having heard her. She knows several of the reasons this won't happen, already.     'I suppose that makes us the worms, and Mesmer the padlock.'     "Please avoid engraving."     'I'll apologize to her when she's awake.'     "I am gentler than a splash of cold water, I shall hope."
Flamel Parsons	Flamel peers closely through the window... He mutters his reply to Regulus. "If they're hiding information, maybe... Dang it, are we headed *forward* or *backwards* here... If it's the escape attempts, and he's..." Flamel gets, abruptly, a little sullen, looking at The Ring. "Maybe he's the way forward. Memories of him might help us reach the escape attempt."     What would a dirty bomb look like? Flamel glances to Odette. "It's not exactly like that. With all due respect, Lilian exaggerates Mesmer's hostility. You might see a cognitive logjam, something 'stuck in place', possibly on purpose." He says, giving a very weak smile.     He briefly fusses with paper in the cell, trying to see if he can incite a further-on memory related to the Manus. But that can't be right, can it? He winds up shaking his head. How can he push this memory through The Ring? He paces around the double-wide shelter... "She would have approached this the same way back then... Focused on integrating the larger world and the people in it. So probably the question would be something like..." He finally stops and turns to The Ring. "Have you seen what anyone knows about The Storm outside?" He asks, pressing a finger up against that newspaper now that this memory has merged the cells. "Do you think someone would know a way to go out and ask?"
Holly Asturias	"Vertin in a coma is as close as she'll ever get to being loved, so yes."     "That... makes me sad to consider."     Holly will continue to be mostly blissfully unaware of the depths of Mesmer's... everything. "But you know, they also say that the best revenge is living well."     "Oh these children most certainly need to live better, and if these practices are *still* in place we need to have stern words with someone. Perhaps several someones. Without a protest or rebellion, this time?" Well... one problem at a time. First, Vertin. "But if anyone knows anything about it at all, it's Arcana. So . . ."     "Wonderful," Holly replies, renewed bile on her tongue. "If I overhear anything, I'll let you know. But considering my disposition towards their numbers, I wouldn't count on it." "I bet she'd taste like shit." "Please avoid engraving."     "I thought she was 'into that'...?"     Does she... does she mean the tattoo?
Ein	'All human medicine, taken in moderation.' "Moderation each that a mixture of creates a terrible tonic, ma'am." Sotheby returns smoothly, putting away the torch after offering out her option and being taken for consideration. "Human medicines rely on chemistry just as much as arcane medicines do. But the limits of even the Soft-Vein Leaf when reduced to its alkali is that it draws what is in you out! It's nutrition that powers the body, nutrition that powers your in-ter-nal furnace." Sotheby continues on lifting the vial of stem and flower again. "This is mandrake - one petal is said to cure any illness of a day's rest, and three is said to break any fever or cold's spell. The precise measurements are easier when it's dried, but the weight's right." She did it by hand, but she claims the weight is right with a clear conviction. The nature of families, of the apparent bloodlines of masters in certain crafts and fields, buys Sotheby a seat besides Mesmer and she spends it carefully, as if coming to a patient. To her, she speaks almost dreamlike, carried, giddy in the motions of knowing exactly how to help and having the cure. As mad-eyed as Mesmer is the brilliant clarity of Sotheby's eyes is an inoxicatingly glimmering sight. "Number seventy-six's formulation was for long term depletion of critical reserves, and batch thirteen comes from several I added phoenix tuft to, for a reviving release of energy. It'd be five springs to one bunch, and one bunch to the vial for tuft, though it's very energetic. The nutrient elixir's purpose is to be both a direct bridge into your body for immediate availability, but also as a beau-tiful garden that the power of the mighty phoenix can take hold within you! You see, the interaction of the Soft-Vein Leaf's alkali with the body especially will begin to damage the bright webbing of the body's inner map, and so it's the phoenix tuft that has a restorative and regenerative effect on that net." It's a nerve-positive agent. 'It isn't poisoned, is it? Will it incapacitate me?' "Poi-soned?" Sotheby asks, aghast. "Of course not! You're someone taking care of Vertin! And so you need to be at your best, and you are chemically unwell! This is something I, Gwendolyn Vera Sotheby, am most capably capable of. And-" Sotheby doesn't have to argue more, Mesmer drinking quickly after her assurance. The effects are tactile before they come into effect, but not too long after she starts drinking it works in Mesmer like seltzer drops to the stomach. If she's not eaten anything recently it works even faster, but this is a good thing - the nutrient mix is a liquid syrup and not tarry at all and mere minutes after going down it's starting to revive her like fruit juice and cookies after a blood draw. There's a palpable wafting of what feels like invisible-to-the-eye tiny bits of fluff that drift like wandering points of capsicum down the throat and into the stomach, where their settling starts a small internal fire that begins to melt a sludge across the whole of Mesmer. Spreading, clearing, curing, Mesmer is ministrated by a chemical genius. If it's altering her consciousness, it'd be the tingle-newness of chemically eroded nerves. If it's altering her consciousness, it's making Mesmer's eyes suddenly itchy from how the rest of her is on the mend. Sotheby has something for that. "Now, there's a clear eyestrain, too? I've got some pads, or if you've got gauze I can apply a masking wipe to one to clear out your dark gutters there? Oh, eyestrain would make it so much worse, your focus! This is why the special goggles I've got have an interior treatment of a moisturizing agent and an eyestrain controller element!"
Regulus	"Guys, this isn't the first Storm nor the Foundation's, it's pretty clear they've had their protocols for a while." Regulus says, a little worried now that her friends and allies are a little confused. But she shakes her head, dwelling on it seems a little silly. It's not exactly important if this is the Third Storm or the Seventh. The Foundation is slow to change and she has no reason to believe that the School's protocols regarding the Storm have changed much since the escape attempt. Maybe a few more guards and towers assuming-- ''Do allow me to do something nice for you, sometime.'' "Sure." Regulus isn't against people doing nice things for her. "But if you really want to do something nice for me, be a good friend to Druvis. Right now, making the people in the Suitcase feel welcome and happy--that's what I want more than anything." And right now Regulus already feels welcome there. And she'll be happy once Vertin's awake again. ''For the Bill?'' "Well, sure, but I meant right now for getting mad." But despite saying so, her smile comes about twice as easy upon hearing she made Lilian's job half as difficult. She mimes zipping her mouth and throwing away the key. ''The easiest to get away with being cruel to.'' Regulus hesitates at the correction but then gives a somber nod. ''Lock me up for terroristic sympathies.'' Regulus mimes using the key she used to seal her mouth to lock Lilian up in an imaginary cell with deep sympathy. "Maybe seriously," Regulus admits. "But that might just be because she's got the right mix of cleverness and gumption. I bet there's 'non'-serious attempts all the time." She frowns and then adds, "But I guess she did also have more motivation." Regulus looks to Flamel and asks, "Hey Flamel, the Storm in here would still--do you think it'd still affect us if we were caught in it? I think following Ring is the right way forward." Unfortunately.
