Update CXXIII: Alternative Viewpoints
JB CXXIII: Alternative Viewpoints
The door swings open, and a small team of identical men and women in neat black and white enter the lair of the Residents. They're all wearing mirrored sunglasses, despite the gloom of their lavish environments, and from the way they tilt their heads, they're listening in to their earpieces. The Residents are quite aware of what these things are. Unlike them, they're... pawns. Tools. Assets belonging to an erstwhile ally. But while the Residents truly understand their own value - and the value of everything around them - the Agency considers most of its assets to be mutually exchangeable. Its total value remains constant, but the allocation of such things is entirely mutable.
"What. Is it?" a Resident wearing a female form says, running its tongue over its lips. The gold of her rings catches the dim light. "We are occupied. What do your masters want?"
"Gentlemen. Ladies." One of the men steps forwards, adjusting his dark green tie. The executives are aware that the five of them are interchangable. It's just that the Agency likes fives. "Our agency has sent us here to inform you - as a pleasantry - that we have begun a systematic policy of censorship of mass media produced by the film industry. There are too many dangerous ideas existing within that field of human endeavor. We wish for there to be no conflict between us in this necessary containment of a field which has gone too long without proper government oversight. Ms. Peach, if you will?"
"Certainly, Mr. Telephone," says one of the identical women. She steps forwards, opening her briefcase, and deposits a pile of paperwork - one taller than her slimline briefcase - on the table. "Mr. Telephone, this should be the transcript of the regulations which permit these actions."
"Thank you, Ms. Peach," the man says, stepping back. "Gentlemen, ladies, please initial and date each clause and subclause of this documentation. Your compliance is appreciated. We shall pursue the Timetable on schedule if you cooperate. This is necessary."
"That's our territory," one of the executives snarls, chewing on his cigar. He exhales a cloud of smoke. "We have an arrangement!"
"Gentlemen. Ladies. We am sorry, but our agency wishes to inform you that we had an arrangement. We permitted you to self-regulate. You told us that you could keep things under control, that industry bodies could maintain order and proper proceedings and that we did not have to bring the force of the law to bear." He shakes his head sadly. "Ms. Peach, would you say that they have successfully kept things under control."
"They have not done so, Mr. Telephone," says Ms. Peach. "Although I may be mistaken. What do you think, Mr. Wheelbarrow?"
"I would have to agree that they have failed to keep things under control," another of the men says. "Do you have anything to contribute to this discussion, Mr. Hat or Ms. Piano."
"I do not," says the final man.
"I would raise the question of whether the Syndicate's attention was really in self-regulation," Ms. Piano says. "We have long suspected that the Syndicate is more interested in maintaining profitability than furthering the Timetable. I look around, and what do I see?" The woman spreads her hands. "I see the same corporate executives who've let Hollywood become a place of... of moral degradation and filth. I see the same executives who've failed to stop the spread of subversive memes."
"Disgraceful," says Ms. Peach. "The memes must be controlled. Self-regulation does not work. Regulation must be imposed from without to bring an end to the present disgraceful state of affairs. We have begun to enforce previously neglected regulations and have begun a widespread campaign utilizing correct ideas to counter subversive memes."
"Counter the subversive memes," the other four agents echo in unison.
"You're overssssstepping your boundaries," snaps an executive, exhaling a cloud of smoke.
"No," Mr. Hat - unless it was Mr. Telephone - says. "Our agency has verified that our actions are within regulations. And part of the terms of the conditions which let you maintain your own self-regulation was that you would properly regulate. You have not done so." A sneer crosses the five faces together. "Moral filth. Implications of sexual impropriety. Disruptive memes passed to the populace. We will regulate this."
"Too much violence has been permitted in movies," Ms. Peach says. "We will prevent it from being shown. It will obstruct the spread of subversive ideas."
"We understand subversive elements positively depict non-heteronormative sexualities," Mr. Wheelbarrow says. "We can target these subversive elements through the proper tailoring of our targeted messages. This will be made easier if you comply."
"We will not comply!" hisses a Resident through sharp teeth, leaping to their feet and slamming their hands into the table, leaving dents. "Your regulations have no jurisdiction here! I own the Senator! Your laws have no power! They have not been passed! You arrogant pups will bow to us, or we will have your agency's funding cut."
One of the other Residents rests a hand on the first's shoulders. "We understand that this recent period has been... disruptive," its says in an oily tone. "Rasssssh government action will serve no one... and will be quite... expensive to enforce. You wouldn't want foreign powers to get a competitive advantage here, would you? Otherwise we may have to move our labor overseas. Aid... other endeavors." It exhales, blowing smoke towards the agents. "Have a cigar," it says, proffering the box.
"We do not smoke," the five Agents say in unison.
The cigars vanish up the Resident's sleeves. "Well, no matter," the Resident says. "Wouldn't you prefer us to be... cooperative? We will of course comply fully with the letter of the regulations, but there is compliance and there is compliance. At the very least, I will not acknowledge such regulations until my legal team has vetted them fully. In extensive details."
"Deliberately obstructing the Timetable is a wrong," Ms. Piano says, in a tone like ice. "And as it is a wrong against Control, it becomes a sin. You are not sinners, are you?"
