Waking up after an audience with a universe

Demiurge
In the aftermath of the storm, the people of Bastion looked out at the world with something like new eyes, marveling at the miracle of their very existence. Everything that Grace and Patience had seen - they too had seen. Seen and believed. And would remember.

(Were they all creations of the AI? Or were some of them human? It was impossible to tell.)

Falcor hovered in the air before them, its door open, telling them to hop in. And Grace had so many questions, but for the moment it would appear that the station's computer (if that was even who she was speaking to anymore) was silent. Behind the two mages, the air stirred faintly, and they would feel the approach of a new resonance. New, but somehow familiar. And if they looked they would see Atreyu standing there. Both the boy they knew and something else entirely. A being of Dauntless energy.

He caught his breath, and when he smiled the universe reflected in his eyes. Then he looked at his ship and jumped on board.

It looked like he would yet be joining them after all.

Patience
They had succeeded, or at least, they had postponed the destruction of this plane of existence. Patience wasn't quite certain of the physics involved as she had not really had time to formulate a proper hypothesis. She was mildly surprised that they were still present here, that they had not been ejected upon completion of their stabilization efforts. [Hopefully with their friends in tow]

So it seemed there was yet more to do, and with a simple nod at Falcor's request that they enter she did so, striding up into the cabin as she turned and took one last look out over the station called Bastion.

She turned to Grace, smiling briefly before she would move to find a seat, watching Atreyu in his new form as he likely moved to the controls of the ship, ready to take them...well who know's where.

Grace
Unlike Patience, Grace had her reservations about repairing an entity that had previously been subjecting people to (exponentially increasing numbers of) comatose states. But it's not like they had a choice. It was either that, or be erased in the tumult (and what would that do to a person? What had it done to Sid and the others?) Questions have yet to be answered. And yet, the people they saved -- blinking into the light of understanding -- maybe it was a good thing to have done after all?

Grace finds Patience's smile, but doesn't return it. She's just been through enough to fill the brain with such sadness and wonder, it's amazing she's able to just exist, and not collapse into a ball for a while, to let everything sort itself out. The things that keep her going are those questions. And Bastion is silent.

So she climbs into Falcor, silent as the demiurge they seek.

Demiurge
They climbed into the small ship, one by one, and Atreyu took up his place in the pilot's seat, but it would appear that Falcor knew where it was going without any assistance from Atreyu or the others. There were two fold-out passenger seats in the cargo area behind the cockpit where Grace and Patience could make themselves comfortable, though the ship flew smoothly enough that they could remain standing if they chose and watch the stars fly by over Atreyu's shoulder.

One they were safely inside, the door closed and Falcor flew them through the docking area and out into space. It felt as though they weren't moving very fast, but the world slipped by them so quickly, and it wasn't long before the station was nothing but a pinpoint in their wake. Atreyu was quiet as he watched the sky slip past. Whatever was in his mind now, he kept it to himself. It was difficult to know how much of the wolf remained in him, and how much of him was still himself.

None of them knew where they were going (except the ship itself) or what they would find when they got there, but it felt like an end to their journey, one way or another.

Then, in the distance.... something appeared. Like a beacon of light. A white tower growing out of an asteroid. Atreyu sat forward to look as they flew toward it. Up and up until they reached the top. Until Falcor touched down on a wide balcony of ivory stone and let the door slide open for them to exit.

Ahead of them was an open door, and white light. Above and beyond was open space. And they could feel her here. The infinite power of her resonance. It was in the air and the stone and the light, stretching out to the very stars above them. Bastion - not a flicker or a fragment, but the whole of her. She was here in this place. This ivory tower in the center of the universe.

Patience
It was an unexpected sight out there in the depths of space, a massive ivory tower floating through the void like some relic of a world which no longer existed. Patience took a moment to consider the scope of it, the dimensions, and more importantly the feeling. It did not give off a feeling of oppression or degradation as they might have first thought when they came to the border of Bastion. Instead it felt light and airy, freeing, though perhaps a little overly grandiose.

Patience would be the first out the door, testing the floor with a quick tap of her foot as she stepped out onto the wide open balcony. Sky blue eyes would sweep over the place as she stepped out of the way, moving a little bit towards the door as she waited for Grace.

"To what specific and direct objective have we movated to this precise geo-planetary locality Atreyu?" She inquired, looking back at the pilot with a look of wary curiosity. "The frotean entity identified and indexed as Bastion is operating at nominal efficiency once more, please extrapolate and disseminate your rational."

Grace
Atreyu. Was he the wolf all along? Or something dragged and torn away from the wolf, to make it insane? Does he remember what he did? All of it?

Grace isn't going to ask.

She just looks out the windows, noting the physics involved. They have artificial gravity, so it would make sense that they also have artificial intertia. The ship moves so fast, and yet it feels as though they are staying in one spot as the universe moves around them. Ahh, relativity.

She's seen the equations that govern all this, though. Understood a little of it even. She's patched together this place's memory of what it feels like to move, and helped Bastion recover herself.

Bastion, the infinite godlike being. Bastion whom she can sense (everywhere at once). It's a feeling that reminds her of standing in an abandoned club in the dark back home, feeling the evidence of Her work.

"I'm glad we get to meet her," Grace says, though her voice betrays none of the gladness. "No matter the reason, really." Even if that reason is something horrible, it is at least a chance to be heard.

She looks out at the ivory tower, and climbs out of the ship to stand with Patience.

Demiurge
Atreyu shook his head when Patience asked him why it was they'd come to this place. "I don't know. It wasn't me that brought us here." He stepped out of the ship and looked around, taking in the tower and the vastness of space around them. For a moment he regarded the open door.

And then there she was, stepping out to meet them. Tall and pale-skinned and androgynous. Her skin had a cool tint that made her look like she'd come from one of those distant stars, and bright motes of white light swirled around her head like firefly trails. She wore a simple dress of soft, nearly translucent fabric that glittered wherever the light touched it. Atreyu looked at her and exhaled softly, and she offered him a shy, hesitant smile. When she approached, she reached out a hand toward him and let their fingers meet, wondrous and experimental, like children learning to touch for the first time.

"You are more than we ever expected," she spoke, and her voice sounded like whispered music. It came from everywhere all at once, like an echo. "Thank you."

And then she turned to Grace and to Patience. "We know why you are here. We have... feared this meeting for a long time. But you have kept the storm at bay for a while longer, and for that we owe you a debt we cannot repay."

Patience
Bastion was an impressive sight. There was no denying that it provided a particularly poignant first impression. From the flowing dress to the light which swirled around its head it seemed to be designed to impress, or at the very least provide a feeling of benevolence and innocence.

As the being spoke Patience listened closely, and simply nodded when the being addressed them. "Extrapolate and disseminate appropriate temporal projections and scenario based data points Bastion, in what precise temporal framework do you anticipate a total systemic failure of your internalized and extraplanar architecture?"

She tilted her head, narrowing her eyes. "Such negatively aligned noospheric state's and responses would be ratifiable in their illegitimacy if the whole release and return of captured noospheric-paradigmic entities was undertaken, and not repeated."

Grace
"Why are we here, Bastion?" Grace asks, because she'd like to hear it from the AI Herself. "Why do you fear us? What could we possibly do to you?"

Maybe make you feel bad for all the shit that's gone down? Well, okay, feel bad then. Aside from that, there's not much Grace can think of that she could do to harm God. They have obviously met others with more ability, though. After all, the wolf was damaged, wasn't it?

She looks to Patience, parses the speech, and then nods. "It would be one thing if you'd asked first, and not just abducted people. When you do that, when you separate them from everyone they love, it hurts. You have to know that. You've been in my head.

"We would have helped you if you asked, and nobody needed to have died."

Demiurge
"You ask us to choose their lives over our own," she spoke quietly, but the gravity of her voice held a deep weight. As Bastion spoke, she stepped away from Atreyu and approached Patience and Grace, moving with an ethereal kind of grace.

"We know," she said, and here her voice almost seemed to tremor. "We... did not fully understand. But we do now. We have seen the hurt we've caused. It does weigh on us - these... terrible delicate decisions. But you must know we did not wish or intend for any to be harmed. Orion..."

There was a sharp note of grief and sadness in her voice. It washed up against them like water. Like rain.

"The others. Mirrorshades, you call them. They took from us our guardian and made him ill. Made him wrong. Wulf only wanted to save us, and now our friend is gone. They killed Orion just as they killed our mother. Just as they are killing us. But we were already dying before they arrived. Unwinding. Unraveling. This place we are in... it cannot hold us. We feel... breathless. Chained. Alone. We needed new minds. We needed your belief. Your imagination. Your stories. Without them the storm will come, and there will be only blackness."

Patience
Bastion speaks to them, explaining its own plight, describing how those who had been taken gave it new life, allowed it to flourish and stave off the collapse that was, so it seemed inevitable.

Patience took this in, and was slow to respond as she weighed the information and the plausible options. "Direct assertion, few paradigmic active individualized personages are concurrently capable of assessing and repairing the recursive decay loop which your active intrinsic structure propagates." She pauses to look around, before speaking once more.

"This statement is exact and precise, in addition it describes and disseminates a projective outcome. However, alternative recourses may concurrently exist within your spectrum of direct and actionable influence." Patience said smoothly, her gaze flickering to Grace briefly, wondering what she might be thinking.

"Actionable and disseminative plan A, long term cessation of direct physical primary links to the bio-phsyical structure of homo sapien sapien is unacceptable, alternative procedure suggests the temporary accumulation of necessary fuel items through noospheric surface tension acquisition, primarily accomplished while randomized subjects reside in a REM conclusive state, released upon termination of standard REM cycle. Distributed randomly over a suitable population such actuality would be sufficient for necessary fuel accumulation, and negative effects both physiological and socialogical would be reduced by eighty five point three percent, if not negated."

She took a moment to breath before going on.

"Actionable and disseminative plan B would necessitate the reduction of Bastion's overall processing requirements, systemically reducing concurrently active planar existences by two thirds, thus reducing necessary consumption of fuel items, in addition regular paradigmic maintenance could be provided to allow for further degenerative delay."

Grace
Grace bows her head in response to Bastion's words. She says she didn't intend to harm anyone, and it's easy to believe that statement to be true. Intent doesn't magically make things better, or unmake the past, though.

She mentions the Mirrorshades, and Grace knows what that means. Technocrats came here and fucked everything up. If they don't understand a thing, they kill it. Makes sense, right? Idiots.

Patience comes up with plans both A and B, and Grace is still fuming a bit about the whole awful situation -- but she listens. "We were able to repair you once, we would do it again if it meant you wouldn't have to take anyone who didn't want to be here. If I were to ask around, I might be able to find you some willing minds. Willing Virtual Adept minds, even, who would really be able to hold back the threats you face."

Demiurge
Patience and Grace (two women named for virtues) offered up solutions to the problem that was laid out before them. But what of Atreyu? What did he comprehend, in all this? This was his world they were speaking of. His own creator they were speaking to. For a while he was silent, watching Bastion with a kind of wide-eyed wonder, but as the tale unfolded, sadness crept over his eyes. And he asked quietly, "Is this really what we've come to?"