Foundation Scions	'Did they really think this would teach children anything...?'     With the same warbly tone, masking over much distress or franticity, <I never successfully intuited the trick.>     <In my various efforts of analyzing Vertin's memories for core traumatic tendencies, and corrective angles, it's quite clear that her 'animation', is a childlike state prior to resultant events; her current habits contain coping mechanisms in order to safeguard her mind from the consequences and resulting trends of her continued bad habits and misjudgments. You're in luck. If I cut out the root of the matter, she might act this way again, someday.> 'I don't want to hear that from you. Can't you just leave it at one pair of legs?'     Mesmer's intercom-style communication pauses, for the exact roughly thirty-two seconds to complete two cycles of square breathing. <You don't know what you're talking about. In that patient's case, progressive necrotizing due to arcanum-sourced redistribution of cellular resources would have killed him. I saved a life. There wasn't any other way.>     A symmetric pause, before, <Any further harm is on you. You forced this outcome. If you disrupt any of this, I'll make sure everyone knows whose fault it was. I'll fix Vertin, regardless of what happens, but as for anyone else->     <I have a job to finish.> 'It's not exactly like that. With all due respect, Lilian exaggerates Mesmer's hostility.'     <A 'bomb'? Are you being serious, now? Of course I'm doing nothing of the sort. I'm a healer. I'm performing an excision, and it will be clean.> Electronic-buzz, like she's too close to a microphone, overlapping some of her own magnetic field-interactions too strongly with Vertin's. She may be distant-seeming as she's utilizing that intercom-technique, but her focus is hard at work, somewhere. 'I bet she'd taste like shit.'     <Stop saying that. No-one should have ever released you from your quarantine cell. If I had a pair of pliers I'd render you-> . . .     Out in the ward-room, frustrated, Mesmer slams a shaky fist against a console, an action that does nothing but hurt exceptionally bad. With Sotheby's tincture, the shaking, now, is far more from emotion than any other source. . . .     <You're upsetting me. This is private work, and Vertin's private memories. This shouldn't be a public display for you to *wander through*. I've been hard at work encouraging productive circumstances and arrangements; and I've finally found a key method to repair her. Just let me be.> The warbling-effect is clearer, more rhythmic now. Whatever focus she's spending on this is sharper and harsher. Her rallying likely isn't a goodness for the venturing Elites.
Timekeeper	"... a bus? Do you know where they were taking them?"     "Mister Morris said that he'd heard some things he wasn't supposed to," Vertin confides in The Ring, who may or may not have actually asked that question. "ansi9243,So he's being taken to get psychological treatment.)" "Did... the Foundation know more about the Storm before it happened?"     "They have to," Vertin insists, slightly disjointed with Riku's comment. "Look there. It says it was a cover-up."     But no, not in the way Riku means it. The date on the corner of the newspaper reads 1987, before Vertin would've been born. The rest of the article is hazy in unfocused memory, but the gist of it is that a previously unknown group called the 'Manus Vindictae' has been spreading inflammatory hit pieces against the Foundation, including many proclaiming a fanatically ideological end-times called 'the Storm' that the Foundation knows about and refuses to disclose to the public. It's on the cusp between being objectively correct and nakedly manipulative propaganda, but there's no time to read through it fully before The Ring flips the paper over to the back.     "There was something written on the back too, look."     And it was *handwritten*, oddly. The vivid black text is arranged in a poetic column down the center of the page, ending with a large scrawl that breaks from the poem's layout reading, 'WELCOME TO THE MANUS VINDICTAE' on it.     ""Weird....""     Both of the kids murmur together, skimming through it. They shuffle to lean up against each other to both be able to see it, adjusting the paper so that the light from Tamamo's tails illuminates the writing better than the faint moonlight coming through the door. "Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame?"     Tracing her finger along the page, what Vertin reads out in harmony with Lilian is the same poetic flow, but different words. "'Nor happiness, nor harmony, nor fame / Nor pride, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts / Shepherd those herds whom blindness makes tame.'"     Vertin looks up at The Ring, his eyes looking straight through the brim of her psychologically constructed hat, and then they start reading through the rest together.     ""Their eyes see not one light of bright stars / Men's past ways are shaded by their shame / Paeans are but admiration's mirror half / Tides run in blind by their ever-be routine / Staining that Heaven with obscene calamity. / When folly wrecks wit / Where do stand we? Before a cruel whip /""     The scene shifts again, this time dramatically. Now it's a whole crowd of children in those same white robes, all huddled together in the hollow of some massive tree like a secret clubhouse. Among the crowd, you can easily spot a much younger Matilda, as proud as always, and *Mesmer* too, shyly squished in with the rest, and The Ring right up at the front. All of them are looking at Vertin as she, mid-sentence, finishes reading the poem off the page.     "Man who man would be / Man who man would be / Must rule the empire of himself; in it / Must be supreme, establishing his throne."     Vertin, speaking out to the cluster of a dozen-off children as their clear leader, thrusts the paper towards The Ring to start passing around for everyone to read. "You see? Singing it like that, it fits right into our school anthem. If we sing that instead, when we're called up for chorus, we can show all the teachers and adults that we want to know more about the outside world!"
