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 Post Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2013 9:52 pm 
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Serpico listens quietly to Athena. His expression is quiet and thoughtful for a long time. Then, before anyone else can speak, he begins to laugh. A quiet, harsh, sharp metallic sound at first, more bitter than he normally emits.

"Heh, oh thats beautiful, Teach. It really is. Our foe, the big frightening villain, a honest sport? Why, that would make everything so SIMPLE. Trust can be thrown out the window as long as youre sure meaning isn't mistaken! And, who knows? It might even be true."

He turns and stalks right up to Athena. "For HIM. Its a wonderful plan, it really is. And he even did everything right. After all, there is no one I, at least, would be more likely to trust than you, Athena. Arbiter, Teacher, mentor., you have been all of that. But...what are you now?"

His voice softens. "Even if he tells only truth, we face a manipulator of minds. He certainly left quickly enough that the only tale we have been told is through your lips. He didnt tell you to tell the truth. He said "Tell them what you REMEMBER."

"But do you remember the truth? The real truth? We need to know that."

With a practiced gesture, Serpico twirls his pen in his hand, his runes flaring briefly and repeatedly. "You helped me see how this works, how I can feed myself the elements for different effects. And what I hope to do now..."

"Green *tsst*" He hisses as he injects himself in the tip of his pointer finger. "is for life. Indigo" And the tip of the thumb of the same hand. "Is death. The fingers are the focus of the tactile sense. The soul is the barrier between life and death, the crossroads. I think...I hope.... that with this, I can sense your soul, even as it is. It won't be strong, but come on, teach. We know you as well as any Arbiter, any God. I hope that I can feel your soul well enough to detect if he manipulated it."

He slowly reaches out his hand towards Athena, to contact against the sides of her forehead. "Will you let me try?"

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 Post Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2013 11:35 pm 
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Athena nods, "Alright. If that will get you to trust me, then so be it."


Serpico focuses all of his attention on the new connection in his hand, and carefully places his hand on Athena's head. He connects... peels away the layers of the strange new blight surrounding Athena's soul to find her center; unmarred save for the blight connecting to it... it's strange however... the blight seems to be holding the cracks and scars in her soul together.

Serpico can tell however almost instantainously that Athena's soul is her own and she IS in control. But he looks closer at the Blight. He doesn't know what he is looking for, but if he had to put it in words, it would be looking for something being "added" from it to the rest of the soul.

There is indeed something being added... it's a resonance of sorts. As if the blight is trying to make itself into an exact copy of her soul, scarring and all.

"Did you find what you seek Serpico?" Athena asks gently.


"You know....I didn't know if that would work." Serpico pulls his hand back, and lets the ink dissolve. "So that type of infusion works right. Well, I think that's as best as I can tell. Interesting enough. I still don't trust him, but at least this seems on the level."

He turns to the others. "I....am fairly sure there's nothing extra in there. Its the Teacher we knew, as before. So what do you think, then?"

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 Post Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2014 8:57 pm 
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"We talk about the options he's giving us. Try and figure out what's going on," Lumina sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose to distract herself from her dawning headache. "Why do we resist the Tiranade's Shift? I thought it was because he was simply letting us remember, but as it turns out that doesn't appear to be the case anymore..."

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 Post Posted: Wed Jan 08, 2014 1:32 am 
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"It could be because we'd met him personally." suggested Alexis. "Or because we were touched by his Blight?"

He considers Athena's words a bit more, then asks "When you say that Tiranade cannot lie..." He pauses, grappling for the right words. "Let us say, if Tiranade had never met me, and you had told Tiranade that I had two tails. Let us say that Tiranade believed your statement to be true, and then told someone else that I had two tails. That would be a lie - in the sense that I do not have two tails - but Tiranade would not have purposely told a lie, he would have said what he believed to be true. Would that be considered a lie, for the purposes of his shift?"

