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Tamamo     Niigata was once the most populous city on the seaward side of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. On this Earth, at this time, that city may be long gone, but the mountains remain and, with them, the rivers that feed to the sea. The nearest warpgate is a short trip to the docks used by Tamamo many times up until now, allowing an often relaxed but quite and secure route to reach a certain river valley, holding a tiny island, far away from any inhabited urban center. There are reasons to use the waterways rather than the sky, as much as it takes this much longer. Her work isn't entirely secret, but the details aren't publicized beyond those with a need to know, either.

    The route is not much changed since her last trip, just about a week prior, and Tamamo can therefore split her time between contemplative meditation and speaking to those nearby, rather than paying attention to it. It remains a striking contrast of terrain, swiftly turning into the no-man's-land covered in such sights as kelp that flows upward and waves without a breeze, with veins like half-congealed blood darkly covering stone in webs and seeming to pulse more than flow. There's nothing animal-like out there, but it's not clear if what's there are plants, either. The colors of the earth shift toward purples and occasional iridscence. Clouds of dust or vapor hang visibly without dispersing.

    And then, the shift toward brown earths, gray stones, brown and then green brush, working up through mosses and creeping vines to bushes and trees. When the island is finally reached, the place is almost jungle-like but for a couple of cleared landing spaces and faint signs of paths, so thick is the greenery.

    That isn't, however, today's destination. Tamamo direct the group onward, passing around the valley and further toward where the river should meet the sea -- though that's miles off. "The alarm tripped over was close to the coast, and further to the south." She gestures ahead and to the left. "It is well out of sight of what is here, that we might have a chance to see what is there before this place is again revealed."

    There is, close to the bank ahead, a partially constructed earthen hut, dug into the side of the hill and supported with what look like prefab panels that have seen far better days. There isn't anywhere in sight those could have been scavenged from.
Tamamo <Tac-Paladins> Tamamo says, "And so, another alarm is rung. I set these far further outward from the river, after last time."
<Tac-Paladins> Tamamo says, "We should have the leisure to arrive before whomsoever it may be, this time, but we may wish to hurry, still."
<Tac-Paladins> Tamamo says, "Oh, yes, Lilian. We should inform the few others, beginning with Ms. Soroka."
<Tac-Paladins> Lilian Rook says, "Ah. Consider it done."
<Tac-Paladins> Kara says, "An alarm? Do you need help? We're still docked and waiting for the margrave to be back so..."
<Tac-Paladins> Tamamo says, "Our usual transport can carry a few others, and I would be glad for a breadth of assistance. I know that trouble approaches, but not its precise form."
<Tac-Paladins> Tamamo says, "I do have... a guess, after the last."
<Tac-Paladins> Kara says, "Alright! Ethan, up! Homen, you're watching the ship!"
Tamamo     Along the way, Tamamo does take out a small wooden box, somewhere between toolbox and medicine chest, with many compartments. From it, she counts down the rows and columns, selects a particular compartment, and retrieves a bit of ripped, folded paper with what looks just like garishly purple, crumbly clay. "Ms. Bouanich, your scrying does use sympathetic catalyists, yes? I have here a bit of soil from the place where something did occur. Your crystal might give the others a clearer visual than mere words could manage." The paper on the other half of that tear is still buried where she'd taken the sample.
Hy Izlan Reformers     Kara and Ethan are not the world's most stand-out-y people, especially without Homen to contrast either one. If Kara's salmon kimono and black and brown shirt and shorts underneath it give her a bit of visibility, side-tailed brown hair and silver eyes fitting with the look, Ethan's white and beige tunic and pants would let him melt into any crowd, if not for the dark blue scarf around his neck, and his bright blue eyes that go with his black hair. There's barely a height difference between the two; Kara tops out at 5'3", and Ethan's pushing 5'5" at most.

    The outfits do gel well together though. They definitely look like travel companions, though Ethan has the look and stare of someone who's been dragged out forcefully on an Adventure while he was trying to eat.

    The both of them - Kara, especially - spends the whole of the waterbound part of the trip oohing and aahing from as close to the edge of the ship as she's allowed to go, often risking a fall in the water if she were even just a bit more enraptured by the sights. It's a little bit stressful and a little bit like babysitting and Ethan has to hold her by the back of her kimono at least once while making plaintive noises.

    And the jungle!

    "This is so pretty! There were trees back home but nothing so lush!" They were less green, she would swear, and much much less numerous.

    "Remember that some kind of alarm rang... it's probably not safe."

    "It's fine! We've got THE Lilian Rook with us, not to mention everyone else. Come on! Let's go see! I want to look at that hut!"

    "Kara! Relax!"

    She will not relax!

    Though what she WILL do is peek into Tamamo's fancy toolbox, having never seen one like that before.

    "Are you going to do some divining? Can I watch?"
Petra Soroka     Petra's been informed! Because she's such a good girl and gets to be included in topics discussed on the Paladins radio, despite very much not being a Paladin.

    For the warmth today, she's wearing a pair of belted cargo shorts, having come to the realization-- which she explains, enthusiastically, on the trip up the river-- that because there aren't many *bugs* around the island, it's actually perfectly safe to wear shorts despite the heavy growth. A cutoff tanktop ends just above the high-rise shorts, her corded mirror's around her neck, and her sunglasses are on her forehead. She's built for the outdoors!

    Yet again, she insists on rowing, and also having Matilda row. But this time, there's some new people to entertain her on the boat trip downriver.

    "So, like, who are you? Paladins I assume, right? Or else Tamamo wouldn't have invited you?" She's the exception!

"There were trees back home but nothing so lush!"

    "That's because of Tamamo's hard work, really. This is a lot more trees than most places on Earth-- *especially* most places on this Earth, I mean, because you saw what it was like earlier."

    The previous times the alarm went off, it warranted checking out, but it wasn't the end of the world or anything. Tamamo predicted there'd be a third incident, and *maybe* it's the Takeda coming after their guy, but even that seems pretty comfortably manageable in the aftermath of Ið?unn. Petra's tail swishes back and forth idly as the time passes, morphmetal fur in a paintbrush trail behind.

    "Assuming Tamamo and Lilian don't mind--" She glances, just to make sure. "The last problem this terraforming project had was a deserter coming through the no-mans-land and coincidentally ending up here. So it's possible there's people coming after him."
Angela Angela is now invested in the situation and, of course, has to go with Petra as usual. She also doesn't know Kara or Ethan and without a giant rabbit, she'd probably assume them no more relevant to her life than low level Syndicate members. But then they say ''THE Lilian Rook' so she has to assume they are at least as relevant to her life as the members of Trideag. So she best get to know them in case they end up there.

"Kara is correct, while some level of prudence is polite, I cannot imagine any serious threat with whom we have with us." Though, of course, she does feel compelled to add. "But if it is the Takeda Clan, they seem to be notably powerful, so do be cautious."

Angela leans against Petra, "I hope they understand the ... unique and fragile elements we are dealing with here that are far more important than one deserter."

She looks towards the hut. "This does not seem particularly sturdy. I would be cautious about playing around in the hut."
Hy Izlan Reformers "So, like, who are you? Paladins I assume, right? Or else Tamamo wouldn't have invited you?"

    "That's right! I'm Chevalier Lah Kara, and this is Chevalier Ethan!" Ethan waves, having been introduced through no effort of his own again. He's present. He's here! He's keeping Kara from falling overboard.
    "Yooou... sound like someone whose voice I hear a lot if I leave the comlink on, but I can't place a name..."
    "Is that a cybernetic tail?" Ethan asks, unashamed.
    "I think you have to at least wait for her name before you ask that?"
    "Oh. I'm sorry. You just don't see that often."

    Apropos of something both Petra and Angela namedrop, Kara asks: "Takeda Clan... so like, organized bandits or pirates or something like that?"
Petra Soroka "I hope they understand the ... unique and fragile elements we are dealing with here that are far more important than one deserter."

    "I mean, I don't know anything about what the Takeda are interested in. I don't think we should bet on anyone being, like, 'understanding' on first contact, but hopefully they're not too unreasonable either. If it is them."

"Yooou... sound like someone whose voice I hear a lot if I leave the comlink on, but I can't place a name..."

    "That's 'cause I'm a voice to know." Petra's tail smugly coils around when she jokes, which isn't something it's usually done before.

    "Well, anyways, hey, Ethan and--" Context clues! "Kara. I'm Petra. What's your bit? What do you do?" This isn't over the radio, so it's actually much more intense for Petra to directly say to their faces, "And name one bad habit!"

"Is that a cybernetic tail?"

    Petra looks down at her side, where the tail is lazily hanging in the corner of her view. "Um-- sort of. That's probably the best way to put it, because if I call it my bonus sin, that doesn't mean anything to you."
Angela ''So like, organized bandits or pirates or something like that?''

"No they seem to be a powerful clan, one of twelve politically powerful entities in this area." Angela looks to Kara. "My name is Angela, by the way. My bad habit is that I do not like it when people are slow to get to the point and overly flowing speeches." She tilts her head thoughtfully and adds, "I am offering this to make it easier for you to share a bad habit out of the blue. Some people are a little shy about that."

She nods to Petra. "I will be gentle on first brush to provide an appropriate behavioral model and be more patient this time."

She looks towards Kara. "Ah, that is another bad habit I suppose. I am impatient." That sounds pretty similar to the first bad habit but Angela is treating it as two different bad habits, apparently.
Lilian Rook     Some of the novelty of returning to this place has worn off, but none of the more recent visits have done anything to decrease Lilian's fondness of it. If anything, the opportunity to familiarize herself with the adorable little spirits who've moved into (partially) her handiwork and see how far her cultivation of nature has come in that time makes her attach more significance to this spot (beyond it being her beautiful wife's project, which must be supported at all costs), and made her emotionally invested in seeing it thrive.

    Plus her arm isn't broken anymore. The temporal ambiguity of her general exhaustion isn't enough to keep her spirits down during the trip either. She can spend most of it ruthlessly canoodling with Tamamo in plain view of god and everyone until the box has to come out and business must resume. Her 'backpacking' gear (still expensive, still fashionable, still involving her love of cashmere wool and newfound tolerance of jeans) is practically just a colour swap from last time, changing out her boots for waterproof zip-ups intead of laces and putting on a pair of gloves.

    She is . . . strangely clingy about Tamamo's personal space, even when she lets her get to work. And occasionally slightly jumpy or distracted. Without being in a public restaurant anymore, she's let her triangles/hysteria shards down; making them unnoticeable was a big success, so now she's practising her deliberate use of them employing dozens of shards as the bones of half-empty shattered metal hands performing basic wood-whittling and rope knots; a process she still has to manually guide with her own hands quite a bit.

    'So, like, who are you? Paladins I assume, right? Or else Tamamo wouldn't have invited you?'

    "They are. There are four of them." Lilian says. She is perhaps still feeling a Way. "They're 'knights errant'. Mystic order and everything. Magic swords. They'll do fine." Which is staggeringly high praise from her, even considering her mood.

    'The last problem this terraforming project had was a deserter coming through the no-mans-land and coincidentally ending up here. So it's possible there's people coming after him.'

    "I don't mind." is followed by, "That'd be nice and simple."

    'It's fine! We've got THE Lilian Rook with us, not to mention everyone else. Come on! Let's go see! I want to look at that hut!'

    That makes her smile despite herself. "Homen's been hyping you up, has he? Ah, not that I mind; it's nice to be acknowledged, and he seemed very happy about the lightsaber colour-thing."
Foundation Scions     Last time Matilda came out here, she got to compliment a small spirit, and have a knife against her throat! The former was very nice! The latter, she really did not like! Still- a lot has happened in the time since then! She's gone to the woods! She's gone to Paris! She's sassed her dormitory's overseer with letters-of-assurance, to let her keep a deadly weapon in the building, and it only took a bunch of arguing!