Timekeeper	The paper, passed around, starts to become crammed with questions the children write down to ask about the rest of the world outside the SPDM, making notes and gossiping with each other with long-suppressed excitement. It's surely weeks after the last scene in Vertin's memory, but as she prompts each of the kids to talk about what they're curious about and what they remember in turn, the tights of her uniform are still chewed through and stained with smears of fresh blood from the Shamir worms' attacks, the wounds asynchronously unhealed. Tamamo leans in to press on them, as the dissonant sensory indicator in this memory, and--     "We'll practice singing together so we can do it on stage next week. Alright, everyone? Together now-- urrrgh!"     The scene shifts instantly and violently. On white stone stands in the stage at the center of a large Foundation ampitheater, the dozen kids and the rest of their class were arranged to sing in chorus for the audience, but instead the scene is enveloped in chaos. Vertin's leg is torn open right where Tamamo poked it on the corner of one of the stone platforms, as she twists and covers her eyes to shield them from white smoke that fills the air, half of the kids screaming and half of them still doing their best to sing.     """""On vanquished will, quelling the challenges --"""""     "Stop that song! Stop their singing! Someone get them to shut up!"     Somewhere, unimportant, there's a man's voice shouting at them. Mesmer's right there caught in the tear gas, as well as The Ring, and another scruffy-haired girl straining to sing as loud as she can whose name-- "Isabella!"-- gets shouted in the chaos. Vertin tries to link hands with her and The Ring to keep all of them standing together.     "Sonetto! Get away from them!" And Sonetto, with much shorter orange hair than she has now, and a face that's somehow even blanker with slightly widened eyes, does exactly as she's told without question. A moment later, a canister is launched from one of the guards' weapons, and its corner smacks Vertin on the side of the head, making the scene go dark instantly. "Even if it's just tend to your wounds, or cook you a meal."     "I'm fine, Sonetto. It doesn't hurt so much anymore."     There's still no image that solidifies to go along with Vertin's soft response. The dream swims, a haze of unformed colors and concussed sensation, with Sonetto's voice fading in and out of audibility. "They probably get escape attempts every year."     "Escape? Are you sure?"     They're all in some network of underground tunnels now. It must be weeks or months later, and most of the children that listened to Vertin with their breath held in that tree are gone now, including Mesmer. Matilda is here, and then after glancing away, she's gone, retreated from this much more treasonous gathering. Isabella, answering for Vertin, chimes in to enthusiastically respond to The Ring. She's clutching a torn page from a book, with a message saying 'meet in the girls dorm basement' written on it.     "That's right, escape! All the instructors have shown us how much they don't want us to know anything about the outside world! This is all we've got!"     Vertin nods. The concrete-lined military tunnels empty out gradually with each sentence exchanged, until there's just Vertin, Isabella, The Ring, and a handful of others left.     "They want us to be their puppets, trapped in ignorance of the world besides what they've taught. I don't want to live like that anymore. Ring, you too-- this is our chance. There's a whole world out there for us."
Odette Raskins	"Do you think anything's changed?" "... Not anymore, no." Odette admits with a quiet sigh. "I was just... Kind of hoping they might've been a little better than before we ran into them. I guess they must've found some way to swear these kids to secrecy if they grew up to know without letting it spread too far." She looks over at Vertin again, then lets out another strained noise while turning to Flamel with a thoughtful noise coming out a moment later. "You might see a cognitive logjam, something 'stuck in place', possibly on purpose." "Something that should be moving, but isn't... Okay. W-well, there's more than enough of us here to remove anything that's creating a jam, even though it probably isn't.. I mean, it probably won't be as easy if it's mind-stuck instead of physically stuck." Just in case, however, Odette checks her hip for her sword. No sword, but she's got her trusty scalpel and the rest of her field surgery kit on her, even in Vertin's mind. "If I cut out the root of the matter, she might act this way again, someday." "I'm performing an excision, and it will be clean." "Then be clearer and stop giving us the runaround!" Odette snaps abruptly, surprising herself at how hostile that might have sounded. There's a long pauyse as her instinct to apologize and defuse contends with her rapidly growing frustrations about everything that's happened lately. She looks over at Vertin and the Ring again to make sure she didn't accidentally startle either of them out of their conversation, she glances upwards with a wavering look on her face like she's still weighing whether or not to apologize, and then she clenches a hand over her left wrist again while addressing Mesmer once more. "What are these orders you're following, what the heck is this 'critical trauma' you want to remove so badly, and how is this supposed to help Vertin? If you want us to leave you alone with Vertin, if you want me and Flamel and Doctor Asturias to convince everyone else to trust you over either of them, then you need to give us a reason to trust you."
Odette Raskins	Afterwards, Odette turns her attention back to the kids and the newspaper, and she keeps skimming the people while leaning sideways a bit to try and glimpse one more word before The Ring turns the paper over. "Doesn't sound like they needed to try hard to make the Foundation look bad..." She murmurs with a quiet noise, hitching her breath slightly when she sees the handwritten scrawl that follows. Shuffling over a bit more to make sure she's not blocking anyone from getting a better look at the paper, Odette repeats those same poetic lines to herself. "Shepherding the... Tame? Staining... Calamity?" With growing confusion over the meaning of those words and only a slight inkling of what it might mean in that moment, Odette starts to look up at the ceiling again. Before she can address Mesmer again, however, the scene shifts, and she quickly closes her eyes until she hears that things have settled. Vertin's talking to a crowd now, and the EMT feels a knot starting to form in her gut. "They didn't know any better... Oh heck. Are they really-er. Did they really go up and sing that, then? I mean, if it's just their teachers, it couldn't be that..." Odette doesn't finish that thought, hoping in her heart of hearts that the knot is just her thinking too hard about what she might end up seeing later. Maybe she won't see anything! She hopes not, but the feeling doesn't leave. It even strengthens when she sees the smears of blood, and her knuckles go white around the handle of her duffel bag at knowing she can't just go up to treat the younger Vertin. Fortunately, she doesn't have to linger on that for long.  Unfortunately, it's because of another scene transition, this time to the kids singing the very song that they had found. Seeing it all unfold has the EMT staring ahead at it wide-eyed in confusion, then horror, then with a steadily rising anger and frustration. There's too many kids being gassed, too many being treated too roughly, and what feels to Odette like not a single adult trying to put a stop to any of it. None of that anger has faded even when the colors and light do. It just keeps Odette fuming while watching the next scene that comes extra closely, nausea be damned. It's hard for her to get any words out at first as she listens to the kids' escape plot, but another uneasy feeling enters her stomach soon enough to look over at her companions in all this. "Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Did these kids... They must have someone from Manus Vindictae waiting for them outside, then, if they're still able to wander around like this. Was them leaving for the Manus the thing that we weren't supposed to see?"
Riku Asakura	'This wasn't the first Storm so they knew about it.' "This seems like it's from before the first one, right?  I thought the first Storm happened in 1999?  But this has to be before then, right?" Riku isn't so sure about all of this.  If you have this knowledge, why not warn people?  Couldn't something have been done before it got this bad?   'Do you think this year's batch of children at the SPDM know any more than they did back then?' "I believe the Foundation shouldn't be allowed near children..." Riku says, not humorously.  Though this does bring things back to the Storm itself.  It makes sense to not... complicate things when you can't stop it, sure... but this is a catastrophe.   'This shouldn't be a public display for you to *wander through*.' "It isn't someplace you should be allowed in either.  I don't care if your family name makes you experts; a person's inner thoughts are important and shouldn't be tampered with by anyone.  So you stop this, and we'll leave.  If not, we're staying to stop whatever it is you think you're doing."  Riku's firm on this.   Riku starts reading what he can in the newspaper clipping.  "This is... before Vertin's time, right?" he says, pointing at the date.  He keeps reading, squinting because it's fuzzy in some places.  "This kind of seems like a hit piece on the Foundation, but... the Manus seem to implicate that the Foundation knew about it," Which seems to fit into what they were seeing, right?   "Even if this is propaganda, they aren't exactly helping their own case..." Riku muses before the paper is turned over and the 'WELCOME TO THE MANUS VINDICTAE' message is scrawled on it.  Along with a poem.  "Oh..." Riku starts to put two and two together: the song that Vertin sang as a kid...
