[Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

[Thanqol]

Dominus: DAMN IT BRAINSTORM
Ferraphim1tp: Ruined it for everyone!
Locker: idk this is what makes sarafim cool
Locker: she doesn't feel the need to turn this into a sitcom for a cheap boost
Bode: I appreciate that she is compassionate enough not to force Errant to fight an evil @Sarahphim.

"Which means that you're ideal to enter in there," he says, turning to Ferra. "@SARA, I do hope the stream will be satisfied with not meeting your evil clone--what am I saying, they're probably already rioting."

“Are you kidding?” @SARAHPHIM scoffs, loudly. “There is room in the world for exactly one @SARAHPHIM, thank you very much. The original. Accept no substitutes.”

She stretches, lean and mean and hungry like a tiger. “Besides, if our evil opposites are coming out... mine’s probably nowhere as dangerous as I am.” That’s the brand, right? Nobody does dangerous like @SARAHPHIM. Just ask Turbo Knight! And don’t ask Possum Girl that was such an embarrassing moment.

“So if you get scared and need to hide behind a big girl,” she adds, patting Victor on the head condescendingly, “Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe, princess.”

Hazard lights flashed yellow. "Warning. Platform rotating. Warning."

There was a jolt and whirr of machinery, and the entire segment of the vertical farm you are in begins to rotate. The centre of the farm is an artificial sun - a huge, crystalline IR-lamp that plants are exposed to in sequences that maximize their productive growing energy. Around you gigantic blueberries and apples sway and wave, spectacular bursts of colour amidst the sterile white machinery and fluid tubes. You are pulled from the dark outer areas towards the brilliantly lit interior landscape...

And waiting for you in a circle around the sun, masked and clutching chain rifles blankly, are the kuang shi - the zombie slaves.

Agri-techs, security guards, young men and grandmothers, multi-coloured tattoo artboards and half-suits, even a catgirl or two - as wild and eclectic a group of people as you'll ever see on the streets, dozens bustling together. Ordinary people, masked and pacified and armed, cannon fodder with one setting: to walk directly towards the nearest hostile target firing weapons all the way.

Of the Hsien agents controlling them there is no current sign.

Limiters off. It's not that she can fly, exactly. It's not even approximately that. It's just that the side of the Hanging Gardens is covered in unusual architecture and footholds. A maintenance platform here, some cabling there, who-knows-what growing basically everywhere, and a little bit above that an automated crane arm tending to some of the upper level vegetation. It's exactly like taking the stairs, except the stairs are all 15-20 feet apart from each other and some of them are the size of a smart phone. It's better to start from both ends of the building at once. Cover more ground that way, and cut off more escape routes.

She reaches the roof in hardly any time at all, and lands with a hard "thud" on one knee. She lets Ferra back on her feet, and this time she does it very gently. Limiters back on.

"F*cking hell." She observes, extremely helpfully.

Ferra, in contrast to her sullen silence during the meeting, giggles excitedly after landing. "That was... completely different from doing it myself. Even now that I can't. It was niiiiice." She sobers up after a moment more, staring down at the building beneath them. "Grid search down there? Or just pot into a floor, let you scan it with the Eye - er, the new visor, and then move on from there if nobody's about?"

She had not missed that the new visor was, basically, a repurposed Eye Of Odin. Which was supposed to be driven by, well, an amount of Rx that she was in possession of. Curiosity had prodded at her, but she had no idea where to start at using it, or even if she could. The Rx was powering her, after all. Besides, it's Euna's. No reason to take her things without asking.

Speaking of which... on to the first floor to search. She reaches out with an arm and pulls Errant close, holding that pose for a second, then phasing them both out and dropping through the floor. Step one, go time.

As you sink through the floors you see the tangled, massive root network of the plants descending, collecting through clear blue-glass tubes and merging together. This farm isn't a million different plants - it's all the limbs of one massive living creature, flourishing with ten thousand different fruits. The tubes join and merge until, finally, it's no longer lines of wood - it's lines of silicon and silk, binding the organic components flawlessly into the receptors of a colossal supercomputer.

It's not just humans who are cybernetically augmented. This entire building is a living being, a spectacular combination of organic matter and precision electronics. It feels the needs of its plants with its senses and adjusts the light, heat, moisture and humidity to compensate. It's a wonder to see the point of merging - this is a precious thing, a marvel of the modern world. This is a beautifully complex living creature, and one could not easily argue that it was not in its own way sentient.

But like all living things are vulnerable to, it has its parasites.

A tap below the floor of the supercomputer leeches processing power and electricity from its host and uses it to power a crude laboratory. All around are signs of cheapness, laziness, and mess - indented couches, old pizza boxes, more bags of crisps and empty energy drink cans than you'd expect from someone with easy access to a cornucopia of fruit. Haphazard workstations and half-completed projects scattered about like debris. Computers that have been left switched on overnight, filling the room with a constant clattering buzz of social media feeds. Every so often the entire room bings, chirps or blips as someone @'s Comstar, a constant background chatter of input, input, input.

It's a big space, too. Spread out, multiple rooms with no real plan behind them. No sign of what you're after just yet - but it's close.

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL 1

Hey, if it’s going to be a firefight? Bring it. There is exactly one (1) superheroine who could walk through a shower of shrapnel and come out the other side untouched, using a reactive bullet curtain to blow every single projectile out of the way and into, well, everything else. As long as they don’t try something stupid like flanking, they won’t get hurt by holding down the trigger. Much.

And if this is going to be a fight, she’s gonna teach them the first lesson of fighting: throw the first punch, morons. If you hit them hard enough, they won’t be in any condition to throw the next one.

Sure, Victor might point something out like “they haven’t started shooting yet,” “we still have time to get to cover,” or some other wimpy little thing like that. But what he needs is a boot up his ass and some incentive to solve the problem now.

“What’s your play here,” she says, her voice lilting in delight as pale blue and rich violet bullets knock down kuang shi and blow chain shrapnel right out of the air. Her Projectiles Per Second is already damn impressive, but it can always stand to be improved with live target practice. “Come on, idiot, I know you’ve got something in that cute little head of yours~”

[Defend 7, choosing to Escalate immediately and to take Influence on Victor. Because I’m nice like that. And do keep in mind you’ve already got influence on Sara, Vicky.]

[PhoeKun]

In a happier timeline dimension, this is the part where Errant would look at Ferra and grin from ear to ear because she'd just experienced something she'd never even imagined she'd go through. Specifically a floor, but like actually through it and not just pounding a hole in it and dropping through that instead. It was incredible. Amazing. Fun, even! The kind of totally weird experience that really throws her condition into perspective and keeps Euna feeling human, because no matter how crazy teched up her body is, all of its functions still exist in the normal range of motions. She's human, just... faster, better, more. Ferra's the one who is truly special. Every time with her is something new, and every time it's surprising. Errant's long since pinned a phrase on a virtual sticky-note on her personal tablet back in her room that reads, "All Ferras are Good Ferras." and it's moments like these where she really believes that.