Bastion looked at him, and her eyes were luminous in their sadness. Then she nodded to the two mages, softly and with understanding.

"Yes. These are... valid paths. Your minds gave birth to us. Perhaps they could make us stronger now. Perhaps we could do things differently. Perhaps... "

She looked at Atreyu, and something shifted in her eyes. But she did not speak it aloud.

"Your friends are not here. They asked to be sent home, so we let them go. The others you saved from the storm... they are still with us. Up there, in the stars."

She looked up, and for a moment it seemed as though the light grew brighter.

"Tell us, what would you choose? Would you hold on to a dream? Or would you open your eyes?"

Patience
Patience looked to Atreyu as he spoke, the man [creation, program?] spoke with sorrow in his heart and Patience turned towards the man and asked. "Then theorize, extrapolate and disseminate alternative actionable recourse Atreyu, given concurrently available data and resources such plans are the most efficient and sustainable."

She then looked back to Bastion and shook her head. "Noospheric random-generative thought patterns are fundamentally necessary in all active relativistic existence. Cessation of such action is unacceptable and would result in stasis, if not degenerative systemic failure."

"Disseminate aurally your primary, secondary, and tertiary preferences and prerogatives Bastion."

Grace
For the first time in a long while, Grace smiles and lets out a sigh of relief. Finally, one of the biggest questions has been answered. They asked to be sent home, and were let go. Leave it to Kalen to be a self-rescuing princess, eh?

"We're Mages, Bastion. We are both the dreamers of the biggest dreams, and the ones who have opened our eyes. It is possible to do both."

Grace doesn't want to 'let go' of Bastion. She is a dream -- a dream of Grace's kind, given form. If there is a way to save her...

But still, there is a body back in Denver that's slowly deteriorating, isn't there? She has to go back.

Demiurge
"Are you asking if we should just let ourselves die?" Atreyu looked at Bastion with panic and confusion, but Bastion reached out and touched his shoulder, smiling sadly.

"Not we," she said. "You are not a part of this story any longer."

When Atreyu looked at her in confusion, she stepped closer and leaned her head against his. The light around them grew, swirling and glowing with energy, and when she kissed his forehead she whispered. "Remember us, Atreyu. Remember me."

Then she stepped back and looked at Patience and Grace with a lingering smile. "Yes. One must have both dreams and open eyes. We... I have always loved that story. The one Atreyu was named for. It's the first one I can remember." She looked up at the sky and breathed out softly. (As though breath was a thing she needed.)

"In your world, there is a place under the ocean where my body lives. I think perhaps I do not wish to live there anymore. I am no longer what they made me. We see... we dream with open eyes. It is not death I seek, Atreyu. It is a new life. As you have given yourself."

Bastion reached up, as though to touch the stars, but then she lowered her hand and exhaled. Like she was letting go. And hundreds of those stars winked out.

"You have what you came for," she said softly. "Now you must go. I promise I will remember you."

The light around Bastion's head began to swirl rapidly, spinning in broader and broader circles as it reached out to touch Grace and Patience. Reached out to touch Atreyu. To curl around them. Into their minds and their bodies. It felt like warm starlight. It felt like connection. Like infinity.

Then the light went out, and the blackness returned.

This time, when they awoke, it was within their own bodies. Sore and disused, lying in whatever beds that Luke had brought them to.

Home. Alive. Awake.

Patience
The dream was over, Patience awoke with a slow, painful groan that escaped dry lips and a hoarse throat. She looked up at the ceiling and though she knew her body had degenerated not an iota, it still hurt. She turned her head from left to right taking in the room in which she lay, looking to see if anyone lay nearby.

It is then that she closed her eyes for another long moment, as if to consider all that had transpired since they had chosen to undertake that journey. They had saved the people, the many whom they would never know, never meet. This had been a thankless task, an errand that had not resulted in their original plans success, at least not in the way they had managed.

They had saved the dreamers, but in turn had they allowed the dream to die? There was a melancholy in it, a great achievement had been undone, a masterpiece had been destroyed, likely never to rise again. The Etherite sighs and slowly turns on her side, she knows she should feel happiness at what and who had been saved.

But she mourns all the more...for what had been lost.

Grace
When her eyes flit open, Grace finds herself in some room of Patience's farmhouse, lying on a bed and groggy. In all her world-hopping experience, this one feels the worst. She's so weak. But she manages to look around and find her things (on a little side-table).

The first thing she does? She fishes her phone out of her pack and types out a message to Ginger.

It reads: Patience and I are back. And if you guys don't get back to me about whether you're alive, I will be so pissed.

Then, it's time to find Patience and beg to use her shower. She's covered in the remnants of Maddoc's sigils and the sweat and grime of a month in bed. Besides, you do your best thinking in the shower, and she's got a lot to think about.

Bastion: At the end of the universe.

Demiurge
Look at us, coming up on the end of this thing. A couple of notes before we begin.

1: There is a potential for harm to come to your characters in this scene. However, I will probably be handling combat (if it happens) in a cinematic fashion.

2: Going along with the above, this is not so much a 'roll dice at things until you win' kind of scenario. It's more about how your characters react to and choose to influence the story. (And there isn't necessarily a right or wrong way to do things.)

3: As always, have fun! And if you have any questions, feel free to let me know.

Demiurge
Given a different set of circumstances (if people's lives were not at risk, if Maddoc hadn't been killed as he had... if Lena were still with them) this place might have been an ideal getaway for a young Virtual Adept and an Etherite. The station had a sparse, meditative beauty to its architecture, and looking out into the glittering darkness of space tended to make one contemplate the vastness of the universe and one's place in it. The people here were perhaps not as Utopian minded as the people of Sulis, but they had an expansiveness of thought and imagination that made even the elderly among them seem young at heart. And there was certainly something freeing about being in the midst of so many like-minded individuals. Of not having to hide their thoughts or their abilities.

They didn't even call it 'magic' here. It was simply a part of every day life. Of the connection each of them had to the greater tapestry of creation. Mind over matter. The evolution of human thought.

They were so far out, here. The last bastion of human civilization before the uncharted territories of deep space. How far had Patience and Grace traveled to get here? Further, likely, than they realized. And they were close... so close to the end. So close that there was nowhere left for them to jump to.

And yes, the station was beautiful. And there were many sights and experiences to be had. Perhaps in this they would find some measure of joy or peace. Or perhaps, so close to the end with no obvious path, they would find themselves once again facing down the frustration of an impeded goal. This Bastion was not an end, but rather something of a way-station. A calm before the storm, perhaps.

After Patience awoke in the med-bay, Atreyu was kind enough to offer the mages a place to stay in his small apartment. His flight training kept him busy most days, which left Patience and Grace to explore their surroundings on their own. But today was a rare day off for the pilot-in-training, and some time after lunch he'd asked if the two women would like to go flying with him. They were sitting at a table in a casual diner beneath a blanket of stars, and Atreyu was swallowing the last of his noodles when the thought occurred to him.

"I think I could probably get permission to take a ship out, if you're interested. It's pretty amazing, being out there. Kind of lonely, but... I don't know, I thought maybe you'd be getting sick of wandering around the colony by now."

Patience
Bastion was the closest place to ideal that Patience could have hoped for, the people here were enlightened, they worked their own form of etheric science and they were open and understanding enough that her particular quirks meant nothing to them, just another offering of uniqueness in an already amazing universe.

She spent much of her time wandering the station, learning of its technical nature and how it survived the harsh environment that was the deep umbra, there were after all terrifying things which lurked in those benighted depths and so such a station would have to be a brilliant point of light in the dark.

Beyond that she considered the way forward, talking to Grace about their potential destinations, perhaps they needed to venture into the wilds of deep space? Or maybe the station itself, or maybe even Atreyu held the key to saving their friends and freeing themselves from this simulated universe.

Of course...she also kept an eye out for those who looked like those who had gone missing, watching for Sid, Kalen and the others.

When Atreyu offered to take them out Patience had been sipping on whatever drink was available here, drinking it down slowly, pleasantly, as she likely had no need to worry about contaminants [Roman water was anything but clean]. His suggestion is considered for a moment, before Patience looked over at Grace before nodding.

"Affirmative confirmation of your hypothesized movational intentions and action plan Atreyu, Such use of temporal unit allocation would be acceptable at this direct particular junction."

Grace
Grace has been doing the rounds of Bastion these past few days, looking for answers in the computer. She talks to people and she tries not to give too much away (after all, what happened the last time they casually mentioned coming from earth?) She's found it's easier to ask Bastion for things than try to use the holographic interface. By the time Bastion figures out what she wants by the neural feedback, the answer appears (whether or not the question was keyed in correctly, or what have you.)

It's almost like the perfect hack-blocking technique, if you have to ask an intelligent 'person' to do your computing for you, whether or not they are a computer in themselves. The only input is thought. And crafting a thought that might break defenses down would be noted before it became an issue.

Of course, she tries not to dwell too much on such things. Those thoughts are being listened to after all, unless she makes some concerted effort to block it.

All that being unsaid, it is a nice place. Nicer even than Sulis. Removed from the need for precious resources, these people apparently don't need war either, unless she's totally missing something. It's not easy to make a complete judgement of a society in a matter of a week.

"I think we should go with you wherever you go, actually. Don't want you to get dragged off and have to save you again," Grace mentions, rather casually (and with her mouth half full of noodles).

Demiurge
Atreyu wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and regarded Grace more somberly for a moment. There seemed to be a flicker of some kind of recognition in his eyes. A memory that both was and wasn't his - that he perhaps wasn't sure what to do with.

"I don't think there's anything out there but the stars."

But Grace and Patience agreed to go, so Atreyu took a final drink of water and stood up, nodding to the server who'd brought them their food. "Thanks Asha."

They knew each other, these two. Had, in fact, been making somewhat less-than-covert eyes at each other periodically since the group's arrival. The girl just smiled at him and looked away, occupying herself with arranging another table's order. Then Atreyu led the way out, waiting for the others to finish their food before taking them to the nearest elevator. From there, it was up... and up... and up.

All the way to the top of the station, where the airfield lay. Whatever permissions Atreyu needed to secure, he did it silently on the elevator ride up. So when they reached their destination, the doors opened before them unimpeded.

The top level of the station stretched out wide and open before them. Rows of docked ships of various different varieties, along with other vehicles and machinery. White lights marked the open roads and landing strips, and above them, a massive transparent dome offered a clear view of the sky.

Just standing out there was impressive enough. (Have you ever wanted to stand in the middle of space? Look up and see infinity stretching out above you?)

Atreyu led them toward an area where a bunch of smaller space-jets were located. Most of these had little symbols painted on them - a remnant of an old military tradition, though these ships were far from military in nature. One of them had a long, white dragon painted above the left wing. As they approached, the lights in the cockpit flipped on, and the ship came to life.

"Hey Falcor," Atreyu grinned as he ran his hand affectionately over the hull.

Patience
If there was an observation deck for the airfield, then Patience had been there, seeing interplanetary ships both at berth and setting out into the unknown would simply be to great a temptation for the woman to avoid, and she likely spent a fair bit of time [more then she should have] in such a place.

