Yours Truly

"Yeah...this is already going pear shaped, anyone else here know where we're supposed to go? Or was Leo it?," as Jun said this she stuck close to everyone else and searched around the place for Leo and Az's presence.

Jun took a mental double-take as she heard Leo say that the entire place seemed to be nothing but a solid illusion, and she decided to walk a little closer to the rest of the group to ask, "So Leo, how far away are your golems again? And what are we trying to get? Because I really don't want to die in someone's magical realm on the same day as the siege."

The door quietly slammed closed the moment Navin walked inside of the room after Solomon made a slight gesture in it's direction, and the librarian swiftly took the opportunity to recline onto his usual gaudy seat before he replied with, "Hopefully yes! Mostly because I don't think that anyone here's capable of fucking up that badly anymore." The woman slowly gestured at an oddly placed bedside table before she said, "You will find some disposable commlinks waiting for the...nine of you inside of that cabinet," she gave Heidrun a bit of an odd look before she said, "And tell me, does your group just enjoy picking up random strays and bringing them over to a private meeting, or did my 'father' see your presence as not being worth mentioning?" There was a brief and awkward pause for a moment before she said, "...sorry about that, I just hate it when the Harlequin switches things up all of a sudden, I mean I've got everything all set up for eight and he just drops another one right onto my lap and expects me to just...deal with it, granted this probably won't switch things up too much, especially since he decided to bring Halley out of all people to this op, which means that we suddenly have a SIN free, not like I thought anyone would be dumb enough to believe that someone with her rather...distinctive appearance is an 18 year old art major named Clara Lune anyway." The woman coughed a little before she turned towards Alexandria and said, "Now to answer your first question, I'm going to give you the chip truth here, no one actually knows what one of Deus's Otaku can do, mostly because A. That's a fucking ridiculous term for them, and B. They're practically a matrix Ghost story, a ridiculous fantasy about magical techwizards that can wave spastically at tech to take it over without even having to jack in or have a direct internet connection and even if this sounds ridiculous it's all true because my friend Dave almost died when one of those bloody teenagers decided that it would be funny to fry his deck while he's still connected I swear on my mum, and oh yeah none of them are any older than 18 for some reason." She then mimed typing something on the seat of the couch before she said, "But as I live in a world of wonders, where a fucking dragon ran for President and got his blue ass elected, I am forced to consider the possibility that technomancers do exist, and if one takes care to sort through all the drek they say on the streets, there does appear to be some truth to the matter, Deus does possess some rather young awakened individuals working for him, who indeed appear to be capable of breaking into secure systems with nothing but the power of their mind, but since I presume that none of you are dumb enough to have a WiFi connection on, they should prove to be nothing more than annoyance, especially for a woman of your...persuasion." She let out a slight sigh at something just out of sight, and leaned forward a little, "And to answer your other question, in this case an Ultraviolet host is best described as every single computer inside of the East Coast Stock Exchange, the people who ran the place thought they were being clever when they made thousands upon thousands of servers work as one, but little did they know that they were a dozen servers away from putting enough computational power in once place to simulate our reality...or maybe they did know and just thought that it was 'neat', who knows with these corporate types..." She shook her head before she said, "But yeah, the gist of it is that we need you to get Deus out of the Machina, and that you can't just flood the lower floors and set the stock exchange back a couple of years because we are not trying to ruin everyone's lives this time around...although personally I wouldn't mind it if you broke some of the more...expensive looking servers."

After spending a distressing amount of time with hunting down a squirrel of all things for her journal, Jun finally walks towards the smithy to catch up with the rest of the group. Upon finding some people walking into a portal that she assumed Leo had opened, Jun quickly jumped in and tried to find the main culprit himself before asking, "What is it this time Leo? Did you accidentally spread the corruption to another dimension or something?."

