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"By all accounts the presumed shooter's a professional," Paul told Juno, unsure how to calm her without making use of plain facts. "He's looking for me. That should make hunting him down easier.' Paul shifted uncomfortably. "Even the best get unlucky. Brighton was one of the best. I'm... sorry that we lost a good man like him." Brighton had been a competent leader and a strong soldier in his own right. His death would be a serious blow to Riverdale. It'd be hard to replace him. They'd have to try, though.

Zoidberg's thought broke Paul's train thereof, and Paul acknowledged the request with a quick gesture that loosed the alakazam from his pokeball. Legs crossed, Zoidberg slowly hovered his way over to Juno.

The words, projected into Juno's mind, had a sense of regret that true language couldn't quite capture.

"I see." A professional. Well that did make sense. He was a very very smart man; he wouldn't have been taken out by some simple-minded moron with a gun. He died in Paul's place. An irrational stab of anger made her wonder whether it had been a fair trade of lives, but she clamped down on that line of thinking when Zoidberg arrived. The psychic pokemon and Juno had a relatively good camaraderie going, but her line of thought would very likely not be appreciated by the alakazam.

The emotion put behind Zoidberg's words nearly made her cry. It was enough of a push that Juno's fist opened up and made her pat the alakazam's shoulder. "He wasn't just a good man...he was a good friend." She took a deep breath and said in a shaky voice, "I'm just gonna go to the bathroom now." She said this mainly for Toby's benefit. He had probably never talked to Paul and she didn't want to leave him with strangers. It's a crappy excuse, but I really don't want to start crying here. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

She walked away to the closest bathroom (which incidentally wasn't that far) and turned on a sink. It was a large bathroom and she wiped away a few tears with her bandana. Juno was not allowed to fall apart for Commander Brighton's death, but she could give him a moment of grief. He wouldn't want me to fall apart. Besides, she still had to go and see the Oaks for whatever they needed from her. It wouldn't do to show up looking like a mess.

A voice shook Juno out of her grief. The fact that Alyssa was even there and completely ignoring the younger girl's sadness....was completely and utterly wonderful. It was exactly what Juno wanted. It had been nice not being alone but amazing that Alyssa would not talk about Juno's sadness. This was a point earned in the woman's favor.

Juno looked around to see if there were towels and found a small pile. "Yeah, there is. It's in a shelf besides the shower stall. You can reach them from your stall without having to fully get out." She found it weird that the girl would easily shower while Juno was still in the bathroom. She looked and smelled like crap. She was probably praising God for finding a shower stall to care about me being here. Juno would have left to give the girl more privacy, but she didn't feel comfortable enough going back out. Her eyes were still a little pink.

Juno was trying to figure out what ormophos meant and from what language it was from before Alyssa answered a part of her mental question. "Yeah, I am. Born and raised in this area."

The blonde was starting to like Alyssa. Not rude, approachable, and was nice enough not to talk about the small crying fit. Of course, she learned another thing about Alyssa within a few seconds - the woman was rather unashamed of her body.

She flipped around and looked directly at the sink. "So uh, what about you? You have a pretty accent, and I can't place it. Where are you from?" Juno wanted to give Alyssa some privacy and well, she was not exactly prepared to see another person naked.

"Oh wow, far away." Once Juno felt sure Alyssa was dressed, she cautiously turned around. The woman (she was certainly not a girl) had been fully clothed and ready to go. "I hear you. I feel the same." She'd been fortunate enough in life that she never had to go without showers, and she hoped she wouldn't have to brave it. If she ever did, she knew it would be one of the top things she'd miss about civilization.

She smiled when she heard the comment about food. "Still hungry? I brought some snacks from home. Guess it was a good thing I brought them." She opened the door and gestured for Alyssa to exit. Once the girls were outside the bathroom, Juno dug around her backpack and took out the jerky and dried fruit bags. "Which do you prefer? You can have either of them." It wasn't a huge deal to give away the food. She could always ask for more from the Oaks at a later time.

