Who: Everyone who goes to the Mediation Center
When: September 24
Where: Underneath Region 5
What: Rescues, bossfights, and decisions
Warnings: Manipulation, mindfuck, brainwashing, violence, and any trauma you might bring. Label your headers!

Running. Fighting. However you've spent the last few weeks, it's been a busy time. The overwhelming force brought to bear against the reclamation depot was successful in re-arming most combatants, and those targeting the network hub managed to safeguard your communications, disrupt the Savrii's, and download no small amount of data on the side. Soldiers and noncombatants alike have built defenses and helped each other stay safe against the killers that tried to intrude. A few individuals have even tried to sway the public.

Still, there are those who haven't been successful. And whether in death or in captivity, a select few of your number are no longer by your side.

Both before and after the disappearance of their friends, a subset of those fighting the Savrii have made it their mission to track down a certain lair. Streets were scoured. Mediation centers searched. Some turned their focus to interrogation, others to following traces left by those who disappeared. Analysis of the communication data turned up a secured relay in Region Five, and as the pieces start to come together, those who promised Mother aid will hear from her again. Two minds that she formed bonds with have filtered back to her awareness. Shadowed—changed—but... not so far. Under the ground.

As convenient as the sudden re-emergence is, you have little choice but to pursue it. And with the added vector, a way beneath can be turned up. Past Region Five's sewers, in a transfer point linked to the EN-line, lies a set of tunnels wide enough to hold a single car that end in a plain, unassuming door. A chokepoint? Kill zone? The assumption wouldn't be unreasonable, but no matter how long you prepare outside, no one will come. It's even unlocked.

The path to understanding is one everyone must choose to take.

explore

One goal of this trip will be met at its beginning. A few adjoining passages off the entrance lead to a control room with a unique console: one capable of shutting down the Artifixx device locking the Ingress Complex off. Once this is done, the team waiting aboveground can embark on their own mission. Those exploring the center will find their own uses for the room; a map of the complex can be turned up, and the console also offers control over the doors. No monitoring devices appear to be included, though. Apparently, those in charge saw no need.

Saw being the operative phrase. The entry passages give ways to halls and rooms, styled similarly to the temporary residences placed in Region 6. This complex is far more extensive, however—even if now, as then, you seem to be the only persons present.

A small infirmary with soft blankets and warm lights. A set of classrooms and meeting spaces, with circular tables designed to foster unity among a group. The library, full of books and datafiles about the Savrii's history, ready and waiting to educate those in need. There's even a small garden. It's all solid and real. All comforting and kind. A place of learning. Of rest. Just waiting to be filled.

And, perhaps, not recently abandoned. Those who search the rooms in depth will turn up recent indentations on the beds. A hair or two, from restless sleepers, or a residual scent. Your friends were here. They weren't alone. And if you search enough halls and passages, you can find the way down.

reflect

At the bottom of the complex lies a stair. At the bottom of the stair lies a passage, and it's around here that communications to the world above cut out completely. Shaped stone progresses to an unshaped cave, and while the stairs down were illuminated, this chamber glows only with a dim silver light—produced, it seems, by something on the ground. Water?

A pool.

Its light illuminates robed figures, standing in the space ahead. All wear the silver cloth that marks the intermediaries. All regard you silently, features muted and distorted in the dark. For once, at last, the intermediaries of Thisavrou have no words for you and yours. But as you step forward, as your weapons raise, the light from the pool flares up.

Reality mirrors, and then melts away.

The Protected:

While all parties present will be affected by the pool's reflections, those who took the link with Mother will be shielded to a degree. For you, perceptions blur and shadow, replacing the sight of those around you with a myriad of ghost-forms. Some turn on you. Some move away. Some wear the robes of the intermediaries, while others look more like those you know—as allies in this place, or enemies back home. While characters who fall within this group will have trouble discerning illusion from reality, it is clear to them illusions are in play. It will also be clear, however, that some attacks are very real. Are the attackers your friends, distorted and confused by simulations? Or your enemies, using them as cover to strike out? You're in the best position to sort one from the next, but it still won't be easy.

The Affected:

Those without safeguards will find the simulations much more solid and complete. Is there an enemy you failed to defeat? A friend you wronged, or lost, or were betrayed by? Or perhaps your focus truly is single-minded, your greatest enemy the intermediaries you came to stand against. Whoever you fear most; whatever you failed or want to confront, you'll find it here beside you, by the pool. This vision threatens your life, your friends, and your purpose. Fight, be killed, or run out into the darkness, but your nightmares—and your enemies—won't stand idle.

The Controlled:

There are those you came to rescue. There are others, who lived in this place before you came. The intermediaries do not fight, not with fists or weaponry, but they have followers still ready to risk their lives on their behalf. And they have captives who have been given no choice at all. Mixed in among the ghosts and nightmares are the Savrii loyalists and the player characters they have taken. Each has their own reasons, but they will attack you, and the harm they do is very, very real.

As is yours.

For all individuals, in all categories of effect, the light from the pool remains the one fixed focus. Silvery and warm, clear and vibrant: a glimmering center where all reflections coalesce. To break the illusion, its power needs to be blocked—through literal obstruction, or destruction at its source. Contact with the water holds great risk, and can bring you further into the simulations, but once the pool is dealt with, all effect will disappear.

choices

You stand in a natural cave of unshaped stone. Without the pool, the only lights are what you brought, but all of them at least show you the truth. The companions who came with you, and the ones you came to save. The handful or so of other bodies mixed into the fight—barely a dozen individuals in total. And at the back of the chamber, a group twice that in number, arrayed in robes and silver cloth.

The intermediaries do not repent.

