Hal Henderics

-The Threshold, Ruins. The child questions Arminius firmly. (5, 2) Calvera, meanwhile, walks into the next room, where she encounters someone who had been listening at the threshold in what seems to be horror, if their covered mouth and wide eyes are anything to go by. The extraordinarily tall Goat-headed creature retreats at the sight of Calvera, stepping back once, then, again, and finally, turning around entirely and walking away rapidly. In the room after that, Calvera would only see a sealed door, and, to the side of it, a plaque and 5 buttons, arranged into an X shape, no trace of the purple robed creature. -Grave Room, New Home (16, 5) Proditor detects no life remaining in these empty corpses. He is made aware that none of them are adults, however. But... The empty one, upon further inspection, is filled with something like... Mummy wrappings. There is a faint sense of something there. Like the remnant of a remnant. The residue left from third-hand contact. How bizarre, that the only coffin with any sort of psionic presence would be the empty one. -Throne Room, New Home. Lucine pulls back the cover, revealing... another throne. This one seems fitted to someone of smaller stature. It hasn't been touched in a long, long time, judging by the dust coating the golden throne. The strange vibe given off by this room is palpable. Aside from the flowers and thrones, the room itself is bare. If the throne were unused, why keep it? If it were intended to be forgotten, then why leave it in the same room as the well-used throne? If it were intended to be remembered, why cover it up? -judgement hall, new home The golden hall that Ignis and Jun enter into looks completely unlike the grey stone of New Home. Ornate, stained glass windows depicting the winged symbol fill the hall, shining so brightly that whatever source is lighting them can't be discerned. Marble pillars line the shining hall, and, in the distance, one might even imagine the sound of birdsong. With a tense feeling in the air, it almost seems like there should be someone here... But nobody came. Nothing else of interest is in the room, aside from a box. There's a note on the box!

-The Threshold, Ruins. (20, 15) (70) (77) By the time Rachel moves around Arminius and Sindragosa, Arminius has already begun pulling at Flowey, whose laughter is cut short by a series of unlikely distractions. While the flower's staggering willpower initially leaves it downright immune to Arminius's ministrations, or so it seems, The blast of Maser fire leaves Flowey distinctly lacking in a body with which to hold spiritual essence inside, even if he is capable of forcing it to stay in there. Arminius obtains the Lingering Will, he supposes. The child looks unsure at the sight of it, wanting to say something. -Grave Hall/Grave Room, New Home. Proditor finds himself going down a long, grey hallway, into a long, grey room. There are seven caskets in the room, each adorned with a colorful heart. The only one he could access without climbing over has a red heart imprinted on the top. It's empty. -Crossroads, New Home. Looking down both paths, one leads into some sort of long, golden hall, while the other leads down a dark, grey hall. Actually, there seems to be a plaque on the southern wall, where nobody would be able to read it normally. It reads "Judgement Hall < > Human Grave"

-Fowl Manor, Mars. The group finds themselves in a well stocked library, ornate, expensive. Very expensive. Already waiting for them at a nearby table, a middle aged man with pale skin and an almost vampiric demeanor warmly looks over the group of strangers, a book claps shut in his hands. "I'm glad to see I've not been misled, expecting guests." He says, blue eyes lighting up with satisfaction. "My name is Artimus Fowl the second, and you've all been given a short opportunity for some of your confusion to be cured, a cure I am all too happy to administer." He waves to chairs near the table. An offer to sit, for those who can stand the decadent and well-crafted seats.

Sokolov stands back, out of danger.

-The Threshold, Ruins. Arminius walks up, Sindragosa in tow, and they open their hug-brackets in anticipation and confidence. (8, 16) And, EXACTLY as nearly everyone was expecting, the ground explodes as vines snap tight around the pair and their SOULs, paralyzing them directly between Flowey and the rest of the group. His face melts like wax and distorts. A circle of violently spinning ovoid bullets appear from seemingly nowhere around Sindragosa and Arminius, pausing just long enough to garner a reaction, they begin slowly closing in on the pair. -The Throne Room, New Home The gang, pressing forward, enters a throne room filled with what must be thousands of Golden Flowers, In the back of the room, a white sheet covers a second throne. Jun, meanwhile, snaps a picture of the archways for future use. Lucine, studying the symbol, finds that it is some sort of winged orb, hovering over three triangles. Some sort of guardian angel?

