Mirandae

OBLIVION

Come on Magpies! Let's wake up.

ᵀʰᵉ Spirits Within/Aeon

---

_{DAY 1 《》 RD-PRS [Research Wing] 《》 After Noon 《》@Aeolian}

---

▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇

It was that light again. The light Emilia had seen in the forest earlier did come from Peter. She half suspected it, now the mystery was solved. Huh...Aether. Emilia thought to herself. It had been ages since Emilia had tried to heal herself or anything else. However, that light was different from what Peter was producing. I haven't seen that before... I wonder what that is. There was no doubt that Emilia had a general interest in Aeon and what they could do, but it was all mostly surface-level and nowhere near the detailed expertise of some of those present in the research wing. Regardless, Errikos seemed to keep an ever-watchful eye on everything, so Emilia could focus on the bizarre Stigma issue. Isolde certainly displayed who the real authority was around this place. She had the seniority both in age and rank, a wealth of knowledge and research behind her, and a rather frightening expression of the spirits within that would humble most Aeon. Emilia had no intention of ever telling this woman what to do or not do. Not even the careerist pigs within the UDF could keep her on a leash like they did everyone else. To top it all off, general McMahon had been polite to her and he rarely took a knee for anyone. The more Emilia thought about it, the more she straightened her own spine out and stood properly while listening to Isolde speak. Of course it's connected to Ben. Why wouldn't it be? Everything else revolves around him. The entire fucking world revolves around him for some reason. Emilia scolded the former flame of her life, as Isolde mentioned him by name. As the buzzing of notifications in cellphones faintly sounded among those present, Emilia reached for the back pocket of her pants out of habit and hardcoded muscle memory. A hint of panic struck her facial expression, followed by rolling eyes as Emilia realized that she had tossed her phone off of a roof early this morning. I'll just listen more carefully, instead. She thought along with a modest sigh escaping her frame. Although, Isolde's praise of Eunji managed to get a warm smirk out of Emilia, which was somewhat rare during missions and times of strife. "Zombies? Like in the movies?" Emilia lightly chuckled, a lazy puff of air at most, flaunting its sarcastic aroma—after Isolde's comment about the ants. It was an outrageous statement to call something 'undead' or 'zombie'. Then again, they were fighting literal monsters and demons out of a horrible nightmare on a daily basis, so it was not as reaching as one could assume. Isolde sounded more like a mad scientist the longer she talked. There was a fine line between being a genius and insane. She was going to conduct some personal experiment on Ben? Emilia certainly felt a bit of a punch in the stomach after hearing those ramblings about blood and a cure come out of the authority's mouth. It was as if that classified part of the Research Division had brainwashed Isolde's soul to a pulp. Or rather, Isolde was probably the one that did the brainwashing. It was difficult to tell whether these lunatic scientists of ResDiv were more out of touch than the night-crawling weirdos of IntDiv. Emilia did not take to the overall suggestion very well, but she kept her mouth shut. That ice-cold stare from the woman did not help. Isolde did not have to say or do anything more, Emilia could feel a sick sense of pleasure in the woman from a mile away—she actually enjoyed this, just as she enjoyed stepping over these poor people's corpses like they were trash in the street. UDF High Command would eventually know about this development, and they would probably side with Isolde. Emilia figured that they would also change their minds about a thousand times before the group even got close to Ben, so it was not over yet. Regardless, there was no use in speculating. Emilia tried her best to control the somewhat disturbing train of emotions going through her facial expressions each second, but it proved to be more difficult than usual. "Well..." Emilia began, trying to equalize her tone as much as she could, erasing any trace of an open book to her heart and soul. "I'm sure you'll convince McMahon and High Command of that. I don't know what we're supposed to do with him other than find him, so any practical direction would be nice, for a change. All I know is that we have to get into that city and find out why he basically destroyed it." Emilia paused and looked at the BlackRock operator. "Christina here saw an Archon in the city earlier, which is obviously Ben. He was close to achieving transcendence years ago, so it's not much of a stretch to assume that he has now. But, if these, eh, things have Ben's DNA in them, is it really him or is it Bahamut? I mean, they're not entirely the same thing, right? So, the question is whether you need Ben or Bahamut alive. I'm only asking because depending on the answer, the mission drastically changes in difficulty." She said and leaned her back against a somewhat clean wall.

Summary

---

Emilia ponders about Peter's light and how it seems different from the Aether element. She listens to Isolde's speech. Emilia finally asks about the distinction between Benjamin himself and his Archon form, which one of them that is important here, and how it can change the difficulty of the mission.

Quest Steps

---

The team has to ready up and head into the city. If there is no interaction to be had, characters can leave the Research Wing and rally by the entrance to the PRS.

