Futuristic Wake me up inside (boobs & butts)

[Buttercup.]

It had been a while since she'd last talked to anyone from the cult.

Well, of course it wasn't a cult - it was the Renaissance Foundation! Advancing humanity! Ushering in better tomorrows! And all the other corporate bullshit they loved to feed the public whilst conveniently hiding whatever it was they were actually doing! But she'd been through the whole song and dance: Recruit college students via a seemingly unrelated spiritual org promising them all the good stuff - you know, community, acceptance, purpose, a break from the soulcrushing all-permeating burden of living in a turbulent dystopia? Then reel them in and put them to work running errands for the Harbinger division of RenF, mostly still left in the dark in terms of whatever the fuck any of it was for. Finally, once the hooks were in deep enough, reveal the true purpose of the Harbinger Project. At that point they'd either stick around to see things through or get immolated - such things just happen, you know? Just some random magical anomaly which RenF was working hard to keep the world safe from, but boy was it hard without more public funding!

Unlike most members, however, none of this was a surprise to her. She knew exactly what she was doing. You see, Sera was something of an intellectual. A real smart kid. Not great with all the awkward interpersonal stuff necessarily, but made up for it by reading ancient books and piecing together whatever she could about the poorly documented parts of history. Was she a fucking nerd? Absolutely. Was she popular in just about any collective? Haha yeah right. But she couldn't help her fascination with what she was uncovering, and she knew she couldn't have been the first one. There had to be others. But of course pursuing politically inadvisable knowledge wasn't something anyone was going to brag about too loudly... Unless they got a little too drunk, anyway. Yes, that was how unimpressive the story of her learning about the Harbinger Project was.

Long story short, she jumped through all the hoops and eventually became one of the key personnel of HarP, owing to her impressive knowledge. Dangerously impressive, maybe? Could it be that having an insatiable appetite for finding the truth - regardless of whether it confirmed the beliefs of everyone in the vicinity - might be a problem in an organisation whose power structures relied on mass indoctrination? Oh well, only time would tell.

Surely enough it did.

Divinity? Pah, a romantic fable according to most. Life was so much easier if one took all the talk of dormant deities with oft problematic moral alignment for superstitious blabbering. RenF knew better than that - they were communicating with one of the elder beings, after all, even if it was only in a very limited capacity. Aaand it was bending their will in very much the same way they were bending the will of naive kids - oh the irony, right? If only anyone could see it...

Well, a certain someone did. She couldn't tell whether the higher-ups were working with a questionable translation or just interpreting things in the most liberal way anyone had ever attempted in the history of everything, and it didn't matter. This ancient god thing was definitely not going to Advance humanity! or Usher in better tomorrows!, unless one counted a violent extinction event as a better tomorrow. And yeah, okay, on some days she kinda did, but that was beside the point. Ending all of mankind in the name of some misguided attempts at making it better (and RenF did actually seem to believe that was what they were doing for the most part) still sounded way too dumb for Sera to just let happen.

But what could one little nerd really do against a massive corporation?

She could narrowly avoid immolation and run away. She could use her insider knowledge to spy on RenF and follow various leads on the many steps required to bring the elder being back to full strength. She could establish a network of contacts who weren't particular about sticking to any set of rules or morals and leverage it to get an edge. She could use her knowledge of tech-enabled magic to augment her abilities (which, let's face it, were nothing to write home about on their own). All in all she'd formulated a strategy that didn't seem predestined to fail every single time, and that was really the best she could hope for.


So yeah.
It had been a while since she'd last talked to anyone from the cult.


"Lil? Shit, it's been a while," a woman's voice answered from the receiver.
"Yeah..." She wasn't called Lilian anymore, but the less anyone from her past knew the better. This was already a massive risk, but she'd always liked this girl and maybe, just maybe held on to the hope she could make her see reason, leave the cult and join her as an ally and maybe they could even go back to... wait wait wait, where had that come from? Well, Sera was only human, leave it at that. "...so how you holding up?"
A short silence. "Lilian, you can't just pretend like nothing happened." Beth's voice was more cold and distant than Sera remembered it. Not a good start.
"I'm not. Just checking on you. I miss you."
"Miss me?!" A bit angry now, probably? "How long has it been? A year?"
"Just under 11 months. I couldn't talk, okay?"
"Too busy stabbing other people in the back?"
"Beth, I never -"
"Just leave me alone, Lil. Please don't call me again."
"I promise I won't, just hear me out: if they ask you to go grab something today, don't go there. Okay?"
Nothing but static by that point. Fuck.

She still had to do it, didn't she? If all went well she'd slip in and out unnoticed in no time. And she was confident the intel was fresh out of the oven so there was hope RenF didn't even know about this particular artifact yet. Sure, the difference between 'hope' and 'wishful thinking' could be awfully small, but who knew? Perhaps things would go smoothly this time!


Go time. Sera gathered everything she thought she might need for stealth and basic self-defence:

• The personal invisibility device she'd built out of some black market parts. It was... far from perfect, granted, but as long as she stayed away from direct bright light and didn't move much the visual artifacts weren't very noticeable until it started running out of juice.
• A hooded cloak with magically conductive fibres woven in - smuggled that one out of the RenF compound on her way out and dyed it beyond recognition. The conductive mesh was attached to a rather old-fashioned looking control panel with several gems in it and a selector switch, allowing the user to imbue the fabric with resistance to extreme temperatures, a directional anti-gravity field that effectively dampened most physical attacks and a couple of other features she hadn't used nearly as much.
• A DIY catalyst. Sera was still working out all the quirks (building magic-augmenting technology almost from scratch in one's basement was quite the project) and it burned through energy cells like there was no tomorrow, but at least the side effects of using it were usually not too dangerous anymore.
• Spare energy cells for everything. She was going to need a few.
• An assortment of throwing knives and similar implements worthy of a circus performer.
• And of course, her combat knife. Not just any old blade either - this was originally a ritual dagger she'd found on one of her previous missions, and it turned out it had excellent affinity for short-term magical enhancements. Oh the joys of seeing someone laugh at your 'pathetic little paring knife' only to eat those words when it turns their skin into charcoal... But, being a ritual dagger, it had this one awkward massive downside to it - imbuing it with magic consumed her own energy. Emergency use only.

She tied her hair in a bun, pulled the hood over her head and left the safehouse. Her destination? A random abandoned chapel across town. Well, the forgotten ritual chamber that still had to be somewhere underneath, anyway. Definitely sealed with no obvious way in, come to think of it. Oh well, she'd figure it out when she got there, right? One thing at a time!


Upon arriving, Sera took a moment to scout the surroundings. Seemed like a quiet enough neighbourhood, only a couple people around and none of them seemed to give a shit really. Looked like things were going to go silky smooth for once in her life!

The chapel was in a sorry state, clearly a target for vandals and a hiding place for some of the less successful members of society. But she wasn't here to sightsee. Instead she took a deep breath and walked in... Taking that deep breath first turned out to be a brilliant idea actually - a group of teenagers were just smoking something putrid in there.
"Hello, kids. I'm going to need you to leave, yeah?" she requested casually.
An androgynous member of the group lazily turned their head to face Sera. "Or what? ...like, this is our spot."
"Sure, that's fine, I'm not gonna steal it or anything. Just need to have a look around."
"You a fuckin' narc or what mate? Need us to kick your arse?!"
Well this was going great. She really didn't have time for this. "Look, just go for a little walk, get some fresh air and you can have this shithole back. Is that too much to ask?"
"They's a fuckin' cop, I tell ya."
"Yeah! Get outta here, copper!"

What now? Fight them? Nah, she needed to save her energy for the actual mission. This was just the entrée. But the polite approach wasn't working either. She had to go for something inbetween, and threatening a bunch of bored good-for-nothing kids sounded like it might make her feel a little bit better about herself, actually. So Sera pulled out her catalyst and waved it around in what she thought was a threatening way. "You know what this is?"
The teenagers squinted at the messy bundle of mismatched parts. "Shit, I dunno... like, a small brushcutter engine?"
"Be a lot scarier if you had the blade part though."
She was going to have to fire it up, wasn't she? She held it out in front of her as some of the parts began to spin and pulse with light, which admittedly looked really dope with all the lingering smoke in the room. Just a little parlour trick ought to do, no reason to unleash its full potential or anything, right? "Yeah don't make me cut your brush, kid!" Shit, was that Sera's attempt at a witty badass one-liner? It was, wasn't it? Shameful.
"The fuck is that?" one of them asked. Their tone didn't really imply 'I'm scared' as much as it did 'I'm too high to tell what's going on', but it was a good sign either way.
"It's something that can fuck you up, but I'd still rather not have to demonstrate." She wasn't lying. The damn thing was starting to overheat from being in this mode for too long already. This had to work, otherwise there was no telling what might happen.
"Oh it's fuckin' me up alright," the sassy stoner mused, apparently hypnotised by the dancing lights. "You still need to get the fuck out though, a'ight?"

So. Fucking. Hot. It was probably crossing the power unit's safety threshold. She couldn't keep this up much longer, so there were only two options: Back out like a complete wimp and become even more of a laughing stock for these underage villains she already felt defeated by... or actually discharge the energy somehow. Two options are more than one though and she wasn't always great at making decisions under pressure. WHAT NOW?! She couldn't just kill them or anything, right? She wasn't evil, or at least she didn't think so? But backing down would get her no closer to her goal and she'd feel really stupid! JUST GOTTA PICK ONE! The damn thing in her hand threatened to explode any second now. MAKE UP YOUR FUCKING MIND, SERA!

 

[starboob]

As far as juvenile delinquents go, stoners scrape the bottom of the barrel. Well. Actually... she supposes that stoners no longer even qualify as delinquents with the government’s war on villains—i.e., the rapid and broad sweeping decriminalization and legalization of every drug under the twin suns. (A travesty for local drug lords with lofty aspirations of wider villainy. Every single one has since been granted amnesty, given legitimate business licenses, and incorporated into Big Drugs. Only an organization as evil and vile as the government can get away with stripping and neutering one of the gateway paths to villainy. The villain community is still recovering from the shock of it all.)

Anyway, the stoners on their own are not a bother. Tristan can handle a few punkass edgelords wanting to get high in a shithole chapel. Like, she gets it. She’s been sixteen before. It isn’t ideal that they've decided to show up the night she means to scour the hidden catacombs, but she honestly can’t imagine that it’ll be that hard to get them to leave. They’re stoners. All she’ll need to do is either scare them shitless or remind them of the combination Pizza Nut/Taco Smell across the street. If she were feeling particularly creative about her approach, she could possibly accomplish both. And she might have been able to start brainstorming had that world class clown act not waltzed in and tried to threaten those teenagers with the single worst comeback line she’s ever heard.