The Resident smiles. "But I do not know if it is in the Timetable until my lawyers have inspected it, and it would be imprudent to accept these regulations until we have vetted them for impact against the Timetable. It is for the good of the Union." Its smile grows wider. "And when we mention the good of the Union, I am sure I would be better convinced of your good intentions and faith if you would look at the other problem which has got in the way of the self-regulation regime which has held up perfectly well until now. I speak, of course, of Iteration X," he says to Mr. Telephone.
The pale man's knuckles whiten around his briefcase. "Gentlemen. Ladies. I reassure you, Iteration X will face due punishment for its quite shocking incompetence in this - and other recent - matters. Gentlemen, ladies, I reassure you of this. Iteration X appears to have forgotten the necessity of the Timetable. It has overtly displayed technology beyond the permitted level of development on Earth. It acts without the proper consultations with my parent agency. Corrective measures will be taken against it. Regulations state that my agency is entrusted with internal regulation of the Technocratic Union, and Iteration X is in dire need of extensive regulation. But, gentlemen and ladies, that is not the topic under discussion."
The Resident smiles a smile which reaches from ear to ear. "Oh, no doubt, no doubt," it says. It gestures to the long table, which is suddenly longer than it was and has five more seats. "Please, please, sit," it says. "Let us liaise. Scratch our back and we will scratch yours. I am sure that we will have a mutually profitable transaction."
Elsa pulses her mapping scanner, getting a readout of the area. "This way!" she says. "We head towards that building! It's got thick walls and I'm not getting any signs from it! We can cut through this alley and..."
"What alley?" Jazmin asks, covering the rear.
Elsa looks up. There's a thick brick wall blocking it. It looks old, but... she pulses the mapping tool again. Now there's no alleyway there. "This way instead!" she orders. It's a nervous, tense attempt to cross the open ground, picking their way between parked cars. And little details aren't matching. Cars change brands. Cars change color. Buildings change appearances. By the time they reach the plaza - which hadn't been on her map - all the cars on the street are black, and half of them are Cadillacs.
Jazmin has noticed it too. "The world's changing," she says.
"Dimensional instability," Elsa says. That's what it should be. But maybe it isn't. Maybe someone's fucking with them. But no, Threat Null shouldn't have any Reality Hackers. And they're not in the Digital Web, so this shouldn't be happening. She looks up at the nice-and-secure entrance to the bank. It's tough. Armored. And there's no one inside. She's scanned it for spirits. This time she's keeping her scanner active, though.
And because she's doing that, she sees them appear from nowhere all around them as the bank vanishes and the plaza doubles in size. There are even more fucking Damons. There are grey IFVs. There are black helicopters. There are lots and lots of police. There are federal agents with guns. No actual military, Elsa thinks, but lots of paramilitary sorts. And she might be bulletproof-but she doesn't want to risk it. Jazmin definitely isn't, for all that her suit is armor-weave.
"We have you surrounded!" comes a booming voice from the loudspeakers. "Lay down your weapons! This is an order! If you do not lay down your weapons, we will fire!"
Elsa thinks fast. Very fast. And she's very glad for her cognitive augs.
"Hold me!" she shouts at Jazmin, her hair blowing in the downdraft from the helicopters.
"What?"
"You need to be in close! I'm going to try a VE thing! Trust me!"
"You have five seconds to comply!" comes the booming voice. "Five. Four. Three. Two..."
Jazmin all but throws herself at Elsa, wrapping her arms around her. The cyborg can only regret that now isn't the time to enjoy it. Jazmin really is adorably petite. Elsa can see the expressions of scorn and contempt and hate on all the surrounding soldiers. They're the same ones from various people in Moscow who didn't really approve of some of her life 'choices.'
Elsa slaps her chest. "Beam me up, Scotty!" she shouts, engaging her dimensional jump module. Normally it'd only work on Earth, but she got data on whatever Nichols had done. She thinks with the right signal, she can shift subdimensions here using the standard hardware. The world fades to white. It's so much more pleasant doing this without the Dimensional Anomaly in the way, Elsa decides. There's no stabbing pains at all. Then the world fades back in, and luckily they're not surrounded by an entire army.
"Who's Scotty?" Jazmin asks warily, looking around.
"Void Engineer joke," Elsa says, tension in her voice. They're in a dusty backroom. There's a few severs in here, between filing cabinets and racks of old-style film reels. They look like they've basically been crammed in wherever they'd fit. The floor is black and white tiling, and the walls are an institutional green. The air smells of paper and copper. "Wait... you haven't seen Star Trek? First season was from the Sixties."
"I'm... still working on the English," Jazmin admits. "Six months ago, I couldn't speak it at all. A lot of people in the Order make references to things I haven't seen. Where are we?"
"Are you familiar with the Digital Web?" Elsa asks her.
"I've... heard of it? A little? It's an Iteration X thing, right?" Jazmin says.
"Kinda. The Void Engineers do things with it too. That psychic realm - when things started changing, I realized that it wasn't exactly real. Like, it was physical, but it was also simulated. I... I think this is the place the simulation is being run from. Which means I think they can't change the world on us when we're in here," Elsa says.
