radio414

For a moment there, when facing that giant maw as the monster shrieked and moved to attack, Chris found himself paralyzed, but everyone else, thankfully, remained unaffected as the newly freed Lana jumped to Chris’ defense, and both she and Ziun directed the monster’s attention away from him. There was still the matter of its other, actual, non-tentacle limb, but with the creature focusing elsewhere, it didn’t take much effort to duck out of the way. Maneuvering through the tentacles and back around to behind the thing would be tricky, but he could manage. “Whoa, whoop!” Okay, well, it was even trickier than expected as he nearly stepped into the pool of acid Ziun had left behind. Even the ground bordering the acid pool was mushy and difficult. Chris could feel himself sink with each step. He looked down and saw that the monster had sunk a bit too, and Chris could hear the sizzle of the acid at its feet. The image got Chris thinking of all the times he had enjoyed pushing servants over into mud in the middle of rain storms, except here the mud was acid, so it probably would be good to do that? Normally, he went for the knees, kicking them out from under whichever unfortunate soul had caught his eye that afternoon, but Chris didn’t want to take a chance on guessing where the knees would be, and he also didn’t want to risk getting his feet involved with the acid any more than he already was. He did have a sword, though, and the creature had demonstrated itself to have enough resistance that if he pushed with that, he wouldn’t go all the way through, right? It was worth a shot. Chris aimed high with his stab, above the thing’s center of mass, almost right between the shoulders (if you could call those shoulders), and put as much oomph behind his thrust as his one-hundred-and-thirty-pound frame could manage. He was satisfied with the effort, at least, even if he was feeling his constant refusals to bulk up (“It keeps me nimble!”) at this very moment. Maybe he could ask Lana -- once they survived all this, anyway.

Madcap There weren’t many other questions in the joint Arcturus-Moray Clan meeting, and certainly none that pertained to the revised plan of “Sibyl causes a ruckus to distract from everyone else being all stealthy-like.” There was only a brief period of milling about as the leaders called a few individuals aside to get them in a one-on-one or three-on-one depending on their loyalty. All Sibyl received, however, was a smile, and a “hang loose” gesture from Atropos from across the room. They’d already covered Sibyl’s main contribution, after all, and if she were to go above and beyond, who were they to stop her? One of the people Arcturus had to talk to was Lucky Cat, who came out of her meeting and made a beeline for Sibyl. “Looks like we’re together,” Lucky Cat said. “And hey, I’m flexible. With a power like mine, you kind of have to be. I’ll follow your lead. Let’s go fuck something up.” Keep Pushing It seemed like more people than expected decided they were perfectly fine helping out the villainess Tidebinder maintain her tenuous hold on a good portion of the city, but there were a few holdouts who, for whatever motivation they so desired, decided to go with Aeon to the field where Project Rubicon lay. Maybe one might have expected that Project Rubicon would look worse for wear, given how long G3 had people crawling all over it and dissecting it, but much of the remaining body seemed more like it had deteriorated than anything else. Steam was pouring out of open gashes all over the body, and those that were on top of it all had heat gear on. The person running the operation was named Keller, a tall man who, despite being one of G3’s unpowered employees, insisted on wearing a vizor that completely blocked any exterior view of his eyes. Everyone at G3 had learned -- some the hard way, and others from those unfortunate few -- that it was easier to just let the fashion choice be than actively question it. It did not seem to affect his vision, even if he did have to noticeably tilt his head downwards to get a good look at Aeon. He wasn’t one for pleasantries either; the first words out of his mouth were, “How good are you with scalding heat?” Run It “Catty Key told me you were coming,” Tidebinder said as everyone approached. The casino was more active than Override would have ever seen it before as he and his contingent arrived. Gibbons went this way and that, organizing themselves before departing. Tidebinder was even away from the security room, instead operating by the front door and directing traffic manually. There was no sign of Legion, but it was easy to guess where he might be. “What do you think?” Tidebinder said. “At the very least, if nothing comes of this today, it would be prudent of me to at least get the official opinion of G3 as to our updated security measures. Think of it as a White Hat gig, if you’re so inclined.” She eyed Override for that bit. “And failing that, well, I’m just glad you can keep a promise.” OOC

i'd like to be some sort of mage i guess but i'd probably end up being one of the dorky ones like artur or ewan or knoll. that said maybe one of those speedy powerhouses that goes down in like two hits but also it's unlikely you'll get two hits on me at once.