"Actually, we should probably get Toby and go down to the labs now. We were wanted there earlier, so they're probably still waiting on us." Juno felt prepared to go and deal with more people now. I still feel guilty for leaving Toby behind too. I'm going to have to make it up to him somehow.

Most of the time, Dr. Alex Terrian didn't think. He didn't sleep, either, or meditate, or even stop moving for long periods of time. It had become dangerous to do so. It allowed thoughts he could not always identify as his own to penetrate and start their own machinations, and that never seemed to end well for him. But today, while he sat on the cliff overhanging the city for which it was named, feet dangling off a ledge hundreds of feet above a face dotted with sparse shrubs and boulders, he decided to give in and think. Dr. Shonevsky had shocked him, which he needed to sort out, and he was steadily closing Synapse's wounds while the orange, murine blob lay curled up in his arms.

He sighed. There was a real reason he couldn't hang on to real sanity anymore. There was, he just knew it. At the very least, there was a real reason that would drive most men to insanity... which excused the fact that he embraced it, right? As long as he was still doing the right thing... but what was the right thing, anymore? He had insulted an old friend, endangered the lives of children - not to mention that doing so endangered the fate of humanity - and despite all his power, there was nothing he felt he could do to directly help. The man who could teleport across miles, the only human being who could create ether shields and illusions, the only human being who could punch a graveler to death, felt helpless.

In a bid to avoid that line of thought, his mind went back to the time just before the insanity had finally bubbled to the surface - back to when it just effervesced, like methane gas escaping a bog and flaring up briefly. He - heh, no one would believe it now except his pokémon - he had been in love. He had been a successful researcher, engaged to marry a beautiful woman who had also helped change the face of pokébiology herself and whom he had given possibly the coolest damn engagement ring he could think of. She was brilliant, and she had loved him, despite his erratic ways, and then... he could no longer remember which had left the other, when he finally broke down just before the Cataclysm.

Alex had not been famous before then, or rich, but he had garnered significant notoriety. He had worked side-by-side with Dr. Beatrice Oak, grandmother of pokétech and pokénomics, and hell, to be perfectly honest, he was the reason anyone had had the courage to continue studying dark-type pokémon, whose bizarre etheric tendencies eluded almost all explanation. And now... he was a demigod, with the raw power to save everything... but his mind was torn in two, and whenever he thought of nuking the Dreamweavers the way he knew he could, it wrenched back around on him and drove him, like now, to light the unnatural fires behind his bright blue eyes, and smile into the depths sprawling into Cliffshire beneath his feet.

"Alex," a voice called behind him, one that made Synapse immediately startle and look for curiously. It was a very familiar, female voice, and from the looks of thing, she still had her engagement ring on, though he hadn't turned around to check.

"He told me to kill you on sight."

"That certainly explains why your eyes are closed." He could feel her startle, and her sparked ire at his insouciant tone, and probably at how his back was still turned to her, though she presumably couldn't tell. The wind blew through the ensuing silence, fluttering at Terrian's hat. Synapse peeked over his shoulder and flattened his ears at the expression he saw.

"Why don't you stop this? You obviously think what we're doing is wrong. I have had sincere doubts. My God, Alex, if Carver knew how you do what you do, he'd probably stop this war and just worship you! All you have to do is pretend you're not all human, and in his eyes, you'd probably be Jesus freaking Christ! He only hates you because he can't understand you!"

The man in black flinched, his expression pained. His brain went into a turmoil, and it was only after a full minute of fighting that he managed to keep calm and answer, "I've tried... a lot of things. They... don't work. I can't... and I can't tell you why."

"Why not? I loved you, Alex. I don't know if I still do, but back then, before all this happened... and you know I still keep it with me. Why can't you tell me?"