Riku Asakura	The scene shifts, the number of children growing.  "Oh no..." Riku immediately feels a pit in his stomach.   'If we sing that instead, when we're called up for chorus, we can show all the teachers and adults that we want to know more about the outside world!' "So it wasn't even intended propaganda; they were just curious about the outside world that they were being kept ignorant of?  They mistook this clipping as a real glimpse of the outside world and instead of..." he starts, but things fall into disagreeable chaos.   'Someone get them to shut up!' Riku's fists ball up; instead of trying to protect these children, they just wanted them silenced?  Before he could do anything, the canister flew, and... they're in darkness.  Riku doesn't know what to say, because it's just so horrible.  It's a stupid misunderstanding by /children/ who should have been protected from this, and shouldn't have been kept in the dark about the outside.   Then comes... a new day.   Underground tunnels, which are probably what separate the outside world from the Foundation.  They want to leave to live in the world outside.  Unaware that it would be a death sentence with the Storm coming.  Riku almost can't bear to look at this, because it's just... so sad.  Children acting out of no idea about what is happening, and instructors refusing to teach the children about the outside world.   'They must have someone from Manus Vindictae waiting for them outside, then, if they're still able to wander around like this.' "So you think this was manipulation on the Manus' part?" He asks; it's not implausible, but he also doesn't know either.  It just feels like such a strange move to get... three children?  Not the organized and one step ahead of them organization that they saw in Chicago.
Foundation Scions	. . .     Mesmer's eaten, once, roughly twenty-four hours ago- every substance she's put in her in the interim has been on an empty stomach, and Sotheby's medicine is no exception. The various sensations of consuming it are direly unpleasant to Mesmer, even if being relatively pleasant-normal in general- she tries to cough up intangible fluff-bits, debates inducing vomiting, and decides that's an idiotic plan. The warmth should be pleasant, but noticing it isn't; her posture shifts place to place in anxious discomfort. Re-awakening paresthesia makes her shiver. None of it interrupts her fixation, unfortunately. 'Now, there's a clear eyestrain, too?'     Mesmer is firmer here, in shaking her head- "I can't afford to be less able to view readouts and monitors. Even temporarily, I shouldn't let my vision stray." She can't help but press and scratch at the areas around her eyes, the more she does it, the more she feels she has to do it- her breathing picks up a bit.     "Is there a pill? Another drink, to fix it? An injection? If you run down the hall, the pharmacist might have hydrocortisone, that might be functional. I need to stay able in the interim. Stable, I mean. No, I was correct before." . . . 'Nor happiness, nor harmony, nor fame / Nor pride,' . . .     Hunched over consoles, nearly caressing Vertin's face with an outstretched hand, underneath the rim of the Artificial Somnambulism machine, as close as she needs to be for surgical-acute Animal Magnetism practice, Mesmer herself continues humming- that same tune as before, carried on in-tandem with the memory.     "Nor pride, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts... Shepherd those..." She trails off, but continues the tune, viscerally-remembered, but nearly unconscious in her focused actions. . . .     <I can't stand the smell of tear gas. I'd prefer this wasn't dredged up again.> A pause, then continuing to transmit, It's a common-enough compound in the dreams of others, given its prevalence in the cultural awareness of individuals, but rarely does someone have the correct memory of its smell.>     <Isabella wasn't badly hurt in that display. For those wondering.>     The scenes progress, and despite Mesmer's relative quietness in her omnipresent capacity to pipe up, and make things worse... she doesn't seem to want to. Tension buzzes and grows, but it's obvious she's watching.
Foundation Scions	'That's right, escape!' 'They want us to be their puppets, trapped in ignorance,'     The warbling intercom, sharper, tenser now, rises to a new texture, that of friction-on-the-edge-of-glass, <Where's the memory of her being informed to the dangers? Where is it? It should be here. I've been looking for it, but I can't find it. She's supposed to know! Why is she talking like that?>     <We were found out. Staff were aware- they found the note in my locker. I was told, I was told everything. Vertin should have been told, too, like they said. Where's the memory? Did one of you cut it out of her? Parsons? This doesn't make sense. Her patterns don't indicate she's misleading.>     Mechanical finally starts to border, truly, on frantic. By whatever mechanism Mesmer is communicating, rather than practiced functions, it's drifting closer to intuition-driven improvisation of Animal Magnetism application. The buzz fades in and out, like she's sifting along layers invisible to the mind-divers, but doesn't settle.     <Vertin? Vertin, can you hear me? Tell them to stop. Turn back.> Unprofessional, emotive, and juxtaposed by every effort she herself continues to take, in the background-functionalities deeper into Vertin's mind. It's the first time she's addressed any of the contents of the dream directly, rather than to the audience. The warbling is modulated to a tone approximating pleading.