"It felt real," Jazmin points out, looking around with more interest and less wariness. "This looks sort of Union-like. I think that..." Then she gasps, making a retching noise.
The coppery smell in the air is because there's a dead body here, just outside the door. In life, he was a man in a black suit and white shirt. Now he's a corpse, head almost severed from an axe impact. The man's flesh is shriveled and grey, parchment-like skin clinging to his bones. Someone - something - has drained all the fluid from his body. She scans him. That wasn't a man. It was a spirit. And it's dead now. Something killed this man in this... this bureau.
"Okay, new plan," Elsa says intensely. "This place isn't safe." Jazmin nods at that. "We keep quiet. We don't engage anything if we can avoid it. I'll see if I can find a place where we get in contact with my ship. And we keep the fuck away from whatever killed that man." She pulls a scanner out of her pocket and makes a show of looking at it. "This isn't a real Union place," she says. "It's a mockery. Remember, don't trust the things here. They're pretending to be people, but they're not. And any of them could be what did this in disguise."
"D-do you know what?" Jazmin stammers.
"No," Elsa says. She doesn't know. She has a horrible sneaking suspicion that it's something to do with... with that thing which tore itself out of the Autopolitan vessel, but... that's a moon-sized alien thing. Not anything which could use a hatchet. And how would an Autopolitan get into this place, anyway? They almost never entered psychic or noetic dimensions.
On the other hand, even if it wasn't related to that thing, it was still an axe-murdering vampire thing. Best avoided. She leads Jazmin by the hand as they sneak through the crowded archives. There are a lot of black-suited men there, with earpieces and looking the very spitting image of government agents, overseeing people who look like clerks. Her augmentations feel a little sluggish here, and her diagnostics say that they've downclocked to prevent damage in a hostile subdimensional environment. That's not good-but it also means that the enemies here aren't going to be nearly as dangerous as they could have been in Hollywood, or in space.
She dodges a handful of EDEs which look like police, and sees more black-suited men and women telling clerks and secretaries what to redact from and what to add to documents. Her eyes zoom in-and she notices that they're scripts. Movie scripts. It's something she keeps in mind as they creep through the crowded archives.
Someone screams. There is the sound of wild gunfire, then some more screams. Then a meaty sound of metal meeting flesh, then silence, interrupted by wild ranting. "It's their fault and they're going to pay for it. Not my fault! Not mine! None of it was!" There's sobbing. "Mommy..." she cries.
Elsa carefully leans out to take a look. The source of the ranting looks like... Henriette. A orange-haired girl with a similar face, covered in blood. Her clothes have been stained red by the crimson liquid, with only splashes of pink to mark their original color. In her hands is a bloodstained machete, made out of a strange black metal. Her teeth are sharp, like a shark's, and there is a crazed look on her face. "I'll find you sister. I'll find you and I'm going to make you suffer and everything you did is going to be for nothing. I'm going to grind your friends up in front of you and crush everything you love."
Elsa can sense just how powerful the being is. Even here, with most of its powers locked away by the nature of the realm, it is powerful. Powerful enough to have slain a dozen armed guards and be hunting down the agents and their lackeys one by one. She runs a filter on her hearing to listen to it, to track it-no, her. Henriette, Elsa decides, is going to have to explain in very great detail why the MUSCOVITE commander looks almost identical to her. If they survive.
The door swings open, and a small team of identical men and women in neat black and white enter the lair of the Residents. They're all wearing mirrored sunglasses, despite the gloom of their lavish environments, and from the way they tilt their heads, they're listening in to their earpieces. The Residents are quite aware of what these things are. Unlike them, they're... pawns. Tools. Assets belonging to an erstwhile ally. But while the Residents truly understand their own value - and the value of everything around them - the Agency considers most of its assets to be mutually exchangeable. Its total value remains constant, but the allocation of such things is entirely mutable.
"What. Is it?" a Resident wearing a female form says, running its tongue over its lips. The gold of her rings catches the dim light. "We are occupied. What do your masters want?"
"Gentlemen. Ladies." One of the men steps forwards, adjusting his dark green tie. The executives are aware that the five of them are interchangable. It's just that the Agency likes fives. "Our agency has sent us here to inform you - as a pleasantry - that we have begun a systematic policy of censorship of mass media produced by the film industry. There are too many dangerous ideas existing within that field of human endeavor. We wish for there to be no conflict between us in this necessary containment of a field which has gone too long without proper government oversight. Ms. Peach, if you will?"
"Certainly, Mr. Telephone," says one of the identical women. She steps forwards, opening her briefcase, and deposits a pile of paperwork - one taller than her slimline briefcase - on the table. "Mr. Telephone, this should be the transcript of the regulations which permit these actions."
"Thank you, Ms. Peach," the man says, stepping back. "Gentlemen, ladies, please initial and date each clause and subclause of this documentation. Your compliance is appreciated. We shall pursue the Timetable on schedule if you cooperate. This is necessary."
"That's our territory," one of the executives snarls, chewing on his cigar. He exhales a cloud of smoke. "We have an arrangement!"