Alan gave Aquilla a bit of a quizzical look, or at least you think he was trying to give him one, it's kind of hard to tell with the clown mask on and all, "Taken one too many blows to the head lately Aquilla? We met back in Australia you know, and it's only been a day since we introduced ourselves..." he then turns to face Nader as the man walks away; shaking his head slightly while he does so. He stood there for a while and patiently listened to Harry as he spoke, up until he heard the man talk about whether the man could build a drone, and he let out a sudden bit of laughter before he ejaculated, "Can I make camera drones, can I mAkE a camera drone?," in a slightly mocking tone, and he coughed a little; suddenly switching to a serious tone of voice when he said, "Yeah I can if you give me some time and the right materials, never had to make anything that could stream across dimensions though, not that I think I'd need to, if I am thinking what you're thinking."

Immanuel decided that if there was ever a time to learn how to move with an amount of grace and dexterity, that would have been about a week ago before he got dragged into this fortress invading mess, but for now he had to settle for frantically going on the defensive with his shields and dodge rolls while he tried to lay down counter suppressing fire with his guns to pin Paulina in place for the hammer. Use Mobilitat+.

"Well that's understandable, not a lot of people would want to watch a slow mo of an ogre's head exploding, but what you said about doctoring a couple of pictures makes me a bit curious, just what else did the two of you post anyway?"

"Well thanks for the help guys, and taking the time to listen to what I've got to say, I'll look forward to hearing from you again." Jun stood up after she said this, and she was all set and ready to say her goodbyes when she remembered something, and her expression slowly shifted as she asked, "...actually, I have a question, what footage have you streamed so far?."

Jun simply nodded in agreement before she calmly said, "Pretty much, although depending on how much we travel we might just have to do the Q&A sessions 'on set' so to speak," she winked a little at the camera as she said that, leaving a little pause before continuing with, "And as for the pamphlets I'll try and write up the drafts myself, but honestly I'm not the best at graphic design, and since unlike me the two of you have several days worth of raw footage to help with... I'll probably have to ask the two of you for help with that as well."

Jun took off her helmet and listened intently to what the pair had to say, before she coughed and suggested, "Sounds about right, and speaking of proof, I kinda need your help with that, we've been going through about...4 worlds in the past two weeks or so? And while we are getting new people to help out in the worlds we travel to, it's a bit of a slow process, one that needs to become a lot more efficient if we ever want to impact lasting change in the worlds we're sent to help in." She left a brief pause to let her words sink in a little more before she continued with "And this is what I want to ask you for help with, I'm going to ask the rest if they want to help out with this, but I think filming some footage where we field questions they give us and talk about what the PART stands for, along with some video or pamphlets we can distribute that showcases what we have accomplished." She started to smile a little wider as she concluded with, "I think could be beneficial for everyone really, the two of you get more and higher quality footage to attract more viewers with and convince more and more people that we are the real deal, and we get something to help convince people to help us expand our operations and allow us to do more than just fight off that one siege."

Jun relaxed slightly as she leaned back against a nearby seat and said, "Its all been going surprisingly smoothly this past week, it feels kinda nice to work with the locals instead of having to avoid getting arrested by them for once, which is part of why I called the two of you actually, what do the people back in Brockton Bay think of us so far? And has the PRT noticed at all?".

It didn't take too long for Jun to find her way inside of the bus, or for her to make sure that no small trickstery dragons were waiting inside to screw her over, which was good, she really didn't want anyone to mess around with reality this time, or at least any more than she'd need to with the phone and all. The alleged phone looked as complicated as ever when Jun approached it, and she took her sweet time with fiddling about to work the controls little by little until she knew how to use it well enough to call up the men who had assembled this entire vehicle in the first place, and wait for them to pick up.