And she'd be saying some kind of awkward version of all that right now as best she knew how instead of having the thought blip through the back of her brain before fizzling against the iron wall called Focus. In a happier dimension, she'd be doing exactly that. But that's not the reality we occupy. There is no reality like that, because the dimension with that happy Euna doesn't have a Ferra to show her something like this. But that's a topic for a third, more philosophical dimension whose Euna can't think about this either on account of the potential that Dr Gears stole from it to do... something.

This dimension, meanwhile, has Sabrem in it. And she looms over the entirety of Errant's thought process. She checks her comms. Then she checks her backups, her backup backups, and her backup backup backups, all while picking her way around empty snack wrappers and crushing a NOSBull into oblivion under her heel. Her field of vision sweeps slowly over the haphazard lab and takes precisely none of the beauty of the hanging garden in, because that's the sort of gawking that gets a soldier killed. She frowns. Then she idly kicks at a months old pizza box and watches it skid preposterously far into the next room.

"...It's hard to believe," she says in exactly the way a bad soldier would, "That this place is on the verge of catastrophic reality meltdown. Don't you think so? It's all so... I dunno. Teenagery. Bet the guy flying the pizza delivery drone was surprised when he saw where he was piloting these things."

There's a moment where she pauses to listen to the sound of her own voice, and whether or not it echoes or gets absorbed into the leaves and fiber optics of the grand technoplant they were standing in.

"Area secure. Take the rear, beginning sweep of the eastern wing."

[Assess the Situation: 7 "What here can I use to find the breach quickly?"]

[Balmas]

“So if you get scared and need to hide behind a big girl,” she adds, patting Victor on the head condescendingly, “Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe, princess.”

Brainstorm swats at the hand irritably. No. No, that's not productive. Breathe deep, calming breaths.

“What’s your play here,” she says, her voice lilting in delight as pale blue and rich violet bullets knock down kuang shi and blow chain shrapnel right out of the air. Her Projectiles Per Second is already damn impressive, but it can always stand to be improved with live target practice. “Come on, idiot, I know you’ve got something in that cute little head of yours~”

[Defend 7, choosing to Escalate immediately and to take Influence on Victor. Because I’m nice like that. And do keep in mind you’ve already got influence on Sara, Vicky.]

"I'll tell you what the play is," he growls. "I mean, I'm sure even this version of you can adapt one of your old patterns on the fly, right? Say, Wings of the Water Lily?"

And before she can respond, he's launching himself into the pattern and trusting @SARAPHIM to open the holes he needs to avoid bisecting himself. It's going to be brilliant, the fans are going to love it.

Of course, they'll see it as @SARAPHIM having the amazing wit and reflexes to see where he's going and predict where he needs to be. Of course they will. When have they ever done differently? No need to think about the other half of the equation, right, as he springboards from tree to shelf to squelching, oversized tomato. No one considers the gymnastic ability or on-the-fly reshaping or instant geometric processing that has to happen for him to squeeze and swing and leap up to where the artificial sun lights the room. Nobody appreciates the calculation of how to accumulate the speed you need to shatter an object of that size.

Spitefully, he jackknifes himself into a spinning drillbit as he hits against the glass. Nobody will be able to see in a few seconds, but what else is new? Not like they saw before, either.

[Unleash Your Powers: 10. Brainstorm wants to destroy that sun and plunge the room into darkness. Debating, also, whether that clears Insecure or not.]

[Eldest]

Ferra looks around the mess of a lair. "I can believe it. She's talented. Genius in fact. But just absolutely no interest beyond her addiction." She follows, blowing out a screen in each area they search with a sonic blast, marking where they have yet to look. Her mind is elsewhere: she's pulling back, in a way she hasn't before, barely paying attention to here-this-reality, looking into the adjacent ones. What was important, what was chaff, and what to do next.

Out Of This World, Freak (2d6+2)[7]

[Thanqol]

Locker: omhg that's incredible. look how perfect that aim is.
Angel-IKA: It's like she knows how Brainstorm is going to move before he does.
Dominus: THAT'S RIGHT, BRAINSTORM. SHATTER THE MECHANISTIC CORPORATE GRIP OVER AGRICULTURE. DEMONSTRATE THE RESILIENCE OF THE COMMON FARMER.
Ferraphim1tp: Oh - hmm. That's weird. The usual emergency evacuation systems didn't engage.


It came to pass that in a certain year, in a certain time, the sun was slain. A barbed, black arrow is fired into the heart of the sun and it shatters. Energy pours from its wreck in a waterfall, golden fluid rapidly fading and darkening to thick grey murk that mindless boots and sandals struggle to slog their way through. Bloody crimson emergency lighting crashes into place.

No automated warning messages, though. No sirens. Instead a huge, ominous whir of backup generators - and suddenly the entire space is in chaos.

@Sarahphim, the platform you're standing on drops like a stone and then lurches dramatically to the left. You lose sight of Victor and the shattered sun instantly, and you're still moving. All of the Kuang Shi come with you - fifty mind controlled zombies verses one superheroine. You're on a smooth, flat, rapidly moving Mortal Kombat stage with the cameras on and a swarm of faceless mooks to dispatch. If there was ever a moment to cut a little loose, this is it.

Victor, when you emerge from the shattered sun, you see the entire vertical farm's mobile platforms spinning and circling wildly. You've got no line of sight on @Sarahphim and the environment around you is rapidly shifting and re-orienting. It takes a moment to realize that the patterns aren't random - they're deliberately shifting to box you in and restrict your mobility. Everywhere you turn the system re-orients to block your path with solid walls of greenery. You've just made the connection when you start getting sprayed down with cold water from a dozen hoses. The facility itself is attacking you!

*

The thing about reality breaches, Errant, is that what's on the other side looks exactly where you started. An incautious step can take you across to another dimension and you might not even notice. What you need to do is de-sync yourself from your dimensional counterpart. Fortunately you're trained and equipped for this - you just need to activate a quantum sampling system on your comlog. It's a process that'll take a few minutes to complete but when it does you'll be out of sync with any parallel universe versions of yourself. Even if your doubles are doing the same thing their processes will finish slower or faster than yours which will let you perceive them through any dimensional gaps.

It does mean you've got to hang out... perfectly still... in enemy territory for a few minutes while the system runs. But hey, it'll give you an opportunity to make small talk with Ferra while you're here.

