[RFC] [Meta-riffic] The Untitled Multiverse Project

[Cobalt Greywalker]

More world-building time, but I want some opinions. What is Inspiration? What does it DO to a person?

Given M Fnord’s opening, my initial thoughts are along the lines of a combination of telluric energy awareness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telluric_current]telluric currents being a real thing) and a Spark.
Basically, when Inspiration hits the persons awareness of telluric energies kicks in. This triggers changes in the brain, causing a Spark of Genius focused on a concept/subject. That’s the standard package, so to speak. Those changes are how people can find out if they’re Inspired, taking a 10 min test with a helmet EEG and a telluric energy source. As said in the opener, more than a few people are Inspired. Most of them don’t even know they are Inspired, the effects of their Inspiration being subtle (in difference to someone like Deidre Griest, who’s Inspiration wasn’t at all subtle). An Inspired can push their limits far farther than other people through force of will and focus, much like champion athletes. They’ll pay for it, but during the period of focus they can keep going until they collapse.

It’s the other side effects, what TvTropes calls Required Secondary Powers, where things get interesting. Let’s call them Tricks and Talents. Tricks are the really low-key, sort of useful, abilities. Talents are out and out Powers. These tend to be useful in the context of the Spark’s focus, and can sometimes be learnt if both the Spark’s focus and the existing tricks and talents the Inspired have are in the same ‘cluster’. E.g. the ‘Oracle’ cluster has pre, present, boosted, and post cognitive abilities.

The changes to the brain during the First Flash of Inspiration give the person something of an inbuilt understanding of their subject. It’s not like other people can’t understand the Inspired’s subject as well as them, but the Inspired have a leg up. This DOES also mean that the Inspired’s thought processes are not quite human-normal anymore, but they can fake it fairly successfully. This tends to lead to the easiest Trick for the Inspired to learn, which is boosted cognition. Redistributing the focused intelligence of the Spark into a more general form, the Inspired normally get about ten points on their IQ score.

The main limit is every trick and talent granted by Inspiration is a mental one, and not really an active one either. No super speed or strength, flight, healing, magery, etc… However, if you had the potential for such things you’d be extremely likely to awaken it.

[robkelk]

More world-building time, but I want some opinions. What is Inspiration? What does it DO to a person?

Given M Fnord’s opening, my initial thoughts are along the lines of a combination of telluric energy awareness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telluric_current]telluric currents being a real thing) and a Spark.
Basically, when Inspiration hits the persons awareness of telluric energies kicks in. This triggers changes in the brain, causing a Spark of Genius focused on a concept/subject. That’s the standard package, so to speak. Those changes are how people can find out if they’re Inspired, taking a 10 min test with a helmet EEG and a telluric energy source. As said in the opener, more than a few people are Inspired. Most of them don’t even know they are Inspired, the effects of their Inspiration being subtle (in difference to someone like Deidre Griest, who’s Inspiration wasn’t at all subtle). An Inspired can push their limits far farther than other people through force of will and focus, much like champion athletes. They’ll pay for it, but during the period of focus they can keep going until they collapse.

It’s the other side effects, what TvTropes calls Required Secondary Powers, where things get interesting. Let’s call them Tricks and Talents. Tricks are the really low-key, sort of useful, abilities. Talents are out and out Powers. These tend to be useful in the context of the Spark’s focus, and can sometimes be learnt if both the Spark’s focus and the existing tricks and talents the Inspired have are in the same ‘cluster’. E.g. the ‘Oracle’ cluster has pre, present, boosted, and post cognitive abilities.

The changes to the brain during the First Flash of Inspiration give the person something of an inbuilt understanding of their subject. It’s not like other people can’t understand the Inspired’s subject as well as them, but the Inspired have a leg up. This DOES also mean that the Inspired’s thought processes are not quite human-normal anymore, but they can fake it fairly successfully. This tends to lead to the easiest Trick for the Inspired to learn, which is boosted cognition. Redistributing the focused intelligence of the Spark into a more general form, the Inspired normally get about ten points on their IQ score.

The main limit is every trick and talent granted by Inspiration is a mental one, and not really an active one either. No super speed or strength, flight, healing, magery, etc… However, if you had the potential for such things you’d be extremely likely to awaken it.

"Inspired, eh? Well, beats 'Whispered'." - Ramona Jackson, while building her first replica Avro Arrow from spare parts and sheet metal

And with that quote, one can take a look at the backstory of the Full Metal Panic! world and raid it for ideas...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[M Fnord]

As far as Inspiration goes, I hadn't given much thought to the exact mechanical effects. Taking from the original source of the term OTOH, I had envisioned it as a source of pulp-grade superheroics, your Shadows and Doc Savages and Sherlock Holmeses and Modesty Blaises and so on. The effects are largely mental - to use Deidre as an example she could rightly be called The World's Smartest Woman thanks to her Inspiration - but there's a physical component as well. Inspired individuals are tougher to kill, have some form of limited damage resistance and regeneration that allows them to tank damage that normal people can't. The classic example is the old bullet-to-the-shoulder gag: an Inspired adventurer can take a bullet (arrow, whatever) in the shoulderblade and not be as impeded as someone like you or me who'd need a fair bit of surgery and PT to be able to use the arm properly again.

There's also a paranatural element to it. Sometimes this results in magic or superpowers but for the most part it involves luck. The Inspired have the devil's own luck: when it's good it's great but when it's bad it can turn a milk run into a complete clusterfuck. The Titanic scenario Sam Wildman talks about in the forum post above is a great example of this. As an Inspired adventurer his mission to rescue the Titanic's passengers goes swimmingly right up until his luck turns and they run into a nest of desperate Draka on a sinking ship. What makes a veteran guildie (or looper) great is the ability to survive when the dice turn bad.

Which leads into thee only other thing I've thought about Inspiration: the effects aren't 100% permanent. You have to at least keep up a pretense of maintaining Inspired skills or else they'll start to fade. So working out, studying the Ancient Arts or keeping up with Interworld Scientific American are important parts of a field op's downtime.

And on that note, some origin story coming later today.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[M Fnord]

And now, the origin story. Enjoy.

---

Imaginary Friends

“Time travel within our own worldline, as opposed to sidestepping to historical echoes, seems to be if not impossible then at least well beyond our capabilities for now. And yet there are moments and flashes that suggest telluric energy is not as limited as we are. Inspiration echoes in all directions.” ~ Deidre Griest, The Axis of Infinity

Fairplay, Colorado
16 June 1985

Sam was kind of a weird kid. Not a bad kid by any measure, but if Leo and Betty Wildman had any real issues with their son it was that he wasn’t as outgoing as they thought an eight-year-old boy should be. Instead of playing with the other kids in town, quiet and bookish Sam was content to wander out around the fields reading material in hand, looking for a nice comfortable place to let the day pass.

It was on one of these expeditions that Sam first found the tree. It was a cottonwood, old and gnarled and standing out in the valley like a lone sentinel from the tree-covered slopes. To the mind of an eight-year-old, this discovery was simply the greatest thing ever. He climbed the tree, getting halfway up and perching on a branch to see if he could see his house from there. He swung from the branches, taking care to avoid the ones that seemed a bit creaky (the tree was quite old, after all – best to watch for rotten wood) and laughed as he pretended to be Tarzan, coming out of the jungle for the first time to track elephants on the savannah. And when he was finally done jumping about the tree, there was a nice, mossy hollow in the roots just perfect for sitting back and reading.

On his third trip to the tree, he noticed that he wasn’t alone. Sitting alone in the hollow, the sun dimmed for just a second and Sam looked up to see a girl looking at him in some mild confusion. She was about Sam’s age and height, coppery-tan skin and dark eyes set in a round face and dark hair coiled up in a bun, wearing a funny kind of dress that he’d never seen before even in books. He blinked and the girl jumped a little, apparently surprised that he could see her. That was a little weird.

Well, Sam Wildman was raised to be polite, so he scrambled to his feet and stuck out a hand like his dad meeting somebody new. “Hi!” he said. “I’m Sam! Nice to meet you.” The girl looked at him blankly, cocking her head a little and then she said... something. Sam couldn’t make it out. It sounded a little like Spanish.

“Uh, sorry,” Sam said sheepishly, putting his hand back down. “I don’t understand you.” The girl frowned a little, apparently deep in thought. She then put her hand up, one finger raised directly at him. Sam picked up on the intent and mirrored the girl’s action.

Their fingertips touched and Sam could feel something electric jump from her finger (the touch was so light as to be almost insubstantial) and race down his arm. He didn’t jerk back, though, instead keeping the contact as well as he could. Girl and boy moved together, tracing a circle in the air between them. The girl smiled a little for the first time, it was small and maybe a little awkward but Sam decided with the incontrovertible logic of the small boy that he thought this girl was nice, no matter that she spoke some kind of not-Spanish moon language. He picked up his book and gestured at the tree’s hollow. The girls smile widened a bit more and she produced a book of her own.

~***~

Trimontium, Vesperian Empire
23 August 2741 a.u.c.

Flavia was an odd child. Everybody in Trimontium knew it, though none would dare say it out loud. The Nepos gens was a respected pillar of the community and to say anything against Atia and Marcus Nepos’s eldest daughter wouldn’t end well. But whispers echoed in the stillness of the valley: when she got emotional sparks would fly from her fingertips, when she entered a shop in town strange things would happen. While her parents were sure that at least some of this was exaggeration, it was clear enough that young Flavia was a witch and Marcus knew that he’d have to send her away sooner rather than later.

Two weeks after her birthday, Marcus and Atia decided the time was ripe and sat their daughter down to talk about this situation. Her powers, her need to learn how to control them and how it would mean leaving the valley for Ostianova or one of the other great cities of the Empire. They were gentle, they were saddened by the necessity but in the end they were unyielding: it was going to have to happen no matter how Flavia thought about the situation.

Flavia for her part took the discussion with stoicism, far more than anybody could have ever expected from an eleven-year-old. At the end of her father’s lengthy explanation of the situation she stood and said in a calm voice that almost broke her mother’s heart, “I understand, if it needs done then we should do it. May I be excused?” Her mother could only nod and Flavia strode from the room.

She managed to get to the villa gate before breaking into a run. Down the road, into the fields and towards the ancient cottonwood tree that stood alone in the heart of the valley, the one rock of true stability she’d had the last three years. Flavia approached the tree and saw with a mingled gladness and dread that her mystery companion was already there engrossed in one of his books. Flavia often wondered about the strange foreign boy who spoke no language she’d ever heard of, all sunburned pale skin and unruly brown hair. As her powers started to emerge she wondered if maybe he’d been summoned or conjured by some passing wish.