Flowey rebuts, waggling his vines harmlessly.

-The Threshold, Ruins. It's at this point that a pair of leafy vines emerge from either side of Flowey. -Underground Exit, New Home The gang all enter into what looks like a smoothened cave. To the southwest of them, a stone archway held up by ornate pillars holds up a relief of some strange, winged symbol. THE BARRIER stretches behind them in the room they just left.

-The Threshold, Ruins. Everyone enters the threshold with the flower smack in the middle between them and another doorway. It looks impressed, and the group fully entering the room seems to prompt the patient flower to pipe up. The room seems to dim when they finish speaking as a significance settles over this ENCOUNTER. Muted colors aside, the most interesting thing of note are the vividly colorful hearts now floating in front of everyone's chests, in stark defiance of the rest of the room. Despite all of this, the child is without fear, standing at the front with whoever else happens to be there. -Trash River, Mount Ebbot's Surface Lilly gets an ominous feeling from the cave mouth, her senses telling her it shares the properties of the cave entrance and the pit entrance. A barrier stretches across it's insides.

Clownback shrugs, his smiling harlequin mask failing to conform to the severity of the situation he's inserted himself into. "When demons hit rock bottom, there's nowhere to go but..." He scratches his chin. "No matter. I do so rarely get to put on a good show for our naughty neighbors." "My jokes are killer, but..." "Well, no matter. I'll have my audience even if it kills them." His chest heaves with silent giggles.

Sure enough, Proditor feels the presence of The Barrier. - Arminius finds there's only one exit, in the northeastern part of the room. An ornate, ancient archway, marble pillars supporting a huge carved relief of a strange symbol. The child, following Arminius's sightline, looks up at the symbol as well, checking it out. The ghost from before pipes up. Past that, a small patch of sunlight is shining on a tiny yellow flower, like the ones that were once in the previously described flower bed. The flower is smiling patiently. - (10, 13) Ador and Lilly are able to track down a river flowing into the mountain. The river is filled with garbage, but even looking as far as they can, it must be miles and miles to whatever city is dumping the garbage here. No other recognizable human presence seems to exist anywhere on the mountain or the surrounding forests, only accentuating the horrendous silence plaguing it.

Akihiro takes a few experimental hops, before grinning. This could be fun, if he has correctly assessed the facts. As an experiment, he transforms into a paper kite for a moment, flopping to the ground nearly instantly. That's odd. Considering the info at his disposal... There's no air. Right, he should have guessed that. A small burst of chakra smoke heralds him returning to his original form, as the smoke is rapidly de-exist'd in the vacuum. "Let us move." Akihiro says, preparing to make the hop over to the asteroids.

They say firmly to assuage Arminius's worries.

As Akihiro stares at the first image, he slowly grows more annoyed. "Is this it?" He says, not actually flicking to any other images. Veins around his eyes beginning to bulge. "Where is the rest of it. Surely you don't just have one picture in this entire tablet. Where are the rest of them kept." He eventually thrusts it back into her hands, distinctly angry after deigning to flick through a few of the pictures. "Useless. It would take me weeks to read all of this nonsense."

(19, 5) Arminius catches the ass-end of a monologue he suspects was meant for the unconscious child below him. It's at this point that the child wakes up. Rachel, meanwhile, finds that everyone but the flowerbed are in perfect health. The flowerbed is a lost cause after several hundred pounds of power armor and several hundred kelvin of jumpjets impacted it, turning it into a crater. Calvera slowly drifts down, as she disappears out of sight, she encounters a strange... something. The walls slowly melt away into waves of black and white, dragging her down into the unknown depths below. She promptly lands on the ground with the rest of the gang, with the flower patch destroyed, her fall is a bit rougher than theirs. Someone could probably get hurt, falling down here now. - The rest of the gang who opt not to leap into the pit are possessed by a malign spirit of logic, and decide to circumnavigate the mountain, using their memories of the vision to piece out where the second entrance to the underground is. They succeed after a somewhat long hike, coming up to the dark, western side of the mountain, up onto a large, flat area that looks almost manmade. Nothing but a black tunnel ahead of them.