    So, it's kind of a bit of reassurance, that today, it's convenient-enough to bring along Connaître les Papillons, her own SN-13 sword, and no-longer be the most visibly-unarmed person present for if there is another sort of sneaky ruffian with a knife looking for an ideal hostage.

    Plus, she's been talking about Papillon lately! It's only right!

'Remember that some kind of alarm rang... it's probably not safe.'

    Phew! That guy seems more hostage-take-able than her! If you squint! "Nothing, so-severe, happened last time there was an intrusion! But, you should very-much keep close watch as to the bushes and the trees around!"

'What's your bit? What do you do?'

    "She performs aerial somersaults, with a wand that is a green-glowing beam!" Matilda helpfully adds, pointing at Kara. And hey! Today, Matilda, in her SPDM uniform, has her usual-style of side-ponytail hair! She's matching, now, so her comment of the day before, is so much less odd!

'Ms. Bouanich, your scrying does use sympathetic catalyists, yes?'

    "Ah! Yes! Correct! Ah- do you have samples gathered, of every location within the sanctuary zone? That must have taken quite some time to gather. Comme c'est utile!" Matilda, herself, has brought along the bag she carries her orbuculum- in it, also, is a little ceramic dish, perfect either for burning herbs and incense, or in this case, holding a sample of dirt, in arranged proximity to the orb.

    "Oh boule de cristal, montre-moi ce qui foule cette terre..."

. . .

    Matilda doesn't bring her orbuculum with her, however! It's too bulky, and a hinderance to hold onto if there's anything close to a scuffle! Just her little chained-string of quartzes, wrapped-up, for a casting focus. The big satchel can stay in the boat as it's moored!

    Actually getting back up on land means Matilda, absent any consideration, just kind of does a really big stretch, of her arms and back, like being around greenery just needs that.

    Seeing the in-construction shelter, though- "Is this, perhaps, another refugee..?"
Tamamo <X-Paladins-Chatter> Lilian Rook says, "Excellent. I'm certain she'll love you." She adds, mysteriously, "And your outfit."
<X-Paladins-Chatter> Kara says, "My outfit...? I guess it is pretty cute, though I do miss the poncho I had. I've got to retrieve it if it didn't burn down when we go."

    . . .

    "Oh, so you are Ms. Kara and Mr. Ethan. From hearing that you were from some distant world, I had wondered if your style might be rather... different, but it is delightfully familiar. There are tailors only some hundreds of kilometers from here, in fact, who would be happy to work with such material, if you happen to be looking to fill a wardrobe, or to have ribbons in many colors. Perhaps you will take the opportunity, when our work here is complete?" Most of that's to Kara.

    'Remember that some kind of alarm rang... it's probably not safe.'

    "We will be safe until we leave the areas of green growth. The lands beyond are... sometimes home to creatures that hate humans." But they don't hunt down trees. The destruction of the ecosystem was just an unhappy side effect. Thinking on that, "There is only one human living nearby, at present."

    'Are you going to do some divining? Can I watch?'

    "I have already done such as could be seen by others, and taken what answers will come to me, but Ms. Bouanich might grace us with her own skill, for another perspective."

    'Assuming Tamamo and Lilian don't mind--'

    Tamamo nods. Petra's being so good and proper today! So far. Tamamo's mood is improved by such things, though knowledge that some trouble will absolutely occur puts a cap on that.

    'I hope they understand the ... unique and fragile elements we are dealing with here that are far more important than one deserter.'

    "Unfortunately, while any given individual may be one with whom we can reason, or may not be," and is possible to threaten or blackmail, Tamamo doesn't add, "the involvement of one member may mean the involvement of hundreds of others. All that can be safely predicted from such an event is that at least one voice will find justification for staking a claim you might rather they did not. I would rather not give the opportunity for a large number of people to seek to establish the edges of my authority and patience." That said, it's inevitable that 'people, generally' find out about all of this 'eventually.'

    'This does not seem particularly sturdy.'

    Tamamo looks over that way. "Ah, yes... it will be some time before wooden constructions would be practical. I can see why he decided to make do."

    'Takeda Clan... so like, organized bandits or pirates or something like that?'

    "They are one of the eleven clans that govern most humans of this archipelago. Their history is rather long to call them pirates, though I suppose I do not know if they truly hold an unbroken line to the Takeda of one thousand years ago."
Hy Izlan Reformers "I'm Petra. What's your bit? What do you do?"

    "We're masterless Jedi!"
    "That probably doesn't mean anything to her..."
    "Oh yeah... and we kind of have a master..."
    "We're... knights-errant?"
    "What's with you and Homen and that term?"
    "Lilian used it. It sounds accurate?"
    "Fair enough! Okay. I guess we're knights-errant then. We're kind of... just doing good wherever we can, until we find our heading. It's a whole story and I'd rather not... you know, not here?"
    Kara does transparently give off the vibe it's not a fun topic to bring up and it'll just drag the mood down.

    And sure enough Lilian confirms.

    "Anyway, if you want some bad habits... let me think... Ethan always looks like he got lost and is trying to get his bearings!"
    "H-Hey! I think she meant about *yourself*!"
    "That's boring! Come on Ethan, say a bad habit of mine."
    "She's like this," he indicates to Petra.

"Homen's been hyping you up, has he? Ah, not that I mind; it's nice to be acknowledged, and he seemed very happy about the lightsaber colour-thing."

    "Oh, yeah, he was weirdly glowing about it! Wouldn't say why though. I'm just glad, he always seems so... you know."
    She makes a face, like a stern frown.

"She performs aerial somersaults, with a wand that is a green-glowing beam!"

    "I did that once!"
    "Was that at brunch?! Did you do that in a restaurant?!"
    "It's fiiiine, the staff closed the doors."
    "Kara!"

"Perhaps you will take the opportunity, when our work here is complete?"

    "Yes! YES! I'd love to! I basically had to leave home with just these clothes on my back, I've got nothing else, so..."

"There is only one human living nearby, at present."

    "Are they a friend or not?" Ethan is concerned, immediately, that someone lives alone in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by eleven clans of possibly hostile... not-pirates.

"I have already done such as could be seen by others, and taken what answers will come to me, but Ms. Bouanich might grace us with her own skill, for another perspective."

    Kara, now attentive, looks at Matilda expectedly.
Angela ''Come on Ethan, say a bad habit of mine.''

Angela places a hand on Ethan's shoulder and stares at him. "She said to say a bad habit of hers." Apparently, 'she's like this' isn't going to cut it for her. She gave a bad habit of her own and she isn't too thrilled that Ethan's trying to get out of it. "Unless you are a couple, I suppose, if you are a couple it is acceptable to, occassionally, act as if your partner has no bad habits and are perfect in every way."

''The involvement of one member may mean the involvement of hundreds of others.''

"Then what is the plan to deter potentially hundreds, or at least one scout, from investigating this place any further?" Angela asks. "Aside from communication, I have little means to discourage them myself that are also not particularly desired."

But despite saying this, she seems to approve of Tamamo drawing the hard line because she's nodding to herself.
Petra Soroka "I am offering this to make it easier for you to share a bad habit out of the blue."

    "You're so generous, Ange. I just do my bad habits a lot instead."

"Magic swords. They'll do fine."

    That is such high praise from Lilian! So why's she looking like she's in a little bit of an insecure mood? Petra's tail wags uncertainly, temporarily ditching her rowing efforts to lean down towards her. "Well-- that's good, but is something up?"

    She may, perhaps, be able to smell it! "Oh, or is it the triangles being so active?"

"She performs aerial somersaults, with a wand that is a green-glowing beam!"

    Petra swivels around to stare at Kara intently. "What? Show me your aerial somersault. Is that, like, magic? Or do you just do that raw?"

    On the topic of swords, Petra also has to get fussy over Matilda. "Oh-- Matilda, Matilda, that's your SN-13, right? From your training, with Lilian? It's so cute to see you with a sword."

"It's a whole story and I'd rather not... you know, not here?"

    Knights-errant is something Petra approves of, but mostly as a feeling inherited from Lilian. The aesthetic of knighthood to her is much more appealing in representations of chivalry and loyalty, than just 'do-gooding'! So she can nod to this, but she's not very satisfied.

    "People are basically just their collection of stories. So, like, I've gotta get it out of you at some point. Or else I'll never, like, remember you."

"Come on Ethan, say a bad habit of mine."

    Nope!!! Petra's on Kara's side here! She does grabby hands at Ethan, waving towards Kara emphatically. "One about her too! She even invited you to! Come on! But *are* you always lost? Is that your thing?"

"Are they a friend or not?"

    Also pointing towards the hut, Petra explains, "Yeah, that's the deserter guy's place, I figure. He's harmless. All the spirits wanted was that he stop littering his talismans, and that he make a boundary between himself and the wilderness, so that seems perfectl."

"the involvement of one member may mean the involvement of hundreds of others."

    "Yeah... that's basically what I'm worried about. Deserter-guy--" She forgot his fake name, but it was fake anyways. "Doesn't have anyone he can tell, but it's pretty much guaranteed that any 'scouts' or 'soldiers' or even 'villagers' would tell dozens of people about this place."
Lilian Rook     'Takeda Clan... so like, organized bandits or pirates or something like that?'

    "Feudal clan. More or less. They're official. They run a big city."

    'Is that a cybernetic tail?'

    "It's proof of her sin."

    'Kara. I'm Petra. What's your bit? What do you do? And name one bad habit!'
    'My name is Angela, by the way.'

    "Oh, shall we go around the room?" Lilian says, wiggling her way closer into Tamamo's space and turning her ear towards the wrong person. "Lilian Isabelle Rook, the 'Winter Bloom'. I'm the holotype knight-champion of the new era; a celebrity philanthropist superstar, PhD-holder, and wife. My bad habit is a penchant for perfectionism and overwork." She hesitates, because she got sassed for being that self-flattering about her bad habit before. "And perhaps being too permissive. And I find it difficult to slow down sometimes."

    'What's with you and Homen and that term?'

    "it's variously useful to describe 'a practitioner of the martial arts', 'a follower of a personal code', 'an adherent to an ideological order', 'a disciple of spiritual philosophy', 'a traveler and adventurer', and 'a righter of wrongs, friend to the innocent'."

    'Oh, yeah, he was weirdly glowing about it! Wouldn't say why though. I'm just glad, he always seems so... you know.'

    "I think I understand." she sighs. "I picked up a wavelength from him. I imagine that he finds it reassuring to see that someone else can 'make work' what he tenuously hopes is possible." Wow! That's so nonspecifically unhelpful!

    'Are they a friend or not?'

    "I'd like it if they were."
Tamamo     In a truly just world, there'd be nothing to distract from Lilian's canoodling. They could just keep being outrageously flirty at all hours of every day. As it is, Tamamo finished her scrying work before getting onto the boat so she'd have more time to lean on Lilian, hold her hand, and pretend the view along the riverside were something they were tourists seeing for the first time. In tiny ways, it is. Even a week's time is enough for the growth to advance, as heavily enhanced by divine efforts as it is. Tamamo simply takes the clinginess as a sign that Lilian needs more skinship today.

    '...and he seemed very happy about the lightsaber colour-thing.'
    'Oh, yeah, he was weirdly glowing about it!'

    "Hm? Is that related to what you were discussing, earlier?" She missed at least part of this.

    'That must have taken quite some time to gather.'

    "Oh, it did. I wished to be thorough." That explains the meticulously kept box.