The secondhand embarrassment is enough that Tristan considers melting into the floor just so she doesn’t have to continue living with the knowledge that someone earnestly used, “Don't make me cut your brush, kid,” as a threat. A fucking nine year old on the ‘net could do better than this amateur!

Truly, it’s moments like these where the bleach blonde is thankful she has two evil moms. Her evil moms never would have let her reach age six if she were slinging zingers as pathetic as that.

The phrase echoes in her mind like the latest radio garbage and completely leaves the woman stunned under the bench. She stares up at the gum-encrusted wood, blinking a few times before she manages to bring herself back to the present. Gathering all of her focus, she sighs and weighs the pros and cons of intervening. It’s not that she cares about saving the clown from further embarrassment—Tristan isn’t convinced that’s even possible—but she does need to clear out this chapel before she starts searching for the hidden entrance to the catacombs.

In the end, she decides that five stoners (give or take) and a nerd with a brushcutter (?) are hardly opponents. She probably won’t even need to use her gauntlets for this one.

The woman rolls out from beneath the bench she ducked under some odd hours ago and rises to her full height. (She’s not exactly tall and she’s not exactly short either. She's painfully average and she's never quite recovered from the curse of having a form smaller than she feels.) Tristan runs her fingers over her buzzed skull, then rubs her neck before she appraises this situation. Her dark eyes widen.

“Holy fucking shit—turn that thing off!” Look, Tristan isn’t a safety expert and barely reads the instructions on her microwave meals, but it doesn’t take a fucking rocket scientists to know that that brushcutter (?) is going to explode. “The fuck!? Are you trying to microwave everyone on the block!?” She has to admit, it is rather hardcore that this clown is threatening teenagers with such lethal force. Well, it’s either hardcore or fucking pathetic, and for long as this clown is wielding a lethal weapon, she decides on hardcore.

“Woah, can you, like, chill, my dude?” One anonymous stoner chimes, not taking their attention off of the blinking lights on the device. Another stoner, also mesmerized by the lights, adds, “Yeah, dude, you’re totally cramping our style.”

‘Maybe I should let them all die.’ It isn't like the explosion will reach the catacombs… but the explosion probably will have the local pigs sniffing this area for weeks if a thingamajig goes off and blows out half the buildings on the block. That would seriously set back her fucking progress. ‘Ughhhh!!!’

“Shut the fuck up,” she points her finger at the stoners, using her most diplomatic tone of voice. The stoners shrug. She then turns to the clown, curling her dark painted lips. “Do I need to repeat myself, Pennywise? Or do I need to punch you square in the face?”

 

[Buttercup.]

Great, just when she thought this situation couldn't be any more of a mess... a human-shaped bundle of what the fuck rolled into sight from under one of the pews. Sera's first instinct was to point the catalyst at this new arrival, but it took her eyes a second to properly focus on it with all the smoke and embarrassment adrenaline filling the air. When they did she saw a young woman, presumably, looking somewhat unremarkable and thus hardly out of place. Probably another stoner who just went for a nap down there. She seemed to be carrying some large knapsack or whatever it was, probably a bunch of bongs and whatever else these dumbasses liked to carry around.

"Turn it off?!" she asked, her voice a little hysterical at this point. She stared at the new person with glazed eyes as the invisible timer for saying something witty counted down in her mind. (There was also the soon-to-be visible timer of the damn thing in her hand threatening to start charring her skin, but let's not talk about that.) "How 'bout... I turn YOU off?! HUH? You'd look good microwaved. Yeah!"

One of the other kids couldn't help but burst into laughter when another killer one-liner left Sera's lips.
That was it! The whole room was bullying her - her, the most powerful and knowledgeable person around! Same as it ever was. Geniuses - or genii? - were always misunderstood for some reason and she hated bearing this burden. She was DONE bearing it, in fact. It was now or never! Careful who you call ugly in middle school, for they might grow up and wave a DIY magic catalyst in front of your face while making cringeworthy threats!

The group of weirdos said some more stuff but Sera didn't care. She was done taking their shit. Something about punching her in the face, sure, never heard that one before. WELL GUESS WHAT, FUCKFACES? "I'M DONE PLAYING AROUND!!!"

Sweaty hands.
Red hot surface.
Bad combination.

She could swear reality unfolded in slow motion as the catalyst slipped out of her hand seconds before she was going to unleash a pressure blast, no longer caring how much damage it was going to do. It spun around in mid-air a little bit. Then it landed on her foot, the trigger gently pressing itself against the toe of her messy sneaker.

...
note to self: add a trigger guard
...

Anyway, the next thing Sera could properly process was her somehow not being dead and half the chapel just... um... kinda no longer being there? All the kids from earlier seemed to be gone too, but it was hard to tell with all the rubble. Oh well, the place was old and ugly anyway! What were the odds anyone in the neighbourhood would've noticed it blowing up? None! And the unexpected redecoration her totally safe invention had caused did have a bright side to it - there was a suspicious hole in the floor just behind the altar now...

She scrambled to her feet, brushing aside some loose boards and bricks. Battered as fuck, but she still had everything. The catalyst didn't even look completely beyond repair - another testament to her engineering prowess. Yep, those damn stoners were never gonna laugh at her again after this display of raw power!

Down the hole it was. Not even Sera was out of touch enough to assume nobody was coming to investigate, so she needed to move fast. The stairs led to a surprisingly unassuming ritual chamber, maybe the same size as the chapel itself? Judging by the architecture it had to be older though, she could even see some ancient script on the walls... what did it say?
"Should ye make Her slumber cease, never shall the world know peace? More like... should ye make her slumber cease, I will make you CHOKE ON DEEZ... NUTS!" (She was really proud of that one, wasn't she?)

Anyway, the artifact! She had no idea what it was exactly, just that it was probably something related to ancient sealing rituals. Could be an enchanted trowel, maybe? A really important brick? Or maybe something more metaphorical? She was sure it'd be displayed in a very obvious 'look at me I'm an artifact' place though, hence not giving it much thought beforehand.

That was a mistake though.

Because guess what it was? An ENORMOUS fucking chain, like... each segment was the size of her head (and it was a relatively large head, for the record). The whole thing could easily weigh over 500 pounds. Sera gave it a good tug just in case the laws of physics decided to give her a break, but the attempt was every bit as pathetic as one might expect. "FUCK! Okay Sera, what now?"

She was gonna need a bunch of wire rope and a winch. And a hook. Probably some pulleys? Maybe a pickup truck. Yeah, that'd do it!

 

[starboob]

Three out of ten.

Tristan would have rated the woman much, much lower—she would have gone so far as to invent new numbers to find one low enough to accurately capture just how gods awful these zingers are—however, scrambling her brain cells together so that she can survive the current shitshow unfolding right before her eyes happens to take precedent.

It happens in slow motion. Even as Tristan turns on her heel to bolt, she can see the next sequence of events playing out in her mind’s eye. And it's all fire.

She doesn’t bother to help the stoners. She doesn’t bother to even warn them. She saves her own ass and ducks behind a stone pillar, pressing her back firmly against it.

Or, like, that’s what she would have done if she had supersonic fucking speed.

Instead, she only makes it halfway to the desired post before the explosion hurls her the rest of the way. Helpful? Not in the slightest. Tristan’s body bullets through the pews until she hits a wall with a disturbing crack. Everything after that whirls into a blend of fire and black spots, the black spots eventually taking over.

By the time Tristan peels her body from the (former) chapel floor, she’s breathing in more smoke and debris than air, choking on the fumes. She coughs harshly, wincing against the effort of hauling herself to her feet, and staggers towards a clearing. A clearing that happens to be the newly renovated back of the chapel. Yikes. And, as far as she can tell, no one else has survived the renovations. Double yikes.

That's about the extent of Tristan's horror, having seen (and done) worse. Besides, the blown out building has also conveniently revealed what she assumes is the stairwell down to the underground catacombs that will take her to chains used to bind the old god. (Yeah, Tristan did her fucking research, but not because she's a nerd or anything. It's just that she has a life and she has other shit to do tonight. Like that brunette with the stunning tits she met earlier.)

As Tristan descends the steps, she swears she hears someone else down there. Someone familiar. Someone—

"—I will make you CHOKE ON DEEZ... NUTS!"

Tristan releases the loudest internal groan she can manage, resisting the urge to bang her skull against the wall. 'Why didn't she fucking die??'

She backs herself against the wall, keeping herself from the other's view. Even if she doesn't necessarily view the clown as a legitimate threat, she did (technically) blow up half the chapel some odd minutes ago. Who knows what other explosives she's carrying on her person.

Tristan will need to be tactful about this. Slick. Sly.

"Hey, asshole!" She steps around the corner, fists clenched at her sides as she stares down the clown. "You better have a good reason why I shouldn't punch your lights out." To further demonstrate her point, Tristan hits a button on her wristwatch and pieces of her gauntlets fly out from her backpack and reconstruct themselves around her fists. She flexes them, then pounds the knuckles together. A surge of electricity pours into her veins, but Tristan is so used to this power trip, that it feels like a tingle. Like this, she could send the clown straight to the moons with a sneeze.

This also happens to be the moment where Tristan recognizes the chains behind the other woman. She lifts her pierced brow. "Wait." She looks at the chain. The clown. The chain. The clown. "Uh, what the fuck do you think you're doing?"

Serious question: has she accidentally dimension hopped into the Nightmare Realm?

 

[Buttercup.]

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Of course someone had ALREADY come to investigate. Well, Sera wasn't going to give up easily now that her prize was in reach! And now that she wasn't being assaulted by the sensory overload of numerous kids mocking her she could even put up a fight.

"Whoa!" was the best she could do as she jumped into a fighting position and pulled out her dagger.
Wait a minute...
It was dark there, but she was pretty sure... yeah, it was that bitch from before, wasn't it? Why hadn't she died or run away? Why was nothing ever easy?!

"You better have a good reason why I shouldn't punch your lights out."
Ummm... well actually... okay, Sera had nothing, honestly. She was about to take the remark for an honest inquiry and come up with some contrived excuse, a sob story about how it wasn't her fault and she was in fact randomly getting possessed by an evil spirit or some other nonsense, but the stranger didn't waste time. With one flick of a switch that woman was now armed, and not with something that looked like standard issue street kid gear, either.

Well, shit was by no means a rare thought for Sera. (One might've called it her mantra, but mantras are supposed to be helpful in some small way.) Still, the frequency with which it kept springing into her mind today was way above average.
Okay, calm now. Scary magic-infused tech or not, those still looked like a melee weapon. Her cloak's anti-grav field could take it.