at the bmv for the next two hours ama

Perhaps Brian’s false assumption about Klein’s ghostliness (ghostitude?) should have been more embarrassing, but on the other hand, a lot of his focus was on keeping Kepler face-down in the dirt, so he didn’t really think about any of that. He did pay more attention when Kessler started talking, though that only served to make Brian more annoyed. “Fucking hell,” Brian said. “Like, if you were a ghost, at least I’d be able to understand it -- being tethered to a location and exacting vengeance and whatnot. But nah, you’re just some dude.” Well, he was kind of still tethered to a location, wasn’t he? The way Kelsey put it, the first guy he killed was looking to repossess his home or whatever. After that, he was stuck patrolling the area in case of interlopers. He didn’t seem happier for it. In a way, Brian pitied the man. But mostly, he was still angry. “I dunno, man. You don’t call a closet inspector if you’ve got skeletons in there, and you decided to call the whole fucking Mystery Machine. Didn’t you see the van? Waste of my fucking time, really. I could have gotten a proper night’s sleep for once.” Then he remembered the specific reason Carmen and he had been called out here in the first place. “I guess you wouldn’t have, but who’s fault is that?” Brian shifted his weight a little, making sure to keep Kyle pinned. He wanted to close the whole night out with some final one-liner, but couldn’t think of anything, so instead he just looked up at Carmen. All the while she had been poised and ready with the butt of the gun. If it were up to Brian, he wouldn’t have been so merciful, but then again, he had seen how she was with firearms now. There was a decent chance he would also end up full of bullet holes, and a best case still involved an incurable ringing in his ears. God, next they probably had to drag Kevin back to civilization and call someone, then they’d have to explain just what they were doing to the fucking cops, which meant they’d probably be retained in case of a trial, and then, knowing K., he’d probably invoke sovereign citizenship or some bullshit like that and Brian would have to hear all about made-up legal theory in a boring ass-courtroom. He sighed. “Yeah, you can hit him now.” He couldn’t even get the satisfaction of doing the final blow himself.

Everyone else’s attacks went about as well as could have been planned, if “planned” meant Chris’ vague pointers in the right direction. That meant it was Chris’ turn. Lana had managed both the remainder of a tentacle and a gouge into one of the creature’s sides, and Chris immediately leaped in to plunge his sword deeper into the wound. It wasn’t enough to down the thing, but it still felt like progress. Unfortunately, as Chris was yanking his sword back out, Lana started moving on the defensive, deflecting a tentacle with her axe, sure, but falling backwards to avoid another and ending up basically supine on the ground with a monster towering over her. On one hand, it was the perfect time to panic, but then, Chris had also dealt with this situation already, and his spool and thread were already in his hand. “Lana, I don’t know if you saw Ziun do this, but-” Chris said, but he paused. He had already anchored the string, but to get it to Lana’s hand was going to require a bit of work. Ziun had just been grabbed by some tentacles. Lana was in dangerously close proximity to the monster -- any approach was going to be dangerous. He ran to the side and tried to shove the monster, but it was crouched down now, and with a lower center of gravity, well… Chris grit his teeth. There wasn’t really any way around it, was there? He took a step back to regain his momentum and vaulted over, around, and through the tentacles between him and Lana. “Pull!” he yelled as he got the spindle to her hand. But even as he said it, he could feel the tentacles shifting targets. He just managed to turn around and at least face the thing, but he also started to feel like he had just traded one problem for a different one. He still had his sword, though. If he could just manage a free enough arm to thrust it…