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2014 1:53 pm 
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Athena smiles, "There's a pretty simple explanation as to why Tiranade's memory magic cannot effect you. But the reasons why that explanation is there will take some time to tell. I don't know if we have much..." She turns to Alexis, "As to that, we spent a long time studying the effects of his Shift - it boils down to what his soul believes. If someone convinces him on every level, without a shadow of a doubt that two and two is five, then he can say that information without it being a lie and undoing his Shift. It's tricky, however, even if there is a doubt it will all come undone. However, so long as he speaks carefully he'll never accidentally..."

There's a very large ripping sound as a portal appears in the sky - "...lie." As the group watches, Asch, Harmony, MUSE and Chandi are all ejected from the portal and slide when they hit the ground - Asch's Shift seems to be folding back in on itself and taking a normal form. "Well." Athena seems a bit surprised; the portal snaps shut and a glowing blue feather flutters down, touches Athena on the forehead and melts into her.

"You all figured that out much faster than I predicted. And it appears Destiny has bought us some time... good." She takes a few steps back from the group, "I can assume you are all quite cross with me. Take a moment to catch one and other up on what happened - I'm not going anywhere."

(OOC - You may now all read the other thread you were not in; for the sake of RP we can assume the group quickly spoke to one and other about what happened, so it doesn't need to be re-posted. Please continue by posting reactions and we'll move on to the final act of this world.)

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2014 2:53 pm 
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Asch smirks at Athena's comment. "Faster than you expected? You forget who stayed behind." She sheathes One Truth and looks over the others. "I would say 'what did we miss', but I already have a fair idea of the situation, and our time is limited. What you need to know is this: we can't go back to Arbiter HQ right now, or perhaps for a long while. We really should move this elsewhere as soon as we can."

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2014 2:56 pm 
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"That is something you may be wrong about Asch." Athena inclines her head towards the detective, "It is, in fact, exactly where I'd like to send you. The Elder's know nothing of this yet - and they cannot see past the barriers around this world. We could easily send you back to HQ, blame free, to watch the Elders activities and help root out the corruptions. If you all were willing, that is."

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2014 3:09 pm 
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Asch frowns. "You can't be serious. This goes far beyond corruption. Doyle was more than right to get out of that circle - when one fights demons they must take care not to become demons themselves. I have no reason to investigate from within. I'm fine if the rest of you want to go back, but as of now there's no place for me at the Arbiter HQ."

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2014 3:11 pm 
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"Let me put an end to that right now." Athena claps her hand for the classes attention, "You cannot split apart on this. I can see where this is going... you all are either going to come with me, or go back to HQ. If you split, you put the team going back to HQ in more danger than needed - they may even be captured or Tortured... there's a lot for me to explain still, but I thank balance you still seem to trust me."

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2014 3:19 pm 
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When Harmony appears... she is pissed. "Athena, I swear, I really may slap you after this... but we have no time now. But later. Looooong conversation, Athena, about trust. And I don't trust you now. Not completely. Not after that... But Asch is right. Knowing what I know now about Solarus... No matter what happens, even if I went back to Arbiter HQ, I couldn't stay there. It'd be too dangerous."

She takes a moment to compose herself. "You should have found a better way to tell us what you were planning. We almost didn't figure it out."

"So! Everyone attention please. Let me lay it out in a nutshell. Asch, feel free to correct me if I miss anything."

"First, a little bit of history. We have Athena and the threesome. There is known strife between the three - Makosan and Tiranade both love Eevee, but it ends up Eevee chooses Makosan. This, I imagine, is commonly known. Tiranade goes off for a long while by himself, finds something that scares the bleep out of him - likely the 'Unknown', and goes to tell the Elders about it. Said Elders ignore him, sending him off pissed as hell. This also starts him mistrusting the Elders. Whatever he told them may also have caused what came after..."