The boy looked up and smiled in greeting, then looked puzzled as instead of taking her usual spot against the tree Flavia carefully knelt down in front of him. “I know you don’t understand me,” she said carefully, “but I need to talk about this to somebody.” She gathered her wits and sighed. “I have... a gift. A power. Father says it’s a gift from the gods, talks about our grand and glorious heritage as descendents of Vulcan and Thunderbird and maybe he’s right, I don’t know. But I know that the power is... it’s growing, and I can’t control it like I used to. Like I should.

“Father plans to send me away to a temple where I can learn how to harness this power. I, I don’t want to go, but I need to go.” Flavia looked up and saw the boy’s concerned face. She smiled sadly. “I think this is the last time we’re going to see each other. I want you to know that even if we can’t talk to each other, you’ve been a good friend.” She held out her hand, pointing at him like she did on their first meeting and he matched it. She felt the strange electric tingle as they connected and moved their hands. Nodding sharply, Flavia stood up and brushed the dirt from her gown. “Goodbye,” she said.

Flavia left the tree and the boy behind her, not daring to look back.

~***~

The Negev Desert
3 April 2005 Mobius synchro (2758 a.u.c local)

“Don’t see anybody out there, so we probably managed to lose them.” Sam shivered. “Jesus, I forgot how goddamn gold the desert can get at night.” Flavia looked at him oddly, the tiniest hints of a smile on her face. Sam blinked. “What did I say this time?”

“You’re a very strange man, Samueli,” she said. “You swear by Christ, but you’re like no Christian I’ve ever met.”

“You’ve met many Christians?”

Flavia shrugged. “A few. Antioch and Alexandria have their share of course, and there’s more than a few back home. Nice enough, if a bit…” she shrugged a little. “Stern. They don’t like saying oaths by their god, not like you do.”

Sam winced a little like that, always the little things that marked one as an outsider. “Ah, I was raised in the faith,” Sam said, trying to laugh it off. “We parted ways a long time ago, but old habits.”

“Do you believe?”

“That gods exist? Never met one, but I’ve been in the life long enough. Do I worship? No. Haven’t found one worth the trouble. You?”

Flavia shook her head. “When I was little, I’d go to temple for the high days with my parents,” she said. “After that, I make offerings now and then but I don’t suppose I really worry about it too much. Too busy, both me and the gods. Besides,” she added wryly, “it’s a little odd to worship Minerva when she asks you to call her ‘grandmother’ in the middle of a rite.” Sam chuckled, then laughed and Flavia felt herself start to laugh a little. It wasn’t really that funny all told, but after the long day they’d had even a weak joke sounded really damn funny.

“Yeah, I suppose there is that,” he said, settling down next to her in the low lantern light. “My aunt used to talk about having a close personal relationship with Jesus, guess there is such a thing as too close for worship.”

“Your family,” Flavia said, perking up a little. “Tell me more. How does a Briton with a Christian name end up in the middle of the desert?”

“Not much to tell,” Sam said thoughtfully. “Just a poor country boy looking for adventure.”

“A familiar story,” Flavia said knowingly. “I came from the Montes Magna, from the interior of Vesperia. The beating heart of the Empire, my father used to say. It wasn’t really,” she noted, the faint warmth and low light letting her mind drift back. “Just a small village deep in the mountains.”

Sam smiled. “Sounds a lot like where I grew up, little town called Fairplay, just a wide spot in the crossroads, but it was home.”

“Yeah, little Trimontium, a cluster of buildings tucked into a hollow at the edge of a valley…”

“Mountains everywhere in all directions, framing this great green bowl…”

“The sky! The sky was so big and blue, bigger than any other sky I’ve ever seen, clouds racing past on the west wind…”

“No trees down in the valley, just grass and cows and little streams…”

“Except for one,” Flavia corrected him. “One lone tree, standing against the wind in the middle of the valley.”

“Yeah,” Sam’s voice came low and confused. “I remember that. That big… old… cottonwood.”

“And every day,” Flavia continued, “I’d go outside to the tree and I’d… I’d…”

“I’d meet with my…” The two adventurers stopped. Twisting around in the blanket, for the first time since Alexandria they actually looked at each other. Sam Wildman took in the scars and tattoos on the woman next to him, fitting her face and eyes to the faded mental picture of a girl he’d imagined knowing twenty years before. Flavia Nepos narrowed her eyes and compared the stocky, bearded man beside her to her memory of a pale boy she’d long convinced herself was a dream or an artifact of her power.

They pulled back, out from under the survival blanket, wide-eyed and disbelieving. Sam held out a trembling hand, and Flavia matched the motion. Their fingers barely touched, and moving together traced a circle in the air.

“Oh my god,” Sam murmured. “It wasn’t my imagination.”

“Dispater,” Flavia whispered. “You’re real.”

They sat there for a long minute, neither sure what to say. Sam cleared his throat. “I think,” he said a little awkwardly. “I think we haven’t been properly introduced.” He stuck out his hand again. “Hi, I’m Sam. Sam Wildman. I’m a strange visitor from another world who just met his childhood imaginary friend in a cave in the desert.”

Flavia blinked, then smiled. “Well met, Sam Wildman,” she said, taking his hand. “I’m Flavia. Flavia Julia Nepos. I’m a practicing war-witch who just met her childhood imaginary friend in a cave in the desert.”

…and so they met again…

---

Our Heroes

The card in front of you is perfect. Subtle off-white coloring, raised lettering, the tasteful thickness of it. Even a watermark. Christian Bale would murder your entire family for one of these. It reads:



Sam Wildman and Flavia Nepos were born the same year and day within a mile of each other in two completely different universes. Sam was a nerdy country kid from Zero-Zero who expected to fall into a life of general obscurity once he got out of college, only to end up pulled into the original Mobius operation by his internet buddy Deidre. Flavia was the oldest girl in a family of Vesperian cattle merchants who probably would’ve been married off if she hadn’t inherited a gift for magic and a thirst for adventure from her family’s heroic ancestors.

The two would meet (again, according to their account which to be frank nobody else really understands) when Sam went searching for a missing archaeologist in the fringes of the Vesperian Empire and hired Flavia as his native guide. The missing-persons case quickly ballooned into a mad situation involving the SS Raven Division trying to acquire the (fully armed and operational) Ark of the Covenant from the Sinai. Several weeks later, the archaeologist had been returned to his university, the Time Nazis thoroughly spanked, the Ark restored to the temple in Jerusalem and Sam and Flavia walked out of her timeline to Zero-Zero with an unshakeable bond. From this bond the team Nepos & Wildman, Acquisitions was born, specializing in the dangerous and the ridiculous missions. Whenever Mobius has to stop Dr. Gravitas from imploding the Sears Tower on Parallel 129, or the United Nations needs someone to infiltrate Mid-Childa, or a pro-bono mission to root out Draka incursions, or simply moments where they’re in the right place at the right time, Nepos & Wildman have the skills, the experience and the rep to step up and get things done.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Cobalt Greywalker]

Hum... Inspiration is tricky. I do tend to what you've said M Fnord, it makes for more fun. But... Yeah, I get the feeling there is a need for a bit more in the Inspired. If I could articulate it I would. Maybe it'll come along in story.

Speaking of, this has some of my speculation of Mobius' structure. I've kept it loose, much looser than Infinity (who I've taken some hints from), but how well?

Oh, remember that Colin has served his 20 in the more military bits of Mobius, so it's roughly 2027 at this point. I'll rejig counts in my notes.

---

The Tower. Pretty much the only way anyone who’d been part of the multi-world NGO that was the Mobius Group would refer to its headquarters in Chicago. Being the massive political animal a crosstime NGO was, actually getting there usually meant getting to O’Hare, grabbing a taxi, and letting security check you out. Always book in advance, wait 28 days for delivery. That’s what comes with being backed by the UN.

Colin bypassed all of that. The unassuming travel token he’d been sent allowed him to park his Q-Type Jag in the local transfer port’s VIP zone, walk through security without even the slight check delay most normal people had (even with the scanners), walk past the lines (slight but existent even at that time in the morning), get priority transfer to Whiteout base and a second hop direct to the Tower’s transfer port (pretty much only the bigwigs got to do this), walk through reception and Tower security to an elevator that opened at his approach, and get on a priority non-stop to the board level on the 143rd floor.

All of which explained why Colin popped a handful of pills into his mouth and flushed them down with bottled water as the lift slowed down. An attempted cat-nap in the Jag (auto-drive was such a waste) hadn’t helped. New York called itself the City that never Sleeps; it had nothing on the Tower. So he’d had to resort to pills for the first time in years to keep awake and sharp.

He strode out of the opening doors, down the hall to the board room when his omnitool beeped a notice to his left eye and surprisingly redirected him to the Ops director’s office.

“Go straight in.” The robo-secretary said, unlocking the inner office door.

“You asked to see me?” Colin introduced himself, being as polite as possible while the pills kicked in but still telling the people inside what he thought of their actions.

“Sit down Captain.” Major General Alexi Demitriov, CICTRANSEC, replied.

Colin shut the door, letting the privacy seal re-engage, and sat at the last empty chair in front to the director’s desk.

“Ambassador, Director.” Colin nodded in greeting, already getting a feel for what hell he was about to be thrown into.

“Interesting report you filed.” Ambassador Cheng Jun, TOA Foreign Secretary, noted. “It seems the Bureau is expanding into areas we hadn’t expected.”

“I’m more interested in the offer you so casually made.” Mobius Group Director of Operations Mark Sommerfield remarked.

“I did say ‘might’ Sir.” Colin replied. “I was thinking how it could be good manners to hand over some properly sanitised reports when the follow-up team goes through, what with all the Guildies in their bad books, and given at the time I was retired and they apparently knew me it’ll allow the team to keep watch and blow my head off if need be.”

The Director and Ambassador blinked while the General snorted.

“Rather direct of you Captain.” He observed.

“I was about to go to sleep after just getting back when I was yanked back in. I’m running on pills so may be a tad blunt Sir.” Colin shrugged. “I very much doubt this is a Postman Op you’ve yanked me back in for, and I’d have explained things to Grendel in Contact when I woke up. So I’m guessing Escort.” He looked to the Ambassador. “We trying to get on their good side?”