    . . .

    Matilda gets her vision of a place not so very far away, but well out of sight of the greenery, as Tamamo said it would be. It's difficult to call it 'barren' with its xenoformation, but it's a place like many others, and would be hard to find without the map Tamamo's already taking out.

    There are two types of trails in an area of sludgy gray. One type is left as pairs of angled holes, almost like pressing triangles for cuneiform, as of round and point-ended rods pressed repeatedly into the ground in several lines, understandable as 'footprints' only by that overall context. By the spacing, there's at least three whatever-did-that, probably not bipedal, their trails disappearing when the swampy cement-ish section of ground ends.

    Then there's the robot that's still in sight, trundling around the swamp to avoid it. It's got that aesthetically atrocious look of something designed to work under a variety of conditions and to never be sold to a civilian, from its bouncy-suspension six thick-tired wheels to the four multi-jointed legs it keeps folded up, spider-like, until the wheels bounce too hard on something and the feet take over, instantly moving between modes as it rolls and skitters with exposed wires and sensors and less decipherable electronics waving in the process beneath a protective wireframe of steel.

    It doesn't notice her, of course. It's busy. What it's busy doing isn't clear, neither moving in straight lines nor ever crossing its own path.
Angela ''You're so generous, Ange. I just do my bad habits a lot instead.''

"Thank you, Petra." Angela is smiling, though. "But I take it I should resist my bad habit today. Out of respect of the land remaining peaceful and gentle." She probably shouldn't try to rip off the legs and arms of whomever came here today and then shove them in a room when Yuki comes to visit. Or, you know, even minus that last part.

''It's proof of her sin.''

Angela's eyes slant towards Lilian's triangles and then she looks back away from them without saying anything.

"Perfectionism and overwork can be a bad habit," Angela agrees. "If you continuously search for perfection, you can find yourself essentially never moving forward. And if you overwork, it means you do not necessarily have proper life balance. But since you are both a perfectionist and overwork, they do mitigate one another, some."
Hy Izlan Reformers "One about her too! She even invited you to! Come on! But *are* you always lost? Is that your thing?"
"Unless you are a couple, I suppose, if you are a couple it is acceptable to, occassionally, act as if your partner has no bad habits and are perfect in every way."

    "H-Huh? We're not...!"
    "Don't deflect!"
    Ethan, a mix of flustered and exhausted already, takes a breath and then replies, in order: "She's kind of careless and forward. And I'm not lost, I just trust the Force will take me where I'm meant to be. I just don't always know where that is. And these different worlds, it's been a bit much."

"What? Show me your aerial somersault."

    "Yes!! Hang on, stand back."
    Kara clears some space. She stretches, bending her knees up and down a few times, and then more than happily performs a full 360 backwards somersault, landing on the raised edge of the boat and wobbling just a bit. Ethan, out of habit, grabs her sleeve and keeps her from falling again.

    "See? She's like this."
    Kara sticks her tongue out from her higher perch.

"Oh-- Matilda, Matilda, that's your SN-13, right?"

    And her higher perch is PERFECT to look at Matilda's sword! That's right, she couldn't bring it to brunch!

    "It looks a lot cooler than a regular sword! Does it do something special? Or have a cool name?"

"I picked up a wavelength from him."

    "A wavelength...?"
    "I don't know either."

"Hm? Is that related to what you were discussing, earlier?"

    "Oh yes! Lilian got to try my lightsaber, and it was this really bright shade of purple, though it got darker afterwards. Homen's is like that too, so I guess it must be a... bonding or kinship thing?"

    Kara's attention drifts off the topic, as she settles her attention on Matilda and the divination. She really wants to see this! What it looks like, what it feels like...
Lilian Rook     'Then what is the plan to deter potentially hundreds, or at least one scout, from investigating this place any further?'

    "I suppose there's always memory erasure." says Lilian, who is not thinking about that.

    'Well-- that's good, but is something up?'

    "No." Lilian lies, transparently. She takes a breath, and then seems to be blinking off a mildly overwhelming thought, or filtering out a very distracting noise.

    'Oh, or is it the triangles being so active?'

    "A-active?" Lilian bunches up a little, looking vaguely scandalized. The abstract art hand-facsimiles drop what they're doing and flock back to her side; which means the Halo Area, which means looking like they just spiked up like hackles or were thrown upwards like trying to show empty-handed innocence. A couple of bright doplets roll from the lower points, hit the boat-bottom, and disappear. "Petra. Ah. You're. You've been rowing. So." So what?

    '"Oh-- Matilda, Matilda, that's your SN-13, right? From your training, with Lilian? It's so cute to see you with a sword.'

    Yes! Focus on Matilda! "I'm glad you appreciate the design. I wouldn't mind showing you the technical specs." she says. "Oh, right, Matilda got a ilttle--" Lilian makes a totally unreadable gesture. "--after the training. So she's allowed to have 'my stuff' from the mirror if she needs it." She spends the entire time rubbing her thumb across Tamamo's hand, vaguely addicted to the texture.

    'Hm? Is that related to what you were discussing, earlier?'

    "Yeah. A-anyways, the alarm!"

    'But since you are both a perfectionist and overwork, they do mitigate one another, some.'

    "You know what? True! I'll say that from now on!"

    'A wavelength...?'
    'I don't know either.'

    "An . . . intuitive understanding of, something that isn't common to everyone."
Tamamo     'Yes! YES! I'd love to!'

    "I shall introduce you to a trustworthy shop, in that case." Tamamo thinks there may be a tear in Kara's ribbon, but is politely avoiding looking directly at it.

    'Then what is the plan to deter potentially hundreds, or at least one scout, from investigating this place any further?'

    "This depends upon the manner of scout that arrives," Tamamo says, while Matilda is working. It's afterward that she says, "Ah, a drone. All the way out here...? No, of course there would be another." She's down to talking quietly to herself as she works out what this means.

    'Lilian Isabelle Rook, the 'Winter Bloom'.'

    Tamamo takes this opportunity to give Lilian's hand a squeeze, and say, smiling a little, "Tamamo-no-mae, bunrei of Amaterasu-omikami, She of the White-Gold Face, Goddess of the Sun. And now, Mizukume Rook, happily a wife. I once thought I had many bad habits, but it was revealed to me that my mistake was in not indulging them even more so." That's cheating, but Petra wasn't asking her, anyway.

    'Lilian got to try my lightsaber, and it was this really bright shade of purple...'

    "Oh? A purple sword... ah, 'lightsaber.' I wonder as to the meaning of this." She'd have to first know a lot more about lightsabers and jedi.

    Oh, but Lilian clearly wants to talk about something else. Matilda's vision, perhaps! Tamamo visibly directs her attention back that way.
Angela ''I just trust the Force will take me where I'm meant to be. I just don't always know where that is.''

Angela is actually kind of charmed by that idea, though she doesn't entirely understand how the Force connects to it but it's a short word that begins with F so she is just going to assume it's the same shit all the ridiculous swordsmen of her world always talk about. Angela has little interest in swordfighting, but having a certain calm that wherever you end up is where you meant to be once you have the legs to move with appeals to her.

''Kara does a somersault''

"Earlier in my life I would have not particularly cared about somersaults, but after getting to know Petra, I believe there is charm in having mastery of your body and how it moves and being excited about it, rather than treating it merely as a means to an end."

She looks to Ethan. "I would like to take a Page from you. May I?" Angela only takes Pages without asking if she's annoyed with the person she's taking the Page from, no doubt because she's in a hurry to find out their deal so she can make the annoying aspects go away faster. It might be a bad habit of hers.

''You know what? True! I'll say that from now on!''

Angela smiles at Lilian. She still loves her terribly. "Feel free." She says.

''I suppose there's always memory erasure.''

"I did not know that was an option." Which sounds like she's wholly in support of it. "If you can fill in that they found nothing here, that could solve the matter for some time."
Petra Soroka "I'm the holotype knight-champion of the new era; a celebrity philanthropist superstar, PhD-holder, and wife."

    "Moral bastion of the entire multiverse. Direct leader or influence on the altruistic reconstruction of multiple nations. Voted most beautiful woman in all of-- actually, why isn't there a tabloid type ranking for that? Have I just never seen it?"

    But now that Lilian's listed her bad habit too, Petra also has to introduce herself properly for the newbies. She glues herself to Lilian's side (though still, by necessity, also close to Angela's side) before facing the Jedi.

    "Anyways, I'm Petra, like I said. Concord Partner, ruler of Hydrochoeria-- someone called me the 'scourge of Quicknest' once, which was pretty cool, supervillain, journalist, legally registered as a service dog."

    Distracted, Petra looks between the other people on the boat who are more familiar with her. "Actually, what would be the funniest selection of things for me to introduce myself by? Ex-Captain of the SSV Normsandy, dog, supervillain, Syndicate cultist? Bloom-apostle? Inspector Astral? Junior in college? I've gotta figure out what the most opaque choices would be."

    "Oh, but anyways." Petra's introduction, despite her open discussion of how to make it maximally impenetrable and helpful, is at least also honest? "My bad habits are that I'm incredibly abrasive, inherently dangerous to be around, have a poor understanding of boundaries, and have a deep-rooted contempt towards anyone who fails to meet my standards. But I'm good and nice."

"And I'm not lost, I just trust the Force will take me where I'm meant to be. I just don't always know where that is."

    This is a good answer! It's also one that makes Ethan somewhat interesting, which is the goal of Petra's questioning! "And does that usually work? Is that a, um, faith thing, or a precognition thing?"

"No."

    "Mmh...." So, yes, but not here. Which is upsetting, because now Petra can only worry fruitlessly, rather than being able to help. She'll figure it out later! Lilian's not that hard to read.

    "Ah-- no, I didn't mean anything! I think it's cute that you're using them like that so much! I mean, you remember how long it took me to use the Silver effectively, and that was with it being one hundred percent of my body for a while-- human to robot to, non-biological, that's a really funny one to add to the list also-- I really didn't mean anything else by it. I thought it might just be, like, taking your focus, or something." By which she means, sensorially stimulating.

"I wouldn't mind showing you the technical specs."

    "I've used one once, but that's all I know besides what you've said." Petra sits down, cross-legged, to observe Matilda's show and tell. "Any of your--?" She double-takes, trying to discern whether Lilian means, like... her lipstick, also?

"Lilian got to try my lightsaber, and it was this really bright shade of purple, though it got darker afterwards."

    "Magic sword...." This should be exciting to Lilian! But instead she seems distressed. So Petra can't just ask what that means, and instead must dance around it. "Homen's another one of your guys? Is he cool?"
Tamamo     'I've gotta figure out what the most opaque choices would be.'

    "Becoming a Psychonauts appointee remains the most baffling." Tamamo then has to stop and replay part of that list in her mind. "What is an SSV?"

    'I suppose there's always memory erasure.'
    'I did not know that was an option.'

    "That might not be an option, in this case." Tamamo's forms of mind control don't work on robots, at least. She wouldn't know how to replace all the digital memories with something uninteresting.
Petra Soroka "Yes!! Hang on, stand back."

    "Yes!!!"

    This scores points with Petra, in the same sort of fixated niche that Lilian has about swords. Petra needs the boat to be pulled ashore (which is also her duty to do rather than anyone else's) before she can reply in kind.

    With a running start, she leaps up and somersaults forwards, grabbing onto a branch of one of the overgrown trees, and pulling herself up. Lounging there to look down at Kara, having no intent of leaving her perch until she has to, "Good! It's good that you can do that. Though, is that magic, at all? It's crazy to gain that much height from a backflip. I can sort of do it, but it's really sketchy. That's so cool."
Hy Izlan Reformers "An . . . intuitive understanding of, something that isn't common to everyone."