Meanwhile, before most of this drama had played out and just after the orgy of violence and war crimes had ended, Jun had found herself in a position she never expected to be in; I mean standing on top of a wall overlooking a field full of alien corpses while covered partly in her own blood and mostly in someone else's? What was this? Some sort of tacky holodrama? And the fact that this was the second time she was in this position this month or so was a bit worrying, even if they were doing all of this for a good cause...she thought as she walked about the wall to make sure that everyone was doing quite alright, before she stated exactly where she was going to go and what she intended to do and stepped off towards the nearest stream of water. She wondered what the people back on Brockton Bay thought of all this as she trudged through the battlefield; one of Uber and Leet's drones were undoubtedly at the scene today, and if those two had a lick of business sense between the two of them, they would have framed all of this as the big payoff for the 'Village under siege' arc; which was good for them and their bottom line she guessed, but it really made her wonder... Jun's mind had moved on to bigger things by the time she had actually gotten into the drink, as a moment spent wondering about what someone just tuning in to the stream would think about the group; soon caused her to wonder of what what the PRT had managed to watch, and of course, that soon led to her realizing that one of the reasons why they seemed to be doing so well in Tarraia; is that unlike almost everyone they had encountered in Brockton Bay; the people here actually believed that they came from another world, and they were willing to let them help out, and even chip in when the situation called for it...which honestly seemed to be the way forward from now on, at least if they wanted to affect meaningful change in any of the worlds they had visited. But of course how they were supposed to convince people to do so in future worlds was another matter, one that she could already think of a solution to, or at least, the makings of one. And so after drying off and feeling sufficiently human once more, Jun set off to find the bus, and attempt to find out if she can't call Uber and Leet on the one phone she had found at the back of the bus.

Alan slowly trundled over to the rest of the group after depositing his Sectopod back down in Engineering, leaning against a wall just before he opined, "As someone who had a close encounter of the sharp kind with the Assassin, I'm not sure if any of us would want to go toe to toe against her anytime soon, especially since her ability to just flit in and out of detection is making our resident gunsmith sound perfectly sane and reasonable, for you know; obvious reasons."

Solomon had quietly tried to slink inside of the apartment block almost immediately after he heard Halley speak the first time, only to find himself practically trapped between the watchful gaze of Navin, and the bemused expression of the elven woman, the woman who would raise an eyebrow just before she asks, "And you didn't tell them about what happened last time because....". A few seconds pass, and the woman lets out a slight sigh at Solomon's lack of a response; before she takes a seat on one of the room's large brown sofas and motioned for everyone to just walk on in. "Well I didn't think that it would come up this early? And I didn't want to talk about our last run on the open streets where everyone can hear us?," Solomon offered with a slightly nervous expression on his face, only to find the woman's response to be a simple raising of her eyebrow once more. "Alright fffine, I didn't tell anyone else because I never thought that any of us would have to come back to this drekhole again, and what was I supposed to say? That I let a clown draft a group of perfectly sane and reasonable people into doing his dirty work for him and it all went to shit?," he let a brief moment of silence hang in the air after he asked that rhetorical question, or at least he wanted there to be one, as the elven woman quickly replied with, "Yes." Solomon seemed like he was going to say something snarky in response, before he let out a cough and looked down at his feet a little and said,"Alright fine I probably should have, but I'll talk about that later, right now what all of you need to know is that Harlequin's a dick, but he hasn't lied to us yet, and he's at least trying to keep this world from going to shit. And yes Deus is exactly what we said he is, and that rumor has it, this isn't even the first time he pulled something like this, and blowing up the Aztechnology arcology wasn't the worst thing he ever did to one." "And now after all these years that bithead's vulnerable again, or at least as vulnerable as a gestating pretender God can be inside of a digital fortress hidden deep inside of a castle," the elven woman interjected from across the room. "Except this time we don't have an entire megacorp's worth of runners and black ops strike teams trying to stop him...unless the corps are getting better at covering their messes anyway. So that's why the old clown called book fucker over here again." She leaned forward a little before she continued with, "But anyway can all of you come in now? I can't answer the shiny one's question if all of you are too busy bickering just outside the door, not from across the room anyway."

"And this is where things all go to drek isn't it?," Alan said as he retreated to the relative safety of the Avenger. Move Alan to the inside of the Avenger. Move Alan's tank to A5 Do nothing for the Sectopod since I ordered it to do something last round and it's flaw has kicked in now. Loadout

Atton waited until the two newcomers would stop bickering with each other before he let out a slight sigh and turned to look at Iowa and Punch, "Right, are the two of you finished arguing for now? Because I'm just going to say, that there is no use arguing about our approach if we don't even know what some of us will be doing after we head inside of the meatgrinder, and that neither of you have told us much, if anything about what you bring to the table, and I find that to be worrying, to say the least." He then leaned back on his seat before he continued with, "And I don't know about the rest of you, but I wouldn't put my life in the hands of someone who would rather argue about what we should do, than tell us about what they can do."