"Uh, what the fuck do you think you're doing?" How rude!
"None of your damn business. I'll just have you know that I know exactly what I'm doing. What the hell're you doing here though?" Fair question, really. The unwelcome visitor didn't look like she was affiliated with the Harbinger Project, but well... disguises are a thing, right? Those gauntlets weren't something just any random bum would carry around, and her just happening to come here at the same time as Sera made the CAUTION!!! lights in her weird little brain light up. (That was not a metaphor - she really did visualise a flashing sign at moments like this.)

"What do you know about the chain?" she asked, picking up on the fact her new friend seemed oddly focused on it. It probably didn't matter, but striking a conversation was bound to buy her some time to think of the best course of action here. She couldn't just run away after getting this close!


* * * MEANWHILE! * * *


"You delivered it?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Then it all makes sense." The woman leaned back in her chair, a mischievous smile on her dark red lips. Those RenF guys really didn't waste time, did they? Always so quick to jump at the chance to get another piece of their silly puzzle. Even if they had to blow up a damn church in the process. "Tell our insiders to keep an eye out. I want to know when they're about to do the ritual."
"I'll notify you and the technicians as soon as we know anything," the young blonde nodded.
"Great. Any news on other artifacts?"
"Still waiting for a sign, ma'am. But... permission to speak freely?"
"I told you before, we're not the damn military, Jen. Go ahead."
"Are you sure it's a good idea to help them get even more of these things? I mean, we know the risks, right?"
"Better than anyone, I dare say," she chuckled. "Don't worry your pretty little head about it. The risk is calculated. Always is."
The other woman smiled nervously. Calculated risks are all dandy and sweet... as long as you don't miscalculate. Make no mistake, Jen had faith in her superior's judgment - couldn't really work for this organisation otherwise - but knowing just how close to the suns they were trying to fly still made her stomach hurt sometimes, no matter how noble their goals. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I shouldn't have doubted you."
"It's fine, Jen, we're only human." She... could've gone on, but she didn't. It didn't behoove a leader to show that much vulnerability at a time. "Just keep me updated."

 

[starboob]

Tristan couldn’t care less whether Bozo the Clown defends herself or not. All she knows for certain is that this asshole is trying to steal what rightfully belongs to her and that is as unacceptable and it is unforgivable. (Technically, the chain doesn’t rightfully belong to her—not by divine right or anything like that, but by the principles of finder’s keepers she does believe it is hers. Even if Bozo technically found it first. She ignores that minor detail, because she refuses to accept an alternate reality where the chain escapes her grasp. It's hers.) She's worked way too fucking hard to get this moment; stolen way too much insider information to get to this point; has risked her damn neck to even make it here.

“Pfft.” Tristan snorts when the clown proclaims to know what she’s doing. “Yeah, ‘cause blowing up some teenagers and half a chapel on accident really screams, 'I know what I’m doing, chief!'” She flexes her fists again, stretching out her fingers. Yeah, it would do her some good to blow off some steam before she meets up with that brunette later. And she would totally punch her lights out right now, as promised, but the little dweeb starts getting defensive over the chain and asking Tristan fucking questions when she doesn’t even dignify hers with an actual response.

“Uhh, none of your damn business.” Tristan repeats back, raising her pierced brow, entirely unimpressed with the other woman’s attempt at an interrogation. As if she’s going to reveal any of her secrets to this DIY villain. Or hero. She can’t really tell what this fool’s angle is on account of not caring enough to think about it in earnest. “Step the fuck away from the chain.”

Regardless of whether or not the other woman listens, Tristan takes a step forward, raising her be-gauntled (?) fists to show the woman that she fully intends to make good on her earlier promises if she doesn't step aside. The gauntlets even whirr in warning, electricity jumping over the knuckles. And if the loser is praying this is a sign that her gauntlets are about to overheat and explode like her brushcutter explosive (?), she’ll need to find a new god to pray to.

In fact, rather than wait for the woman to move, Tristan shoves her right over and grabs the chain, hoisting it over her shoulder as if it weighs no more than a sack of rice. “You gonna try and stop me?” She shoots the other a lopsided smirk, knowing that even if she were to come for her, she could send her straight into the stratosphere with her gauntlets equipped.

And Tristan is centimeters away from flicking this woman out of her life—literally, her forefinger and thumb are just ghosting the clown's forehead—when her gauntlets do start to hiss in a horrifying and unexpected manner. Sparks jump up from the knuckles on their own volition, without her express prompting, and the flood of energy in her veins starts to wane. This, she doesn't realize until it's too fucking late. The chain on her shoulder starts to dig into her skin and bone, the bruise forms almost instantly but before it can crush her, she heaves the chain off her shoulder, no longer possessing the strength to hurl them across the room.

"The fuck??" She stares at her be-gauntled (?) fists, then the chain. After a few seconds or so, the gauntlets stop hissing and sparking and the surge returns. Testing them, she punches through the stone altar where the chains had been initially, breaking it into pieces. 'Must be a glitch?' She reaches for the chains once more and is met with the same hissing and sparking as before. She doesn't even touch them before they start wigging out on her. "The fuck did you do, you little punk wannabe?"

 

[Buttercup.]

Using inane conversation as a stalling tactic had worked for Sera in the past... occasionally at best, but it had. That strategy relied on one major assumption: that the other party gave a flying fuck, which the scary lady with anime Gauntlets Of Strength, Energy And Strenergy really didn't seem to. So now Sera was scared, and as anyone who'd been in the chapel just a minute ago could confirm, she wasn't great at decision-making when she was scared.

“Step the fuck away from the chain.”
"How about no?" she hissed in a last ditch attempt to be nonchalant and hardcore.
Oh gods. No. She was gonna get her skull crushed, wasn't she? The energy coursing through those gauntlets seemed fundamentally similar to that in her catalyst, although admittedly in a much more refined (and, unfortunately for her, probably more reliable) form. She didn't want to die for the damn chain, did she? She reached under her cloak with her free hand and fired up the impact suppression feature. She was going to try and bluff threatening to pull out an even scarier weapon, mwahaha! - but got knocked aside before she could put that glorious plan into practice.

"Fucking... OW..." she whimpered, picking herself up from the floor. Fucking hell. Did the cloak malfunction? No, she could tell it did something, but the sheer force was still enough to send her flying. What were those gauntlets? And where could she get her own pair?

Sera was just about ready to start begging for her life, honestly. She still had her dagger and some other shit, sure, but this was all going so spectacularly tits up it didn't even occur to her to do anything clever. It wouldn't work anyway, would it? A cloaking device isn't that much help when the other party already knows exactly where you are and where the only exit is.

She closed her eyes and accepted her untimely demise like the pathetic little wretch she truly was. All her research, everything she'd devoted to preventing catastrophe... it was about to end. Farewell, cruel world, and enjoy the hellscape ushered in by something Sera was trying to stop but this random asshole just had to kill her for no fucking reason. The world had never been fair, why should today be an exception? This was a fitting end for someone like her. She could only hope her cats would find her corpse so they could feast on it so her remains wouldn't go to waste.

Her little introspective moment was eventually interrupted by a "The fuck??". A-HA! Looked like that lady's technofists weren't so hot, huh?! Hahaha! Fuck yeah, now she had the upper hand! No more moping, no more accepting death, she was gonna OWN that little shit now!

...or not.

"The fuck did you do, you little punk wannabe?"
"What?! Me?" Sera was utterly confused, but surprisingly this time her brain wasn't giving her a 'cognition.exe has stopped responding' error message. "I didn't do shit! Looks like there's some weird... interaction going on? Lemme check," she shuffled over to the chain, trying to stay as far away from the other woman as circumstances allowed.

She touched it. Nothing. Still heavy as fuck.
She touched it with her cloak, then punched herself in the shoulder to test. Still dampened the blow just fine. So it wasn't a problem with magic tech in general.
There was one hypothesis that could explain this, but it'd mean... shit, who WAS that smug bitch?
"Look, I don't know how much you know about the chain and its history, and I don't know what that weapon you've got there is... but my guess is they um..." Sera paused to think of a way to word this without giving away information specific enough to be of some use to the other person. "They don't like each other's energy, basically. Kinda like us."

Somehow she got the feeling this wasn't going to make her rival go 'ah ok guess I'm giving up then', which landed them in quite a pickle. If Sera was right in her assumptions - and she liked to think she almost always was - those gauntlets were imbued with divine energy. Artifacts of different deities were known to interact in weird ways, usually rendering them useless. Her own equipment didn't rely on anything of the sort, but she didn't have jack shit to move a massive object with. Awkward.

"...fuck happened here? Search the debris!"
Oh great. That voice came from upstairs, didn't it? Cops? RenF goons? Didn't really matter, she couldn't allow either to take the chain.

"Okay look, I don't care what your business is. Forget I asked. But we can't let those assholes get this thing. So um... I got an idea: flesh is a good buffer. If I hug the chain and you lift me without touching it, it should be fine. I KNOW IT'S WEIRD, YES. But we really gotta get this thing somewhere else. Then we can yell at each other some more!" No time to wait for a response. She sheathed her knife, lay on the chain and hugged it with her arms and legs, ready to become a ridiculous human backpack. This plan was so dumb it might even work.

 

[starboob]

Once upon a time, Tristan broke into some poor bloke’s apartment and beat the fucking shit out him. She had no personal beef with the guy. It was just a job. If asked, she couldn’t even tell you why she had been paid to pummel that jackass—aside from the fact that he had a rather punchable face, if memory serves. The only other definitive detail she remembers of that night is that it was the very night where she met and fell in love with the beauties currently wrapped around her fists.

She remembers it like it was last night. The jackass was tied up and whimpering from his chair, mourning the loss of his toenails, when she first laid eyes on the gauntlets. The gauntlets seemed to spark in response to her attention, calling for her from the corner of the room like they wanted her to take them. Outrageous as this all sounds, Tristan swears she heard them address her by name. Step by step, she creeped through the apartment until she inches away from brass beauties. They radiated a warmth she had always yearned for and never had; it was like a promise. A promise she knew they wouldn’t break. She reached out for them and the next thing she knew, the gauntlets were wrapped around her fists. They’ve been hers ever since and she's never questioned that experience for a second.

So, no. She doesn’t exactly know where the fuck these gauntlets came from or what their origin is. All she knows is that she fucking loves them and would absolutely marry them if it weren’t so frowned upon. These things mean more to her than life itself and she’ll kill any fucker who tries to steal them from her (and she has).

It’s why she easily steps away from the chain when the nerd-clown goes to inspect them, not wanting to damage her precious babies anymore than she might have already. (Is she already drafting a mental apology to her fucking gauntlets? Uhhh, it’s none of your damn business!!) That she’s even entertaining the idea of abandoning the chain, speaks volumes to her devotion to them.

As the other reports back her findings, Tristan’s features remain unchanging and impenetrable. “So their vibes are off?” she summarizes, mostly to internalize the information properly rather than get an actual confirmation. “Great, just fucking great!!”

