[b]Apostle:[/b]

They seem surprised by that, and looks at Brown with pity - not in a condescending way, but in the way of someone who’s just walked across a mile of broken glass barefoot and looked over their shoulder and seen you start taking off your shoes. “Wow, you’re going to be so disappointed if you ever make it up here. Their morals aren’t corrupt, they’re localized.” 

“You know the trolley problem? Just put the ‘five people’ further down the track than the person pulling a lever can see, and the other person right in front of the switch. People will save the one person and feel good about it because the ‘five people’ aren’t real. You can’t outsmart that because it’s stupid.” 

“Everyone thinks bad things are good, they'll work for Babykillers Inc because all their friends work there and helping your friends is good. You tell an engineer to build a torment nexus and they’ll do it for fun. They don't care, they're not going to use it. Too far down the track to see is like, two meters in most cases.”

“And yeah, I mean, the system’s complex so people don’t even want to look because it’s hard, lol.” They snort. “And like, same, that’s why I’m making a perfect machine god to do it for me, so I don’t have to care. It’s actually way easier.” 

There’s a pause.

“Also, really? Just… bread-and-roses communism?” They sound extremely disappointed. “Sounded like her plan was more about creating optimal happiness by playing fairy godmother, and that needs Cinderella sticking to her script for the story to work. I liked that idea [i]way[/i] better. God I hope she’s just lying to you to make you go along with it, that was way more interesting."

...

"No offense?” 

[b]Chaka Zulu:[/b]

“Not my org.” Chaka shakes her head and slumps back against the console, head staring numbly up at the ceiling. “You. [i]Them[/i]. Anyone I side with out there gets hit with conspiracy. If I get picked up defending the train station, then that’s a terrorism charge for everyone else I’m standing with. You gotta help me get this shit out of here before it can be pinned on anyone.” 

It is illegal to participate in a violent riot. Conspiracy charges connect everyone caught doing a crime together. So, for a few short-lived days until the charges are investigated and dropped, everyone from the exhibition the police pick up - if they’re picked up with Chaka in the mix - is treated as part of a terrorist cell. At least if her connection to Alice is made. 

If you think that’s complete bullshit, ask Persephone how she feels about it. 

She covers her eyes with a furred, sharp-nailed hand and groans, “Most of my network’s gone to ground after last night, but if you can help get this to Henry Stanley station in Selene, I have it covered from there. I was just supposed to ride this out here until everyone was out of my blast radius, but if you get the fucking gear out of here then I don’t even have a criminal record.” She flashes a weak, but proud, smile, and lets the hand covering her eyes fall away and catches it in front of her as a balled fist. “I’ll help you beat fascist faces harder than I beat charges.” 

It’s why she’s still here, you realize. If she’s sitting on the stuff when it’s found, she falls alone. If she leaves it and the police find it in the melee, then they tie it to everyone. 

Underneath the drunken, moping self-pity is a soldier who has thrown herself onto a live grenade to protect the squad, waiting for the end because [i]she[/i] couldn’t hack a train network. 

It’s just if this gets intercepted, the intercepted train would be logged in Crimson Tower’s name instead.


[b]The Exhibition:[/b]

Exhibition groups pull back from the streets as Zhang’s work draws the cops to the nearest counter-protestors, and without cops or counter-protestors to fight there’s a natural de-escalation. 

The colour-groups forming up start looking like football teams, which makes what’s about to happen look all the more like a sports riot for it. 

Leading Hermes is a pack of dyed wolves, and a lot of the professional wrestlers. Hermes is the most densely populated district of the station, but it’s got the least per-capita interest in an event like this, so the blue-collars - or, yellow collars, construction hazmat yellow in this case - still seem proportional to the others.

Leading Aphrodite, the pinks, is a lot of the larger performers like the perfect minotaur, and like Monk if she were here. This is the biggest group in number, because it’s the one that’s most interested in a venue like this, because it’s the one most interesting to a community like this, because it’s the local one. It’s the one that had to travel the least far to be here. This group will be your core stay behinders. Don’t forget how often ballerinas used to win gameshows like American Gladiator, the artist and actor group doesn’t fuck around - they are committed to your bit. 

Leading Apollo, in electric blue, the tech industry, is more cyborgs than androids. The more heavily modded full electronic denizens prefer Ares, so this group is left with people like Odysseus the Self Made Man, the completely mechanical cyborg, who’s leaving most of his equipment at the venue but taking a solid forge hammer for the road.  This group doesn’t have the muscle mass of the others, but the gadget freaks and DIY lovers are already equipping everyone else with impromptu riot shields and teaching the chemistry behind improvised gas masks. 

Leading Ares, in blood red, The Ultimate Werewolf. Even the combat androids and disaster-mutants among these ranks give deference to him here, the pro-wrestling heel crushes this role with charisma and muscle mass. He’s kicked over a garbage bin to use a platform to start giving instructions on taking falls and basic mosh pit safety techniques to his group. 

Leading Zeus in stormy white-gray is Anubis and Horus. They’re actually real lawyers in their day jobs, it’s part of why they love the acting side of it. This is about the same size as the Apollo group, and covers most of the journalists that were caught here today. There’s others, but even they’re kind of dwarfed by those two in both size and charisma. 

Leading Gaea, in green and the smallest of the groups, is a motley mix of horses, bulls and bee girls. An anteater, too, a kilted Scot named Leon, one of the transhumans dedicated enough to give up hands, their long clawed toes are lethal. In the wild these things can disembowel a leopard with them. He’s lovely. A lot of the dryads, alarunes and the chlorophyll community is grateful to be in this group, naturally. 

Leading your dedicated stay-behinds, it should be no surprise, is Leather. He’s not down here right now though - right now he’s taken a small team up and down the elevators to secure fire extinguishers and first aid kits from every floor and centralize them in the lobby. He’s firm about this - anyone that gets seriously injured, anyone who gets taken out on the way to the station gets brought back here by his team, contactable by “commandeered” hand radios from the hotel staff. They’re calling themselves the Valkyries. 

They’re going to be making a field hospital out of the first floor hotel rooms, booked at less-than-half-cost due to mass-cancellations, because it’s closer and safer than pushing people to their destinations when they’re already injured, and because they can guarantee the resources here. They can’t for other parts of Aevum. 

Those are the groups.