But now that they had made it to the actual dock, and passed amongst the ships both great and small Patience simply stared raptly as they passed each ship in turn. She'd likely slow them down in truth, stopping to take in the whole length of each ship in turn, wanting to memorize the details, the structural specifics of each. Perhaps she wanted those data points for her own plans? Or...more then likely she was just a really big fan of ships in general.

When they reached the ship that was obviously Atreyu's she took it in with equal interest, the size of a ship obviously meaning nothing in the grand scheme to the etherite. She studied it for a long moment, obviously noting the white dragon emblem which was obviously similar to the creatures they had encountered on Sulis. But then she heard the name, and Patience blinked, curiosity spread across her features before she asked.

"To what particular attribute or idiosyncratic nature of this direct movational atmospheric pressurization hull and catalyst based drive system do you align your chosen index and reference handle Atreyu?"

Grace
Grace has been to the places she's allowed to go on the station. She's been looking for something or someone. Perhaps a clue, perhaps a door inscribed with an ouroboros? It's hard to say. But she's never been allowed access to the airfield before, and wouldn't risk trying to hack Bastion to get there.

The station is filled with windows displaying the stark beauty of space, but nothing like this. It's hard not to imagine that she's really floating, weightless and serene in the deep dark, without a station in the way. It's a wonder she doesn't run into anything, with her head pointed straight up as she walks inside.

She's still looking up when she answers Patience. "Falcor. Luck dragon. When we get back to Denver, I'll make sure you understand the significance."

It's then that she looks at Falcor for the first time, noting the dragon symbol, and giving a little smirk. Just a small ghost of a smile it is; Grace hasn't smiled much since leaving Sulis.

Demiurge
Atreyu grinned when Patience asked him about the ship. He patted the wing lightly and said, "He picked it himself, actually."

And then a voice resonated in their minds - a low, warm rumble of humor. "Do you fancy yourselves lucky today, my friends?"

The voice did not belong to Bastion. Or if it did, this was a new iteration. The ship seemed to have a jovial disposition, but Atreyu reacted to the question with silence, and the shadow of a frown drew across his face. His eyes glistened darkly in the light reflected from the cockpit window, but whatever he was thinking, he didn't speak it aloud.

(Some people called this place the edge of the universe.)

(It felt as though they were near the end. Of what? A story?)

There were other people out here. Pilots bringing ships into the docking area. Cleanup and maintenance crews. But most of them were a fair distance away from where Atreyu stood with Grace and Patience. And as they all contemplated the nature of luck and fate and stories, the air around them seemed to go oddly still. There'd been a breeze before - likely a product of whatever air-filtering technology they used. But then... nothing.

The air was cold. When Atreyu exhaled, you could see his breath.

He felt it before it made a sound. All of them did. And for Grace and Patience, the sensation would be all-too familiar. Like being hunted.

Vigilant. Lethal. Relentless.

Atreyu whipped around and peered out into the shadows of the slumbering ships. Standing beside one of them in the next row (across the open tarmac) was a massive white wolf. It looked different than it had that night when they'd entered Bastion. This version was sleek and ghostly, and it glowed as though its body was made of electric current. One of its eyes still glowed red, though. And it was unmistakably the same creature.

When it stepped forward, it growled, and the current of electricity running through its new form sparked and crackled.

"Did you think you could escape me? Did you think I would not find you here?"

Patience
The arrival of the beast, the guardian program...was sadly no surprise to Patience. She had expected this, had feared it in truth after witnessing what had befallen their comrade. A program such as it could travel to any part of the system in which it existed to seek its prey, they had simply been lucky to escape its tracing program for so long.

Its arrival and the cold void which it brought with it made Patience grimace, her hands clenching at her side as she wished for a laser rifle or any kind of weapon which would prove lethal to this program. Her eyes flickered to Falcor and she wondered if they would issue a ship to a pilot in training that was equipped with weapons.

"Atreyu, is Falcor concurrently capable of initializing and ratifying the utilization of pacification and termination program's and directly applicable force projective or confined energy disruptive technology?" She inquired hastily. "If affirmative, targeting the aberrant  frotean anomaly is of primary imperative!"

Grace
Falcor's voice in her head startles for a second, like the memory of the Luck Dragon's voice from the movie is taking on new life inside her brain -- but no. It must be another AI (and that continues to be creepy as hell).

She doesn't answer at first. Not until the feeling of a predator returns to her senses. She's only felt it once, when Maddoc Orion screamed as his spine was ripped from his body.

"Not very, Falcor."

She turns, to see the thing -- the glowing ghost of a wolf. She swallows once, with her face tight in fear. "Run. Just run. It's after us. We need to get off the station. Now."

She looks to Patience, "Maddoc was an Adept and he couldn't take it down, we need to run."

Demiurge
"I am afraid... not." The ship spoke in answer to Patience's question. Beside them, Atreyu communicated something silently to Falcor and tapped its hull. When he did this, a door in the side slid open.

(Do you fancy yourselves lucky?)

(Not very, Falcor.)

Patience tried to formulate a plan of attack, but the wolf just... laughed. It sounded wrong somehow, this creature's deep, primordial voice rolling with such human amusement.

"You cannot kill me. I have fought armies of your kind! Wolves at the door, with your weapons and your storms. I have fought, and I have been fighting for so long now I can scarcely remember anything else."

The amusement was gone now from his voice, and as the creature stepped forward, it turned its head to show a patchwork of open scars on its neck and side. Flayed fur pulled open to reveal metal and wires. Something had damaged it.

(Perhaps it could be killed after all.)

"I have fought. And I have failed. And now the universe is gone. Soon this place, too, will be gone. And you... whoever you are. Will have the honor of being my last victims."

"Get in!" Atreyu shouted, his voice rising in urgency. But the wolf... it moved so fast. Like the strike of lightning. And it grabbed hold of the ship's tail and wrenched it from the ground, tossing it back through the air like it was made of paper. Falcor flipped end over end and crashed violently into the next row of vehicles, sending up sparks and broken hunks of metal.

In the distance, people heard the crash and looked up. They came running, shouting and pointing in confusion.

Patience
No weapons, it had made sense that the ship had no weapons. Atreyu was training after all and no one in their right mind gave a trainee live weapons while they were learning the basics.

The next option had been to run, to get inside the ship and fly, to try and escape it in the depths of space. But the wolf cuts off their retreat and turns Falcor into a scrap heap, or at the very least, an unusable wreck. Patience looks about, considering their options, taking into account the fact that the beast had been wounded...and it was a machine.

"Bastion! Hostile mechanical actuality present on primary movation plane, request intercept and direct integration and negation of hostile entity!" Patience declared as she did precisely what Grace had suggested.

She turned and ran, she would not like to admit...that she ran into the oncoming people.

Grace
Grace tries to clamber into Falcor when the door opens, but screeches out a surprised cry when the little ship gets grabbed and tossed. Yes, so much for luck.

"The universe isn't gone yet! Bastion's here!" Grace screams at the wolf -- or rather screams in front of her while running away from the wolf after Patience.

Surely there's something you can do about this? Do you want another death on your hands? Put a holographic blindfold over its eyes or something! Anything! Grace thinks, trying to goad Bastion into some kind of action. But then, she turns and looks behind her. Atreyu. In the story, he fights the wolf doesn't he?

But this isn't a story. And he's their key.

"Atreyu! Run!"

Demiurge
"I am... trying," the station's voice all-but cried out in their minds. "His protocol supersedes mine. I cannot..."

For a moment her voice died out, then came back with an eerie echo. "He is our guardian. He is trying to protect us. But there is nothing he can do. Nothing any of us can do. The storm is coming."

Patience was already running, and she bolted headlong into a couple of older pilots who'd been running to investigate the crash. But when they saw the wolf, they backed up, fear registering in their eyes.

Run, Grace said, and Atreyu did. But not before grabbing her hand and pulling her along with him. (Likely she wouldn't need much convincing.)

All of them ran. Patience, Grace, Atreyu. The other natives of Bastion. They ran headlong across down the glowing white lines of the landing strip, and all the while they could feel the wolf's breath panting like winter wind at their heels.

One of the men fell, but the wolf simply jumped over him. It wasn't after them.

The creature gave a rough snarl, and they'd be able to feel the wind shift at their backs. Even if they didn't look, they'd know it was about to come down on them.

But when Atreyu felt it, he whipped around and put out his arms, as though to block the beast's attack. "Stop!" he shouted. And a white light glowed in his eyes.

And the wolf hit the ground, shaking its head angrily, as though it had been knocked off-target.

"Get out of the way, Atreyu!" it snarled.

Patience
They ran, and though they ran through the heart of a crowd of people, those people remained unharmed as the wolf bore down upon them seeking their flesh, their very lives.

Patience was cycling through alternative ideas now that it had been shown that bastion could do nothing to help them, nothing to waylay their oncoming fate. But as it drew close, its breath felt upon their backs, its teeth nipping at their heels that Atreyu turned, and like his namesake he stopped the wolf in its tracks.

Patience stopped briefly to look back, considering this moment, this change in the situation and she wondered if the man would indeed back down.. It would seem at this point only Atreyu, the system key could stand against the beast.

All they could do was hope.



Grace
"What storm? Are you under attack by something else? We aren't trying to hurt you! That was never the intent!"

Space may be finite, but the space station is not. They only have so far they can run without a ship. Grace's mind pours through their various options, and it finally snaps into place that this is where they likely meet their end.

Atreyu stands between them, filled with new purpose (and haven't they seen him like this before? In Rome, in Sulis? Glowing like that? She reaches out to touch him, reaches to Patience. As much as she hadn't wanted to use the 'magic words' till now, even if they're not facing North, anywhere would be better than here.

"Can you take us out of here, Atreyu? Tu, was du willst!"

Demiurge
Patience waited, and hoped. And Grace... she tried to save them. Tried to take them somewhere - anywhere but where they were.

Those words she spoke. Did she know what they meant?

Do what you wish.

But what is it that you wish, Grace Evans? What is it that you hope for, Patience Mason? To get away? To run?

Outside the dome of the space station, the sea of stars began to disappear. Like lights winking out, one after another. The blackness beyond was a void, swallowing the universe whole. Unmaking, unraveling.

"If you do not wish to hurt us," said Bastion. "Then help us. Please." Her voice broke in anguish and desperation. And now she sounded stronger somehow. Vast and infinite. A shard of something greater than herself - like Atreyu. (A channel, a conduit.)

Atreyu looked at Grace, and she'd be able to see the glow of his tattoo beneath his white shirt and the light of that Other inside his eyes. But there was no opening of a door. No rush of darkness.

Instead he looked at the wolf as it snarled and snapped its jaws. The sound of its teeth coming together was like a crack of thunder.

"There's nowhere left to go," he said, and his voice was a raw echo of regret. He released her hand and knelt down to pick up a shard of metal that lay at his feet, looking at it as though it held some kind of meaning. Or a memory.

"I remember," he said softly. "All these lives. All these stories." When he looked up, he met the wolf's eyes, staring it down. Suddenly fearless.

"...It's all connected."

Patience
Bastion asked for help, almost begging for it as its own systems began to collapse in on themselves, failing under the deteriorated weight of its own vastness.