ᵀʰᵉ Spirits Within/Aeon

@Aeolian
Very cool post. My head just exploded, I think. Lots of good stuff for me to work with in plot devices down the road!

OBLIVION

@Salsa Verde
A USB stick with a video of Jennifer Elkmann (one of Nat's friends) puking her guts out at a party.

ᵀʰᵉ Spirits Within/Aeon

@Archangel89
You shouldn't stress out about it, either. Let's do this: Aaron is knocked out and in the trauma unit of the Portable Research Station. Robert and Scylla @DeadDrop@Rockette carried his ass there after the fight. Whenever you are ready to post, there can be 1 of 2 scenarios. First, if you post after the team has moved on, my second character (Hana Maeda) will be there when Aaron wakes up. She's IntDiv, as well, so they know each other. Second, if you post soonish while the team is still at the Portable Research Station, then we just carry on as usual.

This way, you don't have to stress out or feel guilty about not posting. Take care of yourself first, come back, and then things carry on with one of these two scenarios.

ᵀʰᵉ Spirits Within/Aeon

This is mutiny. I can't believe you treat me like this, your own mother.

ᵀʰᵉ Spirits Within/Aeon

@Prisk

Glad you're keeping up with the erotic Emilia headers.

@Salsa Verde

Oh for fuck sake. THAT is not 'erotic'.

ᵀʰᵉ Spirits Within/Aeon

@DeadDrop
Yeah, how about that? It wasn't in my plans, but it turned out pretty well! Always nice with positive surprises.

@Aeolian@Archangel89
I hope I haven't been too harsh on things. Are you guys alright?

The Witches Of Shipden Peak

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Location ⋗ Walking around. Interactions ⋗ ??? School of Magic ⋗ Conjuration & Enchantment. Items ⋗ Cell phone.	_______

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"Lovely picture." Hanna said while gushing over it for a moment, trying out some filters, and then posting it to her Instagram. She had since long set her account to private, so not a whole lot of people would see it. Regardless, it was part of who Hanna was, and there was little anyone could do about this particular habit. In those pseudo-creative moments, a cute Asian visage helped themself to some brownies. Hanna guided them to some apple pie with enthusiastic eyes. "You too!" Hanna chimed in response to their courteous wishes. While continuing to fiddle with her phone, going through some messages and notifications, Hanna reminded herself that she should give the parents a call. "Excuse me for a second, guys. I should give my mom a quick call." Hanna said and removed herself from the food tents, walking underneath the open sky again.

"Hello?" The voice of Hanna's mother, Helene, sounded.
"Mom, it's me." Hanna spoke with a clearly changed tone, softer and more personal, perhaps lacking some of that typical enthusiasm that others were used to.
"Oh, sweetie! This makes me so happy that you're calling! How are things in Bennington?"
"It's fine. We're celebrating Ostara at the moment. And, I baked a delicious apple pie that people seem to like, I think."
"That's wonderful! I did my rituals for Spring Equinox this morning. You did yours, I take it?"
"Yes, mom, I did the solos."
"Great. I just want you to do it properly, you know, so you don't forget."
"Why would I forget them, mom? I live in a coven. It's literally impossible to forget any witch stuff here."
"You weren't always like this, dear."
"Like what?"
"We've talked about this countless times. Do we really need to do it again?"
"Eh, yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. I won't forget, mom, I promise."
"Good! Do you want to speak to daddy? He's right here."
"I should get back to it. Give him a kiss for me, though."
"I will! Call again soon, sweetie. We love hearing from you, always."
"Will do. Bye, mom."
"Big kisses, bye!"

Hanna took a moment for herself after the call. It did not seem to matter where she went or what she did, that time in High School would always haunt her. To make matters worse, Hanna's mother had the uncanny ability to find a way to bring it up regardless of what they were talking about. At least being in a coven like this was some manner of reset, a new beginning, a blank sheet of paper. Nobody here knew about that time, and Hanna intended to keep it that way. Besides, even if they did know, who would care? Everyone had their skeletons in the closet, just as Hanna did. I should get back. Better shake this off before I do, though. Man, how does this always hit me so hard? Teenagers do stupid shit. Why should it define them for the rest of their lives? It's not fair. But, I know I can change... erhhm, I've already changed. This is bullshit, I'm not like I was in High School anymore, clearly. It's not getting to me... it's not. Hanna's mind struggled.

ᵀʰᵉ Spirits Within/Aeon

I just realized how bad my post is in terms of direction. There's absolutely fuck all to work with for most of the cast here. The direction is that the group is on their way into the city to look for anything related to Ben. When the time is right, soonish, I'll do a 'narrative' post and put everyone where they need to be for the next segment.

Fuck Benji

@DeadDrop

Come on now. I guess you're right, but I'm feeling a bit soft about it all, unfortunately.