Lilian Rook	'But I guess she did also have more motivation.'     Lilian tries to summon a laugh at the pantomime from Regulus, but under the conditions, she's barely able to get to a smile; and a weak one at that. "Well. That's how it is with everything." she says. "You want it badly enough or you die. Sometimes both."     'it's quite clear that her 'animation', is a childlike state prior to resultant events; her current habits contain coping mechanisms in order to safeguard her mind from...'     Hearing Mesmer say as much makes Lilian pause. Even after the explanation, the exoneration, the deflection, reversal, blame, and threat, it's all she can do not to become stuck in place; dwelling on the fact that, on some level, Mesmer knows what someone happy and normal looks like, why they stop, and that it isn't right. Her doubts, unaltered, that she can actually treat them, feel momentarily irrelevant; in her franticity, she'd admitted to being aware of it all on some level, and all Lilian can think is--     "It must be terrifying, being trapped in the cladding of 'Mesmer Junior'."     She can't even find it in her to explain. It may even be beyond her ability, in the lukewarm static of the moment. There are too many thoughts moving at once, forming too many interconnected relations, finally filling in so many missing steps, for one mouth to voice them in constructive order. Struggling to inventory her feelings, Lilian only feels . . .     Sad?     There's more disgust than she feels proud of. A trace stain of irremovable contempt. Smouldering coals of anger at how it all parasocially orbits Vertin, practically a martyr on Mesmer's behalf. A persistent itch, on the inside of the box where she locked up the temptation to project her personal experience on her. But it's mostly just sad. It's all so pathetic; all so trite; so completely avoidable and yet too late to do anything about it. It makes her feel like looking at someone with a permanent deformity that a trivial vaccination could have prevented, if administered years ago.     'I'm a healer. I'm performing an excision, and it will be clean.'     "I think you believe that. But I don't think you have any idea what you're feeling right now, what you're about to do, or why." Lilian slowly breathes out. "If you weren't an arcanist, or at least not a Mesmer, I'd ring you in for a psychiatric break about now. But I suppose we are who we are, and it is what it is."     'No-one should have ever released you from your quarantine cell. If I had a pair of pliers I'd render you-'     And still, Lilian fails to find a sense of guilt for making Mesmer remember some asinine sentence from her drugged up past self that she barely remembers making her stressed and upset in a parking lot outside a shitty diner. Sakura clearly hadn't been wrong; the numerous lines that Mesmer has crossed since then have blunted too much of the idea that she could be 'her victim'.     "You're the one who cleared me. Remember?"     'Nor happiness, nor harmony, nor fame / Nor pride, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts / Shepherd those herds whom blindness makes tame.'     Lilian breathes in sharply. "That's it? That's the 'Manus Vindictae propaganda' they recited?" she hisses, moderating disbelief. "A poem they saw on the back of a newspaper that a child-minder left with them in a locked cell?" A short, sharp laugh escapes her; little more than a slightly manic two-syllable utterance. "Tell me that it's something else. Anyone."
Flamel Parsons	"..." Flamel walks, silently, through vignette. He strides with the practice of a Psychonaut, much more gracefully than most. He walks along the surface of the paper when it's passed around, navigating among the substance of the questions. Among the branches of the tree, now. When the cannister slams into the side of Vertin's head, he walks expertly among an explosive blast of the lost neurons out the other side, into the dark, until he reaches the tunnels.     "I'm not seeing anything missing, and I don't take childhood memories. It's against the rules, and irresponsible, and I don't even know how." He says, to Mesmer, in order of argument convincingness. "Really, as far as I can tell this is all factual, and complete." That's the reply to Lilian. "If there's context, Vertin didn't know."     He glances around, examining the boundaries of the halls. "No signs of artificial construction of the memory. And no posture of misleading. No signs of previous psychic surgery in *this* area..." He squats down in front of the short, innocent memory of Vertin. "Were they cutting you off from knowing about it because they didn't trust you? Like they don't now? Or...?" He stands and looks over the heads of the other children. "Was someone...?"     He puts a finger to his temple. When he speaks, this time in telepathy, it's meant as a direct reply to Mesmer, though everyone can hear it. <I know you don't want me down here.> He says. <But I think someone broke a rule a lot earlier than I did. We need to find out more. You said orders... The memory you were here to excise -- which one *specifically*? The trauma? Or were you given a tip, some kind of lead, about a *particular* memory? Because... Pretty much everyone knew I'd show up here eventually. And that Vertin was about to get a lot of autonomy. If someone broke the rules, *deceived* Vertin that day and hurt people, they'd know to erase that above all else.>     He starts walking the tunnel. <The question is *who*.>
Holly Asturias	<I never successfully intuited the trick.>     "I really don't think there's a trick to intuit from this. No, rather... could you please not do that?" It's the same request everyone else has made, regarding Mesmer's intent to CUT something. "... I know I have spoken praise of this process before. I do believe it has legitimate uses. But you cannot truly believe this is one of them? Were you and Vertin not..."     Hold on. They were, right?     Will they get to see that?     ... it's gross and invasive but it'd be enlightening. "It's not exactly like that. With all due respect, Lilian exaggerates Mesmer's hostility."     "I hope so. I don't want to see what a 'bomb' going off in someone's... selfscape? Mind palace? Psych...sphere? My you really can just combine words can't you... ah, that's besides the point. I'd like to avoid Lilian being right, maybe just this once?" "So he's being taken to get psychological treatment."     "Treatment... an excision?"     Mesmer was surely too young then to be in charge of it.     But she'd know, if her family was doing this back then too?     "Mesmer Jr. What happens to people who find out about the Storm?" Scene shift: the hymn.     The simple beat of the lyrics reminds Holly of the cultists who live up that cave, not far away from her abode. They'll chant like that, sometimes - not the same lyrics in the slightest, but the same sort of cadence. It's not a good sound. And in this case... "Why does that sound so... ominous? Is this really something they teach in schools?" Obviously not. Ah! There's the tiny Mesmer, and the tiny Matilda. Scene shift: school is violent.     "What's..."     Awful smoke fills the air, and Holly coughs, shielding her eyes as best she can. She can hear the singing, still, and those screaming for it to stop. It's just singing? What is *wrong* with the Foundation? Scene shift: bonk.     Holly wipes her eyes, clears her throat, spits. That was awful. It is still a bit awful. Now she can't see anything, and it takes a few seconds to realize it isn't because of the gas. "That's right, escape!"     One more shift. What is Vertin doing, this time? Escaping? But to where? Isn't the Foundation one of the only safe havens against the Storm? Did she know otherwise that long ago already? <Isabella wasn't badly hurt in that display. For those wondering.>     "What was even the point of such a strong response? They were just singing, weren't they?" <Where's the memory of her being informed to the dangers?>     "Dangers? No, rather... why are you so agitated? Is this it? The 'trauma'?" Mesmer's always agitated, obviously, but her sudden pleading to *Vertin* is so tonally different even Holly gets the hint. "That's it? That's the 'Manus Vindictae propaganda' they recited?"     Oh, that's why they were made to stop singing. That makes... a little bit more sense, but still, tear gas? On children? "Perhaps the song was... magical, in nature? Like some manner of... incantation that would bring about... something? Or another?"     Maybe it's just grasping at straws.     Why give the Foundation the benefit of the doubt after what they've seen? It probably was just a regular song. <But I think someone broke a rule a lot earlier than I did.>     "Is that something you can undo? Can you 'heal' a missing memory like one might heal a missing finger?"