There are breaches, Ferra, and there are controlled breaches. This is a little of both.

You've seen what happens when dimensions crash haphazardly into each other. Sometimes it's so smooth and seamless nobody notices - someone steps from reality A to reality B and vice versa and the only thing that's different is that their phone charger isn't where they thought it was. Sometimes it's a disaster, where dozens of cyber-Mongolian bikers ride out through a gap to loot and pillage. And sometimes it's needle precise, where a specific person from a specific alternate reality is brought from one to another with nothing going back in exchange. The last form is incredibly complex and requires a huge amount of processing power to accomplish. Comstar built a machine to do that last form in this lab, hijacking the processing power of the Vertical Farm to assist in the number-crunching.

It's melting down right now, you can see that easily. But while that's happening, the precise version is in effect as well. It's trying to bring someone specific across - like trying to light a match while the whole house is burning down.

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL 2

I'll keep you safe.

You ever played a bullet hell game on Lunatic? There's a point where the whole screen's a shifting, chaotic mass of projectiles, with precise adjustments required with windows of half a second or less. And if you second-guess yourself, if you tilt, you're going to burn through your lives.

your heart is a plague on mine

You have to be acting without thinking. Satori. Empty mind, empty hand. You are the empty space between. You cannot be.

the same could be said about you

you can't

That's me! That's me!

you can't

yes, my

you can't

I'm not allowed to have this

The panel shatters where the twisted metal shard tears into it, and nothing underneath it can hold; it leaves an emptiness behind, and red trickles down the flickering silver and blue, and there is a jabbing insistent reminder that she is, that she is more than light and lightning and reaction, that she is more than an empty void dancing in the spaces between. She is gross matter, and she can't get away from that. She's only that. Nothing more.

She tilts.

She tilts hard.

[And that's a beautiful 5 on that Directly Engage.]

[PhoeKun]

"Well I mean, that's the thing. It's like she... hey watch my six for a minute."

Tap tap tappy tap. Errant busies herself entering data into an incredibly clunky looking comm system whose only positive feature appears to be that it would be difficult to break it in a fight. She doesn't make it any easier on herself by constantly jerking her head this way and that to track every tiny sound she hears, despite the fact that the majority of them are just her shifting her own weight or tapping on these stupid analog keys. Urgh. She grits her teeth by way of trying not to throw up.

"Acutally just... get my whole clock, please. Yeah. I, uh. Yeah."

Focus, Errant. Focus leads to control. Control leads to victory. Focus. Focus leads to jesus god what was that? No. Nothing? No. Focus leads to-- gah! What about... no. Not that either. Focus leads to jitters. Come on, Errant. It's only the most dangerous criminal in the entire world raiding a dimensional breach. Why would you possibly be nervous? Her foot starts tapping, which is no good either because the sound is going to start messing with her equipment, which she needs to work properly if she's going to avoid getting lost in multi-dimensional space. You really couldn't have found a wizard for this, Command?

Focus leads to jitters. Jitters lead to twitching. Right, yeah, ok. We're trying small-talk instead.

"A-anyway, sure. That assessment's in line with her psych profile, but don't you think this place should fall inside her zone. You get me? Like, of all the people you've ever met, can you think of anyone more likely to want an appropriately show-ready and supervillain-y Evil Layer? If this were Possum Girl's hideout or something that'd be one thing, but are we really saying Comstar didn't have a script ready for a daring raid on her lab? I don't like it. I feel like I'm going to step on a switch under all this crap and thirty turrets are going to sprout out of the cucumbers or something and start asking me high level trivia questions. Or, worse, this is all there is and we're about to end up on the wrong end of a Sabrem plan.

...Jesus. I'm not ready for this."

[Eldest]

Ferra peers at Euna. "You are trying to desync from your dimensional doubles?" She pauses for a moment, then picks her up with both arms, carrying her to a different niche of the hideout. "You are now desynced." She announces. Then she sticks her head into this room, peering around. "Clear. You're right, in that if she felt like a scene here was likely, she'd make it dramatic. The portal she has open is summoning somebody. I expect it's going to be her, or another @Saraphim that is ideologically aligned with her." She pauses. "The thought is somewhat terrifying. I hope that knowing what the trap probably is helps?"

[Balmas]

It came to pass that in a certain year, in a certain time, the sun was slain. A barbed, black arrow is fired into the heart of the sun and it shatters. Energy pours from its wreck in a waterfall, golden fluid rapidly fading and darkening to thick grey murk that mindless boots and sandals struggle to slog their way through. Bloody crimson emergency lighting crashes into place.

No automated warning messages, though. No sirens. Instead a huge, ominous whir of backup generators - and suddenly the entire space is in chaos.

Victor, when you emerge from the shattered sun, you see the entire vertical farm's mobile platforms spinning and circling wildly. You've got no line of sight on @Sarahphim and the environment around you is rapidly shifting and re-orienting. It takes a moment to realize that the patterns aren't random - they're deliberately shifting to box you in and restrict your mobility. Everywhere you turn the system re-orients to block your path with solid walls of greenery. You've just made the connection when you start getting sprayed down with cold water from a dozen hoses. The facility itself is attacking you!

Nice job breaking it, hero.

The thought flits through his head like lightning. On considering what he just shattered, he's probably lucky not to have actual lightning coursing through him. Yeah, this was. This was not the plan.

In fact, he considers as he leaps over an oncoming shelf of petunias and scraps against the followup whipping hose, this was a **** plan. Whose plan was this? Oh right, his. Dammit, him.

But--morph into a ball to protect his torso while pingponging through the flying shelf of bushes--this system is moving in patterns. And the thing about patterns is that when you figure out their goal, you can predict what they're going to do. it's a puzzle with a thousand pieces, each of which is moving in a murderous cuisinart of foliage, but it's a pattern. And he'll be damned if some jumped-up toaster oven is better at patterns than he is. All he has to do is figure out which way it's trying to keep him from going, and out-predict the computer.

[Thanqol]

She tilts.

She tilts hard.

[And that's a beautiful 5 on that Directly Engage.]

Locker: something isn't right
Angel-IKA: Come on @Sarahphim! I believe in you!
Dominus: SHE'S GOT THIS, THESE ARE JUST GOONS
Locker: no. something is srlsy wrong here.
Bode: I don't see it, she looks in control to me
Dominus: HOLY SH*T!
Angel-IKA: @Sarahphim!!!! Oh no! Are you okay?
Locker: f*ck damn it

*

You're falling, @Sarahphim. Falling past glittering dew and glittering lights. Falling past trees and roots and electronics.