Yeah, Tristan isn’t going to give up, but she’s not sure what exactly she’s planning to do. Her gaze pans over the catacombs, searching for anything that might be able to help her, but it's all just bones and haunted shit as far as she can tell. If she had a time-stopper or maybe the ability to think at lightspeed, she might have figured a solution to her problem. However, when dust rains over their heads, followed by the sound of stomping boots and shouts, she knows she's out of time and luck.

Unless...?

Bewilderedly, she stares at the clown like she now has nacho cheese pouring out of her ears. “Why don’t I fucking skin you? Would that be enough of a flesh barrier—” Tristan isn’t able to finish that thought before those aforementioned boots thunder down the stairwell. “Fuck. Fuck! You gotta be shitting me.”

She glares at the woman, wishing her brain were a fucking computer so that she could find any solution that doesn’t involve carrying her bridal style through the catacombs. But her brain isn’t a computer and Tristan can’t think of a better plan. Abandoning the chain is an option, but this might be her only opportunity to get close to it. ‘Fine. I can always squish her brains later once I figure out this glitch.’

“You’ll be lucky if all I do is yell at you after this. Don’t fucking squirm and shut the fuck up.” Tristan honestly cannot believe that she’s going along with the harebrained plan of someone who almost detonated her earlier, but without a better plan, she has no choice. Once the clown has wrapped herself around the chain like a human tortilla, Tristan knocks her gauntlets together, booting them back up, and scoops the woman from the ground like she’s an oversized burrito. (Not that a burrito can be oversized, mind you.) She hopes the “hold on fucking tight” is implied, because as shadows lurch into the underground chamber, Tristan reactively bolts away with this awkward luggage in tow.

She follows a tunnel at the far end of the chamber, heading deeper into the catacombs. She makes a left, a right, another left, then two rights, twisting through the underground labyrinth. From the schematics she stole, copied, and studied in preparation for this heist, she knows the path she's on intersects with the modern day sewage system—not her ideal exit, but it’s not like she has a large degree of choice in this matter now is it? (Fuck her life.)

For now, Tristan doesn't think they're being followed—at least not closely, but she's also not counting on lady luck to save her ass twice in one tonight. Escape is on her and her alone. As they come up against an apparent dead end, she halts and sets the woman down. She motions for the other to cover her head, then winds her fist back, aiming her next hit at the rock wall. With an impressive crack, the wall splinters against the impact of Tristan’s fist. She hits it a second time, then third, and again until a decent enough hole has formed. Of course with that comes the sour perfume of the sewer. Tristan only barely grimaces. “I will drop you in your own shit if you complain.”

 

[Buttercup.]

And so it began. Sera only hoped her cloak wouldn't run out of charge before this rather comedic escape scene was over, otherwise she'd go down in history as the weirdo who got crushed between a massive artifact and a slightly less massive scary lady. (She could think of worse ways to go, honestly.)

She had done her homework so she was prepared to give directions, but much to her surprise miss Beefhands seemed to know what she was doing. This was worrying, wasn't it? It really drove home the fact that no, this definitely wasn't some random happy-go-lucky graverobber, this was someone who had come here for a reason and had thought about it beforehand. Why? Well, they were hopefully going to have time to discuss that soon enough.

Sera watched where they were headed. Shit, of course her very temporary ally was working with outdated information. "If you're thinking about the sewer exit, I think that's been walled off to prevent— ...nevermind." Not walled off any longer it wasn't! She had so many questions about this strange person, but she couldn't deny one thing - she knew how to get things done. Sera could respect that.

Okay, where to now? It seemed reasonable to assume RenF wouldn't know much about the layout - after all, with their strength in numbers and thinking they were the only ones coming they had no reason to expect this to be more complicated than walking in, grabbing the chain and leaving the way they came. But even if they were unlikely to chase them down, the fact remained Sera and her... carrier were now in the sewer system with no clear idea where to go. She closed her eyes and visualised the blueprints she'd pieced together. Going north would take them to a flood control canal, which they could leave close to a warehouse that was probably out of commission. Yeah, that was the ticket! They could hunker down there for a bit, either figure out some sort of arrangement or kill each other, it'd be great.

But where the fuck was north in this (quite literal) shithole?

The conductor of this weird train didn't seem to worry too much, instead rushing along what felt like a route carefully planned in advance, although it could just as easily have been the chaotic wandering of a man whose manly pride doesn't allow him to ask the locals for directions. Sera wanted to ask which of the two it was, but now she began to realise the power cell in her cloak was starting to run low. The chain felt a lot heavier now. She couldn't breathe properly. Couldn't speak. FUCK.

Slamming her skinny fist against the gauntlets holding her did nothing to get the other's attention, predictably. The best she could do was a pathetic raspy whine that was easily drowned out by the ambience of half the city's faeces making their way to a better place. Poetic. She was going to die in a fucking sewer, surrounded by fellow pieces of shit. It figured, really.

***​

"The fuck you mean it's not here?"
"Briefing said it should be right 'round here," the recruit pointed at the pile of shattered stone. "Someone must've took it!"
"No shit. Look," the man said while handing his young colleague his backup sword, "you and Beth stay here and make sure no-one else joins the party. The rest of y'all, let's check out those tunnels over there!"

It wasn't particularly difficult to figure out where someone could've gone in an ancient catacomb - just follow the suspiciously displaced dust and lack of cobwebs! Easy.

"Shit. What sort of equipment do those assholes have? This was a thick-ass wall." Probably built there for a reason, he thought. A damn fucking good reason, if the ominous rumbling sound was any indication. But he wasn't one to disobey orders. "Alright everyone, let's keep going! This better take us somewhere."

***​

Sera was all but out of oxygen. Her face swollen and purple, but it wasn't like warrior princess Fistina 1) could see it under the cloak in this darkness, 2) had a reason to care.

Blurry vision.
So weak.

This really was the end. She'd had a good run, she really had, but all things must end eventually. And her time was n—

A sudden loud crackle somewhere behind them. The sound of rushing water. A veritable tsunami of shit knocking her, the chain and the other woman on their asses (okay, technically the chain didn't have an ass) and carrying them away. Was this divine intervention? Had the gods of human refuse decided to throw her a bone made of turds and give her one more shot at surviving this clusterfuck?

The grotesque carnival ride composed of cold water, brown jelly beans, two women and a large chain rushed through the sewer system, taking the path of least resistance towards the water treatment plant.

 

[starboob]

Make no mistake, Tristan absolutely and 100 percent felt her cargo tapping on her gauntlets. But this isn't a fucking airline and she's not a fucking flight attendant, so she isn't going to stop and ask if the little flesh barrier is comfortable or needs to stop to piss. That and Tristan isn't looking to stay in this verifiable shithole longer than she needs to. Stopping will slow her down. Talking will slow her down. Ignoring the woman's little taps speeds along this process. Given that she stops tapping after her initial attempts and doesn't fire off another "genius" remark, Tristan thinks she's rather in the clear. 'Must not have been important. Good.'

As she trudges through the sewer, she keeps her lips pursed tight and her breath shallow. It might not be the wisest strategy, but the alternative where she inhales someone else's shit particulates is so low on her list of—

Woosh.

Before the woman can even process what those noises are, her legs are swept out from under her, she drops the flesh shield and the chain both, and is tugged down a raging river of diarrhea. Waves of nausea roll through Tristan as she's tossed around this literal shit show. Now she clamps both her mouth and eyes shut, not tempting the fates to give her a bout of e.coli or pink eye—though it's possible that she's already fucked where that is concerned. She's just going to not think about it for the time being.

And not thinking is relatively easy when she has no way of breaking out of the torrent. Carelessly, she's tumbling through the sewer system and, on occasion, she feels the other woman brushing against her. Whenever this happens she greets her with a kick or shove. Karma usually follows in the form of the chain maneuvering in such a way where Tristan is dunked under the water for a few seconds. 'Fuck my life.' If the gods weren't all chained or chopped up, she'd pray to one to smite her right now because this has to be the worst day of her life.

This continues for eternity. (Three minutes.)

Eventually they're flushed into some sort wide basin where the water is calm. As far as Tristan can tell, they're now in a facility of sorts, but she doesn't bother with the specifics.

"Asswagon," she spins around in the slurry, trying to locate her shit accomplice. "Grab the chain." Once her instructions are followed, she grabs the bundle of nerd and heaves her over the side of the basin before hoisting herself up onto the ledge and promptly collapsing. She tries to ignore what the sludge on her body really is while simultaneously casually praying that she doesn't get any weird fucking diseases. 'This damn chain better be worth it.'

She lifts up her head, taking a better look of their surroundings. Dim blue-green lights line the walls and dot along the ceiling, offering some semblance of lighting. Though they mostly serve to outline the massive silhouettes of various machinery and tanks. It seems that they're alone and it also doesn't sound like anyone followed them, but that isn't all too surprising considering they were swept away by a shitstorm. (She begrudgingly supposes that is a pro, if she were to try out that whole "look on the bright outside" outlook.) Though not one to get too comfortable, she springs to her feet a few moments later and nudges her cargo with her boot. "C'mon. We need to jet. Get the chain."

 

[Buttercup.]

It really did figure that if any gods at all were on Sera's side they would be the ones governing sewage physics. An alliance some might scoff or laugh at – 'hah, look at that loser, nobody wants to have anything to do with her except that weirdo Pooseidon' – but guess who was laughing now! (Well, might be laughing if she wasn't busy coughing up these unholy liquids.) Yes, Sera miraculously managed to get some air in her lungs amidst the brown flood, and well, getting knocked around by cold mostly-water works wonders in terms of waking one up.

Once she'd been hoisted onto dry land again, her body remembered. The reality of what they'd just been through finally had time to sink in. She'd never feel clean again.

She squinted around the hall. Looked like a water treatment facility, most likely. If memory served there was one next to the projects on the south side of town... not the best place to end up, but after what had just happened it really didn't seem that bad. Yes, Sera, look on the bright side. This has been one of those experiences that put things in perspective. You think your basement study is a bit too dark and smells funny? Well guess what, there are sewers out there. The kebab you ordered didn't taste great? Hey, remember that time you ate shit? She was a woman reborn, with a fresh outlook on life.

Okay, focus. Sera swapped the power cell in her cloak first of all, knowing full well she might forget to do so later and that would just be awkward. They still needed to get the chain to safety, and well, this was as good a staging area as any. The reality of them apparently needing each other hadn't changed, and neither had the fact she had no idea who the priestess of magical haymakers was and what she wanted with the damn thing. Sera figured talking about all that was inevitable now if they were to determine a course of action.