Tamamo	Mesmer says something about taking pliers to Lilian and Tamamo has to spend a little while calming down. Work hard, Sotheby. We believe in you, Sotheby.     "We are skipping forward, but in order. Is that expected, Mr. Parsons? We are not viewing a single 'exhibit,' I think, but we are... seeing things we have not business seeing, perhaps. Are we getting closer? I cannot tell, like this. Surely, we are not to see an entire lifetime, dreamed."     As fascinating as aspects of this are, Tamamo didn't come in here to discover Vertin's past. Mesmer's looking for an answer or a key, but the rest of them are looking for Vertin. The way this is progressing... "...is convenient for the observer, of course."     'Where is it? It should be here. I've been looking for it, but I can't find it.'     A chill. If she really did spend all this time 'doing her job,' and couldn't find that one memory, then... no, was this part of the rush job, too? Tamamo can't be sure where the lies start and stop.     "If you cannot find it, and she speaks without knowledge of it, and you were the only one poking into her dreams for months, then only two possibilities remain. It was never here, or you took it out, yourself." The third possibility is insufficient technique, but she pretends not to realize that.     'Tell me that it's something else. Anyone.'     "They had no idea of its meaning, its association, because they knew not what that 'welcome' meant. Someone gave this to them...?" Someone planted a song to signal joining the Manus with some Foundation children. To bring this about? Tamamo thinks over it.     "I cannot follow their reasoning. We have skipped a step, maybe, in the memories. Why they chose to keep singing this, why they thought it would give the message they desired to send, why they would not stop... why, with this, was it so important..." Some ceased. Some screamed. Some continued to sing.     "Such fear, as if it were a ritual to summon calamity."     It's still missing something.     "Is it only meaningless tragedy, or was there a purpose she was not meant to see?"
Flamel Parsons	Flamel looks back at Holly as he walks, grimly. "I'm not sure the memory is missing in the first place. There's things a child can't understand in context. And this is someone's *great* opportunity to try to make sure nobody ever does." He turns back towards the tunnel, adjusting his sunglasses. "We aren't here to reverse a cover-up. We're here to stop it before it happens in the first place."
Regulus	''This is private work, and Vertin's private memories.'' "Didn't stop you from giving us her life story before." Regulus grumbles under her breath, having kept quiet about all she learned on her own until Mesmer started monologuing. She doesn't like being upset at Mesmer, getting mad at her, but it feels like they're made for butting heads. She doesn't think it'll turn around like it did with Sonetto. But one of the reasons it bothers her is because she does feel people are eager to draw their blades on her and she feels slimy being anywhere near that. She just can't still her heart by dreams alone. "Huh?" She says on the matter of legs, less to ask for more information and more because it's such a weird thing to hear without context. But then she gets just enough context and she grimaces. "Oh fuck." She mutters, trying not to make a spectacle out of it or look too queasy. She only really manages with the former. "We aren't here to gawk." She adds to Mesmer. It must be so easy for the Manus. They can just reveal The STorm and put the Foundation in an impossible position. But that doesn't mean they can't handle all this shit way better than they are. She rubs at her eyes. Now's not the time to DWELL on her complicated feelings about the Manus and Foundation. ''the school anthem'' "This is gonna be rough." She warns the others. But a warning doesn't really help does it? Her head jerks towards Sonetto, somehow, rather than Vertin so directly and so she is caught off guard when the scene suddenly goes dark. There's words. Perhaps Sonetto has always been a guide for Vertin in the dark. To think, Regulus mulls, they wasted so much time with other assistantrs. ''The escape plans'' As Regulus expected, it all goes to this escape attempt doesn't it? She can't help but admire Vertin's caution, her planning, even so young as she is. She wouldn't have been able to escape so easily for sure. What kind of person, she wonders, would she have been if she was raised by the SPDM. How would the results of the escape attempt have affected her if it didn't kill her? Would she have been trapped in the past making more of the past like Flamel said? ''They must have someone from Naus Vindictae waiting for them outside, then'' "No, Odette. Manus may have snuck some stuff in but ... nobody was waiting for them. Nothing but The Storm. Please--" Her voice trails off. "This isn't about them. Not really. You don't need to be all that manipulated to want to flee a prison, Riku, after you got teargassed. They must've known they'd try something, but maybe Vertin was just too smart." Then again, she thinks, they were dumb enough to panic at a SONG. ''Where's the memory of her being informed to the dangesr? Where is it? It should be here. .... She's supposed to know!'' "Why are you so certain...That she'd know?" Regulus asks finally. "More tragedies happen out of ignorance than anything else." ''Tell them to stop. Turn back.'' "...We can't turn back the clock, but sometimes..." She wishes she could. "Sometimes both," She agrees with Lilian, miserably, but she is doing her best to not be another unhappy face in an unhappy situation when they haven't even seen the worst of it yet. Maybe Regulus is also just so sad that she's finding it overtake her other emotions. Any disgust at anyone, even the Foundation, is just being overrun with dread and sorrow. ''The question is *who*.'' "I hope it's just a mistake. I hope it wasn't some plan." She tells Flamel, unhappy with what he's suggesting, but unable to argue against it. "I've learned enough of the cruelters of organizations for this month."
Lilian Rook	But of course it isn't anything else. Because the first breath of fresh air she's been able to take in hours, even as ethereal as it is, can't even set her at ease when Mesmer is right there in the memory; and it has nothing to do with the real one in the ward outside. It's that she knows Mesmer was gassed for the exact same thing, because she said so, and that this can only confirm her most absurd vision of the hysterical petty tyrant that must have once held the whip, and may even still do so.     "Tamamo. Please remind me to look up names after this is done." Lilian says, about as normal as she's managed.     'If we sing that instead, when we're called up for chorus, we can show all the teachers and adults that we want to know more about the outside world!'     It's a shot of self-administered anaesthetic for hearing this. The idea of 'doing something about it' at some nebulous point in the future eases the strain of seeing these children march into something that's already happened. It stings anyways. Lilian hisses at the flash to marble white as if it were her own wound being handled. She tries to shut her eyes as quickly as possible, feeling out of gut impulse that nothing she could see here would tell her anything of value-- that nothing would be worth the mental image she's left with. Instead, the whistling of a grenade through the air makes her reach for her sword, and by the time the scene has shifted again, she can no longer be sure whether it was to instinctively defend herself or not.     'They want us to be their puppets, trapped in ignorance of the world besides what they've taught. I don't want to live like that anymore. Ring, you too-- this is our chance. There's a whole world out there for us.'     Dazed, pale, nauseous, Lilian finds herself pacing unproductively around concrete corridors; again, without thinking. Everything is so ordered; so cut up, labelled, and neatly preserved; that there's hardly any room to interact with it, and even less that can be done. For a moment, Lilian wonders if Vertin is experiencing all of this as a long nightmare, right now, and grabs Tamamo's sleeve, squeezing the fabric until she calms down again.     'Was them leaving for the Manus the thing that we weren't supposed to see?'     'So you think this was manipulation on the Manus' part?'     'Where's the memory of her being informed to the dangers? Where is it? It should be here.'     "How stupid can you possibly be?" Lilian whispers, somehow, at the top of her lungs. "Why does everything have to be some dastardly plan or grand manipulation by the forces of evil? Or someone's nonsensical semi-suicidal choice to do something arbitrary and completely against their nature? Why are you people always like this? What about this doesn't make sense to you so badly that you have to explain it?!"     Lilian turns around and starts walking in the same direction as the kids. Fast enough to catch up, at first, then faster, more and more, marching towards a destination she intends to see as if a woman possessed. "Do you see anyone else in this tunnel? Do you see guards? Janitors? Do you hear footsteps? Are they being chased? Is there an alarm? An intercom? Is anyone looking for them?" Not slowing or looking back to check if anyone can even see her, Lilian gestures from blank concrete wall to unattended storage room as she walks, and makes a game in her head out of seeing if she can find a camera.