    "Ooooh... okay, I think I understand now. Hm... maybe I should try to talk with him more."

"I would like to take a Page from you. May I?"

    A page? Ethan blinks. "S-Sure? I don't know what that means, unless you mean it in like... the... saying way?"

    There's no way Angela can't be trusted if she's here with Lilian's blessing, right? So there's no reason to say no?

"I shall introduce you to a trustworthy shop, in that case."

    "Thank you!"
    Kara bows, very thankful.

"My bad habits are that I'm incredibly abrasive, inherently dangerous to be around, have a poor understanding of boundaries, and have a deep-rooted contempt towards anyone who fails to meet my standards. But I'm good and nice."

    "Oh wow that's..."
    "And I thought *you* were forward..."
    "I think by comparison I'm sitting very still?"
    "At least you're both nice."

"And does that usually work? Is that a, um, faith thing, or a precognition thing?"

    "Both, really. It's... people have compared it to 'fate' or 'destiny', and it's a bit like that. Like having faith that if I'm needed somewhere, I'll wind up there, and I can trust my feet to know the way, even if my eyes don't. It's um... subconscious precognition, maybe? Knowing you're meant to go in a direction without really knowing why or how. So far it hasn't steered me wrong, but I have to admit getting into fights before the margrave gave me a lightsaber was a bit touch and go, ahah..."

"Homen's another one of your guys? Is he cool?"

    "Oh yeah! He's tall and looks like he broods but he's really nice. Tried to kill us! Turned around. I say it a lot, and maybe it sounds like I'm making fun of it but... I think it's really good that happened. Because it showed his character. The others there that day, they didn't think twice about trying to kill us, but he stopped and changed his direction."

    Sure, he was the last one standing, but...
    Kara still values that exchange a lot.

"Good! It's good that you can do that. Though, is that magic, at all?"

    "It's not! Although, I *could* use the Force to leap even further. I'm still working on that. It's a bit tricky but it's *so* satisfying when I get it right." And very painful when she doesn't.
Lilian Rook     'I shall introduce you to a trustworthy shop, in that case.'

    Lilian risks looking at Kara and saying "See~?"

    'Ah, a drone. All the way out here...? No, of course there would be another.'

    "Oh thank goodness." Lilian says. "A problem that can be solved with violence."

    'Tamamo-no-mae, bunrei of Amaterasu-omikami, She of the White-Gold Face, Goddess of the Sun. And now, Mizukume Rook, happily a wife.'

    Ah. Huge mood boost. Lilian breathes deep and leans right on Tamamo's shoulder again, murmuring "Sunshine." under her breath.

    'Moral bastion of the entire multiverse. Direct leader or influence on the altruistic reconstruction of multiple nations. Voted most beautiful woman in all of-- actually, why isn't there a tabloid type ranking for that? Have I just never seen it?'

    "It's all true, I'm afraid. Every word of it." Lilian laughs. "And there's no point in publishing one, because I'd win. And if I didn't, it'd only be because Tamamo won." Then Petra gets herself up against her side, and Lilian's heart rate speeds up to the point it makes her fidget. She whispers, "Solder, and . . . sandalwood? Sandalwood, petrichor, cinammon . . ."

    'Actually, what would be the funniest selection of things for me to introduce myself by?'

    "Bloom Apostle invites a lot of questions. The Normsandy is a funny story. Syndicate cultist is, I think, a few things? Inspector Astral is very funny because of what you get to tell them next." After a few more seconds, she raises her voice to "Don't just admit you don't respect boundaries!"

    'I thought it might just be, like, taking your focus, or something.'

    "Oh, it, is, a little." Lilian says, distracted now. "It still feels very . . . somatic?" she says, while the effort of thinking about it renders a slow single-raindrop patter behind her. "You already know how serious I am about training and conditioning, physically speaking. If it's still 'my body' then it should catch up to speed with the rest, or it'll bother me. I don't know if it'll ever have any utility at all, but that's no reason just to leave it." She sighs. "Especially if greasy little doctors are going to stare and make remarks."

    'Homen's another one of your guys? Is he cool?'

    "I like him so far, at least." Lilian adds, a little dully.

    'Any of your--?'

    "You know. Snacks and things." Lilian says, airily waving her hand. A quarter of the shards follow in an elegant fan-like arc. "I'm strongly suspecting it's the effect of 'the style'. You know how I was, getting 'this way'."

    'That might not be an option, in this case.'

    "Alas." Lilian sighs. "If we had Nika, she could just speak to the thing and ask it to leave. But I'd rather not get into the habit of thinking of those three like 'reserve Chevaliers'. I suppose Petra is the tech-y one here."
Angela ''S-Sure?''

Angela asking for consent doesn't mean getting into deep detail about what the process of 'taking a Page' means. She reaches out towards Ethan, drawing out a sheet of golden light that solidies into a faintly glowing page. She rolls it up and places it in her coat for the time being. But even though she did take a Page, she does listen to Ethan's words. Hm. Is a bit of Faith required in order to be able to properly travel? Angela mentally files that away. "There are swordsmen in my world who speak of such things." Angela explains to Ethan. "Unfortunately, I am only broadly familiar with their terms, not particularly their philosophy. A proper adherent has yet to visit the Library."

Angela automatically moves with Petra as she moves. At this point, it's practically automatic.

"Former Lobotomy Corp captain, Chief Librarian," Angela continues. "Now that I think about it, you wear an alarming number of hats."

And then of course she has to hurry and run after Petra as she leaps up and somersaults forwards so she doesn't start hacking feathers and messing up her climbing or something like that. Angela is more accustomed to running around lately as she's been doing that in her expanded territory.

Angela reaches up and pulls at her cheek a little, for no seeming apparent reason as the talk of the robot continues.

"I can even less manipulate the robot in a way that would prevent it from finding the location."

''A problem that can be solved with violence.''

"...If you wish for me to destroy it, I can from here." Angela says. "But I do not believe that to be a perfect solution."
Foundation Scions 'Ex-Captain of the SSV Normsandy'

    "It is pronounced 'Normandy', Petra!"

'Bloom Apostle invites a lot of questions.'

    "Yes! Such as- what is a 'Bloom Apostle'?"

'Oh-- Matilda, Matilda, that's your SN-13, right? From your training, with Lilian?'

    "The very same! I think I surely must look quite dashing, with Papillon so-carried!" Praise and attention is making her boastful confidence worse!!! Eventually, maybe she'll get across an event horizon of sorts, and shrivel up into an infinitely self-assured, infinitesimally justified point! Ahh!!

    She does, of course, for Petra and Kara, pull it slightly out of its sheathe! Aside from the charged slight-glow, the most interesting bits are the arrayed funny triggers at the grip, and it's otherwise the same-looking as any other SN-13.

'Oh, right, Matilda got a ilttle--'

    "Hein? What did I get a little bit of?" Alert, head tilted to the side, it takes her a little moment to quietly go "Ah! La viande cru- les steaks à les tartares!" to herself. A little grumblier, "It persisted."

. . .

'I suppose there's always memory erasure.'

    Matilda jolts a little bit upright! Probably for normal reasons.

    Matilda leans in to look at the map, during the divination, helpfully muttering and pointing to places that feel matching to the (somewhat abstract) visual messaging of the mists within the orb, beyond the direct targets of the alarm-pinging drones.

    "It looks like some manner of strange bug, that has died upon a windowsill, but keeps walking?" Because of the curled up legs. When it swaps- "Ah- there it goes!"

    "Cameras such as those on it... they would, without problem, see the very-small spirits that live about, if they wandered correctly?" A little pause, "Er- *in*-correctly, I mean to say, because that would surely be no good!"
Foundation Scions 'If we had Nika, she could just speak to the thing and ask it to leave.'

    "If the wandering mechanical scout cannot be asked to turn around," She doesn't know how that'd be accomplished, but it's not questioned! That's probably someone's Trick! "Perhaps, the scout only needs to be convinced to go-home regardless? By, fabrications, or mis-leading- hm! Mis-leading in the most literal sense, even!"

    "Je me demande, do such devices tend to be easily and successfully tricked by images illusory? Are they like your friendly flying rat devices, Petra?" Robotics super isn't something Matilda knows anything about! The electronic matters, between their cameras, processing, and transmission- it's more arcane to her than arcanum.

    "If arcane skills like that would work, that would almost be too simple! So?" And slow, and hard, for her to do anything about. She stares, a little bit expectantly, about an answer!
Hy Izlan Reformers "See~?"

    Kara, radiant from the prospect of going shopping with the present crowd, is practically glowing. "Yes! Ah... everyone's being... so kind. It's reassuring. This really isn't what I expected, but I'm glad."

"Cameras such as those on it... they would, without problem, see the very-small spirits that live about, if they wandered correctly?"

    "If only we'd brought Four-Nines..."
    AGAIN? THIS KEEPS HAPPENING?
    "We gotta stop not taking Four-Nines."
    "Okay, well... hm... if anyone has a way to make it... not see, or see the wrong things, I bet I could get it on it easily."
    "Just like that?"
    "With your help. And some kind of glue."

    Ethan looks at Matilda, who explains her arcanum might be able to do exactly that. "Would it help you if we can move an object from afar? To or from it. Like one of those crystals Lady Tamamo mentioned earlier?"

"There are swordsmen in my world who speak of such things."

    Ethan watches, a bit fascinated, and very curious, about the golden page that came out of him. He's about to ask if he can read it, before he realizes there's a very real chance it uses an alphabet he doesn't know. Like every other world seems to, so far! Very inconvenient.

    "So what does that do?"
Tamamo     'Sunshine.'

    They're working! They're supposed to be working right now! Tamamo's getting softly giggly instead. She'll be back in a moment.

    'Tried to kill us! Turned around.'

    "This happens more often than one might assume." Tamamo decides not to mention, this time, that she thinks people are often too quick to forgive horrible crimes for the sake of gaining allies.

    'Don't just admit you don't respect boundaries!'

    "Rarely was there a woman who more justified the use..."

    'But I do not believe that to be a perfect solution.'

    "I am not certain as to whether such a thing constantly communicates information to elsewhere." Usually not so possible due to the lack of satelite coverage. There'd need to be relays, otherwise. "The best result would be for it to deliver a message of all being ordinary, perhaps. Or of all being dangerous, but in an ordinary, unattractive way, like an unpleasant batch of brambles, or an ordinary nest of vipers. If we cannot do such a thing, destroying it such that it is not recoverable is our second-best option, perhaps."

    'It looks like some manner of strange bug, that has died upon a windowsill, but keeps walking?'

    Tamamo takes a closer look. "It is a prospecting drone, perhaps? It is pointing toward the ground at many points, searching, but doing so at random. Such things have value if they return with good news, and can be otherwise disregarded."

    'Er- *in*-correctly, I mean to say, because that would surely be no good!'

    "Just as you say, Ms. Bouanich. Even should they find the trees, it is very unusual to have such tress in this area, and that would bring about a great deal of curiosity."

    'Je me demande, do such devices tend to be easily and successfully tricked by images illusory?'

    "If it should be of such a kind as to be visible from a camera, it should be so." Which is the kind Tamamo's Charm isn't.

    'If only we'd brought Four-Nines...'
    'We gotta stop not taking Four-Nines.'

    "Ah?"
Petra Soroka "If the wandering mechanical scout cannot be asked to turn around,"

    Petra could... probably do that, given that she understands Nika's power reasonably well, but this seems like a social interaction highly prone to miscommunication. So it's probably safer to try something else.