Tell me of the fall. Tell me of the landing, amidst the marvellous and fragile electronics that regulate the dimensional portal. And then roll to take a powerful blow.

Nice job breaking it, hero.

The thought flits through his head like lightning. On considering what he just shattered, he's probably lucky not to have actual lightning coursing through him. Yeah, this was. This was not the plan.

In fact, he considers as he leaps over an oncoming shelf of petunias and scraps against the followup whipping hose, this was a **** plan. Whose plan was this? Oh right, his. Dammit, him.

But--morph into a ball to protect his torso while pingponging through the flying shelf of bushes--this system is moving in patterns. And the thing about patterns is that when you figure out their goal, you can predict what they're going to do. it's a puzzle with a thousand pieces, each of which is moving in a murderous cuisinart of foliage, but it's a pattern. And he'll be damned if some jumped-up toaster oven is better at patterns than he is. All he has to do is figure out which way it's trying to keep him from going, and out-predict the computer.

The main thing you have going for you right now is that this facility is not designed to murder human beings. It is in fact designed to do the opposite of that. It is hitting you with hoses, blocking exit pathways with walls of delicious tomatoes, and... hiring mercenaries!?

You almost can't believe it when your automated data analytics pull out the Maya ad that just went out and put it on your Comlog. Security breach at the Crown&Slate Vertical Farm. Criminal restricted but dangerous. Bounty: $5,000. It went out over public channels, it didn't even signal Crown&Slate security.

Something really weird is going on in this place. You're smart enough to figure it out, but while dodging hoses and crunching machinery at the same time? Roll to Unleash your Powers

...Jesus. I'm not ready for this."

"I hope that knowing what the trap probably is helps?"

A shot rings out. Thick and roaring from the barrel of a well-used shotgun.

You spin about - checking, but there's no blood. Another shot again. A man crumples into a pool of blood, stun pistol dropping uselessly from his hands. The screens, some broken, are displaying fire, ruin, chaos, and a sleek black boarding shotgun held ahead like a first person shooter game. Alarms buzz with sterile, unhurried urgency - the kind of passionless alarm that expects to spend its whole life speaking only in fire drills, never expecting to herald an actual hell.

There is the sound of a child crying.

The vision in the screens tilts to the side. It looks at a little girl. Bloody and broken and burned...

The scene pauses.

A cigarette lights in the red-dark, put to the dry lips of the figure sitting on an armchair that has broken under her metal weight. It's like she's been there all along. A remote for the screens is held in one hand. "My greatest mistake," said the buzzing, artificial voice of a recently cut throat, "was not seeing your potential in this moment."

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL 2

It’s not like she’s really thinking while she falls. Like, that’s the dramatic thing to do, right? To have melancholy thoughts on how fragile everything is, how she finally failed, how everybody was right, she’s nothing, she’s a falling angel and her wings are already torn off and God doesn’t want her no more. Not after what she did. Not after grinding her own Pepper.

Nah. It’s all haptic feedback. The churning of her stomach as her inner ear rings the klaxon, screaming that something’s wrong and this tiger needs to land on her feet. Limbs locking up. Her heart sinking down, receding, settling somewhere between her hips. Her muscles tearing further, wrenching themselves into unnatural shapes as she falls, torn and bloodied.

The only thing that saves her life is the mesh netting she falls into, a half-curtain once used to guard delicate flowers from the world around them. She hits it with a squeaking groan, and for a moment it seems that she’s been saved, that a miracle has happened, that all is good in the world, and then it expels her right back out, right into the harmonic regulators, which crunch and spark and hiss underneath her body, which also crunches.

She doesn’t get back up.

[10 on Taking a Powerful Blow. Take me out.]

[PhoeKun]

Observe. Identify. Attack. Every successful takedown follows this philosophy.

Observe: careful study of a subject reveals their thought patterns and likely responses to key stimuli, which in turn renders the subject predictable.

That's...

Identify: careful analysis of observations and comparison against the subject's profile will highlight a weak point. This gives you a focused target to strike, compounding your advantage.

Th-that's... me. That's her! That's her!

Attack: She's right there in front of you get her get her get her don't let her get away look at how she's sitting there like she belongs like she's allowed she doesn't get to speak to you never again never again you're never going to let her do it ever again, attack attack attack why aren't you going stop her. STOP HER!

"You."

Errant is a missile streaking at her target at utterly reckless speeds. Her fist is precise and utterly lethal. Her form is perfect. Her visor feeds her data and she ignores all of it. Her biometrics feed her more data and she ignores that too. Her heart is pounding in her chest, the rush of her blood is a roar in her ears. There's a tremble to her entire body that she's not accounting for. Inside her mind, there's nothing but the fire and the crying of a young girl desperate to survive.

Observe. Identify. Attack. It works the other way around, too.

[Directly Engage: 2d6-2 = 0 (!!!!!) Clearing Insecure. Unlocking Moment of Truth]

[Balmas]

The main thing you have going for you right now is that this facility is not designed to murder human beings. It is in fact designed to do the opposite of that. It is hitting you with hoses, blocking exit pathways with walls of delicious tomatoes, and... hiring mercenaries!?

You almost can't believe it when your automated data analytics pull out the Maya ad that just went out and put it on your Comlog. Security breach at the Crown&Slate Vertical Farm. Criminal restricted but dangerous. Bounty: $5,000. It went out over public channels, it didn't even signal Crown&Slate security.

Something really weird is going on in this place. You're smart enough to figure it out, but while dodging hoses and crunching machinery at the same time? Roll to Unleash your Powers

On the one hand, that's not good. On the other hand, five thousand dollars? Come on, man. He's worth at least fifty. Five thousand dollars is an insultingly low amount of chump change.

But, that's not the issue at hand.

[The issue at hand would be the 4 I just rolled. Marking XP.]

[Eldest]

There are some advantages to being an artificial lifeform.

Ferra clicks into fasttime as soon as the shot rang out. It doesn't take much, perhaps a quarter of a second, for her to figure out that it's from an audio system rather than a shotgun there, with them. Takes her a few more seconds, mostly because of lag between the audio and the screens, to figure out what they're looking at. She had requested files from the Gears Foundation on each of her teammates, when she first was agreeing to work with them, she's seen this footage, though not from this angle. She knows what she's looking at. So she's got half her focus on her teammate, and half her focus on her enemy, and all the time in the world she needs to watch for where it goes wrong, and to step in and act.

8+3 on Defend. Adding a team and defending Euna. If defending against something that hasn't been posted yet is a little iffy, let me know and I'll redo the post.

[Thanqol]

She doesn’t get back up.

[10 on Taking a Powerful Blow. Take me out.]

...

Panicked exclamations and questions buzz in front of a sightless visor.