Ein	'Is there a pill? Another drink, to fix it? An injection?' There's almost always a work-around. There's usually an alternative treatment. Sotheby, as any good curist would, offered the kindest and easiest cure. The alternative remedies... Expression shifting, and options considered, Sotheby gives Mesmer a look of empathetic concern in pure droop and faint pout of mouth, and then a nod. "I can make something that works from the inside, but it's less pleasant than daubing. So--" She reaches into her bag and gets out a whole little mortar and pestle, bringing in salts and crystals to crush and crush and crush and crush. Her pestlework is crisp and practiced, over and over and over again, the gentle tokchhk-tokchhk-tokchhk of her grinding continuing until it's fine enough she pours off into a small dish with a divot in the center. Mixing a sizzling liquid onto the dish that smells of lemon and burn, a little medicine disc starts to take shape, heated again by holding dish by edge and heating with lighter carefully underneath while carefully working the dish. Once again producing her tweezers, she pulls the little tablet from her construction still smelling of salts and botanicals and lemon, and offers it in tweezers to Mesmer. Clinical, precise, and direct, Sotheby starts rattling off instructions: "Now, this one's a lit-tle touchy, so please remember: Hold under tongue until dissolved. Do not swallow whole. Do *not* spit out once reaction begins. And do not touch eyes with hands, allow them to weep! After fully dissolved, you'll be able to clear away any excess debris in your eyes, but... normally I wouldn't recommend steaming them out from the inside. It does work! Father said it's the only way to get his toughest and sleepiest crusts from his eyes but I know it's because he rarely sleeps." Sotheby answers, pre-loading the explanation. The singing takes a moment, the tender holding of the hand. "I'm sorry, I don't know the song, but--" She would have sung it if she knew? Because of course, ten seconds under the tongue is an eternity in chemistry time. The tab, if taken, is exactly as Sotheby describes - a particular salt, a way that it mixes with saliva, and a mineral geyser sauna rising from under the tongue up into the eyes, something that rises through the mouth and cycles through the sinuses as if Mesmer's nerves were getting a second wring-out entirely through her facial nerves. The weariness peels away from her eyes like cracking and peeling paint, a wetness to the eyes that feels like the first rain across the desert, and as it steams there, restores water to the soil of her ocular gardens. It is also like holding an Alka-Seltzer under the tongue until its gone but Alchemical and thus stranger. "I don't think it would be a good idea for me to leave for a bit, actually..." Sotheby speaks, trying to find the kindest form of saying 'I need to stay here and make sure you don't collapse or have an unexpected averse reaction and I need to Actually hit you with a counteragent.' Also, having requested the hectic mode version of the drugs with extra features, like not *blinking* for the *eyes* to be cleared, Mesmer had made things more complicated. Sotheby is capable of a lot but sometimes extra features have side-effects! "If you need me to get a water, I can roll over and get one!" She asides, hoping to be helpful in the 'hard' part of things, where the potions take effect.
Lilian Rook	"Do you think a place that locks children in a concrete cell with man-eating worms for asking questions they don't understand is something that needs outside scheming to account for its fuckups?! Do you think Vertin was told about the Storm the second time?! Do you think any of these children were told about Manus Vindictae after being gassed for it?! You--" She bites the words back, and finds only equally harsh ones, aimed at a different target. "You heard that stuck pig shrieking their head off in a histrionic fit just now, didn't you?! Why do you need to invent flaws-- stupidity and callousness and rank fucking evil when there's already enough to explain it twice?!"     Her mad objective, burning the backs of her heels and demanding the attention of every nerve in her hand, is what lies at the end; a door, or even a window; something to throw open and show the rain beyond as if pulling back a stage curtain. "'It's Vertin's fault!' 'It's Manus Vindictae's fault!' How many times have you seen the Storm and still not come to understand blind, cruel, hateful, apathetic fucking inertia?!"     The absurdity of going off like this, as the woman everyone had looked at like a radioactive bomb for all she'd said in the woods outside the Walden, is hardly lost on her; but inside Vertin's memory is simultaneously as far away and close to the Foundation as Lilian can be at the same time. The mixture of insulation from anything of meaning and harsh illumination of everything that makes her so furiously upset is like an intoxicant; and right now, that's all she wants.     "I bet you anything that nobody checked. Nobody gave a fuck. I bet you a dozen people saw them; I bet you a handful of teachers knew, and it just wasn't their fucking problem if a gaggle of loathsomely problematic arcanist spawn chose today for a 'tragic, unavoidable' escape attempt that went 'sadly and unpreventably unnoticed'. I bet you anything.     "People knew and they were glad."