in some ways i kind of get it, like, if i ask for your favorite album and you come back with "austin wintory's journey soundtrack" i might feel like that's a video game recommendation and not a music one, grammy nomination or no. like i asked for a burrito and i got an enchilada, it's technically all the same stuff but if i wanted an enchilada i'd have asked for your favorite video game soundtrack. but that's not a debate on "real music" or not. music's music, lol, and we want to treat video games as the art form they are music's gonna be part of that.

Normandie stopped just short of another Tackle, flummoxed by the Ralts’ cutesy demeanor in the face of all the violence a Pokémon battle had to offer. She still collided with the Ralts, but it clearly was not the intended result of her charge. The whole experience seemed to catch the Ratffian in some sort of paradox. She was stuck between the constant need to prove herself -- to demonstrate her might and therefore her reason to live -- and the non-threatening-yet-still-combatitive nature of the Ralts’ Growls. It was enough that when the Ralts released another blast of psychic energy and Normandie stumbled back, Quinn could see her eyes start to unfocus. Normandie charged again, but it was in the wrong direction, and Quinn had to throw out her Pokéball to make sure she did not crash into a dock post. “Hmph! Serves you right!” Alicia said. Quinn was not sure what he ever saw in this woman, and it was getting less and less sure by the second. “It is alright, Normandie,” Quinn whispered to zir Pokéball. “Take a moment to catch your breath. I will require your assistance again soon. “In the meantime…” Quinn fished around in xir bag until they found the proper substitution. “You had best be careful, Alicia. Pisces has only been on my team for an hour at most, and already I can see the potential in him. Prepare yourself!” Quinn threw the Pokéball high into the air. “Pisces! Greet everybody with your Supersonic song!” Thankfully, even though Quinn had not been lying about her unfamiliarity with eir new Goldeen companion, Pisces still obliged. Some might have called Pisces’ cry ear-splitting. There were reactions amongst the crowd that certainly seemed to think so. Quinn thought it was glorious. But there was only one creature that Quinn truly cared about its reaction, and that was Alicia’s Ralts. It staggered for a moment, clearly affected, but when Pisces followed up with a diving Peck, the Ralts still managed to Teleport out of the way. It was quite the slippery thing, Quinn thought. Still, that was no reason to give up. “It cannot run away forever, Pisces! You can do it!” Quinn called out. And indeed, when Pisces’ horn lit up for a second Peck, the Ralts brought its hands to its head in pain. Whatever it was trying to do, whether make copies of itself again or Teleport, it was hurting itself more than was worth the effort, and with a mighty flap of his fins, Pisces brought his horn right into the Ralts’ chest.