"Where are you keeping them?" Despite Akihiro's best guesses, he doesn't see anywhere on her person where the papers could be kept. Especially for something as obviously complicated as a robot. This annoys him slightly, because he'd really quite like to look at them.

"Hmm. Then I guess we are both washed up." He says to hirata's face, not realizing that he has not only compared her to a ten year old, but also called her washed up. "We will need to work with the group to cover for our deficiencies." He nods affirmatively.

Law feels extremely uncomfortable, but every part of his mind agrees on one thing. "No!" he shouts back, hands cupping his mouth.

"Yes, I am familiar with what a robot is." "To clarify, Which of those robots you mentioned are you referring to in the context of your own talents?" He says, slightly insulted at her tone, but still hungry for information. After all... He's never SEEN robots before, outside of literature.

Akihiro takes a step back. In fact, he takes a few steps back. This may have been a mistake. "I do not betray my allies, no." He quickly says conservatively. He supposes that is the most diplomatic way to put it, minutes after being caught for betraying one's village.

Rachel and Arminius both leap down the pit, chasing after the fallen child. As they both fly down at respectably insane speeds, things begin to get... strange. The cave walls shift and distort as they fall, everything turning vivid shades of black and white, before... (2, 9) (3, 20) Arminius crashes ingracefully into a bed of flowers. Rachel, meanwhile, explodes the terrain in a blaze of jump-jet assisted glory. Nobody seems to be visibly harmed, but the child is unconscious. (16, 8) Arminius senses a presence nearby, like some kind of ghost, but... invisible. - (13, 19) As Proditor reaches down into the pit mentally, he finds himself experiencing a novel sensation. His psionic energy seemingly disappears completely from his senses once it passes... Something. Something incredibly potent, almost like a black hole, once he sends feelers in, he can't drag anything back out. He can still tell that the energy wasn't simply destroyed, as it is still connected in some fashion to the rest of the psionic energy at his disposal, but it's almost as though it's caught, like a chinese finger trap, or perhaps a rag stuck in a vacuum cleaner.

Oh dear, things seem to be heating up, Akihiro quickly thinks back to the books he's read, which tell him to firmly interject with something helpful and constructive. He's got this. "I am not certain this discussion is fostering a sense of camaraderie." "We should avoid threatening one another. It will not only make the mission more difficult, but will also make it more difficult to betray the group, if that is your intent." Perfect. It's logical, rational, and above all else, friendly and helpful.

(5, 13) The child mutters, tone dripping with confusion as Lucine rushes over to grab them, and promptly trips over a root themselves. Lucine plows into the kid and sends them both ass over teakettle into the abyss. (9, 13) Calvera erects a gravity well just in time to catch Lucine, who had been the last one to fall. The dog itself seems to have disappeared in the confusion.

(1, 17) They start to say something, but the dog from before yips again. It looks ready to bolt, now that the gang is here. They instead say blandly, turning back to face the samoyed, and taking a sluggish step towards it. (19, 17) With luck sharp enough to cut, they step firmly over the root in front of them, avoiding what would have been a very unlucky trip, and putting them right at the edge of the abyss.

Is she serious? Akihiro can't help but think she's not being serious. "I believed it would be deleterious to my health." "Robots?" Akihiro decides to wait for yet further clarification and information to absorb.

The gang collectively storms the cave, carefully stalking their way up the mountain trail and into the cavernous depths. In the cave, a few things are worth noting, vines and roots litter the ground, a small child is standing in the cave, facing away from the entrance, and near the back of the cave, a small dog is barking cheerfully as they shamble towards it slowly and curiously. Oh, and also worth noting, is the gigantic open mouth of a bottomless pit between the child and the dog. Upon hearing the gang's approach, the child turns, and, seeing them, some of the glaze and confusion drops off of their face as they back up slightly.