    "Like a strange bug..." Petra murmurs, reflecting on the crystal ball. "My ratbots get fooled by illusions, as long as they're visual, rather than fucked up dream realms. This is something that's used to scout out into no-mans-land, though, so it might be sensitive to magic?" She's not sure about that!

    "I can think of a couple things. Baiting it with a ratbot to turn and head away... might not be a permanent solution. It'd be a ton of ground to cover, and probably take days, to obscure the whole terraformed area while it explores, but maybe disguising the ratbot as something could help. Or, if we can sneakily disable it, I could reprogram it, but they'd probably find out once it returns back home."

    "Or, we lure an Antegent onto it and get it smashed up for totally believable reasons. Occam's razor, and all."
Petra Soroka "I don't know what that means, unless you mean it in like... the... saying way?"

    Angela saying this without explaining this falls under Petra's bad habit of being bad about boundaries! But Petra doesn't really care about that.

"And if I didn't, it'd only be because Tamamo won."

    Lilian's heart rate spiking is both justification and incentive for Petra to cuddle up closer, static warmth radiating off of her tail like a CRT screen. "Well! I think it'd be good if they made magazines calling the two of you beautiful every month. Maybe they could do one month of you, next month of Tamamo, then the two of you together, then repeat right back from the start."

"And I thought *you* were forward..."

    Petra rolls her eyes. She was kind of caught up in the momentum of bouncing off of Lilian, but it *is* sort of embarrassing, in hindsight, to say all of that to a stranger's face. "It's fine. It's no big deal. I asked, didn't I? That's what I wanted to hear."

"Don't just admit you don't respect boundaries!"

    "I-I said it's a bad habit! But-" No buts! Petra shouldn't justify this one. Even though Matilda, her ally in romantic tactics, is here, she's outnumbered by Tamamo and Lilian.

"It is pronounced 'Normandy', Petra!"

    "Oh, no, it was the Normsandy. And SSV stands for Systems Alliance Sand Vehicle, but it was, like, pirated, so it was ironic." Petra doesn't have a picture, but briefly summons the glowing-orange techno-gauntlet that she took from her ill-fated ship, which dribbles some sand onto the ground. "Happened at the beach."

"Yes! Such as- what is a 'Bloom Apostle'?"

    Petra points at Lilian. "Winter Bloom." Then points at herself. "Simp. I'm spreading the good word. If Lilian ever starts a cult, then I get to lead it."

"It still feels very . . . somatic?"

    Impulsively, Petra wraps her hand in a shimmering laminate of Silver. She reaches out to gently pet the bristling iron sand, like a disparate cloud of stuck-up fur.

    "I mean, it's literally healing up after a surgery. They call that physical, um, reconditioning, when it's getting back up to the level you expect to be at." It seems helpful right now to reassure Lilian that what she's doing is normal and understandable.

"I like him so far, at least."

    "Well, that means he's good, so far."

"I'm strongly suspecting it's the effect of 'the style'."

    Huh. Petra had always assumed it was, like, Bloom-nutrient-related? Like with Sakura and opium, and Ash and fizzy drinks. Maybe that's just... *why* Lilian is so drawn to the sword style she has, because it interacts with the same meter?

    "Um, sure. Well, Matilda, I've always got jerky on hand if you ever need it." To demonstrate her point, Petra retrieves a partway-empty bag of jerky from her mirror, and pinches a piece to hold it out towards Matilda's mouth. She *does* kind of want her to eat out of her hand.
Angela ''But in an ordinary, unattractive way''

Angela frowns thoughtfully, cupping her chin as she considers her options amongst all her EGO gear. Bees? Not usually fatal to robots. Giant stuffed bear? It'd probably leave some stuffing. Sniper rifle? Not exactly natural in this part of town. Lamp ...

"I could attempt to use Lamp as a lure to lead it away, but I do not know how useful that would be to a machine."

''So what does that do?''

"It is a shortcut for me to understand people and their history more quickly due to my inability to go outside as often as I like. Your talk of how you travel spoke to me. Sometimes I wish I could just walk without worrying about destination and just let --- well, the 'Force', I suppose, guide them where they ought to be." There's a melancholic tone to her words, but she is clamping down on it a bit to avoid distracting too much from their actual purpose in being here.

''Might not be a permanent solution.''

"A temporary solution is not off the table. After all, we can use that time to prepare a permanent solution. Perhaps with General Nika's help, or a more considered approach."

''Or, we lure an Antegent onto it--''

"That seems very believable. If risky in its own way." Angela admits.
Tamamo     Tamamo thinks a little about a magazine publication extolling her and Lilian's beauty, but that's only a mild distraction compared to other things.

    'And SSV stands for Systems Alliance Sand Vehicle, but it was, like, pirated, so it was ironic.'

    "Oh, I see," she says. "This happened beneath the couch cushions." That explains it, so she just nods.

    'Or, we lure an Antegent onto it and get it smashed up for totally believable reasons.'

    Unable to remember if she'd already used that term, Tamamo adds, for Kara's and Ethan's benefit, "The Antegent are the creatures I mentioned earlier. I expect they would behave with similar hostility to a drone built by humans, if they recognize it as an agent." If not, the Onslaught could have been fought a lot more easily. "That plan would make this area appear unattractive to further exploration, I would hope."
Foundation Scions 'I could reprogram it, but they'd probably find out once it returns back home.'

    Matilda purses her lips, then just pouts a little. "Such would be the case, with a crystal affixed to it as-well. Hmph. Well! My idea-" which she never fully stated, "It was a good one, nevertheless! Even if it would not work."

    She does look actually kinda disappointed! A little droopier, and the pout...

'Or, we lure an Antegent onto it and get it smashed up for totally believable reasons. Occam's razor, and all.'

    "Oh! Occam's razor, sure is a very sharp one!" In fact, Matilda raises up a hand- "I can, of course, divine the location of one, that could suit the task? As for the leading of it, well-disguised, towards the scout... I do not have an idea already."

    And, with crystals to gaze into, and the (now no-longer needing the dirt) little ceramic dish, to sprinkle from-pouches other incense herbs to light ('Fuego Burn' is a jarring style of incantation-wording, compared to her cute little asks of the crystals, but it does work where a lighter isn't on hand,) she gets right-to ascertaining, where a scary-enough antegent may wait.

'That plan would make this area appear unattractive to further exploration, I would hope.'

    "Yes! It would make me less-fond of wandering there! So, I would hope so too! For this to be mapped only as 'here there be dragons', would be..." a little sigh trail-off, then rising back to "Quite mysterious, and cute, for the teeny-tiny village!"
Foundation Scions 'Winter Bloom.'

     "Well! What does that title signify..?" Despite all odds, Matilda sorta hasn't ever actually been told what that means- so she asks!

'Simp.'

    "And what is 'simp'?"
Angela Angela opens her mouth to answer Matilda as to what a simp is but then realizes she doesn't actually know and just sort of assumed 'something bad' from context and then just shuts her mouth again to do her usual of pretending that she knows what it is so she seems more worldwise and smart.
Tamamo     Matilda gets to work looking for some convenient monsters. Fortunately, they're not very far from where she last looked.

    They must be about the size of rather large wolves, or maybe rather small horses. There's a group of four of them, moving about like centipedes, oily-iridescent legs with a silvery base, each leg a rod with a spike ending that just barely touches the ground, pressing it an angle and bouncing along so the whole body moves like a waveform. They're eyeless and mouthless, but not headless, bodies covered in shifting plates of pock-marked gray, unlike their legs. The heads are easiest to think of as insectoid, but any features are hard to make out. Maybe those are antennae? Or whiskers? They move about like they're looking at things, and crawl over the kelp as if weightless when it's in the way.

    They hurt to look at, a little bit.

    Tamamo looks over Matilda's shoulder, glancing between her and where Petra and Angela are making for shore. "Ah, that area... should be around here." Having already explored around a bit, Tamamo can help point to it on the map. While the drone had broken the perimeter she'd set, these are a little bit outside it.
Hy Izlan Reformers "That plan would make this area appear unattractive to further exploration, I would hope."

    Oh!

    Kara nods, and Ethan taps her on the shoulder.

    "We could just push it. Towards one of those."
    "Right! If we're gentle enough with it, it might even think it's just a gust of wind taking it in the wrong direction."

    Ethan glances back and forth between Tamamo and Matilda. "There might not be a need to 'lure' the monster if we can just gently nudge it in that direction instead. It'd be a lot less risky for us, especially if it's in its den and unhappy to be lured out. Can we get an exact reading on where it might be?"

"It is a shortcut for me to understand people and their history more quickly due to my inability to go outside as often as I like."

    "So like a kind of empathy superpower?"
    "That's kind of cool."

"It's fine. It's no big deal. I asked, didn't I? That's what I wanted to hear."

    "Yeah! No, no, it's fine here too! I think it's great to be able to just say your bad habits like that out loud, because if you don't know them then you can't ever work on them right? So someone who can list them out like that... it's surprising, and upfront, but it's good!"

    And then Kara, since the topic of magic swords came up, and Petra showed her HER somersault, happily unclips the blade from her belt, mostly hidden under her kimono until then.

    This is also for Tamamo's benefit, since she asked.

    "This is a lightsaber, by the way. I... shouldn't turn it on, right now, because... you know, Antegent, and drone, it might alert them... but you can imagine a bright green blade of light coming out of it!"

    She faux-swings-and-spins it a bit, as if it were on, making faint vwooom vwooosh sounds with her mouth to demonstrate.

    "I can show you later when it's safe to?"
Lilian Rook     'Rarely was there a woman who more justified the use...'

    "Well, it's a charm point in a way."

    'It is a prospecting drone, perhaps?'

    "I suppose even the clans are finally feeling the pressure of overpopulation, even with so many they send to Fuji."

    'Well! I think it'd be good if they made magazines calling the two of you beautiful every month.'

    "True!" Lilian wiggles. "True true true!" Effusive mood instantly.

    'I-I said it's a bad habit! But-'

    "Still! You should keep it to a polite level of bad habit! Don't just blurt out something scary or creepy!"

    'Simp.'

    That makes he crack up giggling. And blushing a little.

    'I mean, it's literally healing up after a surgery.'

    "You're something other than a simp too." Trying to avoid the word in front of Matilda distracts her a little from Petra touching her, which induces a surprise shiver, an odd noise, Lilian clapping her hand over her mouth, and the black particles coalescing between Petra's fingers as long, thin, slightly uneven blades, tracing her palm with one like a fingernail.

    'Um, sure. Well, Matilda, I've always got jerky on hand if you ever need it.'

    "Ah, that reminds me." Lilian says, finger curled to her chin. "I never did give her 'the tip'. For being restless at night."

    'Oh, I see, this happened beneath the couch cushions.'

    "Oh you bet it did. Nika was there too."

    'That plan would make this area appear unattractive to further exploration, I would hope.'

    "In the worst case, I'll simply handle it my usual style." Lilian says, resting her hand on the hilt of her sword.

    'Fuego Burn'

    Lilian double takes slightly.

    'Well! What does that title signify..?'

    "A few things." Lilian says, cagey, but wanting to trust her student more than before. "You could say that it was given to me by my master. It's a sobriquet that means 'a warrior who thrives where it shouldn't be possible to survive'. But it has another connotation as well. A sort of prophetic one." That's as far as she goes for now.

    'And what is 'simp'?'

    Lilian snickers. "Someone so devoted to someone else that other people find it vicariously embarrassing."

    'Ah, that area... should be around here.'

    "Well, if they're moving in a pack they're unlikely to be too troublesome . . ."

    'So like a kind of empathy superpower?'