"Well that was... something, huh?" she tried to break the ice. "Look," she continued after an awkward silence, "we need to figure out what's next. I mean you're obviously not just some dumb muscle" – emphasis on 'just'; she still thought of her companion as that first and foremost – "so I'm just, you know, wondering what the hell you think you're doing. Is someone paying you to bring them this thing?" She relied on the fact she'd proven to be valuable, even if it was only as a glorified insulator, getting the woman to share a little. That was how it worked, right? Establish either friendship or a toxic codependency, then figure out what's what after the fact. "Anyway, I'm Ser—" Wait wait wait, she shouldn't just say her current quasi-real name, should she? "—I'm Sera-Mick toilet bowl deprived, ahaha, you know what I mean? But yeah, name's uh, Kim." Now that's what you call a SAVE.

* * *​

"They've been down there too long, Beth."
"No kidding. You think that tremor could've..."
The lad shrugged with a blank expression. "Better not get ahead of ourselves I guess. Could be they found a secret passage, you know how these tombs are."
"I guess. But the cops are bound to show up eventually. What do we tell them?"

"Yeah better think up something real quick, pal," an officer hollered casually from the doorway. He stepped over some of the rubble with a repeater crossbow at the ready. "Gonna need you to drop the weapon, sir. No need to make this harder than it needs to be, eh?"

"I didn't do this!" was the best the young man could come up with. Surely that would work on a cop. No-one who's actually guilty would think of saying that!
"Sure, buddy... Just drop it."
"Come on, man, just do it? We didn't do shit, no reason to get—"
"SHUT UP!"
"Sir, I'm gonna count to three. One."

Whatever it was that this situation awoke in the Rennaissance Foundation recruit, be it some weird fantasy about being the knight in shining armour trying to impress a random girl or just plain old bursting under pressure, he ignored both the other voices. He just clutched the sword, white knuckles, bloodshot eyes focused on the cop.

"Two."

"Fuck's sake, what are you thinking? Please, officer, this isn't how he usually is..." Beth had pulled that out of her ass, honestly. She barely knew the guy, but he didn't seem like enough of an asshole for her to just let him die over nothing. The man, whose name - quite embarrassingly right now - she didn't remember, still wouldn't budge. She had to step in.
"Look, I'm gonna walk closer, yeah? You don't wanna kill me, do you?"
"WE CAN'T LET HIM TAKE US!"
'Well he probably wouldn't even want to if you hadn't made such a fucking scene, Jeremy' was Beth's first reaction but she knew better than to voice it. That suicide prevention training she'd taken years ago was the real MVP here.
"Sir, let me remind you that resisting arrest is a worse offence than vandalising abandoned property. Come quietly now and I might forget it happened."
"YEAH RIGHT!"

By now Beth was right next to her ballistic comrade. She gently grabbed the sword by the blunt part of the blade.

 

[starboob]

It isn’t hard for Tristan to guess that this fucking clown, who blew up half a fucking church and murdered (mostly) innocent teenagers, thinks that she, Tristan Pierce, is some henchman. Technically, okay, that isn’t untrue. She does a lot of shit for hire and maybe has never pursued any sort of operation of her own (much to her mothers’ disappointment), but that doesn’t mean her skull is just storage space for creatine and protein powder.

This sort of insult would ordinarily warrant a swift and firm ass kicking, but these are not ordinary circumstances (if only) and playing the role of meathead might work to her advantage. Yeah, no way in fucking hell is she going to reveal what she knows. “Not that it’s any of your fucking business, but your mom hired me.” She also isn't going to put effort into a real lie. Too many times she's burned herself by losing track of all her lies and so she finds it's better to just outright lie. (Although, she supposes there is the unlikely possibility that this woman also has evil mothers who would absolutely hire the likes of Tristan... But Tristan likes to believe she's the only lesbian out there with her very specific and particular brand of mommy issues.)

“Now, Kim.” No, Tristan doesn't buy that name for a second. No one is actually named Kim unless they’re about to give you some shitty fetch quest under a street lamp. “You can call me Mik.” Somehow, Tristan manages to pronounce ‘Mik’ in such a way that one just knows that it’s spelled without a ‘c.’ "Enough of these fucking pleasantries and trying to figure out each other's motives. Personally, I don't give a shit about why you want this hunk of scrap metal." Not that Tristan believes it's scrap metal, but it's part of her dumb henchmen ruse. "But I've got bills to pay and a honey to go home to—not that you can relate, judging by your... everything. Now either help me out or become a corpse. I'm being very fucking generous here giving you two," she holds up two fingers to demonstrate, "whole choices."

Her grin is sharp, but dulls in a manner of seconds when those dim green-blue lights flash red. An alarm blares shortly after, screaming, "Intruder alert. Intruder alert," in a robotic feminine tone. Yeah, that's not good. Tristan snaps back to the clown. "New plan, you're getting corpsed. Pray to your gods or whatever." Not that Tristan waits. She's already winding her fist back, ready to knock her head clean off her shoulders.

 

[Buttercup.]

Okay, Sera's assumptions were unfounded. Socially challenged or not, even she could tell "You can call me Mik." was code for "fuck you", and well, considering how believably she'd delivered her own lie, she couldn't even really blame the other woman for this. Anyway yeah, it was clear the only ice Mik was interested in breaking was Kim's face. That was no good. She needed a plan and she needed it 30 minutes ago. She had to get diplomatic.

"Yeah, co-operation is kinda the idea here. Let's just—"
"BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!"
"Uh... what's that?" Splendid question, Sera, really showing your intelligence there.
"INTRUDER ALERT." the alarm continued, as if to answer Sera's inane query.
"Oh. Fuck."

"New plan, you're getting corpsed. Pray to your gods or whatever."
Right. Nothing motivates one to come up with a good plan like knowing they're gonna get their skull exploded in a couple seconds. You got this, Sera.
Invisibility? Once again, not worth much when your position is already known.
The cloak? Can't really block a frontal headshot.
A surprise attack? Could work!
In theory.
But she was pissing her pants. Sweating. Where was her confidence, god damn it? Did those gauntlets have a passive aura dealing morale damage or something?

rattle... RATTLE

Huh? Probably just some machinery. Looking in that direction would be robbing her of precious time. Instead she gazed into Mik's eyes, hoping to channel her inner martial artist (yes, the 5 lessons she'd taken gave her the idea she was something of a black belt herself) and read the other's movements in order to dodge at just the right time, pull out her dagger and land a killing blow like a true badass. She HAD THIS.

khhhrrrrrrt!

She saw something move in her peripheral vision. Coming from behind her. Like a huge snake or something, but the noises sounded like picking up gravel from concrete with a steel shovel. What the fuck?

Without warning the metal serpent lunged forward as if it weighed nothing at all, wrapped itself around Mik's legs and jerked itself violently. The woman got knocked on her ass before she had a chance to say 'what the fuck' at the same time Sera did. Yep, it was the goddamn chain! And this was the perfect opportunity to pounce and finish her opponent off, but Sera was far too confused to even think of that. Decision-making under pressure, her lifelong nemesis.

As the gauntlet wielder tumbled to the ground, partially landing on the chain, the latter randomly flinched. (Can inanimate objects flinch?) Okay, someone more observant than anyone in the room currently could be would say it wasn't random – it happened precisely when the gauntlets touched it. The massive metal object writhed away like a kicked puppy. Continuing that analogy, it slithered towards Sera with its front end raised, as if to seek consolation.

Well, you only live once.
She touched it.

Flashing lights. Infinite power. Bustling cities with awe-inspiring monuments.
More lights. Betrayal. A sentence worse than death.
One more flash. Sera holding a chain.
It felt... so mundane in her hand all of a sudden. But she remembered its weight earlier – she couldn't effortlessly hold it like this if she chugged steroids for 5 years.

Well um, this was cool and all, but... what the fuck did this mean? The urge to interpret this in the very human-centric framework of emotions was hard to suppress, and it told her the artifact liked her. Once again, what the fuck did that mean though? Other than another excuse for Sera's brain to instantly switch into grandiloquent mode?

"Alright, jackass! Get your ass up," she beckoned Mik. "Two can play this game. You want me to whip your cream with this bad boy?!" Oh gods, not the atrocious one-liners again.
Was she confident she could actually wield or control the chain? Fuck no. But at least it seemed to be on her side for reasons she'd have more time to think about later.

Actually come to think of it, what did she even need that pathetic slab of misplaced testosterone for anymore? "Alright, who's a good boy? Let's get the fuck outta here," she said to the chain in a silly voice and took a step towards what looked like the exit.

But this wasn't such a good doggy. This doggy pulled. "Come on man, there's nothing here. Bad boy," she reprimanded the several hundred pound metal object, which still didn't seem to care. Great.

 

[starboob]

Magic isn’t new to Tristan. She knows about magic. She grew up around magic. Her mothers are fucking warlocks (or something nerdy like that), but never in her fucking life has she ever heard of a fucking sentient (?) chain (?). (She is currently doubting whether or not that fucking chain is even a fucking chain or if it’s some other fucking thing.)

What.
THE.
Fuck.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

For the nth time in the last hour, Tristan is knocked off her feet and onto her ass. Pain immediately rockets up her spine, casting black sand across her vision. She groans and lurches forward, taking shallow breaths to ease ache. ‘Oh, fuck…ing Fuck.’

But there is no pain worse than hearing one of those gods awful one-liners with her own ears. She might as well have died and ended up in Fuck, because hearing that one-liner is pure and utter torture. Where the fuck does this jackass even pull these from? The niche porn she watches? Because that last one sounded like something a porn villain would say.

Yet wisdom tells her to heed her warning. The chain very clearly has chosen the clown (“Kim”), of all fucking people. (Again, what the fuck?) And if it leaves with her… No. Tristan cannot let that happen. If she has to fight a chain to kill the clown to get the chain to side with her, then so be it. Nothing is going to come between her and her goals.

She needs that chain.

But the chain doesn’t need her and makes that clear the second she winds her fist backwards. In an instant, the chain launches through the air and rams into Tristan’s stomach. It drives her back into one of those water treatment tanks with enough force that it crashes into the wall and demolishes it, conveniently creating an exit. Just at the mere cost of Tristan’s physical well being. A rather small price to pay in the grand scheme of things.

Completely limp, she slides from the Tristan-shaped dent in the tank and falls directly into the chemical rush now spilling from it. She's swept across the gravel parking lot, taken by the current of whatever chemical had been in that treatment tank. At least… At least she is no longer covered in shit. Being covered in treatment chemicals and accidentally swallowing a few lungfuls is probably okay. It’s preferable to being covered in shit, that’s for damn sure. ‘Note to self: Check-in with the DocBot tomorrow.’