With the focus broken, their powers are too weak to alter your minds here. Still, if you allow it, they will speak. They insist their actions were for the betterment of Thisavrou. They insist they saved it from the harm dealt out by you and yours. Converse as long as you would like to—or as long as your allies will wait.

But in the end, it comes to your decision.

[For more information, and to participate in the vote regarding the intermediaries' fate, check out the OOC post linked above. The setting transition will occur immediately after this log; you're welcome to thread smaller-scale aftermath things, but please avoid dating anything more than an hour or so forward.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[The protests fall upon ears that have learned to train out such falsities. They do not exist. He is little more than a false recreation - some empty-shelled husk, meant to trick them, meant to spur them into stopping. They will not stop. They do not stop, not for a mess of aliens who oppose the Savrii.]

[Who oppose the only people with the power to remake and destroy them.]

[The power to remake and destroy the real Asriel.]

[There's an earsplitting shrill of crimson-worked steel off the curve of the disk. Interesting. These...things seem to favor the same sort of fighting style that Asriel himself did. A disk. Perhaps it has his mind nestled away in it.]

[As if they could be trusted around such a thing.]

[The child spins, seeking to take the legs out from under him with a well-placed kick aimed at his knees.]

Chara, stop! Don't-!

[Whoops, too late. He lets out a surprised squeak as he falls onto his back. He gets a brief look at their face - and their expression is practically unrecognizable. Almost like Chara doesn't even know it's him...]

Wait wait stop, it's me! It's really me! What are you doing?!

[Did it think them stupid? That it could force them into submission with a pretty trick, a face they can say they remember? They see the faces of everyone they've failed in those they've killed. This is no exception.]

[The undiluted, unalloyed power of someone determined not to slip, and make things worse for everyone in the process.]

[There is no answer to his pleas. Instead, they rear back, the Knife gripped firmly in two hands as it swings up above their head.]

[Ready to strike a killing blow.]

[Visuals are still glitched. Audio works a little better, and even when the vocal tones shift in and out, words seem to make it through intact. Still, it's not just Asriel's pleas that draw Rinzler to the scene. It's not just the name he speaks.

It's an ID. A signature that Rinzler's been tracking for days now. That he followed all the way to here.

Chara.

As their knife comes down, they will find it intercepted. Not by one disk, but by two, paired and matched to catch their blade between the curves. Rinzler knows what this place is for, and Chara's intent isn't difficult to understand. But here and now, it won't be executed.

He made them a promise.]

[Asriel flinches, waiting for the killing blow. His breath stops in his throat, as he tries to reassurance himself that it's okay, it probably won't hurt this time-

The blow doesn't come, and the sound of metal against metal causes him to look up.

It's...]

Rinzler! I can't - I can't get Chara to answer me!

[His tone sounds a little desperate. He doesn't know what to do for them, or what's going on.]

[Twin - ]

[Disks?]

[No.]

[Their vision blurs. A sharp shake of the head. Not disks. Can't be disks, not possibly. There's the skid of sparks, and whatever it is that counts for a blade, whatever it is these things are using that counts for one. Whatever it is they think will trick them into slowing down. But they won't. They won't.]

[They lunge instead for the secondary target - the more combative one, and thus the one that requires dealing with before they can move on to the next.]

[Disks. Twinned and matched. Flaring red in each locked grip, although the edges dim slightly past their usual gradient of lethal. Chara lunges inward, and they twist ahead, crossed forearms catching the child's smaller arm between them as Rinzler coils for his own leap. Neither of his blades will slice towards their body, but Rinzler's own frame twists in quick rotation—dragging Chara with, and hopefully, dumping them right on the ground. Success or failure, he'll hold position, staying between Asriel and the new fight.]

Rectified.

[The word is short and harsh—no surprise, not here, not now. Still, the rise of Rinzler's ticking growl sounds just as little pleased as it had been the last time he spoke that word around these two.]

[Rectified. It's a word that Asriel's heard once, and directed towards him. Some ridiculous idea that Rinzler and Chara had in their heads, that Clu had done something to his disk - brainwashed him, instead of helping him.

But now Rinzler was saying it happened to Chara? Asriel had lost sight of them in the confusion of well, everything. It makes his stomach turn that something had happened to them while Asriel was busy trying to scrape by and survive the many guards armed and ready to hunt him down.

Useless. He's always so useless...

Even right now, he can only stand and watch as Rinzler protects him from Chara's attack.]

Chara, please stop! We're not enemies!

[It doesn't make sense. Flashes, those they can endure. Periodic moments where the faces of those at home (at Home) would crop up among the nameless masses in the crowd. But they would soon fade, in time. When the bodies lay with blood of multiple colorations pooling in the dirt or across the shined sleek of metal, there would only be the memory of life after life they have taken, and nothing more.]

[Nothing. Nothing more.]

[It is fast, they make no mistake. It traps them to the ground easily, and they cannot FIGHT. They cannot think. But, with patience...]

[With patience?]

[Patience gets them killed. Gets Frisk taken away, gets Asriel taken away. The snarl drags at the back of their throat as they strain, wordless, to try and throw that great weight off their back.]

[The target hits the ground, and Rinzler shifts into place: knee over spine, pinning and immobilizing. The target hits the ground, and Chara thrashes, and Rinzler has no idea how to make them stop. The world around is still sharp and blurred, shadows shifting in and out of proximity. He wouldn't expect them to do anything but fight, under the circumstances—but if he gives them space to run, there's no telling how long it might take to find them.]

...Talk.

[To Asriel, though Rinzler certainly won't object if Chara takes the advice too. Even when they'd fought before they'd still been talking: to him, to their double, looping circles with their words, but never coming to a halt.

They haven't spoken yet. He wonders if they can. Or if they're listening.]

Diagnostics.

Arc II Final Log A: Therapy

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