"BECAUSE I CAN'T," he bellowed, and his mind was gone. His grin flicked on like a lamp, and he spun around to face her, forcing her eyes open and paralyzing her with an invisible grip while he put a finger on her chin. Synapse landed gently on the ground and watched, unworried. "Kill me on sight? Try. Try, woman. Come on, give it a damn shot." His smile broke, and he said quietly, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I could fix it all, you're right, but... but I can't. I can only do what little I'm doing now." He spat out the next few words in a rush, not a single pause between his syllables, "AskstardusthowafallenangelcanbecomehumanagaaaAAAAAAAAA!!!!" With the scream echoing across the landscape, he and Synapse vanished, leaving the woman shaking in terror and fury, a single tear coursing its way down the tattoos on her cheek. She wiped it off with a disgusted motion, turned on her heel, and walked back down towards the city.

---

Bishop Ina Schwartz looked at the hunched, filthy street urchin in front of her. "What." It was not a question. It was a demand. Ina was twenty-eight years old and had platinum-blonde hair that flowed down her back in waves from a pale, Eastern European face and pale blue eyes.

The kid picked his nose and snorted. "Wasn't your kill." Three of his vermin pokémon kept cycling through the area, jumping on him on as they made each successive pass around and outside the alleyway.

"It is in the workings of the dream," she spat in a clipped, Russian accent.

The boy shrugged. "Wasn't your kill, though. She's not happy."

"She talks to dirty rats like you? Hah! I don't believe it." A furret hissed at her.

"Why not? You're not in her chain of command. Well, I mean, you're under it, but it was her kill and you took it. Still not sure how."

"Not to matter. She is too slow. I make work faster."

"She told Thatcher he'd know you by your missing finger. You know that?"

"What?" She sucked air through her teeth and unconsciously brought both of her thick, powerful hands curling in against her chest. A grimer oozed up out of the drain next to her, and she watched a great spider, an ariados, start climbing down one wall. How many little pests called this boy their master? "Thatcher knows I am coming? He is not one of us! He is a toy! A little toy soldier!"

He ignored her and hocked up a loogie to spit on the ground, running his hand through his greasy, unkempt hair, then shrugged. "Not my problem. I'm just one of her little pets. But I'm the only one in town right now, so I guess it's my job. Chomp chomp, kiddos. And hey, you do good, Beady Boy might give you a promotion. Which I guess means I'd get one, too - cool."

With horrifying coordination, the grimer melted itself around her feet to hold them down while the ariados spat a web to cover her body. She fell backwards heavily, and when she hit the ground, roots crept out of cracks in the asphalt to pin her wrist to the ground and start curling among her fingers, spreading them wide.

Ina was not allowed to scream. They were in Riverdale, and it was the middle of the day. No one could see them back here, behind a smelly old abandoned Chinese take-out restaurant, but they would hear her scream, and then they would both be found out. But her eyes were wide with horror while the furret from earlier appeared next to her hand. It sniffed at her fingers and perked a curious, innocent ear at its master. "Eh, I guess just the pinky. She needs to still be useful, I guess." To clarify, he pointed to his own fifth finger, then pulled out a berry from his trenchcoat, completely ignoring Ina's muffled cries to chuckle at the pokémon's grimace. "Here, this'll get the taste out afterwards."

The older woman's body trembled. She couldn't believe it. She was a Bishop. One of the most important Keepers of the Dream. Taken down so effortlessly by a kid, and now... and now...

Only the fact that a living pinecone suddenly fell in her gasping both muffled the shriek of shock. It hardly hurt more than a sharp pressure at first, but then it burned as blood poured out onto the broken streets. Eyes clenched shut, she waited until she couldn't hear any of those creepy, skittering runts the urchin always had by him before she stood up, covered in webbing, her hand soaked with blood, but blessedly wrapped in clean gauze - he at least showed some heart. The gesture was lost on her, though. She would collect the children. Bind and gag them, and put them in a bag, and bring them back home. She would get her reward. And then... oh, God, and then she would murder the woman who had taken her finger. It didn't even occur to her to be angry at the boy - he and she both knew he was just what he'd said - a pet. But Amaya Jacobson had just turned Bishop Ina Schwartz into a juggernaut.

---

Benji Halloway woke up in the hospital bed and wished he had not. No, his legs no longer felt like they were on fire, but the aching throb he felt in them that he knew quite well from his own experience as a nurse only told him that when the painkillers wore off, he would practically beg for more. Instantly, a cool, tiny, white-gloved hand pressed his forehead back down against his pillow.