"Solarus tells Eevee to go to the planet. At the same time, Makosan confronts Tiranade. Eevee supposedly unravels, huge energy explosion, planets die. Makosan attempts to kill Tiranade when he believes he feels Eevee die, because they're tied to one another. Athena steps in and takes the hit at the last moment. She teleports into the middle of a Elder council meeting, they're forced to deal with her. Meanwhile, Tiranade and Makosan supposedly unravel one another, and even more planets die. Despite the fact that the three do not officially exist, the planets that were rent by their supposed unraveling are still fact... a fact that is even now 'Classified'. More importantly, they did NOT unravel. Someone else caused the explosion. There is a coverup that is currently operating on those three. The fact that power rivaling multiple souls Unraveling was brought to bear upon the three implicates that someone extremely powerful - someone on Solarus' level - tried to kill them, and they've been covering their tracks."

"Now, the bomb was set up directly in Arbiter HQ. The Core of the Utopia was scanned every which way to Sunday - it was clear that when it first came to HQ, it was free and clear. There was no bomb. Arbiter HQ has such innate defenses that there is no way that an outsider, no matter how powerful, could just 'sneak' in. Which means it had to be an inside job."

"Athena was actually in a position to realize that Tiranade is still alive and kicking. Between our own encounter with Tiranade on Utopia and again our encounter with Makosan, she was alerted to the fact that the Fessrians may still be alive. Though she claimed to not recognize him when I showed him before, she immediately noted that only someone with the ability to manipulate memory - as she knew Tiranade was capable of - could do such a thing. While we were away on mission, a new Black Crystal showed up. Athena knew - or at least suspected - that she would find Tiranade here. Athena herself rigged up the bomb - which is a dud by the way and where the hell are the Utopian souls? Never mind, not important right now. Anyway. It was a bomb threat, that very specifically is unable to target us due to Athena's Blessing or her friend Destiny. This freed us to either find out the truth about the bomb, or to come here directly."

"And this would have been so MUCH easier if you had found some way to tell us that the bomb was a dud."

"Anyway, the bomb keeps the Elder Council locked in place ready to deal with it... while Athena came here to Asgard to confront Tiranade and find out what the hell he thinks he is doing."

"Right now, Destiny is holding Tiranade and the supposed bomb in a time lock, but it won't last. When it goes, the Elders will come storming off here to discover what has happened. Which means we need to figure out what the hell we're going to do, right now. The Elders don't know what we know. We could, in theory, go back to Arbiter HQ even now with no one the wiser."

"SO!"

"We have a bomb that was a dud. A teacher who is being too canny for her own good. Tiranade, who's motives are still... Unknown. The likely corrupt Elder Council about to rocket out here the moment the coast is clear."

"Which means we have a choice to make."

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2014 3:33 pm 
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Serpico blinks.

"You know, I'd say you got a bit sidetracked in that bomb defusing job. Lack of focus, perhaps?"

He turns to Athena. "Hmph. Not a bad performance after all, Teach. Even ol' Honest T must not have seen anything."

He turns back to Harmony. "Well, the choice is different than you might think. Tiranade wants us to JOIN him. Apparently somehow we're either interesting or potentially useful to him, and we can trust him on that, at least. Teacher says one thing about our 'friend'. He never LIES. At all. Breaks his fancy tricks in two if he does. Still don't trust him, though."

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2014 3:51 pm 
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"Couldn't have summed it up better myself," Asch states with wry admiration of Harmony. "As for Tiranade... I actually have a whole number of questions I'd like to ask him now that the distraction has been dealt with. I don't see a reason not to join him, and he's a better lead than staying in a place like HQ."

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2014 5:13 pm 
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"I don't trust him, nor am I inclined to just up and join him. He has a lot of explaining to do before I would even think of working with him. But it is obvious he seems to know something important. Something he confronted the Elders over. We need to know what that is."