“That is far more astute than your file suggests Captain.” Cheng told him. “Yes, we are trying to open formal contact with the Time-Space Administration Bureau. Primarily, we’ve found a good place to try the Babylon Project.”

“Hence your reactivation.” Demitriov added. “Colonel Yagami is apparently a high riser and well connected, so having you perform formal introductions will help.”

“And I make a good sacrificial lamb if anything goes wrong.” Colin noted.

“Unlikely.” Cheng told him.

“Still all the problems with the Guildies.” Colin pointed out.

“Hence us taking things slowly.” Sommerfield said, leaning forward. “You will be our point man on this. Build a rapport, get them engaged. Then get them to the table. With their backing, we’ll be able to get Infinity and Centrum involved.”

“And hopefully, Babylon will keep things for deteriorating between us all.” Demitriov added. “Lord knows we don’t have enough problems already.”

“So, who else is on the team? Logistics, backup?” Colin asked.

“You and the General can discuss things.” The director said with finality. “Dismissed gentlemen.”

***

“Well, that was fun Sir.” Colin grumbled as the two men walked to the lift. “Couldn’t they have just asked tomorrow?”

“Nature of the beast Captain.” CICTRANSEC said. “Babylon’s been on the cards for years, you’ve just given us the first decent chance we’ve had to get it off the ground. The Board and Oversight grabbed it.”

“And then we all get together to kick someone in the nuts.” Colin pointed out. “Group like that needs a big outside threat, and even combined the Snakes and Nazis wouldn’t be enough. A Power getting interested?”

“We don’t know, but intel has shown a worrying trend of archaeological digs of the Alpha civilisations being hit. You’ve proven to have an uncanny knack for running into a specific one of those.”

With a ding, the lift opened.

“Well, that WAS one of the reasons I was there in the first place. The planet only had a mining site on the other side of the continent, so a) why’d the Nazis show up, and b) how did the second group show up that quickly?” Colin mused. “The Beebees were tracking the second group…they had a ship, the second group I mean. I’ll have to ask what’s their angle.”

“Good to see all those reports weren’t exaggerating.” General Demitriov commented.

“Never really liked being guide dog to some Grey op. I’m a Scout tech analyst, not a Ghost Sir.” Colin shrugged. “And if Greg Womack had any say in those reports, he exaggerates. A lot.”

“So you didn’t kick a soccer ball filled with hydrogen into a dragon’s mouth?” The General asked, causing Colin to groan.

“No.” He growled. “As I put in MY report, I got a local to kick a football filled with methane into the mouth of a theme park’s animatronic dragon as someone had put in a dart gun as a murder weapon, hidden by the pyrotechnic flame thrower.”

“Ah.” The General nodded as the lift slowed down. “Well, head off to the Marriot down the street and get some rest. Be back for 15:30 so we can go over the mission specs.”

“Sir, that’s the best thing anyone’s said to me all week.”

***

Seven hours of sleep had made Colin feel more human, as had the shower, shaver, and light brunch. The sonic cleaner in the first class room (showing that Mobius cared for its employees) had sorted out his clothes, and his omnitool had pulled down all the latest journals and periodicals so he could start getting up to speed again. All he had to do was get through the mission brief and not kill anyone.

At 15:40, having been ceremoniously shoved out of the General’s office, he consoled himself that he wouldn’t be killing anyone. No, that would be far too kind.

Seriously, just him and one other for the team? No real backup? Oh, events outpacing things was such a load of bull. All he needed was the whitened reports and a backup for the meet, say hi, set up a second meet, and come back. That’d give the company and UN enough time to arrange a proper diplomatic team, which he’d introduce at the second meet. Nice and simple.

But politics had reared its head, and it looked like an end run was being made. Typical.

Time to stock up on headache pills and lock up the house again.

[M Fnord]

Some notes on locations:

Mobius Tower (previously Willis Tower, previously Sears Tower): Chicago, Illinois, Zero-Zero, referred to as The Tower by everybody in the business. The headquarters of the Mobius Group, where the board of directors and bigwigs from the UN, other nation-states and various corps meet to set interworld policy. Heavily retrofitted with outworld tech.

Grand Central: Winnipeg, Canada, Zero-Zero, a massive interworld transport hub connecting Zero-Zero to several timelines via stable portal gates. Considered something of a boondoggle by most observers as the facility runs at 15-20% capacity max. Home of the Time & Space Rail Road Company.

The Eyrie: Medium Earth orbit, inclination 14 degrees, Zero-Zero. Main base of Mobius space operations, constructed entirely from outworld tech. Considered the main defense point for Mid-Childan incursions. Home of the Mobius saucer fleet.

Mount Nebo: (roughly) Marseilles, France, undisclosed timeline, the semi-official home base of the Guild. Set up as a private retirement community for guildies and bloomed into a freeport for Guild members and dependents. Named for the mountain Moses viewed the promised land from before his death.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Dartz]

"This is the Steamship Titanic, requesting a harbour pilot for entry to New York"

"Oh Ha-Ha, dickhead, you honestly expect me to believe that one? Get of this damn frequency before I report ya to the Coast Guard"

======
Steamship Titanic

Currently owned and operated by the mercenary group Garrets Privateers, rumour has it they 'salvaged' the ship mid sinking for another buyer - but where stuck with the old girl after the buyer got cold feet when he saw the bill. Grabbing the Titanic involved canvassing a number of potential 1912's, one 1916 Titanic was torpedoed off of Kinsale by a U-boat (Irreperable), a 1937 where she was scrapped along with her sister (Shagged and worn out), and a 1959 where Titanic was a floating San Francisco hotel (Gutted and unseaworthy).

Ultimately, the plan involved waiting beside a promising iceberg for the Titanic to do it's usual thing, come to the rescue of the crew and passengers with a freighter, and then offer Mr. Ismay a 'fair price' for the salvage rights to the clearly doomed vessel. Some horsetrading followed in which Ismay delayed for as long as possible before signing on the dotted line.

SCUBA gear, and an expanding foam normally used to contain nuisance crosstime parahumans, were enough to seal the damaged compartments to the point where Titanic could be made seaworthy again and the flooded compartments pumped out.

Titanic then promptly vanished, and it was assumed by all those left behind that Garret's crew had perished while attempting to salvage her. Their insurance paid up. Immigrants found new lives. One became dicatator of the USSA, but that's another story.

Titanic reappared at double-zero, towed into New York harbour by tugs. She was only a century late.

Since the original buyer backed out, the Privateers have taken to using the Titanic as their mobile base of operations. It helps when a whole bunch of wealthy passengers left a good deal of expensive items behind. The ship includes onboard offices, refugee accomodations, staff accomodation, luxury accomodation for guests and clients. She has been partly automated, with her coal boilers now being fed by automated stokers rather than Black Gangs, and her engines now monitored by industrial SCADA systems, allowing her to operate on a minimal crew. Some safety upgrades have been made, with some additional hull plating added internally. Otherwise, she is much as she was in 1912, with many of her fittings preserved. Her engines can be repaired with industrial-revolution era machinery, and she retains the ability to be operated by a full manual crew in an emergency.

When not required for a crosstime mission, will occasionally take charter tours for enthusiasts and filmakers known for being a bit.... tetchy.

=======
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Cobalt Greywalker]

Argh. This took a bit of time to get done, but after getting stuck on the scene before this (including a rewrite as it went in the wrong direction) I just moved on to this one, which I wanted to get to for a while.

And then it just didn't want to end.

So, I've given this a bit of a going over but yeah. C&C time please.

Also, we really need a better way of addressing new worlds.

---

Parallel minus 8/251

The cool of the rock he sat on was fading, body heat soaking through his barrier jacket’s cloak, as he looked forlornly at the wreckage of the archaeological site. He didn’t even notice the windows displayed in his glasses, noticing the scorch marks and cratering and not to mention outright destruction of walls and structural remains.

“Bit for your thoughts sir?”

He turned to look at his black clad companion, fortunately not in full combat mode at this point.

“Nothing I haven’t thought a thousand times already Trainee. How people can just destroy the past like this.”

“Don’t mind him.” The woman in white to the side told the trainee. “History’s being a bit of a sore spot at the moment.” Her cheeky grin deflected the sour glare the sitting man directed at her.

“Point.” He conceded. The situation was quite routed in the now collapsed historical belief that Mobius was some enterprise (believed criminal) of people raiding sites of technological civilisations current and former. Amusingly enough, the first cracks in that had come from apparently the same person as had instigated the current furore. It had been increasingly shaky when ships with an unknown form of dimensional drive had started being encountered. Still, the Mid sense of horror filled survival from the final orgy of destruction of the Belkan civilisation meant that however threadbare it seemed, the theory that Mobius was just some group that hid its backers as successfully as Jail had until the revelations of the Doctor’s capture had prevailed.

Up until six days ago, when the report from Section Six on the latest Hückebein incident had arrived. The conclusions based on the evidence were inescapable. There was another multiversal civilisation out there, one almost mirroring the organisation of a horrible part of NAW 97’s-Earth’s last global war. The included files were…bracing. That they had achieved some form of multiversal travel and the technologies they employed also turned what was considered a unprovable theory on quantum reality into a thoroughly proven one hadn’t helped the scientific profession inside the Bureau much either.

And if there was one… Hence this little party. On the other hand…

“Why are you really here?” The glasses wearing man asked, the slight breeze causing his long ponytail to flutter as he gazed shrewdly at the white clad woman.

“I lost the bet.” The woman shrugged.

The black clad trainee looked a little confused at the man’s knowing chuckle.

“Um, Chief Librarian,” He piped up, interrupting his reply, “do we know what civilisation these remains were from?” He looked around. “I’m not seeing anything Belkan, or even hinting at Mid.”

“You’d be hard pressed to find anything hinting at Mid ON Mid-Childa, given how much has been replaced over the centuries.” The man sighed. “Still, no. We have a few sites we can tentatively link to this civilisation, but no positives.”

“Whereas I’ve run into it lots.” The person they were waiting for said, walking round the corner of a crumbling wall and causing the white clad woman to materialise and level her staff-like weapon at his armoured form.

A tense few seconds later, she got her breath back and pointed the staff down.

“How did you do that?” She asked.

“Trade secret.” The older man said with a grin. “Well, looks like you and Specs over there grew up well. I just grew old badly.” He stuck out a gauntleted hand. “Hi, Colin Green. Didn’t really get introductions last time, what with me bleeding everywhere.”