"Heya, Francis... thanks." He smiled as the ledian sat down quietly by his shoulder, nodding at the officer who had come in. "Ah... Minister Thatcher," he greeted.

"Good, you remember me."

"I don't forget patients."

"You remember my wife?" the general said with a gentle bristling in his voice as he sat in a chair next to Halloway's bed in the hospital.

"...no. If you recall, sir, she disappeared. I'm not exactly high-ranking." He interrupted Jacob as he started to ask the obvious. "And no, now that I've been captured, I won't be let back in and ever allowed to leave. She's your issue. I'll be happy to give you a few names and descriptions, though I haven't a clue what you'd do with them. In fact, you're probably bugged right now - Beady Boy has some tech we don't understand so he can spy on people, so I'd really be surprised if I survived the night." His voice was getting hollow, and it was clear there was no filter between his brain and mouth. He felt it immediately, but couldn't seem to stop himself. "Not sure why I forgot that, or why I don't care. Probably the amphetamines. Yeah, forgot them. Hey, as long as you're getting up, can you thank Paul for me? And when you come back, bring some pencils and paper so I can help out, since I'm probably getting snuffed, soon. Hey, and a soda. Wow my legs hurt. Man." He passed out mumbling incoherently, with Francis just gently rubbing his forehead, and his sleep was dreamless.

The ledian, having been left alone by nearly everyone after displaying his medical competency and even volunteering to treat several other patients while his master was out cold (at leas those who were nearby), began working. He buzzed his way under the bed, hidden by overhanging sheets he had carefully arranged while tending to Benji, and sat amongst a pile of medical supplies he had filched while working on the others. In almost no time, his swift and agile hands had crafted two makeshift, single-shot dart guns from air-filled needles, mechanical pipettes, and tape. Anyone watching would have been fascinated by the sight - not only was the construction sophisticated for an animal, but also, the mien with which it was done was hardly different from a crow using a hooked twig to fish for grub. It was still a very animal instinct, but it had created effective and deadly weapons. These, he stowed in a backpack he had fashioned from a few gurney straps cut with a scalpel and a drawstring bag, alongside the scalpel itself. He then crawled back out and sat atop his master's chest, going back to offering what services he could to the nurses who were still there. Not a goddamn soul was touching Benjamin Halloway.

((Alright, well that was fun and felt awesome. The Mysterious Woman who confronted Alex, Benjamin Halloway, the Street Urchin, Bishop Ina Schwartz, Sergeant Jeb Donaldson of Woodmount, and Sergeant Major Scott Hertzstein (also of Woodmount) are available now as temp characters to those who may be bored and want someone else to play. I will give you details of these characters if you want to take them on. Each costs a downpayment of 3 AP, which you will receive back double upon completion of their particular chunk of storyline where they are right now. Each one should require, I think, about half a day of in-game time to complete. Sound fun? I think it does! These guys are all very entertaining to write with, and have fun quirks I've built into them.))

((Alright, it's been a while, but let's see if we can't get this fireball rolling again. I'm on a train looking at a full moon right now, and it's begging for firelight tales.))

Fast-forward three days. Everyone (all PCs) have now gathered in Glenville and so far, things are going relatively smoothly, especially compared to the day of their arrival. The young'ns have been able to train their pokémon quite a bit, and due to the nature of the pokéballs in which they were kept, they have grown attached to their trainers far more quickly than usually expected for such things. While they may not yet be the very best of friends, they are certainly now comrades. Each has had a chance to contact any loved ones, and for the most part, those are well. Tsuki has only heard about his family via a diglett courier to Lexi from her father, informing them of the state of Woodmount.