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2014 6:32 pm 
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"As to that." Athena interjects, "I have a way of finding that out. I let the blight take me... it's healing the memory damage of my scaring, filling in the gaps, and preparing my soul to have the scars removed. I'm still unsure how Tiranade did it... but when I first arrived here, he set the blight on me and grew it with his power - the more it grew, the more I remembered. When he says I've half-remembered everything..." She motions at the half of her body still covered in the Runic Blight, "He was being quite literal. I was AT that meeting - I had my memory sealed as well, but the seal is leaking with this blight. If I let it finish... then I'll have that answer."

She then looks at Harmony, "But if I communicated with you in any way my intentions, you'd all lose the ability to appear innocent. Yes, it seems you are learning towards coming with us, and I have no illusions about this I am NOT going back to the Arbiters, but if you didn't... if that bomb went off and fizzled - if the group that came here failed, then only Tiranade or myself take the blame. None of you do. If I had said anything, they'd find a way to know. As for the souls? They are packed away in a hidden pocket in the Collapsed Core - cleansed and ready to be roused, even the Three Goddesses. It took a long sleepless night to cleanse them all myself."

"It was an all or nothing gambit. Either you'd succeed and find me - or you'd fail and be none the wiser, and not to blame." She smiles, "You were protected however... when I dove into that Core and found Tiranade's program, I set it to never harm myself -- with my blessings in place, that meant not harming any of you. And the reasons Tiranade's memory wipe didn't work on you? Those blessings again - he had already wiped himself from my existence. He couldn't do it twice... but by then I was already starting to prize the seal loose and suspecting the Elders. I am not stupid - nor am I broken as they would have me believe. I knew something was wrong - I had to find out what."

"And you know what?" She raises her arms, "It all comes down to The Unknown."

There's a crack of thunder, a sheet of lightning, and the blight spreads through Athena's body, painting all of her with the runic tattoos her right half was covered in. A second triangle appears under her left eye. She makes a sudden gasp, and then drops her arms, "Yes... that's right. I remember."

She opens her book, dons her glasses, and a three-dimensional display appears on the ground between them - life sized. "One last lesson?"

--------------------------------

The Room of the Elder Counsel - six sit in session, Elders Solarus, Yasuhiro, Viata, Riordan, Aurora and Athena. The 7th seat is currently empty; history recalls this moment there were only six, the seventh seat was looking for a new God after a prior elder retired. There is a knock on the door, and Athena answers, "Enter."

In walks a somewhat younger looking Tiranade, no scar, and yet to have that truly haunted look in his eyes. He is pale and gaunt however, as if he'd just been through a nightmare. Athena stands, "Tiranade! You've come back! Where did you go? What happened to you?"

Tiranade takes a knee and bows before standing, "I went off hunting... something I had been tracking since my last true Arbiter mission. Elders, tell me, what do you know about The Unknown?"

Solarus scoffs, slowly speaking in his detached way, "A myth... fabricated by demons... a fairy tale." The others nod in agreement save for Athena, who has given Tiranade her rapt attention.

"I'm sure that's what you thought once... but they are real. I encountered one. It tried to erase me..." Tiranade goes pale, "I've never EVER fought anything like that before. It could bend and twist reality in impossible ways... not even using Runes. I think the only reason I survived is because of my Shift... and through it, I've learned what they are."

Aurora holds up a hand, "You disappear, disobeying Arbiter orders, then come back with wild claims? Why should we listen to you?"

"Aurora..." Athena pleads.

"Silence."

"Because we may have created them..."

All eyes in the room turn to Tiranade, even Solarus'. "What do you mean?" Little Riordan is the first to respond.

"I mean... when I fought it... just one of them... they seemed to exist outside of reality. The rules didn't apply to it; I couldn't harm it with Rune Magic, my blade, NOTHING worked! Only memory based attacks seemed to have any effect at all..."

"Memory Magic?!" Viata is now on her feet, "Tiranade that is illegal!"

"I had no choice!! Listen to me!!" He pleads, "I think... I think the Unknown are related to Unraveled Souls!"