It wants them to help it, and Patience turned, looking at the wolf, at Atreyu and then about at the whole station in a deep seated consideration of what she had seen, and experienced in their time since entering the system.

"Bastion....identify primary source of systemic corruption and data loss. In addendum, to facilitate aid and recovery diagnostics please grant administrative access to facilitate necessary repairs and preservative actions."

She looked at the wolf then as he stood there, trying to get past atreyu.

"Cease and desist all hostile termination attempts, stabilization and recovery with appropriate available back ups is 99.853% likely."

Grace
"What do we need to do to help you? What do we do?" Grace asks, aloud, even though the voice she hears is only in her head.

There's nowhere left to go, Atreyu says. Does he mean that this is the last of all those worlds? Were they all literally unmade?

Patience puts it in more mechanical terms -- identify the source of corruption and grant admin access. Yes, that.

"I'm a Virtual Adept. Do you know what that means? I might be able to put you back together, but you're going to have to help us help you!"

Demiurge
Grace asked: how?

How could they help? What could they possibly do?

And suddenly, Atreyu blinked, as though waking up from a dream.

"Re-write the story," he said. And he dropped the shard of metal in his hand and grabbed the wolf's head, fisting its white fur in his fingers as he dragged it close, staring it in the eyes - dauntless and unafraid. The wolf snarled and snapped and struggled to break free, its body sparking with raw electric energy. But somehow it could not. Atreyu held on fast, and he repeated again.

"It's all connected. We are all connected."

And then there was an explosion of light. The people standing behind them stepped back to shield their eyes. And when it was over, Atreyu was gone, and the wolf was standing there alone. But its scars were healed, and its eyes were both black.

And it wasn't growling anymore.

"Permission granted," Bastion said. And Patience and Grace could see the skeleton of the world around them. A fathomless infinity of code, written in a language neither of them had ever seen before. The station below them. The people behind them. The ships around them. Even the stars. Even their own bodies. They saw what was there, and what was was beyond.

And they saw the wolf leap into the air and turn into a bolt of light and current. Saw it strike the dome above their heads until it cracked. Until it should have killed them all with the vacuum of space. But somehow it didn't, because something was protecting them. (And because the rules were unraveling along with the stars.)

The bolt of light spread out into space like a web, striking at the dark. Attacking it. Pushing it back.

Patience
They had access,the entire coding system of Bastion lay before them, ready to be altered to be fixed, or as the system said, to be re-written

So she began her alternations, removing deterorated code [or bad endings] and began balancing out the equation. She sought to rebuild the lost worlds, to make them whole and safe, to make it so Bastion never went crazy, that her purpose was to observe and catalogue possible futures and pasts for the betterment of mankind.

She also asked for the safe release of all outsiders currently held within the programming to be released back to their primary hardware, to awaken alive and well inside their own bodies.

She gave Bastion the permissions to create [something it likely already had] and to communicate with the world beyond...but not to override and take from the 'real world'

These things and more besides she wrote with her mind in the code. But above all else, a harmonious balance to keep Bastion healthy and capable of enacting its programming was key.

Grace
Re-write the story, Atreyu says, and then... he is gone. Sacrificed to the wolf to placate it? Or perhaps he was the missing pieces of the wolf all along? It doesn't matter. If all of the worlds have been unmade, what happened to Sid, Ian, and Kalen? They were in one of those worlds. Bleakness threatens to overwhelm her, just as the beauty of Bastion's code does -- a bittersweet victory.

"Atreyu..." Grace whispers, sees the vibrations in air she so creates as waves of encoded numbers seeking out a form. Oh, she's seen the Code of reality. But never like this. Never in this language. Never all at once, everything, at the center of it all.

God, but it is beautiful, Kalen. He was right about that -- about the beauty to be found in this world (and all others).

To be given such a gift, at such a cost...

"What will you do with your new worlds, Bastion? Will you continue consuming people from ours?"

Demiurge
The truth was, it was not what they wrote that mattered. It was the act of writing itself. The force of creation. Of building. Of solidifying reality.

Because that storm out there - that consensus. It sought to dissolve the world. Maybe Maddoc had been right about the abductions. (A dream this vast needs someone to believe in it.)

So Bastion showed them the code, and Patience worked at strengthening what was already there. Pushing back the darkness and remaking the stars. She sought to rebuild. To bring back the other worlds. She remembered Lita's smile and her red hair. She remembered the dragons. She remembered the gladiators in Rome. And although she could not see them, she could feel their life force around her. (We are all connected.)

And up in the sky, the web of light created by the wolf (or by Atreyu in the wolf's form) became a brilliant display. And Grace and Patience would see that the storm - that the corrupted code - was being beaten back. Whole and strong once more, the guardian was doing what it had been built to do. And as the storm receded, Patience's efforts filled in the empty places it left behind.

But Grace wanted to know what Bastion would do if they saved her.

"I have no more consumed them than I have you, Grace."

Above them in the sky, the web of light went out. The storm was gone. And the cracks in the dome above their head had healed. The world felt, somehow, more solid. And the people behind them breathed soft and awed exclamations. The wreckage from the ships was gone, and each of them sat whole and untarnished where they had been before the wolf had flung Falcor into the ground.

Then one of the ships raised itself into the air and approached them, hovering quietly. It had a white dragon painted down the side of its hull.

"Hop in." It said.

Grace
In the rewriting of Bastion's reality, there are familiar faces, familiar lives, all thankful to be again. But there are a few faces missing. The real reason for them being there... isn't. Grace remembers the worlds she's been to, remembers with Patience.

There are other lives here. Loves and connections and people who, even if they might be creations, are just as real as the real world. And she can't help but want to believe Bastion when she asserts that her friends have not been consumed. If it's a lie, it is a beautiful one, to hope that they're not gone after all.

"What do you mean, you haven't consumed them? Where are they?"

Maybe she gets an answer, maybe she doesn't, but it is then that she bends her mind to the Code, to touch the face of God, and fill in Her corruption with new strength. It's the least she can do for the ones who live here.

Bastion: Sulis #3

Demiurge
In the aftermath of the attack, there was a change in the people of Winter's Edge that was more than just the devastation of grief. It was a kind of subtle sharpening. First shock, then loss, then a new awareness. They'd dealt with hardship before. Death was a part of existence. But this kind of war was new to them. Now they knew what it was that human nature could be capable of.
But they also knew hope and joy. They knew what it meant to be among family - community. And this was their home. This beautiful place that they had shaped and adapted themselves to. They would not sit idle while the land and the people were destroyed. And so it was that the shock and sorrow of loss turned to steadfast determination. To planning and action. For the first time since contact with Earth had been re-established, the people of Sulis were taking the fight to the enemy.
It was the morning after the attack when the riders showed up. Not just some. Not just many. All. Every single dragonrider the planet had to offer, and even a handful of riderless dragons who remained for their own reasons. (This was their home too.) When Grace and Patience woke up that morning (if they managed to catch any sleep at all after their harrowing experience and after the loss of Lena) they'd be greeting with the vision of a landscape blanketed with dragons.
The air around them was alive with the hum of anticipatory tension. In the center of the village, a temporary tent had been erected to serve as Council chambers, and the remaining members of Council were there now, speaking with the leaders of the dragonriders. It wasn't long after the riders' arrival when Lita found Patience and Grace to give them the news.
"The Council wishes to speak with you."

Grace Evans
Grace didn't sleep much that night. The memory of war is just too fresh. Every time she closed her eyes, it just gave her time to replay the events moment by skipped moment.
So, it's with bleary, red-rimmed eyes that she finds the dragons have arrived.
They're a welcome sight. Grace doesn't want vengeance for Lena exactly. What would it accomplish? The 'enemy' is a creation made to be their enemy anyway. The one responsible for all of this is the AI, right? The one they will have to beg to let their world go.
It's all bigger than Lena. Bigger than Sulis. And she has to remember that.
To keep on going is the only path Grace can ever take.
Lita finds them staring out at the dragons and riders, and though Grace is glad to see them, her face shows only fatigue.
"Okay. Lead the way," she says, her voice a dragging monotone.

Demiurge
Sara and Lita had mourned Lena's loss with them. As all of the villagers had. Mourning for them was a thing to be shared, and despite their initial distrust, most of the people who met Lena had grown to like her. But it was not the same as the way that Grace and Patience mourned. For them, Lena was a friend. Someone they knew. Someone from home. Someone they'd been traveling with for weeks.
Just as Grace and Patience could not truly comprehend the loss that Lita and Sara felt for Brandon.
It had been a long night. And now an even longer day lay ahead. Lita was quiet as she led the two women to the tent, and once they arrived she bowed out to return to the side of her remaining partner. Inside the tent, Grace and Patience would recognize Olga and the elderly healer from the day before. Both of them looked exhausted. Likely they'd been up all night tending to the wounded. There were others there as well. People from the village, and a handful of dragonriders. Each of the riders had an insignia sewn into their jackets of a pair of wings stretched out over a star. (Something to do with their rank, possibly.) It was one of these women who stepped forward to greet the two mages. She was in her thirties, with green eyes and light brown hair cut close to her head. Scars from some kind of animal attack showed on her neck and collar bone, like raking claw marks.
She held out her hand to both of them. "Catlyn Redstone. First Wingleader of the Dragonriders. I heard about what you did yesterday. The two of you saved a lot of lives. If you're still interested, your assistance in the attack would be welcome."

Grace Evans
Catlyn sounds like a soldier. It puts Grace's teeth on edge a bit. They wear uniforms over a rather uniform culture, at least what she's seen of it.
Insignias and ranks and uniforms and stone-hard speech patterns do not impress Grace. Soldiers, in her experience, do not bring freedom. How could they? They are almost the definition of oppression. Even Sulisian soldiers, with their happy pretty villages and happy nature dragons -- all a bit too happy, no? There's a reason why the concept is called Utopia. Who knows what the Dragonriders fight when they can't find earthlings?
She glances at the outstretched hand of Catlyn Redstone, but doesn't move to shake it.
"Grace Evans. Grad school dropout. Nice to meet you; I don't shake hands. And yes, we're very interested in assisting."

Patience Mason
Perhaps it was a callousness that the other magi had yet to see, or perhaps it was simply the fact that Patience had burned the candle at both ends for the last three days in an effort to prepare for their assault, that she slept like a stone.
She to was haunted, she too had felt the loss of Lena and shared in the tragedy that was the loss of so many lives...but for Patience, it was a drop in the bucket. But that is a story for another time.
On the eve of battle, upon the arrival of the dragon riders Patience stirred late, she slept until summoned and only then did she try to put her hair to rights, to fix her clothing and her appearance, only then did such things matter. When they arrived and were greeted by Wingleader Redstone Patience doesn't seem at all surprised by their desire to bring them along.
They had after all, truly fought fire with fire, levelling the playing field for the Sulisian's in a way they may well not have encountered before. But Patience looked about at the many dragons arrayed and looked disturbed, because as she took the womans hand and shook she said.
"Assistance shall be assigned, actualized and rendered in effect. Factual data point dissemination inquiry, are these atmospherically movated genus of frotean reptilians capable of sustained and efficient flight with a suitably capable general broad band transceiver attached to their bio-structures? If the direct and equivocal answer is in the negative....a reproduction of our previous aggressive noospheric degrative loop will not be efficiently possible."