The woman forced the slight greenness at the memory down and shook the hand.

“Takamachi Nanoha.” She introduced herself.

“Funny, don’t seem Japanese but what’d I know?” He shrugged, then turned to the man.

“Yuuno Scrya.” The man in glasses introduced himself, also shaking the offered hand.

“At least Blackie dropped the red-eyed look and washed out the hair dye.” Colin commented. “Still doesn’t look like his ID, but it was something like Thomas?”

“Thoma Avenir sir.” The black clad teenager stayed where he was, what with an armour clad and armed stranger in his presence, even with the satchel he was wearing and the fact his helmet seemed to be solidly hanging from the metal backpack.

“Tommy boy then.” Colin’s offhand nickname got an involuntary snort of amusement from Takamachi.

“So, you’ve encountered sites from this civilisation before?” Scrya asked.

“If by encountered you mean tripping over them about twice a year for a couple of decades, yes.”

Yuuno’s face showed his surprise.

“Did you bring the site report?” He asked.

“If you don’t mind us doing the business first.” Colin reached into the satchel and pulled out a document wallet. “Here’s our guys’ reports. It’s all printed in micro compressed format to keep the bulk down so you can scan it in. If you’re willing to trust your computers, the electronic form is on the memory stick included.” Takamachi took the wallet. “The site report is also in there, but this’ll probably work a bit better.”

With that he pulled out a semi-domed device, set in on the ground, and stepped back. With a slight hum it powered up, then did a quick laser scan all around itself.

Scrya’s jaw dropped, Takamachi blinked in surprise, and Avenir’s eyes widened as before them a full colour holographic view of the area appeared. It was positioned in such a way as to overlay the structures from their view points.

“Wow…” Yuuno breathed, reaching out to poke the construct. With an audible blip, the portion of the image he ‘touched’ was zoomed in via a display window. “That’s…that’s writing. I’ve only found fragments in the reports I’ve seen.” The blond haired man looked at the image in awe.

Colin chuckled, getting his attention.

“Sorry, it’s just what you’re looking at so intently.”

“You can read it?” Yuuno asked excitedly. “What does it say?”

“Toilet sixty medium units to the right.” Colin told him deadpan.

Takamachi unsuccessfully tried to restrain her giggles at her friend’s face, she even covered her mouth with her hands leaving her staff hanging in the air. Colin smiled to show he wasn’t being mean.

“It’s pretty much the first thing we translated. If you dig a bit under twenty point four metres in that direction you’ll probably find a bathroom.”

“Oh.” Yuuno’s blank expression as he worked out what had been said brought on another fit of giggles in Takamachi.

“Here,” She said, sliding the document wallet into the man’s un-protesting hands, “hold this while you think.”

“Wha..? Hey!” He broke from his thoughts as the white clad brunette stepped towards the armoured visitor.

“Nicely done.” Colin complimented her.

“Plenty of practice.” She told him, looking him up and down. “Interesting getup, quite different to your last outfit.” She shrugged. “Makes things interesting.”

“Oh?” Colin asked as she smiled.

Then she grabbed his head and kissed him hard.

After a few seconds of wide eyed surprise, he narrowed his eyes. He stepped forward, grabbing the back of her head in one hand and lifting a leg with another to bend her backwards and return fire.

Avenir watched in open mouthed shock as Yuuno folded his arms and waited, tapping his foot.

Finally, they straightened up and parted; Colin with narrowed eyes, Nanoha with a bright, dreamy gaze and licking her lips.

“Fate’s going to be SO sorry she won.” She muttered to herself with a satisfied smirk. “Where did you learn to do that? And can you introduce me?”

“Nanoha,” Yuuno sighed, “Don’t make me embarrass you in front of the nice man and your Trainee.”

“But the thing with his tongue!” Nanoha complained. “I can feel Hayate’s jealousy from here! I can finally win that bet with Signum!”

“Sorry.” Yuuno apologised to Colin, causing Nanoha to pout at being ignored. “She has this thing about always fulfilling her bets, even the silly ones from years ago.”

“Was not silly.” Nanoha grumbled quietly, but still audible.

“You were twelve and on painkillers!” Yuuno shouted.

“You never complained about those bets before.” She shot back slyly, causing the blond to blush and cough into his hand. To clear his throat, you understand.

“I see the establishing relations part of the mission is going well.” A quiet female voice said, as a slim form clad in similar armour appeared from behind the same wall as Colin had.

“Leftenant,” Colin sighed, “your comments are noted.”

“Yes sir.” The young woman looked remarkably like Fate to Nanoha and Yuuno, with her long blode hair in a thick braid. Her form was more slender (as far as could be told underneath the armour), and her face sharper. The voice was noticeably different, and she was lightly taller. The main difference was the eyes, a violet shade rather than Fate’s red. Nanoha noted that the woman’s armour was far more intricately constructed.

“Everyone, Leftenant Eve Mizuhara.” He waved vaguely in her direction, voice tired. “Leftenant, Everyone.” He straightened up. “So, we’ve come to the formal bit of this shindig and that means some re-introductions. I find this particularly annoying, as I was nicely retired before they pulled me back in. So, hello again. I am Scout Captain Colin Green, Mobius Group Survey Division. This is my colleague Leftenant Eve Mizuhara. Under the auspices of the Transworld Oversight Authority, the Mobius Group Board has me bring formal greetings from the United Nations of Earth and its allies to the transworld entity known as the Time-Space Administration Bureau.”

Yuuno exchanged a look with Nanoha, and stepped forward.

“Hello Captain Green. I am Professor Yuuno Scrya, Chief Librarian of the Infinite Library. With me are Captain Nanoha Takamachi and Trainee Thoma Avenir of Special Duty Section 6. On behalf of the Time-Space Administration Bureau, we gladly receive the greetings of the United Nations of Earth and its allies. In return, as directed by the General Council in conclave of the Time-Space Administration, we extend formal greetings to the multiversal civilisation of the United Nations of Earth and its allies.”

“On behalf of the United Nations of Earth and its allies, we warmly receive the greetings of the Time-Space Administration Bureau.” Colin replied.

There was several seconds of silence and neither side moved, then Colin and Yuuno relaxed.

“Right, there’s that over with and looking good for the history books.” Colin said. “God I hate the PR weenies.”

“At least you don’t have movies being made of your early career.” Nanoha said sullenly.

“You poor girl.” Colin said sympathetically.

“So, what now?” Avenir asked.

“Well, my orders were to make friends. There are other things, but that’s basically it.”

“Finally!” Nanoha cheered. “Someone does it the easy way!”

Avenir shuddered in remembrance.

“That sounds like there is a story behind that.” Mizuhara noted.

“Quite a few.” Yuuno agreed, but was distracted as Colin’s head snapped up.

“Caution! Emergency!” The staff floating by Nanoha said in a female voice as red coloured holographics appeared around the left forearms of Colin and Eve.

“Oh, we SO don’t need this.” Colin complained, glancing at the holo-display.

~ Ground Team! ~ The voice of Alto Krauetta telepathically filled the mages’ minds. ~ Dimensional breach 3.5 km north west! Reading ten lifesigns with weird signatures. Wait, four launches! ~

“Incoming!” Colin snapped as he grabbed his helmet.

Yuuno snapped a hand out, forming a green mystic circle in time to take an energy blast. Inside his newly sealed helmet, Colin winced at the telluric energies clashing. Then the blond mage ducked to the side as a figure smashed right through the circle to hit the ground.

The figure was male, wearing a black uniform and goggles with swastika on a prominent red armband. What could be seen of his face under the goggles showed a red wing-like tattoo on the left side of his face, and he had the same sort of impractical weaponry as Avenir in a triamese arranged set of plasma rifles with stupidly large bayonets.

“Eclipse Driver.” Avenir identified.

The Nazi grinned a sharp toothed grin, swung his weapon round and opened fire.

[M Fnord]

Dropping In
From the Journals of Tom Olan…
It was dark and stormy, but if I’m going to be honest it was closer to mid afternoon than the middle of the night when it happened. The weather is a bit weird around Castle Falkenstein: according to Morrolan it’s because of the wild Magick used in its construction messing about with the air currents. But it’s weird in a Camelot sort of way - it only rains after six o’clock and so forth. Storms, especially big lightning storms, are an incredibly rare occurrence around the castle. The clouds started gathering not long before lunch, and the darkening sky put everybody on edge. The castle guard went on high alert - even without the Colonel ordering it, it was just sort of assumed that something was about to happen.

With the guards busy, that left Morrolan, Marianne, Rhyme and myself effectively at loose ends. So, being reasonable, practical people we decided to play cards until the storm broke and normalcy returned to the castle, or something happened in which case our talents would be required. “You know,” I said conversationally, “this is the first time I’ve seen a really big storm in these mountains since I came here.”

“They used to be more common,” Morrolan noted, “before the Castle was built, I remember there were some impressive thunderstorms around the old keep. I gather that neither Auberon nor his majesty the King are too fond of thunder, hence the spellwork.”

“I wonder why this storm now,” I said. “Maybe the Magick keeping the weather out is breaking down?”

Rhyme scoffed. “Ah, lad, it’s the Castle,” he said. “Maybe it prefers the dramatics and is taking advantage of Auberon and the King being away. I’ve given up trying to read the bloody thing’s mind.” Lightning bounced off one of the further towers, punctuating his statement. “You see? I’m just glad the lightning rods are holding up, otherwise there’ll be a Hell of a mess to clean up in the morning.”

Apparently whatever God or gods look over New Europa are fond of dramatic irony, because just after Rhyme said it there was a great crashing of light and noise all around us. The blast of lightning, the sound of masonry cracking, glass shattering and people screaming. We sat there stunned for a moment, then Marianne cried “The ballroom!” and we rose as one and ran for the door.

The guards managed to outrun us and by the time we reached the ballroom door a platoon had entered and were surrounding two strangers, a man and a woman, who were pulling themselves to their feet and holding each other like drowning men amidst the rubble of the ballroom roof. Their clothes weren’t the usual Bayerenese garb, nor anything recognizably New Europan. Instead, they had on pants and shirts that reminded me of the contents of my old backpack!

Who were they, and why had they come here? And more importantly, who brought them here?

~***~

Many miles away at the King’s Residence in Munich, Lord Auberon of Faerie abruptly stood in the middle of a meeting with King Ludwig and his advisors. “My pardon, Your Majesty,” he said. “Something has happened at Castle Falkenstein that needs my immediate attention.” The advisors started to harrumph in outrage, but the king waved them off.