"Gentlemen. Ladies. We am sorry, but our agency wishes to inform you that we had an arrangement. We permitted you to self-regulate. You told us that you could keep things under control, that industry bodies could maintain order and proper proceedings and that we did not have to bring the force of the law to bear." He shakes his head sadly. "Ms. Peach, would you say that they have successfully kept things under control."
"They have not done so, Mr. Telephone," says Ms. Peach. "Although I may be mistaken. What do you think, Mr. Wheelbarrow?"
"I would have to agree that they have failed to keep things under control," another of the men says. "Do you have anything to contribute to this discussion, Mr. Hat or Ms. Piano."
"I do not," says the final man.
"I would raise the question of whether the Syndicate's attention was really in self-regulation," Ms. Piano says. "We have long suspected that the Syndicate is more interested in maintaining profitability than furthering the Timetable. I look around, and what do I see?" The woman spreads her hands. "I see the same corporate executives who've let Hollywood become a place of... of moral degradation and filth. I see the same executives who've failed to stop the spread of subversive memes."
"Disgraceful," says Ms. Peach. "The memes must be controlled. Self-regulation does not work. Regulation must be imposed from without to bring an end to the present disgraceful state of affairs. We have begun to enforce previously neglected regulations and have begun a widespread campaign utilizing correct ideas to counter subversive memes."
"Counter the subversive memes," the other four agents echo in unison.
"You're overssssstepping your boundaries," snaps an executive, exhaling a cloud of smoke.
"No," Mr. Hat - unless it was Mr. Telephone - says. "Our agency has verified that our actions are within regulations. And part of the terms of the conditions which let you maintain your own self-regulation was that you would properly regulate. You have not done so." A sneer crosses the five faces together. "Moral filth. Implications of sexual impropriety. Disruptive memes passed to the populace. We will regulate this."
"Too much violence has been permitted in movies," Ms. Peach says. "We will prevent it from being shown. It will obstruct the spread of subversive ideas."
"We understand subversive elements positively depict non-heteronormative sexualities," Mr. Wheelbarrow says. "We can target these subversive elements through the proper tailoring of our targeted messages. This will be made easier if you comply."
"We will not comply!" hisses a Resident through sharp teeth, leaping to their feet and slamming their hands into the table, leaving dents. "Your regulations have no jurisdiction here! I own the Senator! Your laws have no power! They have not been passed! You arrogant pups will bow to us, or we will have your agency's funding cut."
One of the other Residents rests a hand on the first's shoulders. "We understand that this recent period has been... disruptive," its says in an oily tone. "Rasssssh government action will serve no one... and will be quite... expensive to enforce. You wouldn't want foreign powers to get a competitive advantage here, would you? Otherwise we may have to move our labor overseas. Aid... other endeavors." It exhales, blowing smoke towards the agents. "Have a cigar," it says, proffering the box.
"We do not smoke," the five Agents say in unison.
The cigars vanish up the Resident's sleeves. "Well, no matter," the Resident says. "Wouldn't you prefer us to be... cooperative? We will of course comply fully with the letter of the regulations, but there is compliance and there is compliance. At the very least, I will not acknowledge such regulations until my legal team has vetted them fully. In extensive details."
"Deliberately obstructing the Timetable is a wrong," Ms. Piano says, in a tone like ice. "And as it is a wrong against Control, it becomes a sin. You are not sinners, are you?"
The Resident smiles. "But I do not know if it is in the Timetable until my lawyers have inspected it, and it would be imprudent to accept these regulations until we have vetted them for impact against the Timetable. It is for the good of the Union." Its smile grows wider. "And when we mention the good of the Union, I am sure I would be better convinced of your good intentions and faith if you would look at the other problem which has got in the way of the self-regulation regime which has held up perfectly well until now. I speak, of course, of Iteration X," he says to Mr. Telephone.
The pale man's knuckles whiten around his briefcase. "Gentlemen. Ladies. I reassure you, Iteration X will face due punishment for its quite shocking incompetence in this - and other recent - matters. Gentlemen, ladies, I reassure you of this. Iteration X appears to have forgotten the necessity of the Timetable. It has overtly displayed technology beyond the permitted level of development on Earth. It acts without the proper consultations with my parent agency. Corrective measures will be taken against it. Regulations state that my agency is entrusted with internal regulation of the Technocratic Union, and Iteration X is in dire need of extensive regulation. But, gentlemen and ladies, that is not the topic under discussion."
The Resident smiles a smile which reaches from ear to ear. "Oh, no doubt, no doubt," it says. It gestures to the long table, which is suddenly longer than it was and has five more seats. "Please, please, sit," it says. "Let us liaise. Scratch our back and we will scratch yours. I am sure that we will have a mutually profitable transaction."
***
Elsa pulses her mapping scanner, getting a readout of the area. "This way!" she says. "We head towards that building! It's got thick walls and I'm not getting any signs from it! We can cut through this alley and..."
"What alley?" Jazmin asks, covering the rear.