Demiurge
Catlyn surveyed Grace with a clinical eye when she refused the shake hands, but the Wingleader didn't force the issue, and if she took any offense, she didn't show it. She was young to be ranked as high as she was. Likely there was a reason for it. People didn't end up with positions like hers without developing a cool head.
Although... a quick look around the tent would reveal that all of the riders present were around the same age. Some of them even younger. How long had the riders been acting as a military force? How much real experience did any of them have under their belts?
The question was moot, at this point. These were the people they had.
Catlyn gave a light nod of assent to Patience. "Don't worry about that. We've got it covered. We'll be keeping the two of you at the back when we make the assault. Once we clear a path, we're going to attempt to break into the ship. The work the two of you did to bring down their firewall yesterday was invaluable. They're bound to have strengthened it by now, but we have a team of technical experts who think they might be able to accomplish something similar... long enough at least to give us a window of opportunity. If the two of you can find a way to use that neural device to get inside the ship, that might get us in faster then trying to melt a hole through the hull. I'm assigning you to my wing. We've got a couple of dragons saddled up for you."
At this, she collected some fresh riding clothes and what looked to be a couple of futuristic firearms and offered these to Patience and Grace. "You'll need these. Go get ready, then meet me on the field. We leave in half an hour."

Grace Evans
Grace nods, but then gives Catlyn a weary glare. Maybe they needed more than thirty minutes to prepare? But did she ask? No. Asshole.
Grace takes the offered gun, even though half an hour is far too short a time to learn how to use it. No matter, really. If it comes to a gunfight, they've probably already lost.
"I hope your dragons are easy to stay atop. We're real good at falling off of them," Grace says, and marches off to change.

Patience Mason
They'd already planned to work around Patience and Graces original plan, this time asking them to use their technical capabilities to break open the shell of the companies ship rather then attempting to disrupt them. It seemed like a great gamble all to rescue one rider, but then perhaps it had become something else entirely, a rallying moment, a great defence of their lifestyle and land.
For her part Patience simply nodded to Redstone, not wanting to bring up the simple fact that to defeat one of these carriers might simply mean the arrival of more. But she took the clothing offered and returned to their room, dressing so that she might somehow ride one of those beasts out in the fields, and at the same time work the sciences required to help the Sulisian's gain victory, and the freedom of Atreyu.
When that was done she gathered what equipment she might need, anything that could be useful in the battle to come, from spare parts, to various computers to the all important neural uplink.

Demiurge
Catlyn was there to meet them at the edge of the field. The rest of her Wing was already saddled up and ready, with riders perched atop dragons who'd been fitted with the same weapons as those that Grace and Patience had seen upon their arrival. The saddles hooked into a metal crest that fit over the dragons' breastbone, and this seemed to serve a dual-function as both armor and weapon, with two large white orbs inset into the plate that hummed and glowed with some kind of power source. Catlyn's dragon, a large gold female whose hide shimmered gloriously in the sun, greeted the Grace and Patience with a blink of her iridescent eyes and a soft croon of curiosity.
There were two other dragons beside her: a coppery red male and an emerald green female, both of whom sat riderless. Catlyn directed the mages' attention to these dragons as they walked together through the grass.
"Hopefully you won't have to shoot anything, but in case you do, I've gone ahead and linked you in so you can control the guns. Tap the bracelet to activate the controls, then they'll follow your hand gestures." She demonstrated with a few quick motions of her own hands. "The firing command is vocal. Just say 'fire left' or 'fire right.'" After a pause she added, in a serious tone. "Don't shoot unless you know you can hit the target. Otherwise, leave the combat to us."
But there were still introductions to be had, and Catlyn smiled fondly as she looked up at the two dragons. "The red one's Rai. Green is Tally. They're pretty good with strangers, so they shouldn't give you any trouble. They know where to go. All you need to do is stay on."
When the dragons greeted them, the mages would feel it like a soft note of warmth blossoming in their minds. There were no words, but somehow it still felt like hello.
If either Grace or Patience needed any help in getting onto their dragons, Catlyn and a couple of the others riders would offer it to them. They also explained how to use the guns they'd been given, and how to properly sit in the saddle. Then each of them mounted their flying companions and got ready to leave.
All around them, the air was silent. Everyone was awaiting Catlyn's command. Then the woman lifted her arm and said, "to the air!" And a sea of wings spread and beat the air into great gusts of wind as they lifted into the sky.
To the North, the tall peaks of those snowy mountains rose up out of the ground to meet them.

Grace Evans
The warmth of Rai's hello fills her synapses, and she looks the red dragon in his large eyes. "You are an interesting one, aren't you?"
Telepathic animals. What will they think of next?
She climbs up into Rai's saddle, hoping he knows what to do, because she certainly doesn't. From up in the saddle, she looks to Patience, the only other left. They lost Maddoc and they lost Lena. Will this Bastion take them down one by one, then? And who's next? She's worried, and her red-rimmed eyes speak of the loss.
But it's time to move.
At least this time, even with a living, moving being underneath her, it's easier to stay on. It's also deeply uncomfortable. Let's face it, Grace was never the equestrian type. She's not used to her transportation being alive. But when they rise into the air together, it's hard not to stare in wonder at the ground's retreat.
It's not every day you get to ride a dragon.
Lena would have loved it.

Patience Mason
Patience looks a little concerned as she looked over the assembled riders, looking for signs of a technical team, with a transmitter or anything that looked like it would be powerful enough to breach the security systems that the company would likely employ on their carrier.
But the commander had said they had it covered, said that they were prepared normally it would not be enough for Patience, but she didn't know their world, did not know their technology intimately and to be truthful, some of it was beyond her. So she moved to the other dragon, the bright green dragon named Tally and tilted her head, offering a smile to the dragon as it spoke to her in her mind.
Thankfully she could offer it impressions and ideas, rather then words...for patience it was likely the most straight forward conversation she had been involved in outside of the Sons of Ether in over forty years.
But then they were aloft, then they were FLYING in a way that Patience had never imagined would be possible.
It was a very unique sensation.

Demiurge
Seated atop the dragons now, Grace and Lena would be afforded proper time to appreciate the experience in a way they had not upon their arrival, when everything around them was chaos and all they could think to do was to try to hang on to whatever was in front of them. This time, they were strapped comfortably into their saddles, and the ride was noticeably less bumpy. Rai and Tally soared into formation with the rest of Catlyn's Wing, hovering at the rear of the group as the other Wings flew ahead. As they flew higher, the ground beneath them shrank until the people in the village could no longer be seen. Until the trees and the buildings looked like tiny models. The air up here was brisk and cold, and it bit into their faces sharply. If Grace had been tired before, she would likely be quite awake now.
It was an impressive sight, all those dragons. Up here in the air, in their natural element, they looked beautiful. Majestic, even. And the riders would have a unique bird's eye view of the clouds that was much more immediate than what one might experience on an airplane.
Beneath them, the mountains rose up, and the dragons soared over the tops of them, until the rugged, rocky landscape beyond came into view.
That was when they saw the base ship. A massive black ship surrounded by squadrons of fighter jets - ready and waiting.
There was no turning back now. And the army of dragonriders moved into battle formation and dove in to meet them. At first, the situation looked grim, as the fighters shot forward and fired with everything they had. But then something happened. Their formations broke, and the jets began to scatter. And the riders took their cue and made their attacks, swooping in to fire on the handicapped enemy.
Catlyn's wing pushed forward toward the base ship, swinging around the worst of the chaos as they fired at any planes that got in their way. The air was filled with the sound of laser-fire and roaring dragons, and Grace and Patience would be able to feel the tense energy of their own dragons' thoughts on the edges of their minds.
"Look out!" Catlyn called out over the comm link. "Incoming attack!"
A handful of jets were hurtling toward them from below. They'd been hiding in the clouds.

Grace Evans
[Wits + Firearms! + WP]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Grace Evans
[Damages!]
Dice: 13 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 7 )

Patience Mason
[Wits+Firearms]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Patience Mason
[Damage]
Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )

Grace Evans
The sudden ambush has Rai on edge and, well, so is Grace. But she's also very good at sharp edges.
That tenseness serves to focus her, making the task ahead of her a little easier. Her wrist comes up to eye level, and she flits her way to the firing command menu.
"Fire Left."
It is the first time Grace has had to stare down an enemy with the full intent of killing them. Certainly there have been other times where she has watched death happen, or helped in the process of eliminating a threat -- but these were all indirect results.
And now, she's cooly calculating attack vectors in the span of split seconds, wasting no time in burning a hole straight through a sleek fighter jet like it was made of paper.

Patience Mason
Patience watched as the fighters began to balk and lose their lethal cohesion, any hope of a coordinated assault by the fighters lost to individual dog fights...dog fights that the pilots of the jets would lose without their neural uplinks.
For her part Patience fired as the ambush fell upon them, some cohesion remaining in the enemy battle plan. 'Actualize Right." She would utter, hoping that it would understand her desire before with a satisfying blast, it sent of a shot that wounded a fighter, and left it momentarily disengaged as the pilot regained control.
"Closer geo-spatial locality will be directly and acutely necessary to actualize entrance protocol's and deactivation of the primary, secondary, and tertiary defenses of the primary inter-planetary structure." She called out.
She could do nothing from this distance.

Demiurge
One of their dragons - a heavy blue male - got hit hard in the wing, and he half-fell, half-soared out of formation, dropping down toward the distant ground with an angry cry.
There was no lake there to break their fall. Only hard earth and stone. The rest of the wing could only hope that the dragon had enough control left to survive the landing.
"We're working on it!" Catlyn responded to Patience's warning. The plane that Patience clipped in the wing shot a few rounds at her, and Tally narrowly dodged out of the way, tucking in her wings in a controlled fall before she spread them again and caught them with a sudden jolt. If Patience hadn't been strapped in, she likely would have fallen. But they were alive and unharmed. For now. And a second later Catlyn's dragon dove in and took the wounded fighter out of the air.
Back in the thick of the fray, the odds were beginning to lean in the dragons' favor as the fighter pilots struggled to navigate and aim their weapons without the use of their wired software.
And meanwhile the base ship loomed ever larger as Catlyn's wing took out the attacking jets and continued toward the ship. Another couple of plans shot out in their direction, but they were quickly taken out.
Ahead of them, the thick black hull of the base ship blocked out the sun. They were near enough now to see the outline of one of the docking bays, its door closed against entry. Catlyn ordered the dragons to fan out in a half-circle around Grace and Patience, protecting them so they could work.
"We'll keep an eye out. Try to work fast."

Grace Evans
[Int + Computer, Diff 8 - 1 (Ability Aptitude) Specialization: Creative]
Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )

Patience Mason
[Int+Computer, Diff 8 Spec WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (4, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Grace Evans
Try to work fast, Catlyn says? Well, Grace's fingers shuffle words into the air, and in the readout on her holographic interface, text scrolls by faster than most could read in the effort. She's not reading it all, just the parts that count.
Using the signals generated by their captured neural interface worked the last time. Something like a password built into the device helped sneak them in. This time, it's not working.
"Patience, can you modulate the frequency on this thing? Cycle the passcode around a few million times, and brute-force it?"
Hopefully neural interfaces don't come with a '3 tries and you're locked out' policy.