“What has happened, Lord Auberon?” the king asked. “An attack?”

Auberon looked troubled. “I’m… not sure, Your Majesty,” he said carefully. “I do not believe it to be an attack, but it may be serious regardless. By your leave?”

~***~

Normally, stories like this begin with “when I woke up” but in this case it’s a bit more complex than that. Most of our last few seconds in Sunnydale remain blurry: I remember the ground shifting beneath us, the intangible demon yelling something Sam yelling something back, the inversion circle I’d inscribed on the seal flaring to life, an explosion of black light as the nexus spasmed and then we were tumbling through possibility space for I don’t know how long. Then reality reasserted itself in a loud cracking noise and we were ejected, clinging to each other and screaming, into a new cosm. The moment I saw the floor below us - far too below us for comfort and coming close too fast for a decent featherfall - the first thing I thought was This is going to hurt. And I was right.

The next thing I know I’m on my side on a cold marble floor and I can’t see a damned thing. My vision was flooded with light, bright white and colored, including a few colors I’m pretty sure don’t exist in normal light. For a brief second I wondered. Was this Elysium? Did we finally hit the end of our story, by falling into a big room? That’d be one for the poets.

“Julie? Julie.” Sam’s voice hissed in my ear and my senses reset. The light dimmed to a more tolerable level, I could hear the distant sound of running boots on stone and my right side ached like one of Father’s horses had kicked me.

“Ngh,” I managed to grunt. “‘M okay.” Sam put his arm around me and the ache in my side spiked. “Agh, not so okay,” I gasped. “I think that’s a rib or two. How’re you?”

“Twisted my ankle, and I think I cracked my shoulder on the landing,” he said quietly. “We’re about to have company, you okay for standing?”

“I can manage,” I said, putting a charge into a quick numbing spell. Nowhere near as good as a proper heal, but if Sam was right we didn’t have the time. The pain in my ribs faded - I’d have to get those bound before healing, then a shower, a bottle of wine and a nice comfortable bed sounded really good at that point - and we hauled each other to our feet just as the door burst open and a platoon of men in blue uniforms charged in sabers at the ready.

While they took their time arranging themselves in a defensive formation I took the moment to examine my surroundings more closely. We had arrived in the middle of a great ballroom, white marble and gilt in a style I didn’t recognize. The light that flooded my senses on arrival seemed to cling to the walls and floor, tendrils creeping along the ceiling. My godsense reached out and touched the light.

We’d landed in a nexus, but not the nexus that we’d left from. The Sunnydale nexus was old and strong and evil, a vampire latched onto a cosm draining it of every drop of Inspiration it could. This nexus wasn’t aspected, but it was older and stronger than Sunnydale and instead of pulling power into itself it was pumping power outwards, a great flow of telluric force flooding into the world. No wonder my godsense blanked out when we arrived!

This little revelation took no more than a second, by which time the soldiers had their weapons at the ready. “Nicht bewegen! Wer sind Sie und wo kommen Sie her?” the commander barked.

“That’s a very interesting question with a lot of philosophical tangents,” Sam replied. I let him play; he was in his element. In the meantime, I could feel something pricking against my godsense. Somewhere in the array of colorful guards, I could feel the magic in the nexus vibrate against something. Sorcerer, I signalled with the hand on Sam’s back. Strong, attuned. Sam tensed a little, his hand on my waist squeezing back.
Stop him? A good question. I’m a strong war-witch but whoever the nexus was resonating against was potentially stronger. In a straight up fight it’d be close. But if there’s one thing my time as an adventurer alone and with Samuel had taught me, it’s that only idiots fight fair. I concentrated, grabbing a tiny fraction of the nexus and using that power to charge our barriers.
Barrier up. I could feel Sam relax a little as he shifted from completely combat-focused to the mask of affability he used in sticky situations. I looked over the force standing around us, searching for the magic-user, and settled on a neatly bearded man standing near the vanguard. My eyes met his, and he stepped back, momentarily stunned. I wondered what he saw there.

“Okay,” Sam said clearly, “we don’t want any trouble here, so if somebody could tell us where we are and what today’s date is we’ll happily get out of your way.”

~***~

The latest residents of Castle Falkenstein arrived in incredibly dramatic fashion… (Art by Tom Olan Fictograph.)
From the Journals of Tom Olan…
The newcomer spoke English. No, that’s not quite right, he spoke American, a language and a dialect that harmonized with my 20th Century soul and one I never expected to hear again.

“I will answer your questions if you answer mine first,” Colonel Tarlenhelm said evenly in English. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“Well, I’m Sam, this is Flavia,” the interloper said. “We’re travellers, a long way from home.” He eyed the Colonel. “Quite a longer way from home than I think we hoped, in fact. As for what we were doing, ah, at first we were falling and then we were crashing.” The man looked up at the hole in the ceiling and whistled appreciatively. “That is a very big hole. Wow. Er, sorry about that incidentally. Circumstances.”

“You fell from an airship?” The Colonel sounded skeptical, and I didn’t blame him.

The interloper’s eyes lit up with manic glee. “An airship!” he cried. “That would make a great deal more sense, wouldn’t it? Sadly, no. We didn’t fall off an airship. If I were to say we arrived out of a hole in the fabric of space and time, would that make any sense to you?”

Morrolan choked. “The Veil,” he said, staring at the pair. “You fell through the Veil?”

“Not a phrase I recognize, but I’ll take it. Also, not so much ‘fell through’ as ‘were launched through.’ Anyway, now that I’ve answered your questions, could somebody tell me where in Hell we are and what the date is?”

“You’re in Castle Falkenstein,” I supplied. “And it’s the 30th of April, 1871.” The intruders looked at each other.

“Walpurgisnacht,” the woman said. Her voice was low, like Marianne’s, and she had an accent that sounded oddly familiar but I couldn’t place. “Day and month match, at least.”

“D’you think we landed on the other side of Sunnydale?”

“I doubt it, this is a nexus, but it doesn’t have the right aspect to be connected to Sunnydale…” The two drifted off into quiet conversation of a technical nature that I didn’t understand then and only barely understand now. Rhyme had an ear cocked towards the jargon, but his attention was fixed more on the man’s - Sam’s - gun holster, which contained a very pretty piece of weaponry that reminded me of Buck Rogers. Marianne kept her guard up but had plainly filed the two under “eccentric but not immediately threatening,” and I followed her lead. As for Morrolan, his eyes were locked on the woman.

“Pretty sure she’s taken,” I murmured.

He broke contact just long enough to give me a look before murmuring “That’s… Never mind. Later.” and returning to his observations.

“So!” I said. The intruders jumped. “You’re in Castle Falkenstein, the personal residence of His Majesty King Ludwig II of Bavaria, and since it seems you came here by honest accident, you’re welcome to stay the night until we figure out what to do with you.”

The woman - Flavia - smiled. “That’s very generous of you, mister…?”

“Olam. Captain Tom Olam, of His Majesty’s Hussars.”

“Olam,” Sam said in a I-know-that-name tone. I froze. “You wouldn’t happen to have a buddy named Pondsmith, would you?”

I had no idea how to process that. But before I could reply, Auberon showed up and everything got more complicated.

~TBC~

For the record, the idea came first, the picture came second and the story came third. --M.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Cobalt Greywalker]

Yay, battle scenes. Hopefully I can get to a good stopping point...

---

~ This ~ Yuuno thought, slipping aside a thrust of a Divider blade. ~ is going fairly badly. ~ His retaliatory palm thrust was backed by a dense 4 stack Multiple Defenser, which blew the Eclipse infected Nazi almost instantaneously into his own 3 meter deep hole as if he’d been shot out of a cannon. It wasn’t the first time this had happened to one of them, so Yuuno knew he had about 30 seconds before the Driver’s regeneration got him moving again.

He’d barely got the first line of a sealing aria done before he’d had to dodge an AMF boosted plasma bolt and abort the spell. Frustratingly, this also wasn’t the first time that had happened.

Nanoha, when she wasn’t actively engaged, was noting how aware the hostiles were of each other and their enemies. She’d vaguely recognised some buddy system thing that fighter jets did but flight mages normally didn’t have to do.

Her Strike Cannon stutter-cracked as it fired a three round burst at the Divider she was engaging. He dodged right into her Mid-shield Plasma Cannon’s line of fire, and the body fell smoking from the air. Whatever that flight suit was made of was clearly more than fire proof. Why no barrier jackets?

She had to abort the Beam Cannon’s firing sequence due to the Mobius Lieutenant’s sword clash moving through her line of fire. The Lieutenant’s wings beat strongly against her opponent’s flight spell, and at this angle Nanoha could see again how her armour had manipulated itself to allow the blonde to GROW her wings out. The white clad mage wondered where Mobius had found an actual metamorph?

Eve was far too focused on the enemy in front of her. While she had come to love her adoptive family, it was her adoptive mother that had most helped her come to terms with being a living weapon.
Which was why when she grabbed her pistol with her hair, she made sure it was only in concussion mode. The Unclean thing ate at her skin, trying to infect her, consume her, and she would not allow it! It would be PURGED!

The pistol’s barrel was jabbed hard into the gut of the infected Nazi, and the mass effect bloom of the concussion mode caused an unnatural bulge in the Nazi’s back before he was thrown away like a crash test dummy in a head-on smash.

The blonde activated her omni-blade, and scraped it down her arm-blade as she threw herself forward with a massive beat of her wings.

The Driver got his Divider up to block the omni-blade, letting the superhot carbide blade carve deeply into it. Eve focused her surprising strength to use the weapons lock to get the blade out of position for her arm-blade to carve through his arm above the elbow like paper. She continued the spin her swing had started, morphing her hair into a comically large mallet and smashing it into the side of the Nazi’s head.

As the now disarmed Nazi tumbled like a ragdoll into the forest below, she flicked the wrecked Divider and attached arm off her omni-blade then used it to sterilise her arm-blade again before dismissing them both.

As her adoptive mother had taught her, there are times where not being nice works best. Now, she had a Captain to track down.

***

After Avenir had blindsided the plasma-fixated freak and his subordinate had stretched her wings (so to speak), he figured he’d find a secure position after picking up the mess.

But no. Mr. Overcompensation kept dragging the trainee back to around his position. Colin couldn’t help the kid much, too much of a risk of hitting him instead of the Nazi. The veteran Scout worked out why the Nazi had wanted to stay close to him when the motion sensors spotted four more bodies heading his way through the ground clutter.