Once the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into the boats and went to Capernaum in search of Jesus. -John 6:24 (NIV)Fen’s chimera question caught Melissa off-guard, partly in ways that it really shouldn’t have -- it only seemed like a non-sequitur because chimeras didn’t exist on Ambrosia outside of cardboard form -- and partly because she got lost in the mechanics of eating such a creature. Did each of the composite animals have its own meat consistency that required different preparation? The classical chimeric mashup was lion, goat, and snake, but Fen said, “a chimera” implying there was more than one, in which case, were they all like that or were there different types of chimera? If part of a chimera was fish, what were the implications of that vis-a-vis Lent? Could she only have the fish part of a chimera on Fridays, or would all of it be okay? Or none? Much to think about. In the meantime, she was now assaulted by expectations on both sides. Fen was still looking for an answer to her question, and Kasayee was nudging Melissa looking for funnel cake on top of the veritable cornucopia of food already cradled in her arms. Melissa obliged Kasayee first, tearing off another piece of funnel cake and resisting the urge to fly it around like a miniature airplane before offering it to the open-mouthed lizard woman. “Um, no,” Melissa said. “I haven’t- do you think there’s some here? Most of the stuff here I recognize, though, um…” She eyed the lizard tails both Kasayee and now Fen had in front of them. “... some of them are on the edge of palatability, I admit. But I guess a lot of fair food started as a novelty. As for other food, um…” She tried to think of something, defaulting to what she didn’t see in fantasy books (not that she read too many fantasy books). “...do you know what a sandwich is, and if yes, what kinds?” Melissa went to offer Kasayee another bite of funnel cake and noticed just in time that Kasayee was no longer there. She looked up and just caught her leaving the food area, now off staring up at one of the nearby rides. When she went to investigate, Kasayee pointed up at the sign and said, “What does that say?” The pair of words seemed pretty reasonable to Melissa. “Bumper Boats,” she read. “Um, I guess that could mean a lot of things. We had bumper cars back home, uh, little carriages with safety tubes so you could bump into each other, but boats could be like tubing?” Melissa’s curiosity was answered when she looked further. “Oh.” The graphics on the connected building made it seem like a combination of the two suggestions, which made sense. There was a problem, though, in the form of Tia also in the distance, and she spotted everyone as well. Even from this far away, Melissa could still see the glint in the woman’s eyes, and she tried to back away, or at least put Kayasee between the two before anything dangerously social happened.

Chris was about to fire back that he had already tried slicing the thing’s tentacles to no avail, but after a flurry of webs and acids and axe strikes, this one was certainly looking worse for wear. “Right!” he called back. It couldn’t hurt to try again, anyway. Even if his sword acted more like a metal club against these things, that would still be annoying, right? This one seemed intent on focusing on Lana despite its bindings -- anything he could do to draw it away, even momentarily, would surely help. He wanted to aim where Lana had just hit it, right in the exact same wound, but the thing was flailing the tentacle around to the point it was hard for Chris to keep his eyes on it. He didn’t want to charge in and get slammed by an errant reflex if he could help it. But as he crept around, looking for an opening, he did spot the areas where the thing’s tentacles attached to the rest of its body. Those looked much easier. After all, just like a shoulder, no matter how the arm moved, the shoulder had to be closer to the rest of the center of mass, and Chris had made a habit of aiming at the joints of more normal monsters. The other tentacles were still dealing with Ziun’s webbing, but they were freeing themselves. It was only a matter of time. If he was going to do this, it had to be now. Chris stepped in with his sword already raised, and brought it down into the creature’s free “shoulder.” It hadn’t been damaged in all the previous fighting, so Chris was unsurprised that he couldn’t fully separate the tentacle from the rest of the monster, but the attack still noticeably affected how hard the rest of the tentacle was flopping around, dramatically reducing the intensity of the whole thing. Meanwhile, the monster was almost done freeing itself from webbing on its other tentacles. Chris quickly gave another tentacle shoulder a taste of his blade, then fell back in case one of them came his way. “Aim further up on them,” he said, reiterating out loud what he had just figured out. “Don’t risk getting too close for it, but hopefully it’ll make it easier to hit and we can focus one spot easier.”