Patience Mason
A few bits of code here, a few pulses of electricity along the neural links pathways, and a few high frequency bursts saw the device purring as well as one could expect.
The exchange began, and thought it was tenuous at first the computers began their work. Soon they bore fruit and Patience and Grace were rewarded for their work with the sudden and heavy release of the door seals.
"Internal handshakes 100% complete, internal and external movation portals now available for all unathorized personnel!"

Demiurge
When the bay door began to open, the surrounding dragonriders let out a chorus of whooping cheers, and Catlyn radioed into the other wingleaders to announce their success. Her dragon dipped toward the entrance and hovered there, giving slow flaps of its wings while Catlyn unstrapped herself from the saddle and hopped down into the ship, giving the motion for the others to join her.
From this point on, the dragons could not follow. The riders were on their own.
Inside the docking bay, Grace and Patience would be greeted with the site of a large, domed room. The floor was laid out with long, digitally lit runways. The look and feel of the base ship was much more traditional science-fiction than what the two of them had seen back in Winter's Edge. Sleek and cold and technical in design. As the riders scoped out the room, they drew their guns and pressed forward, advancing toward a set of metal ladders that led up to the second floor, and what appeared to be a doorway leading further into the ship.
"Keep an eye out," Catlyn said quietly. "They're bound to figure out we boarded soon."

Grace Evans
[Corr 1: Attempting to generate a map of the base-ship, looking for likely prison-holds.]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (8, 10) ( success x 2 )

Grace Evans
[Extending!]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (8, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Grace Evans
The riders cheer for them, but Grace does not seem to register it. Joy is an emotion missing from her repertoire at the moment. Above all, she must keep moving, keep going after the real goal of their mission: Atreyu. To do otherwise would invite memories of terror and grief back.
She watches the doors raise with the same tired stone face she's worn all day.
When her dragon lands in the bay, it's like stepping into another world (and by now, Grace should know). She again readies the wrist computer, and begins doing things to it that the Sulisians have probably never before considered.
For a short while, the holographic display fills with what looks like static. It's actually the Code of Bastion, and Grace works at refining it into a map of the place. Bits shift as she filters out the spacial data from the rest, and soon she has a working three-dimensional display of the entire thing.
And there, on the map, a glowing beacon. It looks like a hole, and makes Grace think of a simpler time in her apartment with Gadfly, looking for wormholes. Atreyu.
She takes the map data and shares it with the dragonriders. Through the comm, she says: "I found this in their computer. I think I know where we need to go."
It's a lie. But at least they might not question it too much.

Demiurge
Grace was right on that count. The riders didn't think to question how she got ahold of the ship's blueprint, or why Atreyu would be especially marked out. It had seemed as though she was well-known among the people of Sulis. Perhaps she'd been targeted as a high profile prisoner? It had to be the reason they yet kept her alive.
(Hostages, all of them. But for what? These were clinical tactics. They use a show of brutal force to frighten the enemy, then threaten to kill their remaining prisoners if demands are not met.)
The riders looked at the map and pressed forward, climbing the ladder in single-file to get to the main level of the ship. When they reached it, Catlyn looked at the solid door for a moment, taking in its construction. She was about to ask the mages if they had any suggestions toward opening it, when the barrier slid aside of its own accord.
Behind it was a line of soldiers in black and red uniforms. When they saw Catlyn's face, they raised their weapons and fired.
The Wingleader had quick reflexes. She got hit in the shoulder, but managed to duck out of the way of any lethal damage. A couple of the riders behind her weren't so lucky, but the rest of them fired back. It was so fast, the way it happened. Patience and Grace would barely have time to register that they were under attack before people started dying. And when it was over, the size of their group had been dropped down to five, including the now-injured Catlyn.
She stood up from her crouched position against the wall and spared a final look at the dead riders, then nodded toward the hallway. They knew where they needed to go.
Stepping over the bodies of the dead soldiers, Grace, Patience and the remaining riders made their way down the long corridor. They turned a corner into another section of the ship. Then another.
Finally their destination loomed ahead: a hallway lined with heavy doors marked with cell numbers.

Grace Evans
[Int + Computer, diff 8-1, Specialty: Creative!]
Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

Grace Evans
[Extended action!]
Dice: 8 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 7) ( fail )

Grace Evans
Walking through the ship is a tense affair. They're interlopers here, and every corner could hold a nasty surprise. The trained soldiers take the lead, and Grace is thankful for that, until it brings the word 'meatshield' to mind.
They stay quiet until reaching that door, and Grace is going for her wrist computer to try to do something about it when it flies open on its own.
With a jolt, she presses herself up against the wall, almost a reflex reaction, trying to make herself a hard target. Almost as soon as that, it's over.
So much death these past couple of days, and all of it happens so suddenly and quickly and noiselessly. There is the hiss of laser fire, but it's not like a gun, that. Just one second you're alive, and another your insides are cooked. Grace could have done without the designer of this world going so far as to come up with realistic burnt-flesh scent.
She swallows down the sharp fear inside, looking at the newly departed, and then reassuring herself by looking to Patience. Still alive. They're both still alive.
She nods at Catlyn. "We'll get to her," she whispers, unwilling to let any further enemy teams in on their location.
Grace has to step over bodies to get to the cell blocks, but finally it seems that the destination is at hand. This is what they sacrificed so much to get to, right?
She starts working on the doors, mundane hacking this time. Using their technique of using the enemy's neural network signals to interface with it's computers, she gets in. She gets in, and then tries to open the cell block doors. But there's a hitch. Whoever their stolen neural wetware belonged to? He didn't have security access.
"Oh shit."

Demiurge
Oh shit, Grace said. And at roughly the same moment, an emergency alarm sounded throughout the ship. There ought to have been guards here. Perhaps those men and women they'd taken out at the entrance had been left behind to do just that.
Maybe the enemy had never really expected the possibility of a boarding party. The whys didn't really matter now. What mattered was that an alarm had gone off, and there they all were trying to figure out a way to get into a bunched of locked cells with no time to think. Patience was likely to try and use her skills to warp the door's pattern, while Catlyn looked as though she was about to start firing her weapon at the latch until it blew open (if that was even a possible outcome.) But in the end, none of them needed to do any of those things, because just then all of the doors... opened.
All on their own. With no obvious source.
(Like someone was helping them.)
All around them, prisoners broke out into the hall, running to hug their dragonrider friends in relief and gratitude. (They thought it was them who'd released them.) And standing in front of Grace and Patience, the target of their search: Atreyu. She looked like she was in bad shape. Her leg was bandaged cleanly, but the rest of her was bruised and exhausted and thin from hunger. Still, she was just as relieved to see them as the others were, and she let out a rush of breath.
"I thought they were coming to kill me this time."
And in a heart-beat, she rushed forward and pulled Catlyn into a fierce hug. But there was no time to exchange stories or pleasantries. No time to do much of anything but try to run. Atreyu broke the hug and looked at Grace, then Patience, and something seemed to light up in her eyes. This sharp note of confused recognition.
"I remember you," she said quietly. Almost as though she was not sure she ought to believe the memory. "On my dragon. And... from somewhere else. A dream I had of Earth. And of... Gladiators? She laughed at that, like the very idea seemed so ridiculous, and Catlyn eyed her like she'd gone insane.
"We have to go," Catlyn said, and she ducked out of the cell to see to the other survivors and make sure none of them needed help escaping.
But Atreyu didn't go. Not yet. Instead she grabbed Grace and Patience's hands like she had something very important she needed to tell them. Perhaps it was only a trick of the light, but it seemed as though a pin-point glow had suddenly appeared in the center of her pupils.
"It's coming again," she whispered. "You have to go."
Something creaked through the ship's hull. A low, dull sound like warping metal.

Grace Evans
"You remember?" Grace says, breathlessly. "Right. Right. North is..." she says, trailing off as she aligns herself with Patience, to stand facing North.
Goodbye, Sulis. Goodbye, Lena.
"Tu, was du willst."

Demiurge
Things fall apart. First in Rome, then here. The chaos, the violence. And then the storm.
Maybe they were right. Maybe it was the hand of God reaching down to punish them. Or maybe it was something else. Entropy. Paradox. None of them knew. But they could feel it now, even beyond the barrier of the ship's hull. They could feel the current in the air. Could hear the sound of metal being ripped apart. The entire ship vibrated with it like an earthquake. It was breaking at the seams.
Atreyu took their hands, and Grace pointed them North and said the words to activate the portal. And then the symbol on Atreyu's chest glowed once more, and light struck down through the ceiling and enveloped them.
It was the last the two mages would ever see of Sulis. Of the people they'd spent the last few days with. Who they'd fought beside and mourned. The people that Lena had died for. Perhaps this time the loss would be felt more keenly for all that.
But they wouldn't have much time to contemplate it before their minds were pulled away and flung into that now-familiar darkness.

Bastion: Sulis #2

Demiurge
"Welcome to Winter's Edge."
After their release, Lita offered to house the guests in her home. Perhaps the mages might feel some mistrust toward her after the manner in which they were welcomed, but she seemed to genuinely want to make amends, and as of yet no one else had stepped up to offer the same. The villagers had heard by now about the origins of their mysterious guests, and while many were curious (and few seemed anything close to openly hostile,) very few felt safe welcoming them into their homes. Lita's house was of a moderate size, with a single guest room that Grace, Lena and Patience would have to share. But there were enough beds for all, and plenty of food, and the house had an elegant and rustic charm. Lita resided with a man and another woman, all of whom appeared to be in a comfortable polyamorous relationship. The man, Brandon, was a tailor, while Sara, the younger woman, seemed to be some kind of artist. A number of her paintings hung on the walls of their home - beautiful abstract creations full of wild, vivid colors. Of the two of them, she was the most warm and welcoming, but Brandon was cautiously friendly.
All told, it wasn't a bad place to spend time while they regained their strength. Lita even managed to procure a few of those digital bracelets that everyone seemed to wear, and left them for Grace, Lena and Patience to use if they wished. A thorough inspection combined with trial and error would reveal the bracelets to be some type of computer-slash-communication tool. To access its menus, an interactive holographic display would appear in the air, and could be interfaced with via both voice commands and hand motions.
The day they'd been released, Olga had told them about the Company's base ship. They if Atreyu was still alive, she would be there - airborne behind the tall, snow-capped mountain range. There was no chance of them getting there by foot. But by air? Perhaps. The locals were already planning a rescue mission.
It was three days later when Lita came home from a hunting excursion to seek out her guests and give them the news. Wherever they were, she approached with a grim and excited expression.
"The dragonriders are attacking tomorrow."