While he still wasn’t comfortable with his shiny new D38, he had to admit the Toybox gun freak had done a good job rebalancing it for him in the hour or so they had and upgrading the smartgun to his spec while he was out; he just wished he’d had enough time to do the final tweaks before they’d shipped out.

The three round burst took the greyish skinned, fatigue-clad and misshapen human form high in the chest with enough force to knock him off his feet and scattered the rest of his pack.

“Had to be a fucking Beastmaster too.” He grumbled, picking another target and dropping it before letting the frame take the strain of an 80 kph dash to better cover. “Hoping the last two are pack mules.”

The tac-net signalled an alert as his two dropped targets started moving again.

“Oh, give me a fucking break.”

He led the wolf pack on a merry chase, angling his course towards the insertion point. Nazi’s usually had grenades at their fall back points. Colin liked grenades, you could use them for so many things. Stupid regs not letting him take any to a meet-n-greet. Stupid Lieutenant’s not listening to their more experienced scouts. Not even one in the barrel of the D38’s integrated grenade launcher (she’d checked). At least he’d brought some toys.

~ Only one heat source? ~ He noted as his sensors came in range, then his eyes widened and he leapt upwards with all the power his hardsuit could spare.

The tree to the front right exploded, splinters and nails filling the air. If he’d been right by it the kick would have hurt and debris would have blinded him for a few seconds. Letting the gecko grips in his boots grab the nearest tree for a moment before kicking off again, a chilling realisation came over him.

He was being hunted like an animal.

The hyperspectral camera in his smartgun caught a faint silhouette and he got off a snap shot in that direction before the electro-gravitics kicked in to soak the impact of his landing.

“Could use some backup about now Leftenant.” He called over the comms. All he got was a message ACK in his HUD. “Figures.”

There was a bright pink flash overhead and he winced at the telluric feedback. The HUD bleeped a warning as the wolf pack got close.

Time to move. But first he popped a ping-pong sized ball out of his backpack and dropped it between the roots of the nearest tree.

***

Nanoha narrowed her eyes and flipped her Strike Cannon to closed mode. It wasn’t helping that way.

Flier Fin wings appeared on her back.

“Flash Impact.” Raising Heart announced as she blurred into movement.

The Driver tried to block, but the explosion of power on the clashing of blades snapped all the bones in that arm.

“Smasher!” Nanoha cried, swinging the Plasma Unit round and firing on impact.

A temporary pink sun appeared over the battlefield.

~ Status? ~ She called telepathically to base, watching the charred mess of a body fall to the ground. Regeneration and AMF meant you had to hit harder, but the target could survive it better.

~ Echoes clearing. ~ Alto replied. ~ Backup ETA 2 minutes. ~

~ Roger. Yuuno? ~

***

~ Give me a minute. ~ He grunted telepathically, yanking on the garrotte he’d used the spider’s web of Alchemic Chain to wrap around his combatant’s neck. The hand the Driver had managed to get to it made things much harder.

Still, it’d distracted the Eclipse infected Nazi enough.

“Sealing Bind!” The blond mage invoked, causing the chains to glow.

The Driver tried to yell as the combination of sealing spell and Struggle Bind collapsed his defences enough for the physical chain to bite deep. It was all downhill from there.

~ Target contained. ~

***

Thoma wished he was doing as well. His opponent had far more combat training and experience, but was not used to the abilities of an Eclipse Driver. He on the other hand had been bashed around by Nanoha Takamachi for a few months now, but was expending a lot of effort to not let the Eclipse virus get the best of him without Lily to contain things. So it all ended up even.

At least he didn’t have to worry about getting infected again. Oh. Not a good idea, but what was with Eclipse?

Thoma darted in, smashing the Divider away with his own and punching the guy in the face with the other hand. Given the blades on his fingers and bracer, this hurt the guy a lot. Kicking him between the legs even more. Kaiser thank Doctor Shamal that he knew regeneration covered that as well. Still, he didn’t waste his opening and stabbed the Driver in the heart.

Then he concentrated and focused the Zero Effect into the body. Away from the regeneration effect.

The Divider shattered, and the wing like mark of an Eclipse infectee peeled itself off the body like dried flakes blowing off in the breeze.

Thoma pulled his Divider out of the man’s heart with barely a mark left on him, and grabbed his unconscious body by the wrecked shirt to keep him from falling.

~ Target silenced. Medical containment necessary. ~ He broadcast.

~ Understood. ~ The corporal on Wolfram replied.

~ Also, Captain Green had ground forces in pursuit. He’ll need backup. ~

***

The wolf pack slowed as its tracker sniffed the air for traces of their prey.

With a crunch, Eve dropped on the rear-guard like an anvil and swept across the others with her D38 in full auto. The levels of regeneration showed by their airborne compatriots had loosened Eve’s typical restraint, and her hatred for the Unclean reduced it even more.

But she would not kill.

That left plenty of options though.

A plasma blast smashed into her, the deflectors doing their job of protecting her. Instinct had her fire back as she moved to cover. The Captain was in stealth mode, burst comms minimising signal intercept. That was fairly annoying, given she was supposed to be his partner for this, but understandable as a data burst was decoded and the tac-net updated.

A Nazi with therm-optic stealth on par with theirs, needing hyperspectral vision to clear it? The guys in armour-dev would hate her if she got this info back to them. Dad and Mother were supposed to be going on vacation next month as well.

Eve ramped up the suit sensors and reviewed the tac-net map. With the unconscious ground team, the Bureau should be arriving in force soon. That meant either a retreat or an ambush. More likely the former, but in the latter case…

***

Her overcoat wrapping around her, Cinque looked over the scene as Yuuno’s captive was secured by the Raptors with a scowl.

~ We’re going to need to default to Alpha-Two from now on. ~ She advised through the telepathic link to base.

~ That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think? ~ The voice of Hayate Yagami came down from Wolfram.

~ These were soldiers with Eclipse enhancement. Their ROE would not be as restrictive as ours. I just hope too many Bureau members don’t have to die to prove me right. ~

~ I agree Mistress. ~ The blue and white sent from where he was scenting the ground. ~ The Bureau, for all its power, is more a police force than a military. It is now facing the fact of other nations like Belka had to. Things will get…messy. ~ The wolf stopped. ~ I have the scent of the invaders. ~ He sent sharply.

Yuuno stopped writing his report at the tone, Cinque narrowed her eye, and Hayate felt goose bumps forming.

~ What? ~ She asked.

~ Beyond the Eclipse scent, there is something…wrong. ~

And he took off into the forest at a lope.

***

~ The problem with invisible Nazi hide and seek ~ Colin thought morosely, ~ is that Nazi’s tend to cheat. ~ But that was OK, so did he.

The tac-net updated with a data burst from Eve. Seems like she’d finally got the point of secure data comms. Still, she had been a bit busy. Colin read the message, watched his sensors, and carefully swept his smartgun camera around. He had positioned himself with a reasonable view of the arrival area, a more lightly forested part of the valley. If he had the time he’d upload his custom smartgun software, but he usually had to tweak it anyway.

His motion sensors pinged the arrival of the wolf pack in the area, followed by a new ground contact. Dammit, didn’t any Beebee have some sense?

***

For all their enhanced senses, the Nazi Eclipse wolf pack barely had time to react as the wolf-like Guardian Beast sprang from the underbrush, transforming as he went, to smash into the lead element with a growl more suited for his animal form.

This distracted the rest from the more obvious sounds of a running body just enough for Cinque to launch a spread of Stingers. Most of them hit, but only in non-vital locations. Then she was close enough to start slicing.

Zafira viciously pounded his enemy, trying not to draw blood unnecessarily, hoping to cause a knockout. That hadn’t stopped him using a maiming attack on the Driver’s sword arm, shattering the bones as well as dislocating it. He backed the grey-skinned infected up towards a tree before he unleashed a powerful kick to knock it into the plant. The Wolkenritter’s experience meant he had chosen this particular tree as one of Cinque’s missed knives was available to allow him the opportunity to nail the Driver to it. Thus restrained, he drove his gauntleted fist into the Nazi’s face. Then he went to assist Cinque.

The child-like Combat Cyborg was glad of the help, as although she’d divested one of their weapon after slicing his wrist the others didn’t seem to really care for their colleagues. Zafira’s intervention took one blade away, and the distraction let her dodge enough for the remaining blade wielder to stab the other. Cinque jammed a Stinger blade into the assemblage and jumped away, triggering Rumble Detonator.

Only the instinctive use of her Shell Coat to protect from fragments kept her from being seriously injured by the unexpected plasma bolt to her blind side.

There was a sharp crack as something passed by her, followed by a crunch. Then a mottled green and brown turning to black form appeared from the other side and wrapped an arm around her to leap away from further plasma bolts.

“You OK?” The female voice asked, Cinque barely remembering that this was one of the Mobius team.

“Yes.”

The figure’s helmet nodded and turned to where the weapon fire came from.

“That’s the Captain warned.” The Lieutenant said. “He’s heading for the insertion point to intercept.”

~ Backup to distortion point! ~

***

The sound of underbrush and grass being crunched filled the air, a brief flicker of form accompanying it.

There was a crack, and with an effect like white snow on a mistuned analogue TV, a grey and black armoured form staggered forward. It had two craters in its armour plating, one left torso and the other in the middle of its back still sparking.

The figure didn’t stop moving, it just started weaving between trees.

When the figure entered the clearing it sped up, making for the strapped down and gagged misshapen figure on the six-wheeled buggy. It was less than a metre away when a pink bolt of energy appeared in its way, turned sharply, and punched it off its feet backwards.

Sprawled on its back, the figure had a good view as the white clad woman floated down towards her pointing the long-barrelled weapon on her left arm at it.

“You are under arrest.” Nanoha said. “Further resistance will result in additional and more serious charges. Any statements made will be taken as evidence.”

~ I have the final targets in custody. Medical assistance needed for number 10. ~

~ We’re still missing one! ~ Came the call as the final Driver shot from the forest, still missing most of an arm but not his Divider. Nanoha got her Mid-shield into place to take the strike, but the figure on the ground made a move for the transport.

A black armoured figure appeared from behind the buggy and pointed its rifle directly at the other figures head.

“Zu diesem Bereich kann ich nicht verpassen.” He said in flatly accented German. “So ergeben. Es ist besser für uns alle.”

With a roar, the Driver disengaged and came at him.