Timekeeper	"Do you think this year's batch of children at the SPDM know any more than they did back then?"     "If we go first, someday, they'll follow."     Vertin, resolute, spreads a map of the SPDM grounds out on the floor of the tunnel. She looks at The Ring, hat shading her face. "We can't rescue everyone at once. This is our one chance." "Do you think someone would know a way to go out and ask?"     "We'll probably have to fight," The Ring reasons in response. Joining Vertin and Isabella around the map, he draws his finger to trace routes underneath buildings towards the outer walls of the compound.     "They never let anyone out, as far as I know. There's even a graveyard, out way past the lake, so we couldn't pretend to get into coffins either. And there's guards at every tower."     Vertin's head ducks, expression unreadable. "I don't have any arcane skills, so I wouldn't be helpful in a fight. Maybe we can find a way to sneak past them. Isabella, do you have the map of the tunnels?"     Isabella produces a whole satchel from under her robes, excitedly flipping it open and rifling through its contents. "Yep, and a whole bunch more besides. Those critters have been flying over the school a lot more lately and dropping *packages*-- the instructors keep trying to hide them, but I snuck this one out when they thought I was in the guardhouse."     Vertin starts unloading it, and there's sheafs of paper pamphlets, MREs, even knives and packs of firestarters. She lays them down over the school map, flipping through the old architectural book that was in the satchel for floor diagrams.     "All of this... it should be helpful for escaping, and then to survive until we can get somewhere with people. Whether the 'Manus Vindictae' know it or not, they've been helping us all this time."     "We should thank them once we're out!"     "Yes, we should!")] "They must have someone from Manus Vindictae waiting for them outside, then, if they're still able to wander around like this."     "Do you really think so?"     The Ring and Isabella share looks, both hopeful and dubious in equal measure, and wanting to be reassured by the group consensus. "If those people really are waiting for us, then we'll owe them a ton. --Maybe they're all escapees too! Maybe there's a whole society of us! And next, *we'll* be dropping things to help the others escape!" "Is it only meaningless tragedy, or was there a purpose she was not meant to see?"     "That song, it had to have been a message for us from the Manus Vindictae, telling us to go this way. If not, then... we'll still find our way. We might not know about the world, but we have each other. We'll find our way." <Vertin, can you hear me? Tell them to stop. Turn back.>     "Wait, come back!"     She surely can't hear Mesmer, just the same as she can't hear anyone else, but Vertin does push herself up to her feet and call out into the tunnel. Not towards Isabella and The Ring, though, but to-- "Matilda, hold on just for a second!"     The memory smears, and Vertin is pressing a packaged MRE into Matilda's hands, halfway down the air raid tunnel. The inner lining of the package has a note scrawled onto it in code-- Matilda's eyes are bloodshot, and she stares at Vertin like it's the last time she'll ever see her.     "I know you can't come with us. But if you could please deliver this message to Annika? She's one of us; I don't want her to be left behind in the dark." "Is there an alarm? An intercom? Is anyone looking for them?"
Timekeeper	It's days later, again. The tunnels still lay grimly empty, stacked full of dusty crates and rotting plastic totes. Vertin pries one open and digs through its moldering contents, looking for a gun, or a Laplace equivalent.     "Two. They're both down by the tower gate to the outside, but I don't think we'll get a better day than this."     Isabella and The Ring have little pouches beside them-- a stray white sheet tied into a bindle, loose and empty despite how small they are for carrying all of their worldly possessions. The Ring flicks a finger under the hoop that encircles his temples, thinking as hard as he can while hunched over the map.     "Two's alright. If you two can disable one quickly, I'll try and take his weapon. We can use the Shamirs to distract them if we have to, but I don't want to risk losing them. As long as we get through them, there won't be any backup coming for ten to fifteen minutes."     The tactical planning overlaps over itself, hours across nights going by in an indistinct blur out of chronological order. Indefagitable, Vertin orchestrates the others to cause a power outage, coordinating doors and windows left unlocked, sneaks notes in books and codes knocked through walls, until the whole group of escapees is climbing down a metal ladder into the depths of the tunnels, on their way out. The flash of a K-Tope calibrator aimed in their direction is blocked by a a shielding incantation that streaks out from down the hallway. "I bet you anything that nobody checked. Nobody gave a fuck."     The 'fight' is over in a blink of an eye, or it feels that way in memory. The Foundation-clad guards are unconscious, knocked out by a decisive strike each by Sonetto's glasfeder. Sonetto stands across the breakaway escapees, holding her wand down by her side, stiff and dull.     "Sonetto... you're not going to try to stop us, will you?" Isabella's faint voice comes out from behind Vertin, hiding from the guards and Sonetto among them.     Sonetto sounds like she's about to cry when she opens her mouth, but it's as if her face hasn't learned to make the shapes associated with it. Her attention is solely focused on Vertin, struggling to look at any of the others. "... You will not regret this, right?"     "No. This is what we truly want. No matter what happens once we're out."     "Okay." The emotional imbalance in Sonetto shifts, sounding numb while her lip trembles. "Then you won't be needing my help anymore."     "Thank you, Sonetto. It'll be okay. We've chosen different futures, but no matter what... we'll see those futures through. Maybe someday, far in the future, we'll meet again."     The hallway seems to shrink away, Sonetto becoming more distant along with it. Her voice is barely audible, quiet even in reality and swirling away into the vortex of this collapsing dream. "... It was a pleasure to be your deskmate, Vertin."
Regulus	Feeling inevitability approach, Regulus's pounding heart becomes more and more compelling in the face of all evidence. She watches what happens, happen. The particulars of the plan are hazy, like she can barely think of the present when the future seems so damningly close. This is what they are ultimately fighting, to step away from nostalgia and see the future together with all its sorrows and joys. But it's hard. ''I don't want her to be left behind in the dark.'' "She's one of us." Regulus repeats, finally finding a phrase for why exactly Mesmer frustrates her so much and why she can't damn or cast her out of heart and mind all the same despite all the insults and curses thrown her way. Mesmer, too, was a rebel once. ''Sonetto'' "Oh Sonetto..." Regulus exhales in a sigh, reaching out before remembering the caution she has urged in others. But if they have to watch this. If they have to watch this horrible day. She turns to look at Vertin as her heart overwhelms her sense and she takes in a sharp hoarse breath and... "Vertin...One day you'll be free from all this, free to go wherever you want with your best mates, free of the Timekeeper and fighting but..." She closes her eyes, struggling to maintain her composure. "But before even that." She lets that hang for a moment. "Before even that, you'll get to travel. Sometimes you'll be able to choose your destination, and sometimes your sense of responsibility will take you there. You'll have friends, people who respect you and love you and--you'll have danger and adventure and you'll never be without a Suitcase to protect all your precious things." She takes a heavier breath, now, and rubs at her eyes with her hand. "You'll help so many people who came after, but it won't just be kids. You'll find there's so many adults out there who need you too. They'll see your heart as if you were holding it in your hand. And they'll trust you. And you'll save them." Then quietly. "Even a silly little pirate. But that's not why I need you." She sniffs. "I'd be happy just to see that smile of yours. Every time during those two months where we played around at the beach, making those truly impossible sand castles, when we had our little rock party to save the day, all I could think about is how much more fun it would've been if you were there too. I know you want us to be happy and cared for and all you need from me is maybe some breakfast now and then and some help with the chores, but..." She takes a steady breath. "It's not home without you, love."