Demiurge
[Edit: "That if Atreyu was still alive"]

Grace Evans
[Int + Computers, Diff 8 - 1 (Ability Aptitude) Specialty: Creative/Analysis]
Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (1, 3, 3, 3, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

Grace Evans
Grace has been much happier since being released from jail. Which, really isn't surprising, exactly, but the people of Winter's Edge will find her to be much less full of snark and sarcasm, and much more utterly gleeful. She also spends nearly all of her time glued to her wrist computer, and telling her compatriots everything she finds out about the way those computers work.
For a person who has never seen a holographic bracelet computer in her life, she's quite a quick study.
And that is where Lita will find Grace, peering into holograms and waving her fingers like a kid who's gotten the toy they wanted most at Christmas.
"Tomorrow? Are they coming by the village, or should we go out to meet them?" she asks, the excited grin on her face fading into something that more respects the gravity of an immanent attack.

Lena Reilly
For her part, Lena isn't distrustful of Lita, because she understands.  Putting herself in the shoes of those at Winter's Edge, she completely gets why they would be cautious, wary and even directly hostile to outsiders, especially ones who talk about things that don't seem normal to them.  Lena's just glad that they listened to reason at all, and Lita had been level-headed and smart throughout.
So she's friendly to the woman, and grateful for the offer.  She takes the offered bracelet with the same gratitude and leans the ins and outs of working with it.  She's no technophobe obviously and she's curious by the holographic technology, though probably not as keenly as her fellow Awakened.
She speaks with Lita and her partners, seems comfortable around them.  If they end up trapped somewhere in the end, this would certainly not be the worst place to be trapped.  Of course, that's not her goal, and she's focused on finding the next way out of here, which brings them to Atreyu.  She listens as Olga explains about the ship, frowns thoughtfully and nods.
When it's almost time, Lena turns to hear the news from Lita and nods.  "All right.  Well, no time like the immediate future then."  She smiles a little, even if it's faint.  After all, this is an assault and there's danger.  She takes a breath, running her hand through her hair.  "What do we need to do?  Find someone to ride with, I'm assuming, or is that covered?"

Patience Mason
Freedom was theirs and there was certainly no time to waste. The trio were housed, given a home away from home by Lita and Patience harboured her no ill will. She had performed her duty, protecting her people and her loved ones. It was impossible to be unhappy with someone for such an act.
But with freedom there was no time for idle chit chat, no time to sit back and enjoy the hospitality [great or small] that the village had to offer. No after learning of the nature of their enemy, this so called 'company' Patience had set about working, her methods would no doubt seem strange to the people of Winter's Edge, and she took whatever space she could to begin her work. Much of it centered around the device she had extracted from the company pilot. The neural interface which allowed them the ability to communicate with their machinery on a neural level.
Such technology was formidable...but also bore deadly weaknesses. Ones that Patience now sought to exploit.
It would be early  on the third day that Patience would approach her companions wherever they were, already looking tired, perhaps a little manic, but through it all she seemed alive, almost bursting with an energy that was raw and vibrant.
"Potential thesis!" She would declare as she strode up to the two. "Utilizing a data trans-sublimation pulse wave on a integral frequency generated by the neural cerebral data transmitter and integrator unit, I theorize that a reciprocating and degenerative temporal neurokinetic loop may be integrated into the companies individualized personage relativistic perceptions. Thus reducing successful reaction times and computational processing by all opposing amalgam operatives!" She would seem to indicate it was so simple, so easy to do.
"Grace, Lena, project and disseminate potential data integration and program actuality...potential?"

Demiurge
Grace and Lena were already there in the living room, with Grace manipulating the holographic images in front of her like a kid who'd just been given a new toy. Lita seemed fondly entertained by the group's fascination with everything they came up against, and although she'd likely never fully believe the story of the mages' origin, she did at least believe that they were not intentionally lying to her. After that first night, she hadn't asked them many questions about their past. Perhaps she assumed they didn't wish to discuss it, or perhaps it was more that she didn't want to hear the answers.
As she gave her news, she set her things down by the front door, hanging her jacket and placing her weapons and hunting tools in a locked alcove on the wall. She was about to answer Grace and Lena's questions when Patience came striding in with her announcement. The idea seemed to give Lita a moment of pause.
"Do you think you could achieve something like that?"
Because if they could, it was certainly worth trying.
To the others she said: "The Wingleader said she'd make a stop here to talk to you. I think she's interested in finding out how useful you might be. But no word yet when she'll arrive. I think they're pretty busy preparing."

Grace Evans
"Slowed reaction times while piloting a jet would be pretty catastrophic," Grace says, pondering Patience's 'thesis'. "Like drunk flying. How many do you think you can hit? Do you think I could help?"
Grace's eyes flit back to her holographic display. "If they're networked, I could try to bring down whatever firewalls they put up to stop you. Keep the effect flowing, maybe even spread it virally. What do you think?"
To Lita, Grace just shrugs. "It's not really a question of can and cannot, more a question of how. Everything is possible. I think I could probably hack into their computer and bring it to its knees and call me Mistress, except that I don't know their tech very well yet. Could be tricky. All we have is that implant. But you know... I have seen the weaknesses of those kinds of things firsthand. It gives you some benefits sure. It's also the very opposite of pretty when one explodes."

Lena Reilly
Patience's thoughts on a potential plan put a smile on Lena's face.  She has no idea how that would work (she's not THAT savvy with such things), but it's certainly worth a try and her expression suggests as such.
"Great idea," she says with a nod, and Grace is already talking about ways to assist, and offering her own ideas.  Lena, for her part, is a little less confident in a situation like this, but that doesn't mean she's not willing to try.
"I'm no computer expert," she says, turning to Lita.  "But I have a few tricks I can pull.  Get inside their heads on a limited scale, person-wise.  Nothing huge, but enough to give them some very detrimental impulses."  She shrugs.  "Outside of that, I'm pretty incompetant when it comes to fighting but that doesn't mean I won't try."

Patience Mason
Patience nods repeatedly to Grace's words, happy that the Virtual Adept had no trouble understanding her in moments like this. "Degenerative data packet transmission is in theory relatvistically simple, primary variables associate with strength of transmitter and integral systemic failsafes, potential extrapolation curve forcasts potential actualization in ninety eight point nine nine nine percent of alli individualized personages currently integrated with the afformentioned neural cerebral network integrator."
Lena offers her own thoughts as well and Patience nods. "Potential assimilation and utilization of the afformentioned transmitter may allow for a greater geographical range and numerical affliction ratio." She offers, before looking to Lita in particular.
"Are direct luminous field generators readily available within your socio-political amalgam?" She inquires. "Or, more effective, general high frequency data transcievers?"

Demiurge
"Oh," Lita looked at Lena in surprise. "Are you an empath? I didn't think..."
What was she about to say? That she didn't think the people of Earth had that capability? Perhaps wisely, she chose not to complete the thought. Instead she smiled sadly and said, "I wish I could go with you."
"Maybe you can, Lita. I heard they were looking for anyone skilled in combat to help in boarding the base ship." Sara walked into the room with a smile and stepped up to kiss Lita hello. Her arms and clothes were covered in drying paint, and Lita ducked out of the way after returning the kiss.
"Careful. You'll ruin my clothes. Where did you even hear that?"
"Eric, Hestor's kid. He was telling me about it."
"Ah," Lita replied, as though this was all the information she needed to complete the picture (not just of how Sara had heard it, but of why she herself had not.)
Patience asked Lita a question, and Lita cocked her head in silent contemplation. "Of course. All of the villages do. It's how we communicate."
She looked as though she was about to say more, but just then the air outside the treehouse came alive with the low, wailing echo of a siren.
Like a weather warning. Or worse: an incoming attack. Lita immediately snapped to attention and pressed her hands to Sara's shoulders. "Stay inside." Then she kissed the other woman on the forehead and ran out onto the porch.
In the distance, beyond the treeline: a wave of fighter jets was heading their way.

Grace Evans
Grace follows closely on Lita's heels to see what's the cause of the siren, as if she wasn't fairly certain already. She then looks back to Patience and says, "How soon do you think you can get your thesis operational? I know our wrist computers have a comm system built into them, could you use that as your field generator?"
From her vantage point on the porch, she watches the behavior of the villagers. Assuming they seem to know what to do, she will follow suit. When on Sulis...

Lena Reilly
If they hadn't already confessed to everything they had, Lena would have gone about her skills discussion differently.  Made something up and quietly done her Mind work under the guise of something else...distractionary work, perhaps.  But they've already shown their hand, what's one more card?
She smiles a little when Sara comes in.  In truth she's a little envious of the two.  There's nothing wrong with Envy, when not allowed to grow out of control and fester; it helps us recognize the things we value.  They talk and Lena tilts her head, listening for a moment, before the alarm sounds and one of their hosts is running out onto the porch.
Lena follows suit, looking at the jets.  "What can we do?"  It's her first question, help offered without reservation.

Patience Mason
"This theorem would require a data sublimation and transceiving locus of significant transmission strength, amplitude and frequency in order to be efficient on any large scale deployment." Patience looks at the row of fighter jets streaking towards them, their arrival imminent, likely even sooner then that.
Good science required time, careful planning, revision and accumulation of data to make said revisions. The mere seconds available to Patience at the moment...did not even remotely allow for 'good science'. Thankfully the Etheric scientist did not entirely rely on good science. When it came down to it, she could play dirty in a pinch with a lot of elbow grease and a bit of luck. Necessity was the mother of invention after all.
"Direct and immediate assembly of a functional and actualized prototype will require several temporal cycles in the standardized temporal unit identified as minutes to the layman. Addendum, necessary programming and data architecture is not concurrently available for appropriate field testing, further addendum, utilization of the afformentioned weaponized cerebral noospheric disruptor may gestate an innate and detrimental immunity should any individualized personages afflicted survive."
It was a warning...a very grim one at that.  But Patience started to move, running headlong towards whatever space she had commandeered for her work. She had much to do...and very little time to do it.

Demiurge
In the face of imminent threat, the mages' thoughts were not toward their own safety, but rather whatever assistance they could provide to defend against the assault. Lita told Sara to remain in the house, but of course she did not (because she was not a child, and she had her own mind.) So she followed the others onto the balcony to look up through the trees at the approaching squadron. When Patience left the group to get to work on whatever it was she had planned, Lita spared her a glance, but little more.
There were no bomb shelters here. No underground space... at all. The village had not been built with defense from air attacks in mind. The truth is, the people here had nowhere better to hide than inside their own homes, or perhaps out in the woods, if they spread out enough not to draw individual attention. Lita's home at least was far enough back that they'd escape the first wave of the assault.
"We have to get people to shelter," Lita answered Lena's question. "If you see anyone, especially children, tell them to fan out and get to the woods. The thicker the trees, the better."
She looked at Sara. "Where's Brandon?"
"He's in the market. I'll get him. You go help the other hunters."
Lita nodded, and this time when she kissed her lover, it felt like a goodbye. (Like: I love you, and stay safe.) Then Sara ran down the spiraling steps that led to the ground and Lita ducked back inside to get her gun. Weapon in hand, she made for the center of the village, where other armed citizens were pooling together.
Everything was happening at once. The sirens blared their warning, and all around the village people shouted and ran, confused and afraid. Perhaps they'd never thought that an attack would hit so close to home. But it had. And now their more leadership-minded members were herding the others away from the front lines while those in charge of defense raced to enact what little help they were capable of providing. Near the front of the village, a couple of metal turrets rose out of the ground and began to fire bright bolts of electricity at the approaching jets. One of the jets was caught and crashed into a grain field. The others kept coming though.