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13 168 DAYS REMAIN Intermission: The Archangel Lailah Of course, today of all days, the service would be crowded. Worse, she recognized most of these people too. Lailah could imagine a world, where the Moray Clan had stacked the church, either with their people or people from the media. But no, people here, as far as Lailah could tell, were interested in what she had to say. The people here did not know they were about to be disappointed. Well, no, that wasn’t entirely true. They had separated themselves to keep a lower profile -- it was harder to identify a single triplet than all three sitting together -- but there was one Fate in the pews to her left, one to her right, and one straight ahead. She was surrounded; there was no backing out now. They wouldn’t be disappointed. The Archangel Lailah said, “I have to apologize. This sermon is being given under duress. These words are not mine, but ones I am reciting as the resolution of a favor owed by me to Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos Lanthimos, the three Fates in control of the Moray Clan. The only reason I can even relay this apology to you is through their will. I can only speculate as to their motives.” This was a lie, but not one she could refute right now. It wasn't part of the speech. In truth, Lailah knew exactly why she was doing what she was doing. The Fates had explained it in great detail the night before. She hadn’t seen how it happened, but all three Fates arrived in her room in the middle of the night. Her power had notified her, the word Intruders blaring in her subconscious like a siren, snapping her awake. Lailah very nearly brought out one of her manifestations, but the sharp *clack* of Atropos’ knife put a stop to that. “I wouldn’t,” Atropos said. “Cards on the table, we don’t want to hurt you anyway,” Clotho said. Lachesis added, “We did make a promise to someone pretty important, after all. You know how we are with deals. But also, you know, the inconvenience of it all. On the eve of your big speech?” Lailah had always woken up quickly -- and the sudden jolt of adrenaline certainly helped! -- but she still found herself stumbling over her words. “I don’t- I told Director Sekelsky that-” “Mm…” Lachesis said. “We know what you told Vic. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” “What the Fates have conspired to ask us is: Why now? Why has the world been so ordained to end now? What are the circumstances that differentiate this next half-year from the months before? From the year before? If Caesar builds some superweapon and brings the city to heel-” There was a murmur in the audience. “This sermon was clearly written for me before the events of last week!” Lailah said. It was an improvisation, though, one that happened more on instinct than anything else. She hoped she could be forgiven for that. “If Caesar builds some superweapon and brings the city to heel, why would that necessarily follow from the prophecy we were given?It was Clotho’s turn to speak. “Like we said, we’re not going to hurt you. Nor are we going to do anything untoward towards this building. But we did think it necessary to remind you exactly what reneging on our favor means.” “Do you want to know why we got into the gang business?” Lachesis asked. “Why might three promising young women get their hands dirty like we have, carving out a whole chunk of Scarlet City for our own?” “Heard a lot of guesses. Money – ill-gotten gains, safety taxes, what have you. That’s a common one. Some say we’re lashing out at something or someone, magnifying a desire to reclaim control of our lives. Or the sheer chaotic thrill of it…” Atropos whipped and snapped her knife again. “Some good guesses in there-” “Some of them even almost true!” “But nah.” They were all pacing -- no, dancing? -- around Lailah’s bed now. Every alarm bell in Lailah’s head was screaming at her to do something. Her manifestations were at her beck and call for moments exactly like this. She could have Michael blast one -- Atropos, probably -- and then swap over to Chalkydri while they were all still reeling to carry her to safety. But then Lailah noticed the subtle step and stutter-step the Fates did, ensuring that wherever one of her phantasms might manifest, it was always at just inconvenient enough a spot where, if they were ready, they’d react in time enough to spoil the whole plan. Lailah caught Lachesis’ eye then -- or her approximation of where they must be behind her blindfold -- and the Fate flashed her a wicked grin. “Do you want to guess?” Clotho said. “You’re smarter than most, you might just get it.” Lailah chanced the opportunity to sit up. The orbs above her head shifted, and so did the Fates. “You’re demonstrating your power over me,” she said. “I understand that much. Both in what you’re trying to make me say and just now. But I also get the feeling that if I just say, ‘Power,’ you’re going to say I’m wrong.” “And this runs up against the nature of our faith. ‘The world is ending unless we believe it not to be so,’ cheering on Zorro and Astra in their endless battle against Nyx. So what has changed? What the Fates put forward here is that these two points are not contradictory -- the world has always been ending. It is brought to its knees every time some S-Class threat pops up and needs the entire community to push it back down.”