Solomon's expression darkened as he saw and heard the person greeting them, and he shifted slightly before he said, "What's that supposed to mean?," at the unexpectedly brash doorperson. "Well, it's just that the last time you were here, the old man dragged you and your weird group of friends into saving the world! With him, and we both know how well that worked out...," there was a slightly awkward pause before the elf turned slightly and noticed Halley's presence, "And I see that you even brought the senator shooter back with you, how...nice." the book wizard raised up his voice to say something in response, but he only managed to get out a, "Technically h-," before the elf slammed the door closed on him. Solomon paced in place and angrily muttered something about how the contact was a councilor to the faint sounds of a bolt being slid back and a metal chain being fiddled with, before the door slowly but surely creaked open completely, revealing an elven woman dressed in the top half of a stereotypical knight's outfit, with the other half being composed of completely regular black colored casual clothing. "Technically he didn't die yeah, sure, whatever, you still fucked up, so I have no idea why the two of you are here again," She lets out a slight and defeated sigh before she turned around and walked deeper inside of the house. "But I'm here to talk about your group's future, not about their past...although, what happened to the rest of them? Do you just change your rosters regularly or.." "No I just couldn't find them this time, and I'll have you know that the others managed to get the job done without any losses on our part, and that's more than you could say about most runners who go toe to toe with any corp on their home turf, nevermind Aztech," the book wizard offered as a defense, causing the woman to stop and turn around slightly to say, "Most runners don't blow up an entire fragging arcology in the process, or let a German scientist run away with his research notes, or piss off a cyborg, and I could go on but this is taking too long, and I don't want to be in this ridiculous outfit any longer than I have to, so I'm just going to t r y and pretend to be cordial for long enough to answer 'all of the questions our intrepid young multiversal travelers have in mind', and then you will leave, and never come back to this house again."

Flora stands beside her charge with a slightly odd pose, ready to flash the required gangsigns and odd sounding words needed to throw a deadly bolt of eldritch energy!...for whenever one of the black skull soldiers steps out of the darkness anyway. Round 1 End Round 2 Start Black Skull Soldier 1 The Black Skull Soldier in front of Dagda changes stances with a practiced ease, holding his odd crackling musket to brandish it and it's jagged barrel as an impromptu spear before he thrusts it directly at the man! (14)+6 = 20) hitting the man for (1+3=4) Piercing damage and (2) Electrical damage as a crackle of lightning surges through Dagda's metal armor!. Dagda would notice that the metal soldier seemed to be...repairing itself as it's musket-spear digs into his shoulder a little, with pieces of metal seeming to grow over it's dripping white wounds. Crossbow Girl The crossbow wielding woman swiftly loads and fires another shot at the one soldier in sight! (13), only to find it surprisingly hard all of a sudden to hit the target without also shooting the two or so people standing in front of it, causing her to let out a curse as the bolt embeds itself on Dagda's poor and abused shield. Snoop Drow Flora and Tarja would hear the sound of a door quickly being unlocked right next to them, before it slowly swung open to reveal a surprisingly well lit home, and a man could be heard coughing just before they heard a man say, "This way! Before any more of them arrive!," in a light and nasally tone of voice. Black Skull Soldier 2 This little tin soldier marches on up to P-11, leaving the cover of darkness only to completely and utterly ignore Flora's eldritch Blast as the sound of the door opening and the man coughing distracted her for a key moment, causing her shot to go off wide. Ronnie James Ronnie fares a lot better this time! As he remembers a long forgotten piece of advice and takes a deep breath...and leans in to rest his musket's barrel on the barricade to stabilize it, finally managing to land a hit this time despite all odds (20 after disadvantage)...granted it was still a glancing shot, but to be fair these things seemed ridiculously well suited to tanking gunshots in the first place (6 damage), It is now Tarja's Turn. Conditions Current Map