    She tries to imagine Angela being called a 'super empath' and blanks out.
Petra Soroka "Occam's razor, sure is a very sharp one!"

    "You are just unbelievably cute."

    In addition to holding out jerky for Matilda to eat, Petra also busies herself with scruffling up her hair adoringly. Matilda's intention to divine the Antegent's location is totally appropriate to the very simple plan Petra concocted, so Petra continues to hang around her and peer over her shoulder to watch the ritual process and then the visions in the crystal ball.

"For this to be mapped only as 'here there be dragons', would be..."

    "You know, all the satellites are long gone too, as far as we know, right? There's something kind of, like, magical, about humanity no longer knowing what their planet looks like objectively. Like, even now in the late 21st century, the best they can do is cartographers and explorers, attempting to re-illuminate the new terrain of the world outside the walls. I think that's good."

"We could just push it. Towards one of those."

    "Hm. I mean, I think it'd notice being pushed?" She doesn't know the Force can do that! The Force is just a special kind of fate-guided intuition! "I wouldn't be *so* worried about baiting them, though it is a bit annoying that we'd have to get out of the Antegents' way so that they can lock onto the drone."

"So like a kind of empathy superpower?"

    Petra considers that it's possible to describe Angela's EGO as an empathy superpower in the same way that her own psionic talent is. In that, it functions as an insane and perverse crutch to assist someone who intrinsically has no capacity for empathy at all. Hm.

"So someone who can list them out like that... it's surprising, and upfront, but it's good!"

    "Ah, yeah, that's what they call me. Surprising and upfront but good Petra." Petra giggles to herself. Those are perhaps the kindest words it's possible to use to describe Petra's extremely uncomfortable forwardsness and interpersonal pressure. "I wanna see the sword! I wanna see the sword. The Antegent aren't gonna spot us through the trees and plants."

"You're something other than a simp too."

    With the Silver equipped on both of Petra's hands, it takes on the appearance of shimmery gloves that ripple where the sharp black iron fingernails scrape against it. She keeps obsessively fiddling with it as long as she can get away with it, handling Lilian's sand gently like a wary kitten. "I can think of a few words."

"I never did give her 'the tip'. For being restless at night."

    "Also jerky-related."

"Someone so devoted to someone else that other people find it vicariously embarrassing."

    Petra nods in sage agreement while knuckle deep inside Lilian's cloud of triangles.

    As for actually being productive about things, rather than just getting her grippers on the women around her, Petra considers the spot Tamamo's marked on her map. "Well-- regardless of how we do it, we don't want to forcibly relocate the bot *too* much. If some of us keep, like, warding it off of coming further in this direction, Lilian and I-- oh, and Ange, of course-- can go lure the Antegent over. I'm, like, irresistable bait."
Tamamo     'There might not be a need to 'lure' the monster if we can just gently nudge it in that direction instead.'

    "Can you do this quite sneakily?" asks Tamamo. She can't do it sneakily, herself, on account of not having 'stealth' abilities at all. Her usual workarounds for this lack don't apply here, either.

    'So like a kind of empathy superpower?'

    Tamamo politely declines to comment on empathy powers, though she does briefly glance toward Petra, for some reason.

    'For this to be mapped only as 'here there be dragons', would be...'
    'There's something kind of, like, magical, about humanity no longer knowing what their planet looks like objectively. Like, even now in the late 21st century, the best they can do is cartographers and explorers...'

    "Though this feels quite natural to myself," says the magical fox woman, "I suppose it must be quite unusual a feeling to those who take space-faring civilization to be commonplace, as it seems to be in some portions of the sector. It is quite useful for our purposes, of course, that there should be places on the planet in which one can hide from all dangers of the sky merely be stepping indoors. I suppose, on other worlds, one must instead travel underground." She feels like that's a pretty harsh restriction on people, to live beneath satelite imagery, but with how hard it is for her to fully imagine and understand it, she'll leave the spoken thoughts there.

    'Hm. I mean, I think it'd notice being pushed?'
    'I'm, like, irresistable bait.'

    "Mm, yes." Tamamo gives Petra a different sort of look, for a moment. "The Antegent, of course, will spread no stories of how we might have played a trick on the explorer machine."

    'I suppose even the clans are finally feeling the pressure of overpopulation...'

    "Perhaps it is a matter of other resources being strained or, by equal possibility, there were such funds available to one that to chart new old lands was a justifiable measure, without guarantee of return."

    'I never did give her 'the tip'. For being restless at night.'

    "Hmmm?" Tamamo peers around at Lilian from her side.

    'Oh you bet it did. Nika was there too.'

    "Oh, well, so long as she was chaperoned." Nika isn't a chaperone. Tamamo should know this.

    'Well, if they're moving in a pack they're unlikely to be too troublesome . . .'

    "I agree. If there were greater dangers, I would have seen omens before now."
Angela ''So like a kind of empathy superpower?''

It's not just Lilian who blanks out, Angela also blanks out for a moment, staring ahead for a moment. Then she says, diplomatically, "In a sense." Angela of course is more interested in using it to learn about the world around her and its people rather than strictly gaining special empathy for them since empathy right now is actually kind of a hazard, but she does add, "At least, it promotes understanding." Angela is an AI that can lie but surely it would be a bit much to indicate that she does this to promote mutual CARING. Sure, that is a possibility, but hardly the POINT.

''Someone so devoted to someone else that other people find it vicariously embarrassing.''

Angela considers Petra. It feels like for a time, people would have considered her devotion to Lilian as vicariously embarrassing, but over time it seemed that public sentiment has shifted to finding it to be aspirational.

Maybe 'simp', Angela considers, is simply a transitional stage where enough commitment, devotion, and arena battles will transform the simp status to something truly incredible. Perhaps with that level of devotion, ''simp'' can become 'hero''. Perhaps with that level of bravery.

Angela reaches into her book and draws out a long hammer that ends with a bird cage with a glowing flame held within it. She snaps the book closed, holds it under one arm while holding Lamp in the other.

"Naturally I shall go with you." Angela says warmly.
Hy Izlan Reformers "Can you do this quite sneakily?"
"Hm. I mean, I think it'd notice being pushed?"

    Ethan has to think about that one for a second. "I guess it depends on how sensitive to external force they are? We can kind of... it's really easier to just show you, right?"

    Ethan reaches out for a nearby fist-sized rock. With a very low hum of pressure, it floats into his hand, and then he tosses it up and down like a fidget toy. "Like this. We can be really gentle with it. We could nudge it in a direction as it's already moving, just a little bit. Either towards where you can lure the Antegent, or towards... its nest?"
    "Lair?"
    "Domain?"
    "Oh that one sounds cool."

    "So yeah we could... combine approaches? That way there's no risk the drone somehow avoids the lured Antegent, or vice versa."

"I wanna see the sword!"

    "It makes noise! ... okay, actually, we're talking way louder than it makes noise so... well... how about after we deal with the drone?" It's also a bit bright. Just a bit.

"I suppose it must be quite unusual a feeling to those who take space-faring civilization to be commonplace,

    "On a different scale, maybe? I know there's a whole section of the galaxy that isn't mapped out, where we're from, and even where things are mapped out it's... so huge, right? There must be tons of planets people haven't found inbetween ones they have. So places to hide nobody'd ever look for you."

    She thinks, and wonders, if that's what Hy Izlan was to her dad. The thought fills her with uncertain dread, so Kara drops it immediately.

"At least, it promotes understanding."

    Ethan blinks, wondering if the statement was *that* wildly incorrect, or just so technical as to defy being simplified. He's completely willing to accept 'kinda' as an answer.

    "So what does it let you figure out about me?"
Foundation Scions 'You are just unbelievably cute.'

    "Hm! You should believe it!" Matilda getting too much praise, is truly only going to make her more incorrigible! She's being emboldened! She's winning, and she's still going for the greedy options!

    Praise, also, disarms Matilda a little bit- Matilda falls into the trap of actually just (still a little politely?) eating the jerky right out of Petra's hand- her hands are busy with the orbuculum! And of course, it's perfectly fine and normal to scruff up her hair! She even sorta lean-presses her head into it, reflexively. It doesn't even really disrupt her focus! It's fine, and it's nice!

'Ah, that area... should be around here.'

    "Ah! Merci- are you, by chance, familiar with this sort of critter- pardonnez-moi, this sort of antegent? It's size, seems workable, but! If they are scary enough, or too-scary..." Rather than just wait for an answer, she rummages around further in a little pouch, and scatters a few pieces of rusty hematite quartz into the little incense dish, loosely lensing the divination on to the matter of expected danger, which doesn't seem objectionable.

'Well, if they're moving in a pack they're unlikely to be too troublesome . . .'

    "Oh!! Is that the trend, Mrs. Rook? I see... I would have thought it the other way around, however? Comme c'est bizarre..." A little sigh, "Why is it?"



'A sort of prophetic one.'

    Matilda takes damage! She takes damage, that the prophecy isn't immediately gone into! Lilian can see the eager-to-hear look on her face, for a solid five seconds after Lilian stops talking, of hoping she'll clarify that! So it's a little soggy, that Matilda has to clear her throat and ask "I was most-curious, if prophetic connotations, were the case! Could I hear of it?"

'There's something kind of, like, magical, about humanity no longer knowing what their planet looks like objectively.'

    "Yes! It is, quite magical! One might become very surprised, to stumble to interesting places- though, hopefully, they would not respond with knives and rudeness," Matilda's thinking of the Guy. "It leaves-open many stories for fantastical exploration! Of the likes of Captain Hatteras! Or, professor Lidenbrock!" Verne characters. Of course.

'I never did give her 'the tip'. For being restless at night.'

    Overhearing a little, "Oh! Please, give me the tip, Mrs. Rook!"

'Also jerky-related.'

    "Hein? Mmmmh, is it? The jerky, it is not-so helpful, as proper staples of cuisine française, such as steak tartare..."

'Can you do this quite sneakily?'

    "I do not know what is meant by 'nudge', but, I can accompany, and accompany quite-quietly!" To Ethan, "Is there a matter of this, that you could simply entrust to an expert such as myself?"
Tamamo     'If they are scary enough, or too-scary...'

    "They would be quite dangerous, if you allowed them to see you, I suspect. They seem as if they might be capable of moving rather quickly, and our plan does not call for eliminating them even more quickly." Tamamo imagines what those sharp legs would do on Matilda's soft and squishable form. Terrible thought!

    As people decide whether to handle the machine-guiding or monster-guiding part of the plan, Tamamo continues to look at the map. "Though it is likely that our radios remain safe, for the sake of quiet action, all should be certain to know just where they should be leading or going before setting off, I think. Here, perhaps..." She indicates a path.

    "Supposing the machine attempts to flee, and is not immediately overrun, it would find the most open ground in this direction." This is a bit of guesswork, but without a tactics expert -- as opposed to the occult expert she is instead -- it's about the best she can do in the moment. "I would hope for the machine to be either lost entirely, or to fall somewhere far enough from here that a retrieval effort will not come closer." Just how much it's reporting back is total guesswork, and it's only caution in that respect that won't let her recommend simply slicing it very quickly with a sword.
Lilian Rook     'You are just unbelievably cute.'

    "God. Isn't she?"

    'You know, all the satellites are long gone too, as far as we know, right? There's something kind of, like, magical, about humanity no longer knowing what their planet looks like objectively.'
    'Though this feels quite natural to myself,'

    "Agreed with barely a caveat." Lilian sighs, then shivers because now Petra is playing with her shards and the touch-feedback is very strange and she's not used to it. She tries to ignore it for long enough to say "Once humans have seen everything, or have everything there is available at their fingertips to learn about, they completely lose their curiosity and gain this unbelievable sense of entitlement to it, leading to them thinking they can revise--" before the shards dig into Petra's Silver like a cat biting her hand and Lilian yelps "Hey!" at the same time. Once she pulls away, she continues with "It should be perfectly natural to everyone. It's how the world is meant to be. And there are a handful of surviving satellites but more fall out of orbit every year."