“Closer than all the other ones, though!” Clotho said. “Yeah, by the end of this you might think we’re just nitpicking on terms,” Lachesis said. “It’s ‘violence,’ actually,” Atropos said. “Though not the sort of violence that you might be thinking of.” “See, I was reading this book- well, part of a book -- an essay, really. I won’t bore you with the details, but it defined ‘violence’ as ‘an infringement upon another’s will to act.’ “Maybe that’s pretentious, but then again, I bet you’re going to tell Vic we accosted you in your room.” “Maybe even ‘attacked.’” “We haven’t hurt you, though, right?” “Anyways,” the way Lachesis said the word was pointed, but she didn’t actually seem annoyed at her sisters. “The essay then asked the question, ‘Who has the authority to do violence?’ And the answer to that isn’t any one person. Nobody should have that right, of course. But someone has to have it, to keep everybody else in line -- the state!” “It’s called ‘Social Contract Theory,’” Atropos said. “We all give up some freedom to keep everybody else in check.” All three of the Fates looked so smug, but Lailah seized upon an opportunity to push back. “Well now, hold on,” she said. “If that’s what you’ve been after all this time, why not join up with G3? They even have a program for rehabilitated villains. I’m sure you could do good there, and you’d certainly get what you want.” “Oh, sorry,” Clotho said. “That’s another weird definition mix-up.” “Yeah, ‘the state’ means the whole kit and kaboodle. Do adults still say that? G3, Peacekeepers, all the gangs. That’s all the state. We’re all wrapped up with each other. Sure, there’s conflict, but it’s measured conflict, isn’t it? There’s still an understanding between everyone.” “The world has always been ending.” The manuscript Lailah had received had this point bolded and underlined, so she said it again for emphasis. “The world has always been ending. I want- The Fates want people to understand what that means. It means this is the world we’re stuck with. There’s no getting out of it. “Or does it?” And here was the part Lailah had been dreading. It wasn’t strictly a redefinition of keeping the faith -- The Fates had done their homework there -- but it was still a new doctrine, and no matter how many times she insisted someone else had introduced it, someone was going to take her at her word. “If this world is going to end -- is always going to end -- what happens if we change the world first? That’s what the Fates are working on, but you can do some small part as well. Find a way the world could be made more just and act upon it! That is your homework for this week. And if you can’t identify something you would change, at least stay out of the way of those that can.” “The purpose of a system is what it does,” Atropos said. “This G3 and three gangs system has been around as long as anybody can remember. There’s no point in arguing otherwise. We’re part of the state too.” “That’s where the authority of these favors comes from,” Clotho said. “We don’t need to threaten you further. If you don’t follow through with your end of the bargain, you’re rejecting the status quo itself. And we all know what happens to those who do that.” “Unfair?” Lachesis said. “Certainly. But like we said, we want the violence to change that. The state may have a monopoly on violence, but it spends it all fighting to maintain itself. We’ll play ball. We don’t want Scarlet City to descend into chaos any more than anyone else does. But the state’s always looking for a new S-Class -- a new exterior threat. It’s not going to look inward and find out it’s a snake eating itself.” “Until it’s too late.” THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17 164 DAYS REMAIN “None of this matters! Direct force alone drives the history of the world. I guess what I’m saying is I’m the one with a gun, so none of your arguments really matter.” -Simone Weil (as depicted in Existential Comics by Corey Mohler) Americana The weather quickly took a turn for the worse. There was a windstorm on November 14th that only served as a portent for the rain, snow, and then an awkward sort of slush flurry that followed. To call the temperature “tolerable” was a generous adjective. It was just cold enough to be uncomfortable, but just warm enough that you couldn’t use it as an excuse to not go outside. And yet, indoors, in the G3 Headquarters building, there was such a