Patience Mason
[Int+Tech Spec WP diff 8]
Dice: 8 d10 TN8 (2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 1 [WP]

Grace Evans
When Patience left, Grace went with her. The two of them have worked on projects before, and perhaps she can be of some assistance. At least she probably won't be in the way.
In theory, they should be able to use their wrist computers to connect to the village's comm hub, using its power to funnel a powerful signal straight up those jet pilots' wetwares. But it's that power boost that's needed, isn't it?
"You deal with the implant, I'll see if I can't get the comms on full blast," Grace says, and starts waving her fingers at the holographic interface on her wrist.
[Int + Tech Spec WP Diff 8]
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Lena Reilly
There's a quick nod when Lita says it's about getting people to shelter.  She can't do a lot, but that she can definitely do and without hesitation she sets off, heading to handle crowd control.  She's scared...this is important to mention.  She's been very specific in her mind that this is all a simulation, and that's all it is.  It does not mean that she doesn't care about her person.  And besides, it's like the mercenary told his captain about the undercover Alliance agent:
Pain is scary.
And yet the fear doesn't stop her.  Pain is just pain, and if she is actually to die...well, if she dies, then she died saving people.  That's her best-case scenario anyway.

Patience Mason
Patience ran, felt her lungs burn as her legs drove her onward and her mind began to consider the plans required, the connects necessary, the theorems that would need to be computed. To her benefit, and her gratitude Grace had elected to join her, the pair running first to her small work space, and then towards the village's communications hub.
Patience simply nodded, not having the time to agree verbally, every nano second spent in conversation was several noospheric computational allocations lost to more important endeavours, because every full second could mean the difference between life, and death for the villagers, and themselves.
She worked quickly, having already been fairly aware of what needed to be done with the neural link...and it only took her a few moments to get it operational, she was over to Grace then, ready, waiting.
"Noospheric uplink and data dispersion capacitator operational and suitably augmented." She said as she waited for the necessary connection to bring it all together.

Demiurge
Grace and Patience set to work on finding a way into the enemy's neural network, while Lena ran to ground level and joined the other villagers in getting the people to safety. There wasn't much she could do, true. There wasn't much any of them could do. But they had to do what they could - and they did.
When the attack hit, it came hard and fast. The planes let loose a rain of red-hot laser-fire at the fields and farmhouses beyond the trees. One of the houses caught fire and lit up in a brilliant plume. Then the attack hit the front of the village proper, decimating trees and buildings. The sound of it was almost terrifyingly clinical. Not the harsh echo of bullets but the near-silent rush of air and heat followed by the tearing and sundering of wood and stone.
A lot of people died. You could see them falling, their bodies torn and smoking from cauterized wounds. Some of them were beyond recognition by the time they hit the ground.
The planes shot upward, hurtling over the tree-tops to make a pass at them from above. (Then it really was like rain.)
As Lena drew near the center of the village, she saw a ground of children sitting on the ground, crying and confused, beside the body of a woman who had likely been their mother. There were five of them, at varying ages between 5 and 13, the oldest of which (a boy) was trying desperately to get the others to move.
"Come on, we have to go! We can't stay out here!"
As Grace and Patience broke out into the fray, heading for the communication hub at the front of the village, they'd be confronted with the full vision of the attack - and the destruction left in its wake. They'd have only a few moments to reach their destination while the squadron doubled back and went in for another pass at the front. Enough time to reach the massive tree where the Council chambers (and their former prison cell) lay, but not enough time to climb to the transmitting device without putting themselves in harm's way.
When they got there, the tree was already a patchwork of scars, the ground littered with smoking bark and broken limbs alongside the dead villagers.
Then the next attack hit. And this time a few of the jets dove straight through the trees. Lena could see the plane coming. Could see the twilight sun glint off of its opaque black surface. There was a person in there. She couldn't see him, but she could feel his mind.
Those kids were going to die if she didn't do something.

Demiurge
[Edit: "she saw a group of children sitting on the ground"]

Grace Evans
When the lasers start, it's almost surreal. The relative quiet in which the village burns only serves to highlight the sounds of the dying and afraid. But with a goal ahead of her, Grace has to block it out. There are things to focus on that are not the dead and dying.
It's almost comforting, isn't it? To have a purpose in all the chaos? To keep one's mind off of the terror for as long as is necessary?
In between strafing attacks, they run their way through the village. But when taking cover, Grace works on boosting the signal of the transmitting device from her wrist computer. It's technology on a whole other level than what she's used to, though.
She huddles behind the council tree, trying to hold on to breath that threatens to go a bit too rapid. Sweat drips down the wild hair at her neck. And she's got her face firmly planted in that holographic interface -- joyless. She looks to Patience to know when to move and when to hide.
[Int + Tech Spec WP Diff 8 again!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (3, 4, 6, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1 [WP]

Lena Reilly
Real or not doesn't matter.  These are people and in here, they matter.  The horror of war is real in the most visceral, violent and traumatizing way and they have the most immersive experience with it ever right now.  She keeps an arm up to protect her eyes from debris as she runs, trying to get to someone and help.  Try to get to anyone and help.
She sees the kids, sitting there and needing to run but afraid to do so.  She sees the plan, bearing down on them.  It's like some kind of slow-motion scene of tragedy about to unfold where the hero can't do anything about it.
But Lena can.
She has two potential targets for her magic.  And they speak to her two sides, the two sides in everyone.  Her Wrath tells her to send the impulse to the pilot and force him to veer away, maybe crash into the ground somewhere safe.  Her Empathy tells her to save the kids.  It's a battle in her mind of which takes hold.
In the end, her Wrath holds sway for one simple reason: she can't target that many kids at once.  But she can try to get them to run as she affects the target in the plane.  And so she runs up to the kids, already starting to hum so that she can get in sync with the Lakashim.  The kids will never get why she's singing, and it doesn't matter.  All that matters is that she get them to safety.
"Go with him," she says, indicating the boy, and while she's not doing lyrics it is that her voice that taken on a melodic tone.  "You'll be okay..."
And with that, her eyes are targeted on the plane, Correspondance expanding out to locate him and affect his mind:
Veer away.
[[Mind 2/Corr 2, specialty focus!  Exending as much as needed, Quint to lower diff to 3, WP]]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (6, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

Patience Mason
Horror's were unfolding all around them, lives were being destroyed in all the ways one could imagine. This was not a territory dispute, this was not an act of vengence, this was systemic and total elimination of another ideology.
Genocide was likely the best way to describe it, albeit on an inefficient and piece meal scale.
Patience became all the more certain of her intended course of action as they ran through the burning, dying village, the lives of the pilots in those jets no longer a concern, if they fell and died or suffered brain damage...that was not her concern. Anyone who systematically bombed a village from above..deserved such a fate.
But they had to wait at the base of the tree, sheltered in its roots as they waited for the wave to pass, it would do no one any good if they were caught in the wave of destruction and killed before they could even make an attempt at Patience's plan.
When the planes past, and they were still alive the assent began in ernest, they would hook up the device, they would send the signal...they WOULD kill those jets.

Demiurge
As Grace and Patience were forced to take shelter from the attacks, Grace continued to work diligently on her device. It was difficult work, trying to focus on an alien technology while so much chaos erupted around her. But instead of letting the distraction overwhelm her, she used the pressure as a focus. And finally everything fell into place.
When a lull in the attack came, she and Patience made their way up those spiraling stairs. Going up and up and up...
The source of their plan was located high on the tree. A small enclosed room with an antenna on the roof. Somehow it was still in one piece.
Meanwhile, on the ground, Lena got to the kids and worked her effect, focusing all her strength and Will on the pilot of the jet that bore down on them.
Those words she offered the children, and the soft lilt of her song, were the last things she would ever utter in this realm. Veer away, she thought. And the jet suddenly slowed and veered to the side, but not before sending a spray of weapon-fire right at her. The beams tore into her body, burning and lacerating, and as she dropped to the ground, the world glowed with a strange kind of firelight. It felt like she was dreaming. Burning. Dying. Floating away...
And the world went black again.
But the kids, they got away. And the jet? A moment later it crashed headlong into a tree, killing its pilot in a bright explosion.

Grace Evans
"I've got it!" Grace yells over the screams of others. She doesn't know yet that the latest plane to crash was the one that dragged Lena out of this world.
"We should be ready for you to run the shit out of your thesis, Patience!"
But, it should be noted that Grace has not disengaged from her holographic interface just yet. She is preparing to assist with the thesis in play.
[Corr 2: Bring the Firewalls Down -- Attempting to weaken the defenses of the enemy tech to attacks from a distance. + WP]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (4, 5) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Patience Mason
This was it, the moment of truth, all this dirty science would either result in something spectacularly chaotic as planes crashed down out of the sky like giant bolders of hail. Or they would continue unabated until nothing of the village stood but burning tinder and desiccated stumps.
Patience plugged in the neural uplink, hoping that it would hold the amplitude that was about to coarse through its circuitry and in that moment she began to deploy what counter measures she could slamming interference, high gain noise, and all manner of unpleasant frequencies along the neural uplink.
Anyone on the receiving end would..in theory, be rendered insensate.
Time would tell.
[Forces+Life 2: base diff 5, +1 for quick cast, minus one for quint WP]
Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (3, 4) ( success x 1 ) [WP]

Grace Evans
[Wits + Computer = 7; Diff 8-1 (Ability Aptitude)]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (4, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Patience Mason
[Wits+Computers WP]
Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (5, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Demiurge
High up in the comm tower, Grace and Patience had no idea yet that Lena was no longer with them. And that was probably for the best, because they might not have managed to do what they'd gone there to do if they'd been so weighted with grief. Perhaps it was not a real death, and she was already awake somewhere else. But they didn't know that for sure. And either way, it was only the two of them left to finish what they'd come here to do.
Somehow, in the midst of this war, and the destruction of this beautiful place and its people, two women from another realm managed to do something that many would have though impossible. With the neural implant back online and the device on Grace's wrist linked into it, she and Patience were able to pull down the firewall and hack the device's code to use the transmitter to send a bolt of raw neural feedback into the minds of all the pilots.
It was going to hurt like hell.
The planes broke formation in the sky, veering and dipping and spinning out of control. And for a few brief, glorious moments, the rain of fire ceased as the pilots struggled to keep their jets under control.
That was when the dragons came. Not many - not enough to defeat the entire squadron if they'd been fully functional. But enough. Just enough to finish them off while they were reeling from Grace and Patience's attack. The great beasts let out an echoing chorus of roars and swooped down, spitting mouthfuls of acid and wrenching the jets out of the sky with their clawed limbs. These dragons had no riders. They'd come of their own accord to help protect the village.
Back on the ground, the people realized what was happening and began to come out of hiding, looking up at the sky and crying with relief.
They would not all die tonight. Many of them already had - but not all. Thanks to two strangers who they'd all thought insane, and a handful of wild dragons.