Unlike @Sarahphim the machinery here does not go down gently. It perseveres through its wounds, bathing @Sarahphim's body in crimson light and scanning every millimeter of her with elaborate cross-hatches. It updates, re-adjusts, and changes its questing cosmic search to find a different kind of person.

It doesn't find exactly who it's looking for.

So it brings them all across just to be safe.

On the one hand, that's not good. On the other hand, five thousand dollars? Come on, man. He's worth at least fifty. Five thousand dollars is an insultingly low amount of chump change.

But, that's not the issue at hand.

[The issue at hand would be the 4 I just rolled. Marking XP.]

Five thousand is insultingly low, yes. That kind of money attracts the lowest of the low, bored wannabe street samurai, eager newbies washed fresh outta their internet degree, or toothless old bears who got obsoleted by tech and scavenge what they can.

But even those losers can get work done with access to a high tech computer system that controls every aspect of the facility you're in - and a riotstopper or two. The walls come down and you're hit with immobilizing foam from three different angles.

"Know, fool, that you have been captured by THE WIZARD," said the guy with two submachine guns, a wizard cap with stars, and a cheap motorcycle. He's got two friends - aforementioned eager new guy and grumpy old guy. They're coming in casual - you're just a punk to them.

Who will possibly save you now, Brainstorm? If only @Sarahphim was here!

Errant is a missile streaking at her target at utterly reckless speeds. Her fist is precise and utterly lethal. Her form is perfect. Her visor feeds her data and she ignores all of it. Her biometrics feed her more data and she ignores that too. Her heart is pounding in her chest, the rush of her blood is a roar in her ears. There's a tremble to her entire body that she's not accounting for. Inside her mind, there's nothing but the fire and the crying of a young girl desperate to survive.

Observe. Identify. Attack. It works the other way around, too.

[Directly Engage: 2d6-2 = 0 (!!!!!) Clearing Insecure. Unlocking Moment of Truth]

Your fist cracks against Sabrem's face. It smashes her clean through her armchair and sends a skidding, crashing, toppling stack of armour rolling through the room. She impacts into the television screens and breaks half a dozen of them, glass and wires and electricity cascading. Her hands come up and it's like she's surrendering.

She's not. She just needs to pop her jaw back into place.

"See what I mean?" her artificial voice buzzed. "No hesitation. No attenuation. Even when under this much pressure you follow through on your training perfectly. It's beautiful."

She drew a sword. It glowed a menacing, poisonous yellow.

"Imagine if your training was actually any good."

So she's got half her focus on her teammate, and half her focus on her enemy, and all the time in the world she needs to watch for where it goes wrong, and to step in and act.

You catch Sabrem's hand by the wrist - with the sword an inch from Errant's right arm. In the same breath she shoots you twice in the throat with a pistol she's somehow already holding in her other hand but you catch those too. You're inches away from her scar-covered face and you can see the yellow tint to her eyes, the few patches of her original hair in amidst the artificial regrowth, the tattoos upon her teeth. There's so much strength in that armour and the artificial limbs beneath - but you hold her back, twist her arm, and the pistol clatters to the floor.

She laughed.

And an explosion rippled through the building. The screens abruptly changed to Comstar's logo - a camera with one angel wing and one devil wing. "Warning! Stabilization system breached! Dimensional meltdown in ten... nine... eight..."

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL ???

“Capture this.”

The hardlight bursts are measured. Controlled. Pinpoint accuracy. Two to the temple, one to the chest. The stupid little wizard hat gets an extra one through it for good measure.

“Or I guess I’ll just have to capture it.” Click, click. The bursts of fame. Click, click. Boots on tiles, crushing wild flowers underfoot.

@SARAHPHIM, AGENT OF A.E.G.I.S. (yeaaaaaaaah!!) grabs Victor by the front of his shirt. “Give me some sugar, hot stuff,” she says, and then sticks her tongue in his mouth. On stream. Click, click, click go the AEGIS sentinel bots.

She drops him in a heap on the floor. “Thanks, that’s the good stuff,” she says, but she’s glancing over her shoulder at the cameras. (yeaaaaaaaah!!) The tactical camera worn over one eye scans frantically over the scene, dumping info directly into her nervous system.

“From that slack-jawed expression,” she drawls, poking him in the chest with her Hardlight Rifle (three-speed variable-range riot-control anvil-stamped), “I’d say you’re this dimension’s version of Haephestus. Cool, cool. Just whip me up one of your transportalizer gadgets and get me out of here, egghead. Trust me, that’s gonna be best for all of us. Unless...”

She stops. Dramatically gazes into the middle distance. “Unless Agent Galahad’s here. Never overlook the chance to reclaim an asset.” She stares off into the middle distance, and clenches a fist. “Never Surrender (Theme of A.E.G.I.S. (Twilight Heart Mix))” starts playing over the sentinel bots’ speakers. “And never... give up on a hot piece of ass.” (yeaaaaaaaah!!)

[PhoeKun]

Errant's coiled like a serpent winding up to strike, which is appropriate because her breath is hissing like one too. Her world is fire and fear. Her sensors spit back weird error messages trying to figure out why there are burn pain responses without the requisite heat. Her teeth are clenched tight enough to snap them. Eight... seven...

"Damn it!" she roars, and her voice is pure, undirected venom, "Ferra, stay on her!"

Six...

In the space between six and five, Errant blurs past the fight, her nemesis, and the horror of her past to find an undamaged console. She snarls. Should've sent Victor this way. Misallocation of resources. Again. The system counts five, and there's no time for her to dwell on it. There's no one left to do it but her.

Four.

She's gonna die she's gonna die she's gonna die. Like this? Like this! Inches from the impossible goal she's been chasing since she was a child, and now she's gonna get torn to shreds by a rounding error from f--king Comstar's leftover schemes. Damn it. Damn it! Her fingers dance with impossible quickness over the keys all on their own, not following any knowledge or training about the systems in place here that she's got herself, but blindly following a series of predictive best guesses keying off the visual data her visor (and her actual eyes, one supposes) feeds into her arms. It's all very scientific, which is to say she doesn't understand any part of this process and it's a moment where Euna is a passenger in her own body and all she can do is scream and rage about everything happening right now.

Three... two...

God damn it. God damn it! How dare she say that? How dare she say anything? Who gave that psychopath the right to say anything to her?! Don't you dare lose to Ferra. Don't you f--king dare take this from her. Oh wow. Assuming her brain is still around to to process that one in a minute there's going to be some Omega Level guilt crawling around up there. Have fun, Euna!

One.

Her fingers stop. Her heart does not. The sound and feel of it rushing through her remaining veins does nothing to pull her from the memories of the roaring flames.