Colin pulled the trigger.

While it didn’t technically have concussion mode, the D38’s integrated underbarrel grenade launcher could be made to have something of the same effect, if on a wider area and much shorter range.

Bodychecked by the expanding mass effect field, the Nazi sniper was again lifted from their feet and thrown back.

Colin let the recoil do the same, falling backwards while coincidently finishing clearing the firing line his tac-net had pointed out.

The Eclipse Driver found himself smashed face first into the ground a few metres away with a heavy plasma blast.

“We done now?” Colin asked, getting up. “Cause I gotta say, you people party hard.”

---

So, on to the next bit...

If anyone wants me to explain bits about the Mobius team's gear, I can do that.

[Cobalt Greywalker]

You know, comments would be nice. Otherwise I'd have to assume nobody cares besides M Fnord.

Anyway, more world-building bits as I'm trying to get a good chunk of story together.

---

Scrabble Yards S-17 Transworld scout ship.

The S-17 is known as the Saucer, due to its highly rounded ovoid shape, has been in production since 2009. The Block I’s were produced after winning a short bid process, mainly on their modularity of internals. Even before the second delivery, the first scout was bringing back new tech and info that otherwise invalidated the design
Of the twenty Block I’s, only three still exist in anything like one piece. No. 3 is in the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum. No 7 is still in the service of Professor Deidre Griest as a personal transport, and No 12 is at the bottom of Tokyo Bay in Kaiju-4.
Blocks II through V were partial spaceframes (the same spaceframes as they rebuilt them), trying to incorporate the tech improvement the dwindling supply of Block I’s were bringing back.
The iconic ovoid shape now known as the Saucer was established by the Block VI’s in 2010. Integrated enchantments in the modular technologies allowed rapid upgrading (major components like engines in a week, up to a month for a full refit), allowing the ships to stay current. The Block VI’s remained in production to 2018 with the Mk. LXVI, and a total of 1575 produced. It wasn’t until 2015 that the Block XII’s entered production, driven by the needs of the UNSAD (current production run is 500 ships). As of 2027, rumours of Block XXI’s are rampant.

Current base model specs are as follows:
Scrabble Yards S-17L Transword Scout Ship – Block XII Mk. XIX.
Length – 30.5 m/100 feet.
Width – 16.7 m/55 feet.
Depth – 7.6m/25 feet.
Power plants – General Electric C-5 Antimatter spiked Hydrogen Fusion Reactor, Boeing Mk III Thermal Reclamation System, solar absorbent surface (See Defenses)
Drive systems – Cerberus System Mk VII Tantalus Dark Energy FTL core, Poseidon Type XII Contr-Grav lifter, 2 x Turia Antimatter spiked Hyper-Impulse Engines, Mobius Group Type XVII Transworld Displacement System
Weapons – 8 x Lasertronix 2 MJ Pulse Point defence domes, Fabrique Nationale d'Herstal Class V AcMag Multi Role launcher (forward facing)
Defences – Cerberus Systems Mk XXX Kinetic Barrier system, Systems Alliance/Boeing Type V Thermal Sink system, BT Class II ablative armour, Megadyne Type XXIII bioplastic radar absorbent/chameleon surface, Sarif Industries optical camouflage system, Mobius Labs Class VI Electronic Warfare Suite.
Computer – Orbit Systems Mk II Quantum Processing Macroframe.
Crew – 2 min, 10 standard.
Cargo – 250 tonnes. (Yes, the story about them driving a MBT into the bay is true. The walking an Atlas in is false. They loaded it lying down and in parts.)
Speed - FTL –(cruise – max – emergency(12h)) 1800c|5ly/day – 2000c|5.5ly/day – 2191.44c|6ly/day
Speed –STL – 1000G
Range – 9 Months
Escape – 3 x 5 person re-entry pods with Mobius Group Type IX Transworld Displacer Pack

There is no stock version of the Saucer. Every vessel produced has been modified to the specifications of the customer, some quite extensively, and aftermarket reconfiguration is the norm.

The UNSAD fleet version reconfigures the cargo hold and crew capacity to allow a better weapons load and defensive systems. Precise details are classified, but do include better shielding , adding an anti-particle accelerator cannon, and loading disruptor torpedoes.

[Bluemage]

Sorry 'bout that.  The Gray Light has been strong with me... and I have SO MANY PROJECTS in or waiting to be in process right now.
Reading this is one of them... but I have to say you have my interest.  My attention is just slightly (HAH!) delayed.

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[Dartz]

I'm not familiar with Nanoha beyond strikers. Although, I suspect there're those in the fandom who would suggest that that's a good state to be in. Like GSC Burst - it never happened.

Otherwise, I've been trying to think of something to do with the setting that either isn't a rehash of the stuff for Fenspace, or isn't just GURPS IW with a shine on it.... and then I have a bunch of other things to do. I tried to to something related to Saving the Titanic, but it's dying in a fire.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Black Aeronaut]

Pretty much what Dartz said.

The only thing I could come up with off the top of my head would be The Continuuing Voyages of Garrick Grimm and Company. Thematically speaking, it would fit, but the sheer amount of dakka we're talking about would give most Space Marines pause. And that's not even getting into His Company - an eclectic mash up of misfits, outcasts, wanderers, lost boys (and girls), cowboys, infomorphs, critters (cute and otherwise), and you get the picture.

Besides, until I get a major portion of Garrick Grimm's Solo Run finished, I really can only begin to guess what he's gonna look like in the end. (Not that I don't know what I want to shoot for in my story - simply put, the future is hardly what we imagine it to be.)

So yeah. A group like this running roughshod over the multiverse would probably do more than just gain a little attention - despite the obvious good they'd be doing they're like the unholy offspring of Vash the Stampede and The Lovely Angels, and are therefore wanted by just about everyone for anything you can think of. :p

[Cobalt Greywalker]

Urgh. This took forever to get to this point, and now I've got an info-dumpy scene I want to get around. Then there's the worldbuilding things I'm trying to sort out, even if it's just for my work.

---

Sitting in the slight clearing, Eve watched as the Bureau medic examined the mule, the Captain standing by her while helping their tech person understand the support framework.

Their increasing looks of disgust made that clear.

Finally, the Captain moved back in her direction as a white coloured arcane construct appeared under the buggy. With a dissolve effect and a flash the buggy and tech vanished.

Eve’s attention turned to the slight hitch in the Captain’s step.

“Are you injured sir?” She asked, getting the medic’s attention.

“Not really.” Colin shrugged. “No matter what they tell you or how good the tech is, you still need a couple of days to recover from implant surgery.”

The medic stopped raising her hands and looked at him with a cautious gaze in her purple eyes. Eve didn’t think that was why the others had stared at her, different shade of blonde not to mention the hair length.

“Implant?” The short haired blonde in the doctor’s coat asked.

“Disease countermeasures.” Colin shrugged again. “Don’t want to catch, or heaven forbid give away some bug. Staying in a sealed suit for long periods ain’t fun, and people tend not to like talking to a visor.” He gave the medic a wry look. “It’s as healed as the arm, thanks again for that, it’s just me not being used to it and being old.” He turned back to Eve. “So, what’s the read on the blood splattered on your suit?”

“Highly infectious contact agent, telluric enhanced, targeted mutagen. Robust, standard countermeasures will have only a fifty percent chance of holding the infection long enough for rapid medical assistance. Upgrades will be required.” Eve paused. “Standard thermal sterilisation works, I need to be cleansed.”

“Right-oh. Secured a sample?” Colin asked, deploying his omni-blade.

“Level four containment.” Eve stated, standing.

“Your countermeasures.” The medic asked as Colin put his glowing blade carefully to the dried blood for a second and moved on. “How available are they?”

“Ours?” Colin replied. “Not very. Expensive but necessary for service personnel, bonded Guild members get it as well. Part of standard procedure is a medical survey, so everyone else can just get a shot good for a couple of weeks the day before travel or do it the proper way and get the immunisations a couple of weeks in advance. Basic general protection is only just getting released, and standard med-kits have broad-spectrum antibiotics and antivirals good for immediate treatment.” He stood up, blade being reabsorbed into the omnitool. “All done. Safe enough for you to wash it off.”

“Thank you.” Eve relaxed slightly.

“Not a problem Mizuhara. Anyway, standard is upgrades needed every half year, but depending on the sitrep they’ll do things faster. Mizuhara’s better with this.”

“Countermeasure updates will be ready in two weeks, vaccine will be about six months. Based on its telluric enhanced nature.” Eve looked at the medic. “It is not known how much work would be required for use in thaum-linkers and others.”

“Oh.” The short-haired blond sounded disappointed. “Um, anyway. I’ve been told to extend an invitation to our ship for a joint investigation.”

“Not sure we can.” Colin winced. “What we know about your laws says our weapons are illegal, and our regs say we’ve got to be reasonably armed when deployed. Not sure how that stacks with me being diplomatic courier rated either.”

The Beebee medic looked to be listening to someone. Probably the telluric thought-casting they’d read about.

“Give us twelve hours. We can get some emergency licences in that time, what with the diplomatic considerations.”

“That would allow us to decontaminate and recover.” Eve noted.

“And get started on the reports this mess is gonna need.” Colin groaned, causing both blondes to wince in sympathy.

***

“So, how would our brand new medichines actually do?” Colin asked as the decon cycle finished and the inner door opened.

“Maybe eighty percent chance of total elimination in five minutes, but with side effects as infected tissue is purged.” Eve responded, removing her helmet. “Why did you lie?”

“I didn’t.” Colin told her, removing his own. “I just left things out to prevent our full capabilities from being disclosed. Remember, this was just a meet-n-greet. Things can still go tits-up later. This way we stay on their good side. Plus, wanna bet they’ll be talking about it right now?”

“Ah.” Eve released the seals on her hardsuit.

“Maki, sitrep.” Collin called out as he did the same.

“Everything’s A-OK here.” The young female voice came from the overhead speakers. “Been fairly boring actually. I’ve already downloaded the recorder data, and once again the luck of the Inspired strikes.”

“And once again I’m telling you it ain’t real.” Colin snapped. “Mizuhara, go grab the shower. I’ll finish up here. How your hair stands decon I don’t know.”

Eve pulled a lock round to her front, and sighed sadly.

“I wish I had an extra pair of hands; it would save water.”

Colin paused, pulling a leg out of his hardsuit.

“Girl, you’re about half my age, we just met a couple of days ago, and this isn’t one of those stupid Alex Sparrow novels. That, and your mother would kill me.”