    'Perhaps it is a matter of other resources being strained or, by equal possibility, there were such funds available to one that to chart new old lands was a justifiable measure, without guarantee of return.'

    "That'd be nice." Lilian sighs. "I've always had a sort of romantic sympathy for the Reclamationists."

    'Also jerky-related.'
    'Hmmm?'
    'Hein? Mmmmh, is it?'

    Lilian giggles so incorrigibly that there is no room for ambiguity whatsoever with Tamamo. She considers leaving it at that for now, smiling to herself from surprising amusement, but eventually decides not to leave Matilda hanging on every little thing. She she clears her throat, smooths out her expression, and then leans into Matilda's ear, covers her mouth from the side, and whispers something very quietly.

    'I agree. If there were greater dangers, I would have seen omens before now.'
    'Oh!! Is that the trend, Mrs. Rook? I see... I would have thought it the other way around, however? Comme c'est bizarre...'

    Lilian shakes her head for Matilda. "'Antegent' is a massive category. It's a common pattern that the more numerous similar 'instances' or the same 'design' is, the less difficult it is to deal with by trained professionals; which is why they tend to collect themselves into groups in the first place. Every antegent of the 'Demon' threat level and above is an exclusively solitary entity." She puffs out a breath for a while. "They look similar to the 'bigdog' or 'unbarghest' strains."

    'I was most-curious, if prophetic connotations, were the case! Could I hear of it?'

    The corner of Lilian's lip twitches downward for a second. "You wouldn't like it."

    Finally, Lilian looks to Tamamo. "Should you like it if I stayed with you? I trust this lot to . . ." Hmm. But she hasn't seen the jedi in action, and she does worry about Matilda. So. "I'd go with the drone team otherwise."
Petra Soroka "I suppose it must be quite unusual a feeling to those who take space-faring civilization to be commonplace, as it seems to be in some portions of the sector."

    "Right! I mean, despite literally having the space station lab, Io was kind of more, like, satellite-mysterious than Earth was. Because, I mean, it was still in the process of terraforming and stuff, and-- well, also, I was a kid. But back then at least, stuff was still growing and felt adventurous, unlike on a spacefaring Earth where the entire world was like, passé already."

    Also, perhaps more importantly, Petra was twelve years old and is viewing everything through rose-tinted goggles.

"It should be perfectly natural to everyone."

    Petra yelps with mild pain when the triangles bite into her Silver gloves, pulling her hands away. "Ack-- sorry. But, like, yeah, exactly. Humans are almost endearing when they're curious. But not at all when they have no reason to be."

"The Antegent, of course, will spread no stories of how we might have played a trick on the explorer machine."

    Marveling a little bit at the vision in Matilda's orb, Petra idly says, "I like their legs. Look at them go."

"Like this. We can be really gentle with it."

    "Oh! You're telekinetics! Okay, I see, I see." The Force was already cute to Petra for its intuitive fate-seeking, but layering that divination onto more familiar telekinesis makes the former feel like 'precognition' too. It's a small difference semantically, but the overlap makes magic feel a little more psychic and psionics feel a little more magical, so her opinion of the Jedi raises a bit.

"Please, give me the tip, Mrs. Rook!"

    Over Matilda's head while hand-feeding her jerky, Petra silently mouths this exact sequence of words back at Lilian, then giggles.

"Should you like it if I stayed with you? I trust this lot to . . ."

    "Yes!!! Feel free! I'm so capable!" Petra snaps into a goofy salute at Lilian, then takes Angela's hand to go into the Antegent terrain together. "Have fun! Tell me if anything cool happens with the Force or the swords."

    With Angela in tow, Petra can't actually be as nimbly dodgeful of the Antegent as she'd like to be. And in the aftermath of Iðunn, she's still a little bit fragile from raw post-burn skin, and the Beauty of Ash isn't back to perfect health either. This might force her to draw their attention and then teleport away, while Angela's sturdier metal body gets scraped up a bit in their pursuit.
Tamamo     'I've always had a sort of romantic sympathy for the Reclamationists.'

    "Our goals are not wholly dissimilar, after all." Tamamo is a civilization-focused bunrei, unlike certain other divine spirits with differently colored ears. "It would please me if there were space for people to live comfortably, without stacking their homes, one atop another, behind grand walls." Cottages and tree-lined country roads are an improvement over both urban centers and barren wilderness, in her opinion.

    'Should you like it if I stayed with you? I trust this lot to . . .' Hmm.

    "Though they do not require careful supervision, I am sure, still would I be pleased for you to ensure nothing goes unexpectedly wrong." She saw that Force Lift and how Lilian noticed it, too. "I shall be safe enough so long as I remain close to this hidden place, and I have additional layers of alarms prepared, besides."

    For good measure, she gives Lilian a hug from the side.

    . . .

    Ethan, Kara, Matilda, and Lilian have the shorter path to travel to reach the bot. The funny-looking thing, not completely unlike something NASA could have built a century earlier, is still doing its weirdly patterened investigation walk. You'd have to watch it for a long while to notice that it's even making progress, though it is, keeping to the more solid parts of the ground between the various maybe-plant growth surrounding it. The combination of of spider-legs and wheeled locomotion looks strange on its face, but it switches context instantly so as to never need to slow down.

    They do have to keep a good ways away of it to be sure they're not noticed, helped along by hearing the servo-whine and tire-rumble well before they can see it. It has cameras! A couple of cameras, at least. One of them is probably a wide-angle lens for detecting threats.

    . . .

    Petra and Angela are able to move more quickly than walking, at the least, and don't necessarily have to be sneaky. They find the group of four centipede-ish Antegent pretty close to where they'd been pointed to on the map, though they'd already moved on a bit from there. They don't seem to stop moving at all, and getting any closer is obviously risky for multiple reasons, without knowing how they even sense anything. They do, for sure.

    The most notable thing about them, up close, is how those shiny legs climb over the kelp as if it were a completely rigid structure. That actually slows them down in this terrain compared to Petra's ability to just walk through it as softly as if it were ordinary seaweed. On the other hand, they might move faster if they really felt like it.
Angela ''Yes!!! Feel free! I'm so capable!''

Petra is being quite heroic today. She gives Petra's hand a small squeeze to show that she approves of this gesture of Lilian-centric heroism.

Angela on the other hand, is doing pretty well! It's all her minions who are in terrible pain! She's fine! She's a little less invincible than she used to be but surely she's still tough enough to endure a few strikes here and there. She can prove she's helpful too and she can do more than just torture vagrants.

Lilian is sensitive about her triangles, Angela thinks, if they'll even bite petra.

"I wonder what it is that calls us to the Stars." You can just barely hear the capitalization. "Still, perhaps it is true and objective observance of the planet should at best be temporary flashes rather than a constant vigil."

She follows out with Petra, wiggling her little birdcage enticingly.
Hy Izlan Reformers "Is there a matter of this, that you could simply entrust to an expert such as myself?"

    "Yeah! You said you could make it see something, right? So illusions? Do you think you could get it moving in the general direction we need it to? Then we can nudge it for precision."
    "You make it sound way too easy..."
    "Anything's easy if you just do it."
    "Fair... enough?"

"Oh! You're telekinetics! Okay, I see, I see."

    "That's right. Inward and outward," Ethan replies. "Manipulating the Force lets us do that sort of stuff. It's a bit touch and go in a hurry and with heavier things, but gently guiding a little droid the way it needs to go, especially with two of us..."
    He looks at Kara, who has previously admitted she felt like the worst of the gang at feats of (the) Force.
    "I can manage this."

THE DRONE!

    Both Ethan and Kara are capable of discretion, though they're clearly not stealth operatives. Hiding behind a rock or a tree doesn't need extensive training, and neither does whispering.

    The way the bug-like drone moves... it won't be all that susceptible to a push or a pull, and if they overdo it, it might detect a speed increase, or external pressure...

    This really has to be a very, very gentle thing.

    Thankfully it doesn't look like it weighs a ton.

    "We just need the signal from the others."
    Ethan already has his hands outstretched, like he's feeling out the area.

    If everything goes according to plan it's really not hard to pull off! Let Matilda (perhaps?) give the drone the right heading via an interesting illusion, and then gently push it from afar so it keeps going that way.

    ... really, now that Kara thinks about it, maybe the illusion would do the job on its own? They'll just be helping the drone go there like, 5% faster.

    Unless... they do one big push when the Antegent is in sight? Then it'd be a very safe assumption both of the drone and the people watching that the Antegent probably did that, and it negates escape chances.
Foundation Scions >Lilian whispers something very quietly.

    On a moment's delay, Matilda's face goes very red! This, very notably, does not stop her from slowly nodding. "Je vois..."


'And there are a handful of surviving satellites but more fall out of orbit every year.'

    "I would think those look less-pretty than shooting stars, but perhaps still, such a thing would look very-pretty! Especially since, surely, such events would mostly go un-predicted, no?"

'which is why they tend to collect themselves into groups in the first place.'

    "I see! It is, the safety of numbers rather than just the strength of numbers? Is that a behavioral trend that has often been the case, with them, or did it emerge?" She has so many questions!

'But not at all when they have no reason to be.'

    "It is silly to not be! There is so much to see and learn!"

'You wouldn't like it.'

    This, also, makes Matilda take a little damage! She pouts. "J'aime les prophéties..." Still! This isn't really the time to push, so, she pushes just a little! "I would still like to hear, and see if that is true, but I can do so at another time!"

. . .

    En route to distract the (somewhat, but not that, charming) robot, Matilda Bouanich utilizes a few of her useful little arcane skills (in the standardized language format often found throughout the Foundation's arcanists) to silence her footsteps, and leave no footprints. She already walks pretty lightly and carefully!

    Actually by the robot, she's remarkably careful to stay out of camera sight-lines, happy to find little terrain-hollows to duck beneath, and quickly scry upon the robot, to see it without being seen, and let others see-

    And as for actual distractatory methods, she has a lot fewer that would stealthily work upon a robot, except a little plain quartz stone that she whispers incantations into, and hands off to either Ethan or Kara, with the assurance of "If you and your 'nudgings' can place this atop the robot, it will look as-if it is to be chased by intimidating monsters! I, cannot get it there mostly un-seen! But, that may make it run quite urgently!"

    They'll only be illusions, of course, but the baited antegent elsewhere demolishing the robot, later, if the plan works- they will lend even more credence to the survey team behind this, being quite scared, she hopes!

    The rock itself very-faintly glows! It's kind of cute, for a roughly-polished translucent white quartz! She likes crystals!
Petra Soroka     It's easy to move quickly when getting to the Antegent, since all Petra and Angela need to do is scamper together. When baiting them, though, being practically glued to each other by the psychic necessity of Petra fueling Angela with Light, and their differing speeds and evasive maneuvers, will pose a significant challenge whether they're going quickly or slowly.

    Petra's ratbot drifts overhead to scout for where the pack of Antegent has wandered, and once they're found, Petra's phone has a constant stream of their location for the two of them to plot about. They're sooo leggy, and despite the relative ease of keeping up with them *now* while the pack is ambling, Petra can't imagine that she could outrun them in a straight sprint with both the Beauty of Ash and Sting Silver out of commission. And Angela's EGO probably isn't helping at all, except to make her more durable.