Elsa looks up. There's a thick brick wall blocking it. It looks old, but... she pulses the mapping tool again. Now there's no alleyway there. "This way instead!" she orders. It's a nervous, tense attempt to cross the open ground, picking their way between parked cars. And little details aren't matching. Cars change brands. Cars change color. Buildings change appearances. By the time they reach the plaza - which hadn't been on her map - all the cars on the street are black, and half of them are Cadillacs.
Jazmin has noticed it too. "The world's changing," she says.
"Dimensional instability," Elsa says. That's what it should be. But maybe it isn't. Maybe someone's fucking with them. But no, Threat Null shouldn't have any Reality Hackers. And they're not in the Digital Web, so this shouldn't be happening. She looks up at the nice-and-secure entrance to the bank. It's tough. Armored. And there's no one inside. She's scanned it for spirits. This time she's keeping her scanner active, though.
And because she's doing that, she sees them appear from nowhere all around them as the bank vanishes and the plaza doubles in size. There are even more fucking Damons. There are grey IFVs. There are black helicopters. There are lots and lots of police. There are federal agents with guns. No actual military, Elsa thinks, but lots of paramilitary sorts. And she might be bulletproof-but she doesn't want to risk it. Jazmin definitely isn't, for all that her suit is armor-weave.
"We have you surrounded!" comes a booming voice from the loudspeakers. "Lay down your weapons! This is an order! If you do not lay down your weapons, we will fire!"
Elsa thinks fast. Very fast. And she's very glad for her cognitive augs.
"Hold me!" she shouts at Jazmin, her hair blowing in the downdraft from the helicopters.
"What?"
"You need to be in close! I'm going to try a VE thing! Trust me!"
"You have five seconds to comply!" comes the booming voice. "Five. Four. Three. Two..."
Jazmin all but throws herself at Elsa, wrapping her arms around her. The cyborg can only regret that now isn't the time to enjoy it. Jazmin really is adorably petite. Elsa can see the expressions of scorn and contempt and hate on all the surrounding soldiers. They're the same ones from various people in Moscow who didn't really approve of some of her life 'choices.'
Elsa slaps her chest. "Beam me up, Scotty!" she shouts, engaging her dimensional jump module. Normally it'd only work on Earth, but she got data on whatever Nichols had done. She thinks with the right signal, she can shift subdimensions here using the standard hardware. The world fades to white. It's so much more pleasant doing this without the Dimensional Anomaly in the way, Elsa decides. There's no stabbing pains at all. Then the world fades back in, and luckily they're not surrounded by an entire army.
"Who's Scotty?" Jazmin asks warily, looking around.
"Void Engineer joke," Elsa says, tension in her voice. They're in a dusty backroom. There's a few severs in here, between filing cabinets and racks of old-style film reels. They look like they've basically been crammed in wherever they'd fit. The floor is black and white tiling, and the walls are an institutional green. The air smells of paper and copper. "Wait... you haven't seen Star Trek? First season was from the Sixties."
"I'm... still working on the English," Jazmin admits. "Six months ago, I couldn't speak it at all. A lot of people in the Order make references to things I haven't seen. Where are we?"
"Are you familiar with the Digital Web?" Elsa asks her.
"I've... heard of it? A little? It's an Iteration X thing, right?" Jazmin says.
"Kinda. The Void Engineers do things with it too. That psychic realm - when things started changing, I realized that it wasn't exactly real. Like, it was physical, but it was also simulated. I... I think this is the place the simulation is being run from. Which means I think they can't change the world on us when we're in here," Elsa says.
"It felt real," Jazmin points out, looking around with more interest and less wariness. "This looks sort of Union-like. I think that..." Then she gasps, making a retching noise.
The coppery smell in the air is because there's a dead body here, just outside the door. In life, he was a man in a black suit and white shirt. Now he's a corpse, head almost severed from an axe impact. The man's flesh is shriveled and grey, parchment-like skin clinging to his bones. Someone - something - has drained all the fluid from his body. She scans him. That wasn't a man. It was a spirit. And it's dead now. Something killed this man in this... this bureau.
"Okay, new plan," Elsa says intensely. "This place isn't safe." Jazmin nods at that. "We keep quiet. We don't engage anything if we can avoid it. I'll see if I can find a place where we get in contact with my ship. And we keep the fuck away from whatever killed that man." She pulls a scanner out of her pocket and makes a show of looking at it. "This isn't a real Union place," she says. "It's a mockery. Remember, don't trust the things here. They're pretending to be people, but they're not. And any of them could be what did this in disguise."
"D-do you know what?" Jazmin stammers.
"No," Elsa says. She doesn't know. She has a horrible sneaking suspicion that it's something to do with... with that thing which tore itself out of the Autopolitan vessel, but... that's a moon-sized alien thing. Not anything which could use a hatchet. And how would an Autopolitan get into this place, anyway? They almost never entered psychic or noetic dimensions.
On the other hand, even if it wasn't related to that thing, it was still an axe-murdering vampire thing. Best avoided. She leads Jazmin by the hand as they sneak through the crowded archives. There are a lot of black-suited men there, with earpieces and looking the very spitting image of government agents, overseeing people who look like clerks. Her augmentations feel a little sluggish here, and her diagnostics say that they've downclocked to prevent damage in a hostile subdimensional environment. That's not good-but it also means that the enemies here aren't going to be nearly as dangerous as they could have been in Hollywood, or in space.