When Tristan finally finds the strength to peel herself from the ground, the chain is prancing happily around Kim's legs, like it's just done a good thing. (It hasn't.) She can’t tell whether or not this means the chain is back on Kim’s side or not. It honestly gives off the aura that it’s a major asshole, though it undeniably has an affinity for the other woman. And it very clearly hates Tristan. She doesn’t even take a full step in their direction before the chain is whipping around like it’s going to attack her again. “Agh—no! Fuck off!” She holds up her hands, backing away. The chain simmers down and continues prancing around Kim.

Fuck this.

If only. Tristan sighs. Maybe she shouldn’t’ve tried to beat the shit out of this woman earlier, because it’s going to make these negotiations that much harder. “So, uh, maybe we got started on the wrong foot, yeah?” Tristan offers, shrugging in a manner that bears a striking resemblance to the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ emote. “Let’s let bygones be bygones? You, uh, wanted to work together, right?” Technically, Kim's already called off their weak truce, but nevermind that tiny inconsequential detail. Tristan is willing to forget that for the purposes of this negotiation. "We prob—"

Unfortunately, this little negotiation will have to pause. The alarms within the facility never stopped going off, they just got drowned out when Tristan and the chain tore a hole in the wall. And, by this point, security has arrived in the form of K9-units—those mechanical bastards that usually have the authorization to kill programmed into them—and their red eyes may or may not have just locked onto Kim and Tristan. The attack dogs charge. The chain doesn’t seem alarmed. (Which what??? Does it only have a vendetta when Tristan tries to kill Kim? Questions for later, she supposes.) Hurriedly, she blurts out, “I won’t let those K9-units tear you to shreds if we… team up.”

 

[Buttercup.]

Whatever the explanation for why the chain seemed intent on protecting Sera might've been, she had more pressing things to think about right now. Such as: what the fuck happens now? She didn't really do anything while the little woman vs half a ton of metal gladiator fight unfolded, instead trying to figure out her next course of action. The thought of cloaking herself while the other person (who seemed to be regretting pissing her off right now) was distracted did occur to her, but she had no idea how the chain would respond and well, she still kinda wanted it. Instead, she took stock of everything noteworthy in the room. That alarm wasn't shutting up and security was bound to arrive eventually, even if it probably wouldn't be much (honestly, who'd want to break into a sewage treatment plant?).

Okay... the huge pipe they came through a minute ago? The wave they'd ridden here had mostly calmed down by now so that was a distinct possibility, although she didn't fancy going back that way.
An airlock door... completely sealed, of course. The alarm must've had triggered a lockdown.
A couple windows letting the late afternoon sun in. Waaay too high up though.
A hole in the wall... Wait. That wasn't there just a second ago, was it? It took her a while to take off her thinking hat and process reality again, but once she realised what had just happened, her only thought was: Fucking awesome.

Okay then, out of the hole, into what looked like an employee-only car park. Mik was just picking herself up from the cracked pavement – fucking hell, that was one tough bitch. Kim– ahem, Sera could respect that at least. She still had no idea what to think about the newly sentient artifact though. Like... it seemed to be on her side, or at the very least distinctly not on Beeftina's side, but it didn't seem to follow any orders she tried to give it. It just kinda moved around, making horrendous noises as the metal scraped against the asphalt, its agenda a black box.

“Let’s let bygones be bygones? You, uh, wanted to work together, right?”
Well, at this point Sera didn't see how she'd benefit from that, but seeing Punchy McBadass squirm like that was kinda cathartic. She was gonna savour this. "Sure hun, let's see if your steroid brain can conjure up a reason for me not to let Steely Dan here pound you into the ground," she scoffed.

Fuck. Once again her moment of grandeur just had to be cut short, huh?
K9 units?! Really? In a fucking sewage plant? "Well fuck me sideways. Ok, uh... Dan, go! Tear 'em apart!"
If the chain had a face, she felt like its expression would read:

Spoiler: The chain's non-existent expression.

What the fuck did you just fucking say to me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Magic Artifacts Academy, and I've been involved in numerous binding rituals, and I have over 300 confirmed bindings. I am trained in arcane warfare and I'm the top whipper in the entire world of chains. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me irl? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am harnessing millennia-old magical energy and I can actually see you right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I am here now and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare rings. Not only am I extensively trained in chain-to-hand combat, but I have access to some weird magic and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little "clever" comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo.

In summary, it suddenly didn't seem to care what happened to her. Alright, this alliance was still a work in progress. Nothing motivates one to negotiate like their allies stabbing them in the fucking back, right?

“I won’t let those K9-units tear you to shreds if we… team up.”
"Sounds good to me!" Sera almost yodeled in her rediscovered anxiety.

She made sure to enable the impact suppression feature of her cloak to dampen any K9s pouncing but she had her doubts about how much it's stop teeth, especially if they went for her exposed neck. "Dan, you better start doing something right the fuck now!" she yelled at the chain, which seemed more... confused than anything right now? Did it only respond to biological threats or something?

"Yeah ok, tell you what. You punch their lights out and I'm sure we can work something out, yeah? I mean like, maybe we even want the same things, fundamentally..." she hollered over at the other women while she dodged one of the steampunk nightmares and ducked behind a car. "I take it you didn't expect this either so uh... we're like, in the same boat, basically?" Considering the degree of control she realistically had over Dan (i.e. seemingly none) she couldn't make any promises regarding Mik's physical health, but well... maybe the chain would pick up on the change of mutual energy and act accordingly? Seemed like something a sentient thing might do? Only one way to find out. "Alright, anyway, these things are a bit scary and this is more up your alley, so um..."

Now it was Sera who made the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ expression. Then she cloaked herself in order to wait this out and provide support if a suitable opportunity presented itself.

 

[starboob]

The mechanical beasts crush like aluminum cans between Tristan’s palms, flattening them until they’re oblong disks. She tosses another into the pile, keeping track of where she last saw Kim and hoping against hope that the fast-talking idiot hasn’t moved or otherwise gotten herself killed. ‘Wait. Why do I even fucking care whether or not she’s alive?’

She chances a glance behind her, where she believes the other woman is, eyes narrowing. It would be so easy to step over to the side and let the K9s tear her apart while she worries about her own ass. That’s all it would take to change fate. One step. One step and those criminally awful one-liners are but a thing of the past and, with enough time and distance, she can even convince herself they were merely part of some fever dream. She catches a jumping K9’s head in her fist as she deliberates and crushes it. She flings the body over to the pile as another stampedes towards her. This is it. This is her chance.

And she doesn't take it.

For the nth time in her life, Tristan fails to take the shot. Instead, she meets the K9 before it can get within even a meter of Kim. She wrestles it to the ground then twists the K9 into two pieces. She tries to convince herself that it's just natural to protect her even if she isn't a hero. Yet there is something deep rooted in this need to protect Kim, something that stretches through the histories written in her veins.

As the last of the robotic terrorists come for them, as Tristan throws herself in the middle of a mechanical dogpile, images flash through her mind.

Bright desert sands.
Twin suns that never stop beating down on the earth.
Golden armor.
An inexplicably cool sword…

Tristan bursts through the gnashing beasts and crushes, snaps, and breaks them with renewed vigor. (Her gauntlets even seem to take on a new glow, though Tristan doesn't quite notice.) With the last of the K9s destroyed and added to her neat pile, she heaves in gulps of air, imprints of what she just saw still burned on the backs of her eyelids.

She blinks once, twice. Her eyes finally land on the chain (otherwise known as Steely Dan), curled up into an unsuspecting pile, then over to the woman’s last known hiding spot, then her gauntlets. ‘What the fuck is going on here?’

Well, whether those visions were hallucinations from the questionable lunch she ate earlier, the fumes from everything she’s inhaled in the last twenty minutes, or her sanity finally collapsing in on itself, she does not know. And with the alarms still blaring in the background, she supposes that’s a mystery for another time. (Or, preferably, never.)

“Alright.” Tristan knocks her gauntlets together, hiding the shock from her tone. (What was that?) They dissemble and reconstruct as plates on her back. “You can quit hiding like a little bitch now. We need to jet.”

Luckily, her mothers only ever taught her the most important life skills. So while Tristan may not know how to make a grilled cheese without looking on the ‘net, she sure as shit knows how to jack a car. (Her mothers had been so proud when she was convicted of grand theft auto just before her twelfth birthday. Prior to that, they worried she was a late bloomer in villainy or, worse, that she was going to grow up to become a ninny.) All it takes is smashing through the driver’s side window and plugging herself into the vehicle’s circuitry to hack it. Her eyes glaze over, glitching as they flash with strings of code. A few seconds later the car's headlights flash on and the engine roars to life.

“Get in, loser.” Once the loser and her stupid fucking chain are inside the vehicles, she peels out of the parking lot and burns rubber through the cuts known as Snake’s Pass, crosses over into suburbia, and back into the bustling metropolis that makes up the majority of Sungrove.

Though Tristan does have a base of operations hidden in the city, she's doesn't trust Kim or that bastard chain enough to take them directly there and risk compromising her research. So instead, she takes them towards the ritzier edge of Sungrove to her private residence. (She's been itching for an excuse to move anyway.) After a few more minutes they pull up to a building so tall that the top can't be seen from the ground.

After instructing her building's valet to discreetly destroy the vehicle they arrive in, they ride up an elevator to her penthouse. (The perks of being a nepotism baby in the business of being muscle for hire.) In a word, her residence is as immaculate as it is large.

“This is a shoes off house. You track mud on my carpets and I’ll—” She quickly reconsiders her word choice when Steely Dan gives the impression it’s growling at her. “...Be super fucking pissed. They're imported.”

"Anyway, you smell like shit. There's a shower back that way." When she points a convenient line lights up on the floor, guiding Kim to the bathroom. "We can talk after you clean up. Don't try anything funny."

 

[Buttercup.]

Sera just crouched and waited, really. Trying to run away would've made noise which could give away her position, and knowing how the programming of most security automatons worked the odds of them finding her while she was cloaked and motionless were close to zero. Instead she covered her ears to drown out the deafening noise and watched as the mysterious woman dealt with the problem.

Honestly, this was impressive as hell. Sera could use comeone like this. 'Use' in the least generous sense of the word, of course. She just needed to figure out the best way to trick princess McBadass into thinking they were in the same boat... which for all she knew they might even have been. Because 'all she knew' still amounted to nothing. At this point the lack of answers was becoming disconcerting. Someone with this sort of skill and equipment was almost guaranteed to be affiliated with some group Sera needed to be wary of... the odds of Mik being just some righteous vigilante like herself seemed slim, and if this were the case she wasn't really sure whether it'd make things better or worse.

Was that the last of the mechanical murderpooches? Fucking finally.
“You can quit hiding like a little bitch now. We need to jet.”
Good plan. Whatever automated system dispatched the K9s probably monitored their status and had already called for reinforcements and well, there was fuck all left to do here anyway!