Their parents are all well, he wrote, as well as their siblings, though the increased military activity in and around Woodmount is nothing short of disturbing. Mr. Hale suspects there is more foul play than mere insanity afoot, and plans on finding out as quickly as possible. Apparently, Paul's home was abandoned by the Minutemen and became not-so-easy picking grounds for Woodmount - they lost nineteen men just getting past the front door, and another four retrieving the arms they could. Herzfeldt hadn't made physical contact with anyone in all three days and had commanded his scouting and raiding parties to expand their routes by twenty miles in every direction via intercom and written notices. The parties are still well-armed, which means that while their average coverage is less, their strength has not waned.

Through May, who received a detailed call from Jake back in Cliffshire, Stetson, Ulysses, Maddy, and Aaron learned what they rightfully likely suspected: Has no idea what it's doing. Seriously, they have started ramping up attempts to trade with cities further east, some of which are more than two hundred miles away, and have issued "Statements of Offense" (letters of complaint) to Riverdale for closing its borders - Riverdale was, admittedly, a source of spare clean water. In addition, members of the military force there are dropping out at the news of all the sudden violence, while recruitment efforts are simultaneously increased, leading to a remarkably equal turnover. Stetson's family managed to call him more directly, via the Oaks' office, to assure him of their safety and give him messages of encouragement and reassurances of their faith in him.

Toby's hair has grown shaggy and despite his age, a shave wouldn't hurt. No one has seen hide or hair of Terrian. Things have not been as calm as would have been liked - the Pack north of Glenville (a hundreds-large mass of pokémon, mundane animals, and armed humans) was stymied by the skilled attacks made by those sent out to take care of them, but reports say their numbers are still growing, especially in terms of people wearing the scar that marks them as Dreamweavers, which is more than slightly confusing. Further, a great darkness has been growing slightly east of the Pack - that is, a spot of negative ether, or nether, detected by the Oak's instruments. Occasional blips of positive ether now generally identified as Dr. Terrian have been seen around the area, but scouting parties can find nothing. It was revealed shortly after the children arrived. Paul, Ulysses, Dirk, Ian, and Jeremiah have all been informed of this. A few oddities have cropped up in the city, as well: a young, ill-groomed man and his aunt, a blonde, prim, pale, nervous woman, have both requested asylum from Woodmount, which refuses to release information on them. Amaya Jacobson has payed a personal visit to Paul and Ryan. It turned out the acorns Skye and Rufus had been given had been marked in a complex pattern precisely locating the proposed underground oak trees... inside a wall of solid rock. It has taken three days to find and effect a safe way in, and today they may finally explore.

Jacob Thatcher received word from Riverdale about its state of affairs from Amaya Jacobson, who arrived the morning of the present day. She recapped what they knew already, and added to it: Paul's fortress-like house had been used as a sort of booby trap to kill a dozen of Riverdale's men. Two survivors had witnessed a man who looked "too clean" approach the maelstrom seeking Paul, almost immediately after hearing of Commander Brighton's murder. The next-in-command has stepped up, but was never as comfortable with unknowns like Paul and Ryan as Brighton was - he didn't know how to control them, so he shunned them. Ryan and Paul learned neither was allowed back in Riverdale; it has shut down its borders because of all its recent casualties.

At present, [the players were allowed to place themselves, somewhat, and it would be easy on the GMs if they were clustered], as lunch had just let up. The tremendous cafeterias that acted as nodes of activity through the city were buzzing with people, most much happier than that to which the former residents of the smaller cities had been accustomed. No word of instruction had come to the young'ns as of yet, but they had been assigned adults with whom they could check in, and who would likewise check in on them every now and then, [some of whom were party members, at your discretion].

((Okay, that's all I have for now. If I have missed something, please notify me via PM. Some of you may be getting individualized PMs, as well.))

Mikhail sat down beside Paul, also with his battle gear. He'd done that the past couple of days. Hume and Epicurus seemed somewhat at a loss as to why. Paul, Mikhail thought, understood.

They were warriors, soldiers waiting to be told who needed to be eliminated, weapons in need of wielders. Without missions, they were growing restless. They needed to do something, to be given direction. They needed to be used and be useful. It was just what they did.

To be fair, of course, Paul was more of a professional, whereas Mikhail was more of a wild card/loose cannon/adrenaline junkie.