She dodges a handful of EDEs which look like police, and sees more black-suited men and women telling clerks and secretaries what to redact from and what to add to documents. Her eyes zoom in-and she notices that they're scripts. Movie scripts. It's something she keeps in mind as they creep through the crowded archives.
Someone screams. There is the sound of wild gunfire, then some more screams. Then a meaty sound of metal meeting flesh, then silence, interrupted by wild ranting. "It's their fault and they're going to pay for it. Not my fault! Not mine! None of it was!" There's sobbing. "Mommy..." she cries.
Elsa carefully leans out to take a look. The source of the ranting looks like... Henriette. A orange-haired girl with a similar face, covered in blood. Her clothes have been stained red by the crimson liquid, with only splashes of pink to mark their original color. In her hands is a bloodstained machete, made out of a strange black metal. Her teeth are sharp, like a shark's, and there is a crazed look on her face. "I'll find you sister. I'll find you and I'm going to make you suffer and everything you did is going to be for nothing. I'm going to grind your friends up in front of you and crush everything you love."
Elsa can sense just how powerful the being is. Even here, with most of its powers locked away by the nature of the realm, it is powerful. Powerful enough to have slain a dozen armed guards and be hunting down the agents and their lackeys one by one. She runs a filter on her hearing to listen to it, to track it-no, her. Henriette, Elsa decides, is going to have to explain in very great detail why the MUSCOVITE commander looks almost identical to her. If they survive.
***
In the void, Henriette duels her sister. She pushes the Trinity Titan into overdrive, and is surprised that it can even fight the Mark V on an even level. Henrietta has become... different. She's not as creative as before, executing her attacks and blocks with mechanical sub-micron precision, the precision of a machine. But even so, she can sense the seething rage that is behind the mechanical precision. She can sense how the Mark V is fighting differently than if it wanted a quick kill-how Henrietta wants to tear her out of the atomic war machine and torment her for eternity. And she can sense the core. The hateful core of this god-machine, hiding behind meters of armor and undying flesh. A hateful beating heart and mind that seeks only to destroy everything she loves and holds dear.
There is no room for mercy or care in this situation. She has to fight, ignoring the damage. Weapons hammer on the Trinity Titan's thick armor, and her repair microbots, optimized for this high-energy environment, work overtime to fix the real damage done by their attacks. She keeps trying to force her way past the Mark V-but it's incredibly fast and agile and keeps blocking her path. The BioVARG cores are crawling out, grabbing hissing biomechanical weapons that throw disgusting projectiles at her.
So-how to beat her sister, Henriette thinks. She's focused on her, an all-consuming monomaniacal focus that has become her nature. She needs a distraction and then-she checks. She has one stealth drone remaining and there's a nuclear grenade dispenser. Yes, this might work.
There is no room for mercy or care in this situation. She has to fight, ignoring the damage. Weapons hammer on the Trinity Titan's thick armor, and her repair microbots, optimized for this high-energy environment, work overtime to fix the real damage done by their attacks. She keeps trying to force her way past the Mark V-but it's incredibly fast and agile and keeps blocking her path. The BioVARG cores are crawling out, grabbing hissing biomechanical weapons that throw disgusting projectiles at her.
So-how to beat her sister, Henriette thinks. She's focused on her, an all-consuming monomaniacal focus that has become her nature. She needs a distraction and then-she checks. She has one stealth drone remaining and there's a nuclear grenade dispenser. Yes, this might work.
***
Elsa and Jazmin are interrupted in their desperate attempts to avoid both the Agency and the deranged avatar of a god-machine in the media archives by a sudden communique from another dimension.
"Hey ladies, I just noticed that both of you are in another subdimension which affects this one I'm in. I'd like a bit of help." Kessler says.
"I-" Elsa stammers. She can't speak for a moment. "Nobody could have survived that. That dragon was a Prime Threat! The kind of EDE you use warships to neutralize and keeps coming back no matter what."
"Maybe," Jazmin whispers, "that's not him?"
Elsa thinks. That sounds plausible. "So prove it. Why should we trust you."
"Good point." Kessler says, musing. "I don't know why you should. Things here are very good at lying. Look, I need you to burn some movie scripts for me. I'm-" he moves his viewpoint, and Elsa can see an army of Americans from various eras and times and films being shot at by other soldiers of different nationalities, from science fiction stormtroopers and rebels to Nazis and Confederates to Russians and other historical enemies. Both sides are being attacked by squid-robots and flying robotic gunships and other machine weapons. Supersonic planes and WWII fighters duel in the background, as artillery booms and blasts everywhere. Superman floats above the fray, heat-visioning a group of Kessler's soldiers, but more and more come. "-kind of leading an accidental rebellion against the rulers of this place and I'm a little busy. I need you to help me with this issue."
