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[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyL9GPs4zRQ]Energy flooded Callie[/url], and energy was information, and information was something she could process.  Encode.  [i]Channel.[/i]  To one purpose.

Mirage Space had collapsed.  People she cared about were now on that ship; one of them was barely conscious, their foe looming over her.  They, within her sight and by her hand, would be safe: such was the pact, the Charter, that she had made with reality a decade ago.  The Arm was the anchor and symbol of that pact – but the identity was hers, and that made Caroline Lidmann as capable a focus as it was.  More.

Near every fibre of her being expressed that identity now, bent to imposing upon the world without the world within.  Callie felt her whole self afire, her nerves screaming in exultation, horror and pain.  Still, she drew forth the power and sent it on, shaped in her image, surging, knowing that she would not fail them.

(In a dark and buried recess of her mind able to consider anything beyond that which pertained to manifesting her fundamental desire through a semi-instinctual connection to the base code of the universe, cries resonated that this was unjust; that hundreds, thousands were currently dying by her hand; that saving only those she liked would not absolve her.  In that moment, it did not resonate loudly enough.)

(Its echoes would remain.  She was only human.)

On the sinking [i]Guandong[/i]-class, where once was peril, a path was made.  There was the deck of [i]BRP Jose Rizal[/i] just behind Task Force Obsidian, a portal offering them their way back.  It called to them, quiet, clear and undeniable, asylum promised with the assurance of truth.  For he who had harmed them – beaten them bloody and worse, done so with that which made them themselves, torn away and subjugated – and would do so again?  A clarion loud enough to deafen, pressed upon his soul:

[color=f7941d][b][i]YOU ARE NOT WELCOME BEYOND![/i][/b][/color]