Yasuhiro mutters under his breath, "Preposterous..."

"It's not! The law of conservation of energy states that matter cannot be created, nor destroyed!"

"And when a Soul Unravels," Viata states, "The energy unleashed is massive."

"And when a bomb goes off, there are always remains of it! It doesn't destroy itself entirely, there are always scraps!" He raises his arms, "I think that The Unknown are made of these scraps... that they somehow... reform! Re-congeal - for into a lifeform that DOESN'T EXIST, and yet is able to bend reality around it! I think that if you were to look upon one, even for an instant, then look away you'd not even know it was there! The only reason I do is because of Black-Fireblaze! These things are a real danger... even a mortal soul unraveled could make one powerful enough to rival all of you!"

"...enough." Solarus' voice is low, but wild.

"But you... you've been Unraveling DEMONS. Do you have any idea what you created?! I think that-" Tiranade is cut off as Solarus appears in front of him, aura burning bright, peeling away Tiranade's flesh and making him scream.

"Enough."

"ELDER SOLARUS!!" Athena tries to move closer but is blown back.

"I will have no more of this insane talk. You've lost your mind Tiranade. Memory Magic? Abusing your Shift? I told you when you first obtained it what I would do if you ever walked the path of a Demon. And now? I think you've started."

Tiranade drops to his knees, burning, looking at the towering inferno before him. "...no."

"I am afraid that you must be erased."

"SOLARUS!!"

"Restrain her." Solarus shoots a glance at Yasuhiro.

Yasuhiro moves and taps Athena lightly in the gut - she's frozen solid like stone, but still conscious. When Solarus looks back to Tiranade, he's greeted by a spiral helix blade through the gut. "Second... SECOND SHIFT! UNINSTALL!!" The blade explodes through Solarus, forming a 6 foot spike of spiraling purple energy, twisting about itself in a quadruple helix.

"You... DARE!!!" Solarus' rage breaks, Tiranade's left side explodes into a fine mist but he holds on with his right arm and pulls the blade hard through Solarus - black tendrils of energy tear out of the 5 other Elders in the room, including Athena, absorbing into the blade, wrapping around the Helix and soaking into it. He gives Athena one last look and whispers...

"I'm so sorry."

There's a black flash of light and suddenly the 6 are seated again, Tiranade is whole, but smoking; breathing hard. Athena stands, "Tiranade! You've come back! Where did you go? What happened to you? It looks like you flew through a sun to get here!!"

Tiranade takes a deep breath, sheathes his Shift and stares hard at the room. "Nothing."

He turns and leaves the chamber, never to be seen again for 50 years.

-------------------------------------

Athena shuts her book and takes a step backward, "By the Gods... so that's what the Unknown are..."

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2014 7:59 pm 
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The Awakener freezes completely as soon as Tiranade states his theory. Even the grinding gears of its shift locks in place. For many seconds, nothing happens at all - it simply remains frozen, unmoving. No sign of anything comes from the hollow god... until finally, just as abruptly, the mask turns directly to Athena.

"If this theory is true, it presents a direct challenge to the concept of finality as defined in my creation. Life ends and becomes new life, matter and energy end and become new matter and energy, and even souls end and become something new. It is possible that there is no true concept of finality, save for finality of concepts themselves. Perhaps, however, even this is not a true finality. You were not aware of the nature of the Unknown, Athena - as far as you were aware, no memory remained, correct? And yet, you guided me to the Shepherds, where I would first be introduced to this theory. It is possible that this guidance may have been on a deeper level than you realized."

The Awakener pauses again, this time for less than a second, and continues.

"No, there is another possibility. I have faced beings similar in concept, though completely different in nature, what the Unknown may be. The victims of my imprisonment - lives which Ended yet remained. Wrongness incarnate, that which cannot come to a true Ending. These Unknown may be the same - souls which have Ended, yet remain. If this is the case, there is but one path that can be taken. I must bring them to a true Ending."

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