[Unleash Your Powers: 2d6-1 = 9 to alter the environment and use skillwires to cobble together some sort of dimensional containment reset. The effect will be temporary]

[Eldest]

Ferra is matching her, blow for blow, move for countermove, but it's going to go and she was covering for Euna, that's all it was. She'll do it as long as she needs to. And she stays between Euna and Sabrim, she keeps going, sonic blasts to answer pistol shots, phasing attacks to answer sword blow. She vaguely sees Euna doing something, one hopes it's going to shut this down.

The counter gets to two, and she miscalculates, and that sword comes far too close, and the fight does not go well at all. Errant gets her wish.

Fight: 5-1 is a 4. Also, if possible, I'd like to spend a team to boost that to a 10 on the prior unleash.

[Balmas]

Brainstorm's cheeks flame a bright, burning crimson red, though the jury's split on whether it's out of embarassment or fury.

This is it. He always knew this day was coming--the day she finally decided to give the shippers what they wanted, decided that the normal teasing wouldn't do, decided to amp up the game that extra little bit too much. And he flounders, a rowboat caught too far out of its depth in a pea-soup fog.

Then, her actual words--and that theme song, could it be more surgically corporate--pierce the mist like a lighthouse beam. He'll take it, as it's something to latch onto, to hold onto, like a sailor clutching driftwood for dear life. Allows it to drag him back to the surface, where he can actually take in what's happened.

"Oh dear," he murmurs, and instantly feels his cheeks burn hotter. Oh, dear? He sounds like some kind of granny after the cat knocks over the knitting basket. Get with it, Victor. "So, you're not my @SARAPHIM, then. ****." Yes, that's more like it. The crowd likes profanity, feels it adds punch.

AEGIS markings. That's interesting. That means that in this reality it was she who was shanghai'd into corporate serfdom. Was Errant a failure, then, or was it simply that--his thoughts flash to a burning car--no. Not thinking about that. Thinking about that is bad. Thinking about that isn't productive. If she wants to tell, she will, but that's neither here nor there.

"The fact that you're here means that my teammate is deeper into the facility than we planned," he decides. "Which is far from ideal. I appreciate the rescue, but she takes priority." Like always, the treacherous viper behind his eyes whispers. "You're welcome to come with, but for now I'm afraid I'm left with little options but to perform an unplanned rescue operation."

And then, when this is done, he can go home and try to figure out the best way to scrub out his entire mouth.

[Thanqol]

Angel-IKA: Oh my god someone call an ambulance oh my god
Dominus: SHE'S FINE.
Angel-IKA: How do you know?!?!
Dominus: I'M LITERALLY A DOCTOR.
Ferraphim1tp: Hangon we're getting signal in the stream again, but it's staticy - let me clean it up and
Angel-IKA: OH MY GOD
Dominus: WTF
Bode: Hmmm.
Locker: hahahahahahahah called it
Bode: If you think about it the fact that this alternate reality @Sarahphim is into Brainstorm is further evidence of their divergence, and therefore indicative that @Sarahphim prime has not made the life choices that would result in this kind of romantic attachment.
Locker: lol ok
Locker: kiss.jiff
Angel-IKA: o.o she's got a laser gun that's so cool

Ferra is matching her, blow for blow, move for countermove, but it's going to go and she was covering for Euna, that's all it was. She'll do it as long as she needs to. And she stays between Euna and Sabrim, she keeps going, sonic blasts to answer pistol shots, phasing attacks to answer sword blow. She vaguely sees Euna doing something, one hopes it's going to shut this down.

The counter gets to two, and she miscalculates, and that sword comes far too close, and the fight does not go well at all. Errant gets her wish.

It feels satisfying to hit Sabrem. She does little to defend herself against it. Metal armour crunches beneath your blows as she just stands there and takes it, recoiling into the blows like each one hurts her. But she doesn't take her eyes off Errant.

"See? Look at that focus. You know how to work the mission. You know how to -" her head is snapped to the side by a sonic blast that leaves her ears ringing. She grins, recovers, and keeps going "- concentrate. On what's important. That's not training, that's talent. And that's rare. That's perfect."

Finally her head grinds about to take in Ferra for the first time. "And you... you don't have training or talent. Doctor Gears' kid, wasn't it? You fight like him... it's still pathetic. See, I'm giving you every opportunity to make this a proper beatdown but you can't do anything with it. Because you don't know how to hurt people... you don't know how to handle winning. You don't know how to kick me so that I'll stay down. I - ooof! - can do this all day."

The sword moves. Her limp right arm sweeps up vertically, catching your overextended arm above the elbow and -

"But I won't," she hisses. "I've people to meet."

Your arm hits the ground.

Ferra, take a powerful blow to see how you handle the damage. Your systems will allow you to voluntarily activate your Regeneration protocols to recover the limb if you decide to - alternately, you'll need Brainstorm for a fix. While you're at it, Sabrem is shifting your Danger down and Mundane up, accept what she says or reject her influence.

Errant, Sabrem is shifting your Freak up and Soldier down. Accept what she says or reject her influence.

God damn it. God damn it! How dare she say that? How dare she say anything? Who gave that psychopath the right to say anything to her?! Don't you dare lose to Ferra. Don't you f--king dare take this from her. Oh wow. Assuming her brain is still around to to process that one in a minute there's going to be some Omega Level guilt crawling around up there. Have fun, Euna!

One.

Her fingers stop. Her heart does not. The sound and feel of it rushing through her remaining veins does nothing to pull her from the memories of the roaring flames.

[Unleash Your Powers: 2d6-1 = 9 to alter the environment and use skillwires to cobble together some sort of dimensional containment reset. The effect will be temporary]

Click. Clack. Perfect.

The skillwires know their work. The shaking stops - the lights ripple and channel. All that power and energy is still moving but it's going somewhere rather than nowhere -

But that all that just means you're alone in a room with Sabrem. And she's coming slowly towards you, stepping over Ferra's body.

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL ???

whirrrr-ka-click ka-ching, goes the hardlight rifle as @SARAHPHIM, AGENT OF A.E.G.I.S. (yeaaaaaaaah!!) spins the barrel chamber. A reminder that she could wipe you out as easy as she just wiped the floor with these goons.

“Tell you what, egghead. You get to work cracking on this transportalizer, and I’ll go get your teammate. It’s, what, some weeds and some street thugs? Piece of cake for anyone who ain’t a cripple.” Oof. Ouch. Yikes. “Keep those fancy creepy-crawly arms outta danger, like always, and let me do my job.”

Victor, @SARAHPHIM, AGENT OF A.E.G.I.S. (yeaaaaaaaah!!) is shifting your Freak up and your Dangerous down. Accept what she says or reject her influence.