The elevator ride up to the 13th floor was about what you'd expect from a crowded apartment, with what would have been a quick and comfortable ride being drawn out unnecessarily with several stops that mostly served to try and annoy the party with how crowded the elevator was getting, especially after it became clear that an ever increasing number of residents seemed to have gotten on to crowd in front of the door and wait until the elevator goes down, you know...just in case someone else did that first and they'd have to wait for another one. It took quite a bit of prodding and pushing before the party managed to unpack themselves from their sardine can, where they were quickly led past a spacious and well ventilated common room full of people minding their own business, and into a equally cramped and dusty hallway that had Apartments 13 A and B at the very end for some unknown reason. Solomon coughed and stepped up to rapidly knock on the apartment's door until a slight sigh could be heard, followed by an annoyed sound as something clattered down to the floor. Another moment passes, a quiet pulsing emanating from behind the door through the silence before it finally opens a crack, revealing the face of a white haired young...elf with sharp and slightly rectangular features whose expression quickly soured as they finally saw the man knocking on their door, "Oh, it's you again,".

Alan, seeing that he was this close to being stabbed to death this whole time, decided to celebrate later and focus on slotting and runing before anyone else got any bright ideas now, quickly attempting to get himself, and every single drone he still has access to somewhere other than here, more specifically the Avenger itself. Of course, ever being the opportunist, Alan simply saw the abandoned tank lying there next to two XCOM operatives and decided to radio in to ask, "Can the two of you hear me? The Advent tank right beside you should still be clear, I am going to try and hack it's controls again, can the two of you drive it back to the Avenger for me? Studying it might yield something useful." Move Alan's tank to A4 Use Assuming Direct Control to try get the empty tank at B5 to work again and try to convince the two XCOM operatives to work on getting it inside Use the Sectopod's Heavy Magnetic Gun to attack the two charging Sectopods at C5, dealing 3d6+Syn (14) damage to them if it hits. Loadout Drones

Solomon started to walk closer towards the elevator after he heard Heidrun's series of questions and responses, and he had a suspiciously kind tone of voice when he said "A healer is always welcome, and I'm pretty damned sure that we'll need one sooner than later if the last group was any indication." The elevator's doors swung open mere moments after he pressed the button that called it, revealing a slightly grimy looking example that seemed to have been installed about a decade or so, and he quickly turned around to hold the door open before he said, "But anyway the Harlequin's waiting for us in Apartment 13-B, and we've got nothing else to do down here so...I guess we'll see you up there Alexandria? I'll be waiting at the door for you."

Radovan gave a little salute before he said, "Yes Sir!" and quickly turned to to get Emmanuel, and yet somehow still finding himself getting there slightly slower than a small girl did, and he stifled the urge to laugh at Emma for being caught in a particularly odd pose, instead settling on putting a serious expression and saying "Emma, I know that you are at that age now, but I think this is hardly the time for this sort of behavior, especially when we need to get to the Aquarium right now, as someone is throwing out powerful water type attacks there, and since no one has any other leads on Sena's current location, we think that the young troublemaker might be on the receiving end of said attacks! So you know, let's just ignore your lame ass excuses and either find Sena or beat up a Gyarados or something."

Jun quickly thanks Kusuke for the free healing before she charges forward to stab one of the beastmasters that just stabbed her. Normal Move: Needle of Agony on Beastmaster 2, deals 4d6+Dex damage and afflicts them with 1/4 of the damage dealt in Agony stacks

Alexandria and the rest of the group would find their trip up the stairs to be uneventful, because honestly, are you going to mess with the heavily armed group of people that just waltzed in past security with what seemed to be nothing but a very funny joke? Didn't think so. The group soon finds themselves inside of a concrete floored and slightly grimy entrance hall with a wall of lockers and a man dressed in the important half a security guard's uniform resting in front of a monitor. The room was mostly silent save for the usual sounds of the street filtering in from the outside world, and the slightly crackled sound emanating from the monitor, it appears that someone named 'Yashiro's' twin brother's uncle had been poisoned, and this 'Yashiro's' innocence was found suspect after the altercation he had with the victim during the travesty that was his marriage to his own stepsister. Solomon coughed a little once he was sure that they weren't being followed, "Well that actually went well, if we keep this up we might not have to blow up another arcology this time, but anyway who's this girl? And why's she tagging along with us again? I'm asking this now because the clown's going to ask this later"