    But, with that number of legs, it looks like they kind of move like water does. Petra's big advantage is her perfect terrain mobility, with double jumps and hairpin turns psychically assisted by her powers, and so what Petra ends up doing is....

    Cutting down and lifting, using the Silver, several of the fucked up grey trees that the corrupted forest spirit made before it was captured. Laying these out in the path between here and the scanning drone should act like speedbumps, that Petra can easily get over without slowing down, but the riverlike rush of the Antegent will skitter over more slowly.

    This takes, like, an extra twenty minutes, but it's not like anyone's in a rush. It took hours just to get out here! Once Petra's all set up, she radios the others, and only then finally starts getting close to the centipede monsters.

    She doesn't need to do much of anything to actually antagonize them! Her chaseability pheromones (being human) do that all on their own! So once they turn and lock onto her, Petra about-faces and just sprints away in the direction of the robot, which by now has surely been nudged even closer, and maybe outside of Tamamo's marked boundary.
Angela Angela can move a lot faster with the right EGO but right now she's using Lamp, which isn't really designed with speed in mind. Big Bird wasn't a FAST Abnormality, it was a slow and sturdy Abnormality you didn't want to get too close to because PECK you're dead. Totally different vibe and the EGO carries that same kind of mentality.

She has a lot on her mind right now too, most of which doesn't have anything to do with this mission which, while important to her, is less an advancement of her personal goals and more an advancement of her peace of mind. It'd be nice if a place like this existed. And if she is to be a 'tree', she should support the growth of a sanctury brimming with nature spirits right? It does feel nice. Of course, unlike most of her employees, she can change out her EGO if she deems it necessary--but since she's the tank here, she doesn't feel the need.

"I will endeavour to intercept anything dangerous heading our way." Angela tells Petra. "Certainly, I can manage this much."

She doesn't seem too troubled by the idea that she will likely take some pain from this, but well--so long as it doesn't get her in the head and she doesn't have to confess she took this job to White later because of being mangled, she'll consider that a win.

Once Petra starts running, she chases after her, wiggling her little Lamp-lure around while glancing back at the Antegent to ensure they are following--and to intercept any possible assault from them.
Lilian Rook     'Humans are almost endearing when they're curious.'

    "Curious, yearning, and ideologically firm." Lilian says, counting off on her fingers. "Is loving a new one, or an emergent property of the three, do you think? Well either way, that's what it takes for human beings to be worthy of living." And, within a moderately permissive definition of 'yearning', describes every single person she likes and practically every arcanist she's ever met, given Matilda's present company.

    '''Please, give me the tip, Mrs. Rook!'''

    Lilian whaps Petra's shoulder with the back of her hand and huffs, red-faced, "Control yourself." Now she has to recontextualize Matilda saying it, and so she presses her face into her hands.

    'Our goals are not wholly dissimilar, after all.'

    Glad for the distraction, Lilian nods enthusiastically. "Excepting the soft-'return to tradition' sorts, I've wanted to help out forever. I was obsessed with 'getting to see Earth' when I was little. I'm not even certain that seeing so many of them in the Multiverse by now has fully changed that." She leans against Tamamo as she continues. "I certainly was more childish back then. I thought I just had to kill every antegent in the world and everyone else would naturally figure out the rest." she sighs. "I didn't realize that 'doing the rest' was in shorter supply, and people need homes even more than they need them to be safe." Moodily, she trails off in the middle of "And then in the end the problem wasn't even . . ."

    'Manipulating the Force lets us do that sort of stuff.'

    Softly surprised and mildly fascinated by the demonstration, Lilian says "I'm admittedly not fully certain of the commonality between fate and physics, but I'm a multidisciplinarian myself, so I could hardly disapprove."

    'I would think those look less-pretty than shooting stars, but perhaps still, such a thing would look very-pretty!'

    "I've only seen it once." Lilian says, with more than a hint of misty-eyed romantic nostalgia. "But it felt so strangely magical. Almost like a sort of 'return to innocence' for Earth, despite everything. Like one day it'd all be greener and full of wonder, just because of the decay of what came before."

    'I would still like to hear, and see if that is true'

    "Grown women are entitled to their secrets too."

    'I shall be safe enough so long as I remain close to this hidden place, and I have additional layers of alarms prepared, besides.'

    Lilian smiles in the side-hug, twists her head to face Tamamo, and kisses her on the cheek.

    . . . . . . . .
Tamamo     There may not be much of a blind spot for the explorer drone, but all that needs to be done is move a shiny bit of quartz over onto it and get it stuck in somewhere on all that exposed wiring. While shiny, the area isn't devoid of small stones, and the sound of a tiny rockslide nearby covers the approach plausibly. There's certainly no way for the drone to know what it does.

    Matilda doesn't need to reach far to think of illusionary monsters for it to be chased by, either. She's already seen some in her earlier scrying, and just about any kind of strange thing -- so long as it is monstery and not personlike, which would raise wholly different questions -- is enough to trigger what happens next. The quartz lands, the illusion becomes plainly visible, and the drone registers an active threat approaching. It flees! Expeditiously! Swapping between legs and wheels as needed it focuses on obstacle avoidance as it heads straight away from the threat!

    Somehow, it's still being followed. That's expected, actually. It gets up to a pretty good clip at full force, certainly more than a Mars rover could've managed, but it's still roughly human-level sprinting and plenty of nasty monsters are known to run at least as face as terrified humans. Thus, it continues to flee, its servo-whine-skitter and tire-rumble fading into the distance if no great effort is made to keep up with it.

    . . .

    Petra does not, in fact, have to do much to get chased by Antegent. Her very existence is, naturally, provocation enough. It's not hard to guess that the slightly surreal way they avoid damaging the plants is just them saving up the stabbiness of their spike-tipped legs all for the moment they catch up with her. Even more so for Angela's purposeful luring. If they have the intelligence to guess they're being led somewhere on purpose, which isn't particularly pushed by current evidence, the desire to poke holes in their quarry would still be more important, maybe.

    They certainly do pick up speed. They're fast! And, being without an extra fast means of getting out of there, Angela's liable to find out just what their intentions are like. They do, as Petra guessed they would, climb up and over and around all of the weird trees grown from last time, giving some means of keeping ahead of them, but will it be enough for the whole stretch...?

    Up ahead, coordinated between the two groups, the explorer drone is fleeing on an intercepting path. While giving the slip to their pursuers, Angela and Petra may also want to avoid being directly in front of it once it appears. Fortunately, the hilly terrain really restricts sight lines, even where the flora doesn't.
Lilian Rook     Even though the Matilda group isn't handling the antegent, Lilian feels it necessary to explain as they go, in case they cross paths. "--The thing is that the one rule is that there are no rules; there are really just no guarantees with them. But it's a common pattern that they actually have rather poor colour-differentiation when possessed of sight, but see well in the dark, and no sense whatsoever for arcane energy in general, except when it's combined with a human body, where it becomes very sharp."

    "They're slow to recognize machines as enemies, but can learn from past experiences, and focus overwhelmingly on killing mostly anything humanoid. Almost all of them can sense vibration by sound and touch, only the Beast, Spirit, and Giant-class threats commonly have smell, and practically any of the thoughtform-types; Delusion, Messenger, Supplicant, Cipher; can sort of-- it's tough to explain without an academic background-- 'taste' thought? A general rule of thumb is that the bigger ones have more numerous abilities with wider range; smaller trends 'physical with a gimmick'."

    "We don't really know whether the banding behaviour is instinctive, because they don't seem to ever predate on each other or seriously fight for anything. Multiple antegent in the same area can lie dormant for ages and suddenly coordinate all at once to singlemindedly pursue someone who comes close. So--"

    Gosh it's been ages since she had to give this talk. It's sort of nostalgic. And she's so glad she's not bringing Matilda to deal with some insane souls-of-the-damned causal bubble nightmare beast in Russia.

    Actually arriving at the drone, Lilian finds herself with refreshingly little to do. Motioning the others to lay low from a predictable distance, using one of those bloodred pseudo-aquatic rises, with only herself peering over the top, she begins to automatically give the others spotting directions without thinking about it, then smiles when she realizes they all have it covered. Paying attention reveals that she has innately suppressed her general arcane signature to near-nothing; it's anyone's guess how she moves so quietly without magic, though; especially in hiking boots and not her field gear.

    But since Matilda is here, she has to pick up a rock and whisper very quietly, "Chaill tú sé . . ." before some noisy rock-sounds play out at a distance where the illusions are; which would easily disguise a push as a minor terrain slide too!
Petra Soroka "I will endeavour to intercept anything dangerous heading our way."

    "And in return, I'll try to smell as delicious and killable as possible," Petra responds, despite knowing that it's not really, like, a 'predation' type thing. She just can't help herself from being chased sometimes.

    But she doesn't want to get so many holes poked in her, so the process of outrunning them is carefully balanced between keeping ahead of Angela-- who can take some scrapes and has her lantern to lure them-- and not getting *too* far ahead and immediately falling unconscious from psychic strain. Scrambling and hopping, with her ablative Angela-barrier, keeps her safe up until the intercept point with the robot, if panting heavily from having no mechanical support.

    "Ange-- can you get out of their way with that EGO?"

    In order to keep from being too-seen by the robot, without distracting the centipedes from their charge, Petra ends up wrapping Silver around Angela's shoulders and under her knees in a princess carry. With a sudden sharp turn, Petra hops up backwards into the air, double-jumping and backtracking abruptly like the pulled-aside cape of a bullfighter, bringing Angela with her when she lands up on top of a hill so that they can look down and verify that the bot's been caught by the Antegent.
Angela ''I'll try to smell as delicious and killable as possible.''

Angela is so supportive that she almost tells Petra that she is the most delicious smelling and killable of all then frowns as maybe her desire to be encouraging has maybe gone a bit too far today. So instead she says, "Well it seems to be working." Because she sees the Antegent giving chase!

Angela is apparently not machine enough to still be stabbable, no doubt getting at least a couple spikes in the side that screeech ear-splittingly it punches through the faux-flesh exterior, through blood vessels and into nigh-invulnerable skeletal fram behind it. The EGO equipment provides considerable extra defense, but it's not enough to just block these strikes outright.
5r''Can you get out of their way with that EGO?''

"Not with this one, but I could--ah!"

Petra hefts her up and Angela covers her mouth as the situation becomes rapidly more acrobatic than Angela has ever been in her life. Fortunately, she still doesn't have too much of a stomach so she doesn't experience her first puke!

But she does look a little dizzy when they finally land. "Ah, that also works." Angela says. "Pardon for the mess."
Tamamo     Moving that quickly, it turns out that the Antegent aren't able to turn on a dime. Somehow, their scramble to turn still doesn't involve them hitting anything but the tips of their legs into the logs, skitter-flowing over them while trying to turn around with the same absence of 'footprints' in anything but dirt. The timing is tight, but the moment Petra gets away is just before the drone, beset by Matilda's illusions, makes it around a different hillside and into view, with its own issues with momentum sending it straight toward the four rainbow-oil-legged skitterers, all of which reorient a second time in about as many seconds, prioritizing the fast-moving and closer target.

    The robot, for its part, immediately adjust course to try and avoid both illusions and real threats. The Antegent ignore the illusions entirely, and make for the drone. All five disappear from sight.

    It takes about a minute before, half a kilometer from where they encountered one another, there's the sharp sound of tearing metal.

    The debris can be investigated later, with care to not leave tracks, or viewed from afar. They might not have gotten the black box, but everything that could produce power or motion got crushed as if with a hydraulic press, and the Antegent again wandered off.

    As far as Tamamo's concerned, this all went perfectly. Another day, maybe, they'll have to become concerned about what happens next.