[PhoeKun]

"Shut. Up."

Errant trembles, but it's got nothing to do with fear anymore. She blinks back the tears. Ferra... oh no, Ferra. Be ok, please! You have... you have to be ok! She didn't ask f-- she didn't want... no, no, NO! Her hands clench tightly into fists and she drops into a low stance, ready for a fight.

Her world cools. Her heart rate slows. Sensors finally stop beeping at her about potential burn wounds, and the psychic pain recedes into the background. It's not that she's gotten over this all of a sudden, not at all. But her friend is on the other side of this... this monster, and that has a funny way of shuffling around her priorities. She's not stupid, you know. Euna may not have Victor's mind or even Sara's level of understanding of physics, but she's good enough to notice patterns. Every time something like this happens, Ferra's gotten back up again. But it's never... it's not quite the same Ferra. The one she's gotten to know this time? Who carried her through a wall and made that funny little noise when she got to the roof? That Ferra's probably gone. And it's her fault.

Her mistake was thinking she was strong. Her mistake was thinking she was skilled. She'd sought out the fastest path to victory instead of the correct one, and this time she wasn't the one who paid the price for it. She glares at Sabrem, and her eyes are filled with equal parts terror and defiance.

"...This isn't about you, S-01. Or me. This is about all the people you've hurt, and I'm not going to let there be any more. Y-you are... hereby under arrest."

She digs in her heels and gets ready for a long and very awful fight.

[Reject Influence: 10. Errant is marking potential by making this not about her (proving Sabrem wrong), and chooses to shift her Mundane down and Savior up, instead]

[Balmas]

Strictly speaking, Brainstorm doesn't have muscles in his cybernetics. It's all a shifting mass of individually-powered robots, all working together, linking and unlinking as needed.

So, therefore, it shouldn't be possible for him to be this tense. It shouldn't be possible for every muscle to simultaneously freeze up, a million different orders all fighting one another. He shouldn't be staring at her smug, so imminently punchable cheeks, fists balled like hammers.

[Reject: 4. Marking Angry.]

Every movement stiff, he steps forward and shoves his chest up against the barrel of the rifle. "Let's get one thing straight, moron. If you're here, then my" sister "friend is in danger. So either stop posturing with your pussy plasma toy and take me down if you think a cripple will be that much of a hindrance, or get the fuck back in line and help me save her."

[Provoking @SARAPHIM to support Brainstorm in a rescue mission. 11. If you do it, add a Team to the pool. If you don't, mark a condition.]

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL ???

@SARAHPHIM, AGENT OF A.E.G.I.S. (yeaaaaaaaah!!) looks you dead in the eyes for a moment. The music turns tense. Her finger tenses on the trigger. What’s her relationship like with her version of you? Does she still push “Haephestus” around and drape herself over him and choke him with tactical mints on camera? Would she think twice about gunning you down and leaving you for the bounty hunters?

Then she shrugs, lowers the rifle. “You eggheads always get so obsessive. Fine. I’ll save your friend and let you pretend you’re in charge, if it makes you happy. So, mon capitaine, where to first? Give me a target and I’ll give you a kill zone.”

Yay! @SARAHPHIM Get! The relevant personnel file has been added to your Saradex. Collect them all today!

[Thanqol]

"Shut. Up."

Errant trembles, but it's got nothing to do with fear anymore. She blinks back the tears. Ferra... oh no, Ferra. Be ok, please! You have... you have to be ok! She didn't ask f-- she didn't want... no, no, NO! Her hands clench tightly into fists and she drops into a low stance, ready for a fight.

Her world cools. Her heart rate slows. Sensors finally stop beeping at her about potential burn wounds, and the psychic pain recedes into the background. It's not that she's gotten over this all of a sudden, not at all. But her friend is on the other side of this... this monster, and that has a funny way of shuffling around her priorities. She's not stupid, you know. Euna may not have Victor's mind or even Sara's level of understanding of physics, but she's good enough to notice patterns. Every time something like this happens, Ferra's gotten back up again. But it's never... it's not quite the same Ferra. The one she's gotten to know this time? Who carried her through a wall and made that funny little noise when she got to the roof? That Ferra's probably gone. And it's her fault.

Her mistake was thinking she was strong. Her mistake was thinking she was skilled. She'd sought out the fastest path to victory instead of the correct one, and this time she wasn't the one who paid the price for it. She glares at Sabrem, and her eyes are filled with equal parts terror and defiance.

"...This isn't about you, S-01. Or me. This is about all the people you've hurt, and I'm not going to let there be any more. Y-you are... hereby under arrest."

She digs in her heels and gets ready for a long and very awful fight.

[Reject Influence: 10. Errant is marking potential by making this not about her (proving Sabrem wrong), and chooses to shift her Mundane down and Savior up, instead]

You're blind. That's what this is. You're blind and deaf and dead and how did it happen so fast. You can feel it, on your skin, on the pressure sensors of your augs - you're being wrapped in bands of razor sharp air, crystal clear and so close to your skin you can feel it -

And then it leaves you behind and you see the aftershocks of elaborate hardlight patterns that wrapped around you so closely on their way to the target that you could feel them. There's a smoking hole and a spectacular pattern of lights; a mandella carved into a hundred shattered television screens and lit with the burning aftershocks. There is a massive crater in the centre of the wall that Sabrem has vanished into. @Sarahphim shouldn't have that much -

"Hey nerd," said the beautiful, dark skinned, fire-haired @IFRITPHIM, wrapping herself around you.

"Darrrrrrling, honestly?" purred the black armoured, tiger-striped @Le Tigressa, leaning against you from the other direction.

"Har harrrr! That's what ye get for tryin' to plunder me booty!" laughed @SARARRRRPHIM, slapping your butt gregariously.

"d-don't hurt my friend," came a tiny voice from the background.

And then a set of stretchy arms wrapped around the entire mess, pulling all of the @Sarahphims into an extremely tight embrace. "Alright! Best friend squad forever!" squeaked Phimmy, the cartoon character stretchy girl.

Then a literal tiger walks up and rubs itself against your legs while purring.

Good news, Errant.

You have been rescued.

*

Ferraphim1tp: Hangon I'm getting more signals
Ferraphim1tp: Let me splice them through
Angel-IKA: o.o
Dominus: o.o;;;;;;
Locker: hahahahahahaahahahahaha
Bode: Called it.
Locker: let
Locker: the
Locker: waifu
Locker: wars
Locker: BGENIN
Locker: fuk
Locker: BEGIN*

POTENTIAL ???