Sera uncloaked herself and got in the car. Once again, the ease with which Mik jacked it begged way too many questions. (She really needed to start writing them down.) At least the chain did what was expected of it for once and slithered into the back seat, its tip kept raised as if watching Fistina Buzzcut for the slightest hint of aggression. None came. For now.

Okay, stop. What was Steely Dan's deal, really? Did it want to keep Sera safe? Apparently not from everything. Did it want Tristan to die? Clearly not unless she was threatening to hurt Sera. Whatever its agenda may've been, it sure as hell wasn't talking, seemingly content to just hang around and keep a non-existent eye on things for now.

When they arrived at Mik's place, any remaining doubts that she might be some weird underdog lonewolf went out the window. This was a multi-million dollar penthouse in a posh neighbourhood. The sort of place you don't get without making friends in the right places and a lot of enemies everywhere else. Was this an elaborate trap? Maybe. But she had an ancient divine artifact kinda watching her ass, which gave her the confidence to take her chances.

"Anyway, you smell like shit. There's a shower back that way. We can talk after you clean up. Don't try anything funny."
Yep, a shower sure sounded nice right now.


37 minutes in the shower was all it took for Sera to feel slightly less like a sentient bundle of turds. She grabbed some underwear, a pair of trousers and a tank top from the clothesline in the room, and put her cloak over it. It still smelled funny but she sure as hell wasn't going to come out without it. Some deodorant she found in the cabinet would do for now.


"Right, so um..." she spoke up when she came back to the lounge. The other woman had clearly showered and changed in the meantime, now sipping on something that looked like whiskey. Or maybe motor oil. Hard to tell. Sera liked the taste of both roughly equally, anyway. "Shit, where do we start?"

She sat on a different part of the huge couch, trying to ignore the very obvious 'oh my god she's talking again' look on Mik's face. "You just kinda saved my ass there, I think. What I don't understand is why. You came for this here bad boy, right?" she pointed at Steely Dan. Well, keeping Sera alive was a way of at least being in the presence of that artifact without dying, sure, but whatever Tristan's endgame was, this probably wasn't getting her much closer to it.

"So who are you, really?" There was no reason to expect an honest answer. But she couldn't deny herself that question. "I mean, we've got a bit of a stalemate here, right? But if we know what each of us wants, we could like... find a way to make this less awkward, at least?" Yeah. Start small. Go from there. "So uh... do the letters H, A, R, P ring any bells?"

 

[starboob]

The shower relaxes Tristan. Putting on fresh clean clothes fills her with a sense of calm. The whisky, followed by her ass hitting the couch, could bring her to dreamland. She sinks further into the cushion, momentarily closing her eyes so that she can enjoy the soft inside of her sherpa hoodie. It would be nice to forget that the last three hours ever happened, but Kim destroys the serenity she's found just by entering the room. 'Don't.' Tristan inhales sharply, just cracking her eyes open. 'Don't be a bitch. Hear her out.'

Her expression doesn't change as Kim tries to puzzle out everything that's happened since their paths crossed back at the newly destroyed chapel. Though her heart stutters at the mention of HarP. The fuck?

"Harp?" Tristan arches her pierced brow. (Yeah, she's heard of that project. It's one of the divisions within RenF, she's pretty sure. That's about all Tristan knows. The real question is how Kim knows about it, assuming they're thinking of same fucking project.) Rather than admit the little she does know, she jerks her thumb behind her, pointing it towards the electronic harp standing in the back corner of her living room. "Of course. I have one. Who the fuck doesn't?"

While Tristan doesn't want to reveal everything, the fact remains that Kim is... right. They're at a stalemate, both wanting the same thing and wanting it only for themselves. That's easy enough to admit. They’ll go nowhere is she doesn’t at least offer something. "I need the chain. It's the only reason you're still alive. If you recall, I did try to kill you multiple times this evening." Just a casual friendly reminder. Not a threat, but if it were it'd be the only thing she can do.

Not naïve enough to believe that Kim would be satisfied with that answer, she elaborates. "I heard about the chain first through some clients. Then I kept hearing about it while doing different jobs and decided to look into it," she shrugs. "If so many people are talking about it, must be important, right? Figured I'd steal it then sell it to the highest bidder." This is partly true. Formerly true. As truthful as Tristan is willing to be. She'd like some points for not outright lying and maybe an Oscar for this stunning performance she's putting on. Cate Blanchet wishes. "What about you? You strike me as a nerd, so why the fuck are you interested in it?" She leans back on her couch, taking a sip of her whisky. (No, she isn't going to offer any to Kim. Kim's already fucking helped herself to her clean laundry.) Clearly, this nerd knows something she doesn't about HarP and she's curious to know how. There's just no way she's part of RenF. They're weird as shit, sure, but even they have standards. Right?

"Anyway, Kim's a shitty fake name. I won't press you for your real name if you don't press me for mine. But I will let you choose something better, 'cause I'm nice." And she doesn't want to be affiliated with a Kim for no reason other than it's not that badass of a name. The only intimidating Kim out there is Kim Possible and her show is basically a long lost relic of the ancient past. "I'll stick with Mik. It's not terrible."

 

[Buttercup.]

Yep, this was going about as well as Sera expected. What she didn't expect, however, was that Mik would have a real harp in her apartment to make that sassy remark actually work. Ugh, fair enough. She walked up to it and plucked a couple of strings. B, A, D... B, A, B, E. Then a Bb for dramatic effect. "Could use a tuner, just saying. And yeah, I remember you trying to kill me. I also remember you getting your ass kicked but let's not dwell on that part right now," she couldn't help rubbing it in. It would've had more of an impact if it was actually her kicking she-Hulk's ass but she took whatever she could get.

Finally Mik cut to the chase. 'Some clients', 'different jobs'... yeah she was still keeping it conveniently vague, huh? Saying something that sounded like an answer but didn't really convey anything at all. Like a high school essay. Selling it to the highest bidder did make sense but Sera still wasn't buying it (you could say she wasn't the highest bidder for this made-up story, if you enjoyed taking puns too far). There were SO MANY things worth stealing and selling to a fence that didn't involve disturbing ancient ruins and potentially pissing off cultists! For someone to go after an artifact like this there just had to be another motivation.
And one part of the story was particularly intriguing – had Mik actually known the artifact was a chain? Because the sources Sera worked with never mentioned that explicitly.

"Hey, uh—"
"...why the fuck are you interested in it?"
Shit, that was a question anyone would've seen coming from a mile away and it still caught Sera off guard.
"I'm... doing a science project. You wouldn't get it" was the best she could do. It probably wasn't even a lie, truth be told. Just depended on one's definition of science – the other half she was pretty convinced wasn't far off.

"All right, Mik. You can call me... shit, I dunno, Robin?"
Why. Why Robin, Sera? Was it because you often wore a hood? It was, wasn't it? For the love of all the dormant shackled gods.

Anyway yeah, even Sera realised she probably needed to let on something to break the ice.
"Right, so um... I'm guessing if you've met some clients doing different jobs you must've at least heard of the Renaissance Foundation?" That was a safe enough assumption. With its corporate facade of magnanimous philanthropy, RenF wasn't exactly playing it stealthy. It was just their actual agenda that few would know much about. "Yeah turns out they want this thing too. And well, considering the resources they have... good luck doing whatever you want to do with the thing before they come get it. Even without me stepping on your toes. And the chain hating you."

This wasn't helping, was it? She had to put a lid on her urge to be sassy now that she felt like she had the upper hand, what with Steely Dan having her back. The people they ran away from at the chapel were probably still out there and if they were with HarP they probably would figure out a way to track down the artifact eventually. This was no time for petty conflict.
"Okay look, I get not wanting to share everything you know. I don't either, and I can imagine like 500 situations I'd prefer over the one we've got here. But... right now I'd rather risk working with an asshole if it means RenF won't get their mitts on our friend. I mean, you got any idea what this thing could do in the wrong hands? And I don't mean just whacking random people in the face." That wasn't a rhetorical question – the degree to which Mik was aware of just what she was trying to steal was an important part of the puzzle here and the entirety of their relationship hinged on the answer.

 

[starboob]

This is absolute dogshit. Tristan shouldn't have to work with some second-rate clown to get her hands on that chain, but life's been using her as a punching bag since allowing her moms to become, well, her moms. She honestly should have expected that her plans would sour under her touch, though she never would have imagined this. It's humbling, to say the least. And while the newly renamed Robin speaks, she eyes the chain. Maybe it she stares at it long enough, a secret will reveal itself and she'll be able to hack its operating system and force it to switch allegiances. Not that the chain is a piece of tech. It would be so much easier if it were and she supposes that's why it's not. Once again, life is saying Fuck you, Tristan.

Her fingers drum against her knee, sipping on her drink before downing it in a swallow. The glass hits the coffee table harder than she means. "A science project," Tristan repeats, snorting. "Your nerd shtick can only carry you so far and I just don't quite believe you're in this for science. If you are, then you're a bigger villain than I originally pegged you for. Already got mass murder under your belt," R.I.P. to those stoners, "are you now working towards world domination? Or are you going to start smaller and just go for the city? That might be more realistic since you have the charisma of a slug."

Science project. She almost laughs again at the notion. Anyone wanting to do science with that artifact is certainly bad news and perhaps the kind of company Tristan ordinarily keeps, but she doesn't buy anything Robin says. Though, it's very likely that the woman could say anything that she would believe.

"Who hasn't heard of the Renaissance Foundation?" Her moms are both donors. Mostly for sentimental reasons as they no longer work directly with the group and have since branched off to do their own work. Ignoring that, however, Tristan latches onto something else Robin says. "So what makes you think you're capable of keeping the chain out of their hands? The chain hates me, yeah, but Steely Dan doesn't exactly seem that insistent on protecting you. You need someone to help. And I'm a perfect meathead." She even flexes her biceps to sell the point. Yeah, playing meathead is demoralizing for a number of reasons, but if it's her in, it's her in. "Those K9s were nothing for someone like me. Put me in the ring and I'll knock out 12 strongmen. Without my gloves."

"Anyway, how do you know they want it?" That detail isn't lost on Tristan. The fact that this nerd somehow knows of their plans is curious. Suspicious as fuck, even. (Suddenly, Tristan is starting to believe there's more to this nerd than meets the eye.) She also considers the other piece Robin mentions, making herself sound like some fucking vigilante, because, yeah, Tristan knows the chain is the source of awesome, raw power. It's precisely why anyone with two working brain cells would want it. That Robin seems insistent on keeping it away from a corp like RenF, without implying her own lust for power... Gods, maybe she is still a nerd who's read one too many comic books. "They tryna blow up the city? Or do you just not want them taking in all this power like Hungry Hungry Hippos?" That may or may not be why Tristan wants the chain, but that's beside the point.