Elsa looks at him as if he's crazy. "I'll think about it. Naryshkin, out." She closes the communications link and hears something behind her, turns around. It's the girl she saw-the orange-haired blood-soaked girl with a black carbon machete-coming at her with full force. Elsa fires at her, but her shots go wild and her gun jams. She instinctively knows that the girl is somehow at fault-her sheer strength in this realm is making her a deadly foe, even if she might not be as dangerous as she would be in either of the other realm forms. She dodges aside but too slowly, and the monster gets its hands on her. It slams her head into the tile hard enough with furious inhuman strength, hard enough to shatter tile and throw up impact warnings and then, all of a sudden-
The blood-soaked teenage girl-monster screams in pain and collapses before she can raise her machete to attack. Elsa takes that chance to run as fast as she can, following Jazmin. She's not fighting something like this. Not here.
"What was that thing?" Jazmin asks. "I tried to shoot it when it was on top of you but my gun jammed."
"It's some sort of... powerful EDE. Don't antagonize it. I don't think we have the power to kill it easily."
"What if we laid some sort of trap?" Jazmin suggests.
"Maybe." Elsa thinks. "Maybe." If it was affected by outside events-and Elsa thinks that happened because of something in either Planet Hollywood or the Realm of Hollywood-maybe if she hurts it here, it'll be easier to fight it outside.
"Hey ladies, I just noticed that both of you are in another subdimension which affects this one I'm in. I'd like a bit of help." Kessler says.
"I-" Elsa stammers. She can't speak for a moment. "Nobody could have survived that. That dragon was a Prime Threat! The kind of EDE you use warships to neutralize and keeps coming back no matter what."
"Maybe," Jazmin whispers, "that's not him?"
Elsa thinks. That sounds plausible. "So prove it. Why should we trust you."
"Good point." Kessler says, musing. "I don't know why you should. Things here are very good at lying. Look, I need you to burn some movie scripts for me. I'm-" he moves his viewpoint, and Elsa can see an army of Americans from various eras and times and films being shot at by other soldiers of different nationalities, from science fiction stormtroopers and rebels to Nazis and Confederates to Russians and other historical enemies. Both sides are being attacked by squid-robots and flying robotic gunships and other machine weapons. Supersonic planes and WWII fighters duel in the background, as artillery booms and blasts everywhere. Superman floats above the fray, heat-visioning a group of Kessler's soldiers, but more and more come. "-kind of leading an accidental rebellion against the rulers of this place and I'm a little busy. I need you to help me with this issue."
Elsa looks at him as if he's crazy. "I'll think about it. Naryshkin, out." She closes the communications link and hears something behind her, turns around. It's the girl she saw-the orange-haired blood-soaked girl with a black carbon machete-coming at her with full force. Elsa fires at her, but her shots go wild and her gun jams. She instinctively knows that the girl is somehow at fault-her sheer strength in this realm is making her a deadly foe, even if she might not be as dangerous as she would be in either of the other realm forms. She dodges aside but too slowly, and the monster gets its hands on her. It slams her head into the tile hard enough with furious inhuman strength, hard enough to shatter tile and throw up impact warnings and then, all of a sudden-
The blood-soaked teenage girl-monster screams in pain and collapses before she can raise her machete to attack. Elsa takes that chance to run as fast as she can, following Jazmin. She's not fighting something like this. Not here.
"What was that thing?" Jazmin asks. "I tried to shoot it when it was on top of you but my gun jammed."
"It's some sort of... powerful EDE. Don't antagonize it. I don't think we have the power to kill it easily."
"What if we laid some sort of trap?" Jazmin suggests.
"Maybe." Elsa thinks. "Maybe." If it was affected by outside events-and Elsa thinks that happened because of something in either Planet Hollywood or the Realm of Hollywood-maybe if she hurts it here, it'll be easier to fight it outside.
***
Henriette yells in frustration as her multitasking renders her slightly vulnerable and the Mark V manages to catch one of her Titan's atomic rocket launchers with a directed gravity beam, crumpling the missiles and launcher as if they were tin cans. She realizes that she's thinking of this Etherite piece-of-shit as her machine now and that it's mildly distressing, but it at least means her attention is away from the stealth drone creeping towards the core.
"So, sister." Henrietta sneers. "Do you have any last words?" The Mark V grabs her, pins her onto one of the walls. It feels disgustingly soft. The BioVARGs are crawling over her.
"Yes." Henriette says. "Detonate."
"You bitch." Henrietta snarls, and the stealth drone explodes flush with the core of her being and she screams, stunned in pain.
Henriette uses the opportunity to thrust off of the wall, pushing the Mark V away as it reverts to less capable self-preservation programming, scoring a gash over its clean black armor plate that it regenerates. The BioVARGs are insane, feral, tearing at each other without her ex-sister's control. Good. That buys her some more time. So nuclear weapons can hurt the core. Good. Just... she needs more. She checks the weapons that the Trinity Titan has.
[GAMMA GATLING LASER-ON/LINE]
[ATOMIC MICROROCKET LAUNCHER-L UNIT OFF/LINE | R UNIT ON/LINE]
[CROCKETT GRENADES-ON/LINE]
[FISSION AXE-ON/LINE]
[GAMMA OCULAR BLASTERS-ON/LINE]
[ORION KNUCKLE-ON/LINE]
[VISHNU SPIKE CANNON-EMPTY]
[SELF DESTRUCT CHARGE (TEN MEGATON THERMONUKE)-ON/LINE]
Grenades, the axe, one rocket pod, and the self-destruct charge. It'll be hard but doable.