@SARAHPHIM, AGENT OF A.E.G.I.S. (yeaaaaaaaah!!) looks you dead in the eyes for a moment. The music turns tense. Her finger tenses on the trigger. What’s her relationship like with her version of you? Does she still push “Haephestus” around and drape herself over him and choke him with tactical mints on camera? Would she think twice about gunning you down and leaving you for the bounty hunters?

Then she shrugs, lowers the rifle. “You eggheads always get so obsessive. Fine. I’ll save your friend and let you pretend you’re in charge, if it makes you happy. So, mon capitaine, where to first? Give me a target and I’ll give you a kill zone.”

Yay! @SARAHPHIM Get! The relevant personnel file has been added to your Saradex. Collect them all today!

Comlog update: The bounty on Brainstorm has increased to $10,000.

Brainstorm, you're still struggling against a shifting, mazelike industrial farm that is taking its termination duties for you increasingly seriously. Behind any wall could be kuang shi, cheap bounty hunters - or worse. How do you play it? Do you want to assess the situation - or just blitz through?

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL 2

”f-fuck...”

Let’s think about science facts. Did you know your skin is the largest organ in your body? It’s true! It protects you and keeps your vulnerable organs and vital fluids inside your body. That’s why it’s important to bandage punctures. All of the things that make you you belong safely inside your skin!

A halo of damaged cameras hang unresponsive around Sara as she pushes herself up on one elbow. Ignore the blood. It’s fine. @SARAHPHIM is invincible. What’s one puncture wound in her abdomen? Haha! If she just sits around and leaves that rusty metal spur inside her like a dope, she’ll never get anything done! She has to go get some dumb teammate to use an AEGIS medkit on her: sanitize the puncture, lay down synthskin, easy peasy. She just... needs to get to them first. That’s the trick.

Hands and knees. There we go. Standing is too tough right now, but anybody can crawl. And— fuck.

breathe. breathe. you can do this.

You are @SARAHPHIM. You are the biggest badass in the world. Pain is weakness leaving the body. You’ve been through worse.

It’s your own fault for fucking up. You deserve this.

There. Elevator. Yes. Get in there, slam a button, and you’ll get back up to the zone with everybody else. Nice and exciting. Plenty of more opportunities to show that you are worth watching. You’re not a fuckup. You’re the best.

Just need to get to the elevator first. Twenty more reps. Here we go.

[Eldest]

It feels satisfying to hit Sabrem. She does little to defend herself against it. Metal armour crunches beneath your blows as she just stands there and takes it, recoiling into the blows like each one hurts her. But she doesn't take her eyes off Errant.

"See? Look at that focus. You know how to work the mission. You know how to -" her head is snapped to the side by a sonic blast that leaves her ears ringing. She grins, recovers, and keeps going "- concentrate. On what's important. That's not training, that's talent. And that's rare. That's perfect."

Finally her head grinds about to take in Ferra for the first time. "And you... you don't have training or talent. Doctor Gears' kid, wasn't it? You fight like him... it's still pathetic. See, I'm giving you every opportunity to make this a proper beatdown but you can't do anything with it. Because you don't know how to hurt people... you don't know how to handle winning. You don't know how to kick me so that I'll stay down. I - ooof! - can do this all day."

The sword moves. Her limp right arm sweeps up vertically, catching your overextended arm above the elbow and -

"But I won't," she hisses. "I've people to meet."

Your arm hits the ground.

It doesn't hurt. She's got damage sensors screaming at her, with the arm sparking on the ground beneath her, and she goes on total defense, dodging a few followup blows that Sabrim throws out as she turned her attention. But no pain, she wasn't made to feel pain and she knows that. She turns to face Sabrim, getting ready to continue, round two, and pearls of laughter echo through her mind, a familiar, infuriating voice, and she's going down, the lights are shutting off, and she wasn't ready damn it.

She goes into freefall, screaming into her own personal infinity, crashing into the array of gears like a meteor coming to rest, a fiery pink halo around her as she goes down. The laughter follows her down, and she yells into the fractally faceted sky in frustration and rage.

Blew the death save, regenerating. Did manage to reject influence, cancelling her influence and taking +1 forward.

[PhoeKun]

Too much! Too much! Errant can feel the heat of a full-body blush creep out through her chest and into her face. She doesn't even want to know what kind of stupefied expression she's wearing right now, but of course there must be eleven billion cameras all on her right now, so that's absolutely a matter of public knowledge. Meanwhile, her thoroughly confused augs register another warning about unexplained heat spikes and, finally concluding that Euna's weak flesh has gotten sick, automatically pings Med Bay 1 for an examination immediately pending the end of this mission. Just kill her now, please. Just kill her now and get it over with.

So let's assess. First of all, what? Second of all, what? And third and most importantly: WHAT?! Admittedly Errant is not an expert (or even a hobbyist) in interdimensional physics, but this is a scenario even Disaster Training hasn't bothered to cover, which as far as she knows means it should be basically impossible. And yet! Her right arm informs her that @IFRITPHIM's outfit is made from synthetic silks. Her left arm tells her that @Le Tigressa is 10 kilograms heavier than any of the other girls currently grabbing her, with a muscle mass similar to Euna's. Her visor spits out very confusing visual data about the mechanics of cartoon stretchy arms. Her brain tells her this is sexual harassment and a betrayal of trust. Friends! They agreed, friends! S-so why is...

"Get! Off! Of! Me!"

The second she's free she sprints to the crater. Sh-t. This is bad, this is very bad. Mission first, soldier. Feelings later. Maybe never. Feelings never sounds good.

"God damn it, she's gone. I couldn't see a thing through all that hardlight! God damn it. If she's got free reign again then... hell. Who saw it? Which one of you had eyes on her?! Report!"

[Balmas]

Comlog update: The bounty on Brainstorm has increased to $10,000.

Brainstorm, you're still struggling against a shifting, mazelike industrial farm that is taking its termination duties for you increasingly seriously. Behind any wall could be kuang shi, cheap bounty hunters - or worse. How do you play it? Do you want to assess the situation - or just blitz through?

Still not good enough, but also good motivation to shut this shit down. He got lucky that he was able, so easily, to trounce Merlin's Bozo Boozetorium, but he might not get so lucky next time and the quality of the bounty hunters is only going to increase with the bounty.

"We lost track of each other when the light"--shitshitshitthink--"got destroyed in the firefight. Then this..." He trickles off, and waves at all the this-ness. "Then this started happening. So, we're going to need to find the control center and shut it down, find the @SARAPHIM that doesn't molest me on-stream, and beam you home. Simple."

Yeah, just like it was simple to destroy the light, and see how well that turned out.

[Yes please. 8. How could we best end this quickly?]