 

[Buttercup.]

Sera's only reaction to Mik laughing off her poorly crafted lie was a hurt shrug of the shoulders. Not exactly helping her case, but her immediate reactions to unexpected situations seldom did so it was on brand, really. In any case she resented the mass murder accusation – surely the kids just ran away when the energy discharge happened. They must've had enough time, right? She wasn't a villain. And if they had died there, it wasn't her fault, it was just karma for treating her like trash!

"Okay, well, we're not getting much further if I don't say this, so uh..." Sera scratched the side of her mouth neurotically. "I may or may not have been involved with RenF, at an unspecified time. Enough to know about some of the stuff they're up to that doesn't exactly make it into press releases." She was divulging a dangerous amount of information already but as she'd just said, they weren't really getting anywhere any other way. And honestly, sharing her tragic backstory with Mik paled in comparison with all the other risks already breathing down her neck.

Sera stood up and paced around the room, a mannerism no doubt borrowed from plot exposition dumps in the embarrasing shows she liked to watch.

"So let's just say I know quite a bit about how they operate and what their long term goals are. And I'm pretty sure this guy," she pointed at the chain, "is an important part of the puzzle they're trying to piece together. Long story short, it's not a pretty one. I mean, you weren't far off with that 'world domination' stuff, you just had the wrong girl."

She paused. This sounded really silly, didn't it? She couldn't expect a random person with unknown allegiances to just take the 'the philanthropic corporation is actually plotting to TAKE OVER THE WORLD' story at face value. She had to be more specific still. While accounting for the meatheadedness of her audience.

"Okay, look. It's a chain." Thanks, Sera. "There's a reason it looks like that. It's a symbol of keeping something under control. Well, some folks at RenF got it into their heads that THEY could control it if all the failsafes were off. I'm pretty damn sure they're full of shit on that part, but that doesn't even really matter. The thing they're trying to unleash is bad news either way."

'Something'? 'The thing'? Not good enough, Robin.

"You know much about the old gods? Asking for a friend."

 

[starboob]

Tristan tilts her head all the way back, taking in a deep breath while the other woman talks, divulging more information than she would have expected her to. With her head looking up, she at least can hide her skepticism when Robin claims to have been involved with RenF at some point. 'Ah, so they don't have standards.' Figures, honestly.

The Harbinger Project only showed up on Tristan's radar a few months back. A chance glance at some documents on a prospective employer's desk. She thought nothing of it at the time, but on another job, she heard some unsuspecting high level goons whispering about it through the ventilation shaft she had been crawling through. Though what really sold her on looking into the project and it's potential worth was when she discovered the city's mayor in on the scheme. Naturally, she arrived at the conclusion it would be her ticket to buying herself a nice little private island to fuck off to forever. (The dream, honestly.)

Now, Robin all but confirms the information she later discovered—it's raw, awesome power. Money might be power, but actually power? She won't have want for money if people are too afraid of their city sliding off into the ocean with one flex of her wrist.

The idea that RenF wants to use what's hers to rule the world sends a shiver down her spine. She snaps her head up, suddenly at attention. Yeah, she doesn't need certified freaks trying to steal power to rule the world. "So, they think they're getting world domination and you suspect it's closer to world demolition?" Also not exactly preferable. Tristan sort of likes being alive.

"I know what they teach of them in school. Twelve gods for each of the months." She scratches her head, trying to pull anything she remembers from the seventh grade. A big ask, since she's naturally blocked it out. "They were all descendents of Time, or something... Ugh, murder probably happened. And maybe incest, right?" Fucking freaks. "Jealousy. The usual fucking crap." She rolls her wrist through the air. "Why's it matter?"

But Tristan has a feeling she knows why it matters. Like any gay kid, she obviously was a little too into mythology for her own good and having two gay mothers meant having access to mythological texts in their personal library. So, yeah, she does know about the jilted god, robbed of her spot in the pantheon and cursed to live amongst mortals.

"Those are just stories."

 

[Buttercup.]

Well, turned out Mik the Thik-skulled wasn't entirely stupid when it came to figuring things out. "Yeah, basically they're trying to, um..." Quick, Sera, a witty metaphor. Kill an ant with a sledgehammer? Not dramatic enough. Break into a lockbox using a hydrogen bomb? That could work. But the conversation had moved on by the time she got that idea so she'd have to save it for later.

"Anyway... yeah, twelve are canon. There's still a lot of uncertainty though, I mean the old scripts don't explicitly say some of them aren't different aspects of the same one or that there aren't any others, but twelve will do for our purposes." Then why go on that autistic tangent, Sera? "So yeah, lots of murder, non-consensual hanky panky, treachery – the usual, really. Eventually all the infighting gave humans enough of an opening to emancipate, but not before some of the gods did each other dirty. And Dan here played a role in that, best I can tell."

The tip of the chain rose slightly, as if it were listening to its granny telling a story of how its mother was born or some shit. Sera looked back at it nervously.

"Sure, you can say they're just stories but I don't know about anything manmade quite like this guy. Shit, even most of the magic tech we use today is derived from artifacts from that era. Like, you know, those fists of pounding you got there? Pretty sure those have something to do with Lephyste."
The chain flinched when that name was uttered. Looked like Sera was on to something indeed.
"And Daniel here was clearly part of one of the weird rituals demigods used to subdue Sicchadis."
If Steely had any moving parts capable of making a hissing noise, it would definitely have made one just then.
"The part I'm not exactly sure about is whether he's associated with a particular god or just... um... anti-god in general." The idea of just saying the names of all gods she knew and watching Dan's reaction didn't occur to her at the moment.
"But in any case, some folks at RenF think Sicchadis was a real personable gal who would totally help them out in exchange for freeing her. That's like..." Releasing an alligator that ate an entire kindergarten's worth of kids earlier and expecting it to be your daughter's new best friend? Nah, too much of a mouthful. "...it's just stupid, basically."

She figured Mik could put two and two together. An ancient deity brought back to life with no other gods to keep her power in check was bad news indeed and Sera still couldn't believe RenF would be stupid enough not to see this. Maybe lust for power just blinded one to how bad their odds of actually succeeding were? Or maybe they had more of a plan than she knew of. Whatever the answer was, she couldn't just let it happen if she could help it because she too didn't mind being alive and mostly free to do as she willed.

"And to make it even more complicated, it looks like the physical site where Sicchadis was bound is on someone else's turf." Perhaps RenF assumed she'd obliterate them as soon as she was brought back to life, solving one of their problems immediately? Not even Sera knew the organisation sitting on Sicchadis's prison was actually well aware of what was going on and getting the most out of it. She'd learn in due time.

 

[starboob]

If blood were to start spilling out her ears over the phrase hanky-panky, she truly wouldn't be surprised. Was Robin born at the cringe factory or is this all nurture? Tristan isn't sure what possibility is worse. For now, she manages to swallow her contempt for the sake of following what the other had to say, because, aside from the cringe word choices, Robin is actually offering something valuable. (Even if Tristan is a bit skeptical.)

"Don't ever refer to my gauntlets as the fists of pounding ever again." That aside, she can see the truth in what she's suggesting. The damn gauntlets had called out the night she found them—practically pulled her in my some unexplainable force of gravity. And she's never been able to figure out quite how they operate, just that they do and they're fucking awesome.

A possible connection to Lephyste also makes sense and could explain their more-than-magical, more-than-technological nature. After all, Lephyste's whole thing was punching shit. Though why the goddess's weapon of choice would imprint on Tristan, who has never done a religious or devout thing in her entire life, is a complete mystery. (That is, if they even do belong to the goddess.)

Perhaps it's a temperament thing? Lephyste wasn't exactly known for being reasonable. According to myth, she punched a hole straight down to the mantle and created the first volcano just because Azmunchair stole her last cocoa nib. (And just behind Tristan are some fist shaped patches in her drywall.) So maybe this isn't a coincidence? Maybe—

Wait, wait, wait. Is she seriously buying this crap?
Is this woman's bizarre contagious?

'Let it go, Tris.' For better or for worse, she cannot deny that Robin might be useful. And might be right. She isn't keen on accepting that, however. Not because Robin is Robin, though that is part of it, but because... well, it means siphoning this dead god's (or not so dead god's?) power isn't going to be as feasible as she prior thought. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

"Alright," Tristan runs a hand over her buzzcut then leans forward, resting her arms on her knees. "So what do you know about killing gods? 'Cause murder seems like a good answer here and if you already know where this bitch is located, let's just finish Sicchadis."

 

[Buttercup.]

Well what do you know, they seemed to be getting somewhere. Mik either knew more than she was letting on or she was just the 'fuck it, I can roll with this' type of person. The latter were easy enough to work with. In either case, this was promising. Even if Mik's proposal (of course her first solution to any problem would be violence) was... quaintly naive? Yeah, that sounded better than 'dense'.

"Well, what I know about killing gods is no-one's ever figured out a way to do it in a way that couldn't be reversed, at least in theory. But there are ways to make that 'in theory' really fucking implausible."

She grabbed some water from a dispenser in the corner and sat down comfortably. This was a lot to explain.

"What they did with most of them, or so the story goes, is chopping them up into tiny pieces and scattering them where people aren't very likely to go searching. In that form even a god doesn't have much sentience to speak of so they're probably gonna be harmless forever unless someone collects all the pieces and lets them regenerate."

A sip. A thousand yard stare into the cup. How did that regeneration even work? Did the pieces just drift together if they were close enough, morph into an amorphous coccoon and have the god emerge good as new? That just sounded ridiculous, but mythology was full of stories that alluded to the whole super regeneration thing. 'Chop off my head should it bring thee joy, I'll come back stronger and smite thee, boy' and all that. Sera didn't need to understand it in order to be scared of it.

"That's not what they did with Sicchadis though. History's a bit fuzzy on the 'why', but instead they did some complex binding ritual that basically siphoned all of her power into inanimate objects. Best I can tell you can't harness her power from these directly, it's in some weird magical stasis I guess? I won't bullshit you: no idea how that works exactly. In any case there's a way to return the power back to her – even remotely – and that's what RenF is doing."

Sera emptied the cup and thought for a second. The way she understood it, Sicchadis in her bound form was basically a regular human, only immortal. Probably comatose back when all the seals were in place but Sera assumed every artifact HarP got their hands on made her stronger. No matter how secure her confinement was, she would be able to break out once she grew powerful enough.

"You know, if we can't kill her I reckon we could go for the next best thing. Give her the 'thousand little pieces in unlikely places' treatment. But to do that we'd first have to reach her body without getting killed by corporate goons. Actually no, first first we'd need a weapon that can cut through an ancient goddess. Got any of those lying around?"