flurry of activity that it raised the interior temperature by a few degrees at least. The worst part was that nobody was really sure why. The precognitive Thinkers at G3 were getting all sorts of signals, though nobody could be sure of what any of the warnings meant. Eventually, that energy did convene into something. It was going to be a full meeting, but slowly, as the time of the meeting approached, the required staff wore down until many just received an email detailing what was expected of them. Unfortunately, Aeon and Override were not included in that list, and so they and a few others found themselves in another one of G3’s many meeting rooms. At least it wasn’t the sweatbox. Director Sekelsky was there, as were Bard, Roy, and Sarah. “Where’s DEUS?” the director asked. Sarah answered first. “Someone saw him going up and down High Street handing out umbrellas.” “How nice of him,” Victor rolled his eyes. “Okay, so: We’ve got people monitoring the Archangel and her associates after the Moray Clan’s little stunt on Sunday,” he said. “We’re following up on people who were there, making sure they’re not about to do something… unwise. Catty Key’s in contact with the Zodiac and making sure they’re not doing anything out of the ordinary, and obviously we’re following up on anything that snake Ophiuchus says too. Which leaves…” He focused in on the group of people he was addressing. “Last week, Override returned to us with a tip that Arcturus, a former Gibbons member, was about to make a play for Tidebinder’s seat at the table. Tidebinder’s signature on the S-Class Addendum Accord came with the condition of protection against this exact sort of scramble for power, which means we’re obligated to provide some measure of assistance. But, given the exact nature of Tidebinder’s…” It wasn’t clear if he was struggling to find the right word or emphasizing a euphemism, “business, we’re not going to send the whole kit and kaboodle to her aid. In fact, we know some of you might have hesitations about working with the gangs in this way, so hopefully this can just be sorted out by some plucky volunteers. “The rest of you are being added to the security force surrounding our excavation-” “Autopsy…” Bard chimed in. “our- G3’s autopsy of Project Rubicon. You’ll proceed to the operation site and report to Snapshot when you get there. If we’re covering all our bases, we should have everything covered that we can plan for. Everything else, well, stay flexible and hope for the best.” Things in the Moray Clan camp were much calmer. It was probably colder too, but it was manageable. The Fates had all swapped their outfits for sweaters of similar swirling color fabric, Arcturus was pacing around, full of nervous energy. Everyone else was dealing in their own way. That said, the pacing eventually got so distracting that Clotho decided to step in. “Hey,” she said, which caused Arcturus to flinch so hard she nearly went airborne. “It’ll be fine, right? These are all people you’ve vouched for, it was practically your plan, you know we’re competent… There shouldn’t be any worries at all.” “Besides, you already owe Sibyl the favor,” Atropos said. “No takesies-backsies allowed.” Arcturus looked up at the ceiling of the hideout and muttered, “The weather’s bad. I hate flying when the weather’s bad. And Tidebinder-” “Well, you won’t have to be flying for very long, at least. Just enough to carry out your part of your plan,” Lachesis said. “And Tidebinder, well, if everyone does their job, she won’t have the opportunity to take advantage, right?” There were a few Moray Clan agents besides Sibyl in the room, each of whom she could have recognized in a passing fashion, but there was also one person in the group Arcturus had brought with her that Sibyl would have recognized: Lucky Cat, who was currently crouched and holding a bit of fire in her palm, clearly pleased that her power had supplied her with warmth in such a moment. Once Arcturus had sorted herself out enough to address everyone, she did so: “The hardest part of all this is going to be the approach. Tidebinder’s got Legion on her side, so she could easily be on the lookout for suspicious activity. We’ll be splitting up into small groups to keep things low-key and converge on the Casino. If you do get spotted, try not to engage. Just disguise your movements. Double back if you have to. Once we’re close, we’ll knock out the power -- and the backup generators -- and overwhelm Tidebinder to the point of surrender. So: Questions? Or is everybody ready to give Tidebinder the business?” OOC

what you will and get a future waifu - spring 2025

kanto - bulbasaur, charmeleon, blastoise johto - totodile, bayleef, typhlosion hoenn - mudkip, grovyle, blaziken sinnoh - piplup, monferno, torterra unova - snivy, dewott, emboar kalos - chespin, braixen, greninja galar - litten, brionne, decidueye paldea - quaxly, floragato, skeledirge