Her sister starts to recover, the BioVARGs and the Core Defender stilling their movements and coming back under central control. A temporary impact. "You'll pay for that."
___________________________________
The Henriettas on all three realms are linked, by the way. Hurting her army hurts her in realspace to some extent, hurting her in realspace hurts her army, and hurting her in the Censor realm hurts her in realspace. This lets Elsa and Jazmin actually do some damage here, although she is still an incredibly powerful creature. Henrietta's attributes in the Archives are human-scale but she gets some very interesting benefits from her Incarna status.
Someone needs to roll Elsa's 10d10e7 Perception + Awareness + Cybereyes to analyze her.
Jazmin can also attempt a 5d10e7 Perception + Awareness roll because she has Entropy and can sense weakpoints.
Kessler's Army:
[ ] (0.8x) Abandon the army, get back to 'real space.' This isn't your task.
[ ] viva la revolution! Take out or stymie the Resident control here and they lose a massive source of Prime Energy income. The Void Engineers need to come back to retake it, but until then...
"So, sister." Henrietta sneers. "Do you have any last words?" The Mark V grabs her, pins her onto one of the walls. It feels disgustingly soft. The BioVARGs are crawling over her.
"Yes." Henriette says. "Detonate."
"You bitch." Henrietta snarls, and the stealth drone explodes flush with the core of her being and she screams, stunned in pain.
Henriette uses the opportunity to thrust off of the wall, pushing the Mark V away as it reverts to less capable self-preservation programming, scoring a gash over its clean black armor plate that it regenerates. The BioVARGs are insane, feral, tearing at each other without her ex-sister's control. Good. That buys her some more time. So nuclear weapons can hurt the core. Good. Just... she needs more. She checks the weapons that the Trinity Titan has.
[GAMMA GATLING LASER-ON/LINE]
[ATOMIC MICROROCKET LAUNCHER-L UNIT OFF/LINE | R UNIT ON/LINE]
[CROCKETT GRENADES-ON/LINE]
[FISSION AXE-ON/LINE]
[GAMMA OCULAR BLASTERS-ON/LINE]
[ORION KNUCKLE-ON/LINE]
[VISHNU SPIKE CANNON-EMPTY]
[SELF DESTRUCT CHARGE (TEN MEGATON THERMONUKE)-ON/LINE]
Grenades, the axe, one rocket pod, and the self-destruct charge. It'll be hard but doable.
Her sister starts to recover, the BioVARGs and the Core Defender stilling their movements and coming back under central control. A temporary impact. "You'll pay for that."
___________________________________
The Henriettas on all three realms are linked, by the way. Hurting her army hurts her in realspace to some extent, hurting her in realspace hurts her army, and hurting her in the Censor realm hurts her in realspace. This lets Elsa and Jazmin actually do some damage here, although she is still an incredibly powerful creature. Henrietta's attributes in the Archives are human-scale but she gets some very interesting benefits from her Incarna status.
Someone needs to roll Elsa's 10d10e7 Perception + Awareness + Cybereyes to analyze her.
Jazmin can also attempt a 5d10e7 Perception + Awareness roll because she has Entropy and can sense weakpoints.
Kessler's Army:
[ ] (0.8x) Abandon the army, get back to 'real space.' This isn't your task.
[ ] viva la revolution! Take out or stymie the Resident control here and they lose a massive source of Prime Energy income. The Void Engineers need to come back to retake it, but until then...
[ ] (-0.2x) You'll want to call the Void Engineers up. They might actually be necessary for the revolution.
[ ] Attempt to prioritize the Henrietta-parts instead of the Residents.
[ ] Write-In.
Henrietta: Isolation:
What's Elsa and Jazmin's plan?
[ ] (1.25x) Sneak around Henrietta and assist Kessler by taking out some of those censors editing the movies for him.
[ ] (1.5x) Don't just take out the censors, do some more direct help.
[ ] (0.75x) Find a way to trap and hurt Henrietta.
[ ] Write-in.
Henriette's War:
[ ] (1.25x) Keep aggressively fighting.
[ ] Try to figure out a way to deal with the BioVARGs.
[ ] Try to take out the Mark V somehow.
[ ] (0.5x) Retreat, this isn't working.
[ ] Write-In.
[ ] Write-In.
Henrietta: Isolation:
What's Elsa and Jazmin's plan?
[ ] (1.25x) Sneak around Henrietta and assist Kessler by taking out some of those censors editing the movies for him.
[ ] (1.5x) Don't just take out the censors, do some more direct help.
[ ] (0.75x) Find a way to trap and hurt Henrietta.
[ ] Write-in.
Henriette's War:
[ ] (1.25x) Keep aggressively fighting.
[ ] Try to figure out a way to deal with the BioVARGs.
[ ] Try to take out the Mark V somehow.
[ ] (0.5x) Retreat, this isn't working.
[ ] Write-In.
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