It does mean a lot of people killed, but it doesn't mean that THEY killed a lot of people. It's sort of a pyramid thing. People at the bottom kill for individual animas, people above them kill for several at a time. Maybe at some level you have the equivalent of cops or soldiers or even bounty hunters who only kill the bad people who collect anima illegally, but as a result they accumulate all those collected anima themselves. That's why it makes most sense that they were going after cuipidine. She had enough anima to be significant, but few enough to be a level or two lower on the pyramid, making her easy pickings if they catch her. Also she was very clearly a bad person so the people after her might not be.

Also judging from the pictures they saw earlier, it seems that multi-anima people existed at some point as both happy family men and celebrities, which doesn't scream "murderer" to me. If the only way to get multiple anima was through cold-blooded murder, then there's no way those people could show up in public in non-violent context since the evidence of the crime is very obvious. Maybe it was a thing to inherit anima from dying relatives or something?

Could they flux the house?

I was wondering, how the mere fact of having multiple animas wasn't a walking proof of having committed the most heinous crime possible. The pictures indicated that having one to a few more was simply normal.

They could flux the house, but Riff is using the "there's no time" excuse because plot. Time always moves at the speed of plot so that excuse means nothing except that the plot demands.

Anyway I mentioned the multiple animas thing. I doubt it will be explained so I don't really think this is spec per-sey, but they probably inherit animas from normally-dying people. I guess euthanasia was legalized.

I do not think that euthanasia was necessary - I already specced on this in the spec thread...

The other issue that Riff has not yet thought about is that he essentially uploaded all of the specs to the DFA onto this dimension's version of the 'internet'. As such, it is not clear that the clouds are either good guys after Cupidine or bad guys intent on a smidgen more animas, rather they could be after something else.........

Very good point.

I was wondering if the DFA is operational right now -- since Riff kicked it, knocked it over, then stormed outside.

I don't see why Riff is worrying about the DFA not picking up Torg just because he's laying down. The DFA is smart enough to take entire objects/people/etc. All they have to do is kneel down and hold onto Torg and he'll be fluxed along with them.

That's how Hereti Corp's DFAs work, but are we sure that's how Riff's DFA works as well? Even if it does, would you want to chance it betting the DFA is "smart enough" to not stop at the hand holding on to Torg?

Has he fluxxed more than just people with his DFA? I can't remember it doing more than that.

Well it did flux Aylee when she was an undead mountain.

That's because Riff had plenty of time to adjust the radius. He explains why he doesn't here - but given the amount of time to explain, and how much time it will take them to get Torg even half-way up, and I'm not sure why he did not just skip all of that and just adjust the radius... I suppose that its a procedure that could take a significant amount of time to do - perhaps because Riff has a lock on the radius that would have to be unlocked first?

But yeah, we do not know if kicking it did any damage...

Hey, maybe kicking it fixed the problem! Kinda like Fonzie and the jukebox ...

I think it's quite possible that even if there wasn't a lock on the radius, he might not have been able to adjust it properly; panic is significant for all concerned.

I'm hoping kicking it fixed it, or at least changed the pattern.

Wrong. That's how Riff's DFA works, and always have been, since the very first version. It's Hereti Corp's version was dumber and took spheres and severed anything outside of sphere. Eventually Hereti Corps improved to Riff's level. Though Riff's DFA have opposite problem: it have a strange habit of picking up things that's not even close to the point of blast, and not even connected.

I'm sure "Spacey-wackey yarn" will be mentioned at some point.

Hereti has two types of DFA abilities. They either take everything within an area or just individual people. Riffs takes any number of people within an area. So no, they are not exactly the same.

You know, I had thought about inheriting animas from relatives when they died, since there was that family picture where the father had two and I couldn't imagine him killing someone.
But, crap, I didn't think about something like "COPS" maybe having to kill Cupidine-like individuals and inheriting their animas as a result. So maybe they AREN'T a threat. Crapity. I am chewing my nails off.