Eve was blushing horribly.

“S-sorry sir, I didn’t mean-“

“Yeah, I know.” Colin cut her off. “Sorry on my end too. Having one young lady kiss me out of the blue kinda made me jumpy that way.”

Eve nodded in thanks, not meeting his eyes, and walked briskly out of the arrival bay.

“Way to go old man.” Colin grumbled to himself. “Not like this mission isn’t messed up enough. Stupid REMFs, not planning properly, not recognising AGIs as people, now you’re screwing things up as well.”

“At least it’s not dull.” Maki put in.

***

“He’s not given us the whole story.” Teana Lanster noted, going over the logs again.

“’Corse he hasn’t.” Vita snorted, reading the fight report Thoma had submitted and noting parts he’d need to change. “History’s littered with examples of groups not being careful when meeting and ending with one or both wiped out, or long standing enemies.”

Teana stopped and looked at the small Lieutenant.

“What?” Vita grumbled, not looking up from the report.

The junior Enforcer turned back to her analysis of the logs.

“Shamal’s really pushing to get that vaccine, if what they said is true.” Vita started again. “Be a good thing to trade for, which’ll make things go easier.”

“Who are you and what have you done with Lieutenant Vita?” Teana said in a deadpan tone of voice.

“Humph.” Vita grumped. “Youngsters these days, no respect for their elders.”

“Is that why you get asked for ID all the time?”

“They just can’t accept my greatness.”

There were a few seconds of trying to smother smiles.

“I’m worried about that Lieutenant though.” Teana continued. “Sounds a bit too much like the Mariage to me.”

“Metamorphs usually are scary, especially ones as talented as this one seems to be.” Vita commented. “Hopefully we don’t have to make up new training regimes for them. Still, not as bad as those ground Eclipse soldiers.”

“Ugh.” Teana shuddered. “Why would anyone do that to themselves?”

“Who said they had a choice?” Vita said simply, causing a cold silence to descend over the room.

***

“I hate paperwork.” The woman with shoulder length brunette hair groaned, slumping in her chair at her desk.

“It’s not so bad Master.” The doll-like figure at her own properly sized desk said, shuffling her own paperwork holowindows.

“When you have to get emergency licences for mass based weaponry, and everyone and their device needs to have why explained again and again and again…”

“At least it’s done now.” The doll said, brushing back her light blue hair. “Besides, the medical reports have come in.” She pushed one of her holowindows at her companion.

It appeared before her, and expanded to an equivalent size.

“Hum. Wonder why the sniper wasn’t also infected?” She mused. At least that spared resources for the containment of the others. The brunette’s blue eyes skimmed the dry, technical details of the support framework on the transport. She deliberately didn’t dwell on the individual medical reports, just on the rough overview. Even those vagaries turned her stomach.

She hoped their visitors from Mobius had some good news, but she knew better by now.

***

When she came back into the equipment bay, she was feeling much better. The loose t-shirt and sweatpants helped her relax, her hair was refreshed and only slightly damp, and she’d managed to dictate her initial report in the shower.

What she found was Colin apparently multitasking. He’d also changed into a t-shirt and cargo pants, and was running diagnostics on both hardsuits, editing his report, and apparently reprogramming his D38.

“Hey.” He said, not looking up. “Cereal bars are in the box by the heat clips. You had some stress fluctuations in the liquid crystal layer of your suit; I’ve cleared that up and done some more optimisations on the reactive crystal system. I’m still tweaking the code on the shockwave mode I hacked for the D38’s launcher; that should be done in an hour or two depending if an image makes timing this build set. I’ve FINALLY got my D38’s smartgun system properly upgraded. I mean, no offence to him but the gunsmith never saw something like my D34’s system.” He paused. “I miss my D34. Anyway, Maki’s worked up a translation matrix and is compiling a set of translators we can hand out so don’t forget your earbuds. In the new upload for your omnitool is the updated comm encryption, as well as a better firewall. Seriously, they really need to up their game at home. Also, don’t forget to have your tac-agent running this time. It’ll speed up your reports, among all the other things.”

Eve took in the stream of information.

“Shower’s free.” She replied.

“Thanks, I’ll grab it once the suit checks are done. I’ve had some bars myself, then I should probably grab a catnap before we head out.”

“Which uniform?” Eve asked.

“Field, don’t need to be too formal.”

“And it doesn’t give up too much information on us. Surely Class B if we’re to be helping their investigation.” Eve pointed out.

“Can’t carry my gear properly with base or formal.” Colin disagreed. “Plus, regs on arms.”

Eve restrained her wince, knowing that the Captain hadn’t said anything on her adherence to regulations previously and how it had made things difficult.

***

“That was disappointing.” The black clad long haired blonde said as her colleague stepped out of the containment area.

“Belkan and this German are not as closely related as we assumed.” The other woman said, acknowledging the Raptors standing guard before moving off down the corridor. “The brief sample Raising Heart captured did not help, and that seemed to be a translation device anyway.”

“Yet another thing to ask for. Headquarters will need a full survey mission for Earth at this point.” The blonde sighed.

Her companion thought on that as a red haired fairy flew up to them.

“Master, Captain. They had to move the trapped guy to Vaizen.” She said, facing the Blonde’s companion.

“That’s worrying.” The Blonde said. “That means the implantation is extensive.”

“The Mobian Captain did say it was not meant to be removed.” The fairy’s master pointed out.

“That doesn’t speak well for the Bureau’s relationship with them.” The Blonde noted.

“Having an enemy that you can despise is a powerful thing. Dangerously powerful.”

“Signum.” The Blonde said, unsettled.

“Testarossa, you have never been in War.” Signum warned, the ponytail of pink hair swaying as she turned her experienced eyes to her companion. “It is much easier to fight something you can say is evil, monstrous, or just plain cruel. You can tell yourself it is the right thing. But good intentions can easily lead one astray.”

“Geez, this got depressing.” The fairy grumped, folding her arms across her chest. “Anyway, aren’t the Mobians due up in about ten minutes?”

“True Agito.” The blonde replied. “We should go meet them.”

***

Colin rubbed the side of his head, trying to work out the headache he had as they appeared on a platform.

“OK sir?” Eve asked quietly.

“I’ll be fine, I took some paracetamol beforehand.” He muttered back, adjusting the backpack and walking off to their welcoming committee.

“Good to see you in person Captain.” Colonel Yagami said, holding out a hand.

“Nice to meet you too.” Colin shook, then passed her off to Eve. “How’re things going?”

“Not well.” A long haired blonde in a black uniform said. “Enforcer Fate T Harlaown.”

“Oh?” Eve asked, looking at the black clad blonde.

“We are having translation difficulties.” A pink haired woman in navy blues replied. She had a fairylike being, also in a navy blue uniform so probably also an officer, floating over a shoulder. “The language we thought was equivalent turned out not to match well.”

“Good job we brought spares then.” Colin said, swinging his backpack off his shoulders. “We have a dozen translators for use.” He reached in and rummaged around to bring out a small case. Popping the clasps he opened it and showed off the devices. They looked to Hayate like hands free ear mounted headsets for cell phones used back on Earth, with a switch on the outside. “They’re fairly simple, the switch selects the output language from English, Mid-Childan, and German or off. Square, circle, triangle, blank, in that order. Just stick it in your ear with the thin bit pointing to your mouth. Probably only ninety percent accurate on Mid-Childan at most, and we’ve encountered so many slight variants and accents that they’re only ninety eight percent accurate on German.” He closed the lid and handed it off to the Enforcer. “The charges are good for about a week if you turn them off when not using them. We shouldn’t need them, we have our own system.”

“Thank you, these should help.” Harlaown smiled, taking the case.

“Right then, I believe the Colonel and I are due to have a chat.” Colin shrugged the backpack back on. “The Leftenant here can help with the investigation if you want, I’m more a tech person.”

“Any assistance is welcome.” The Enforcer said. “This way please.”

“So,” Colin asked as Eve followed the Enforcer and pink haired woman, “Shall we?”

[Black Aeronaut]

*Sighs* I like this, but part of the problem for me is that the only thing I have any real reference for is Nanoha and her crew. Any chance I can get a list of what you're drawing off of here?

[Dartz]

"It's a dimensional ship?"

"Yes?"

"That runs on steam?"

"Yes?"

"It's a dimensional ship that runs on steam?"

"Yes. Is that a problem?"

"Relax Savannah. Remember these're the same people who used rockets the size of skyscrapers to go to their moon without using magic."
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Cobalt Greywalker]

*Sighs* I like this, but part of the problem for me is that the only thing I have any real reference for is Nanoha and her crew. Any chance I can get a list of what you're drawing off of here?

Right, getting this straight for myself as well:

IMPORTANT NOTE: I’ll be mentioning several franchises in this. Unless explicitly stated, they are NOT the canon storylines.

ANOTHER IMPORTANT NOTE: I’m also an inveterate wiki-walker. In many cases wikis are my primary source, so if I get a detail wrong that’s more than likely the reason after my poor human memory.

Mobuis/Zero-Zero: Colin’s home worldline, part of the Inspired cross-rip (how else would Griest contact her alternate doing the EXACT SAME THING?). Quite a few things are based on Infinity from GURPS Infinite Worlds, but it’s not exactly the same. I’ve been focusing on more cyberpunk influences for tech they’ve reinvented, and keeping the mystical influences down (mainly I can’t think of good ones to mix in). I’m mixing and matching based on what seems to be the best use of various bits. I’ll add as I find interesting/useful things.
The biggest influence on Zero-Zero is Mass Effect tech, simply because it’s so useful. There are other things mixed in, particularly stuff from Battletech (armour, energy weapons, POWER). There’s some Halo stuff in there as well, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
The other big thing brought in from the rest of the multiverse is medical tech. Cybernetics is a given (Ghost in the Shell level), along with cloning tech from Shadowrun, and healing devices like from Stargate/Star Trek (though not precisely those).
Thaumotech (lit. miracle technology) is stuff that relies on telluric energies to work. HOW they work is still very much up in the air for a fair chunk of it, but some of it can be replicated.

Eve Mizuhara is the adopted daughter of Professor and Brigadier General Mizuhara. Makoto and Ifurita from El Hazard to you and me. Eve herself is from the Black Cat series (more the anime than the manga).

Maki is an AGI and ship mind for Colin and Eve’s transport. AGI and a chunk of the more advanced nanotech are from the Eclipse Phase RPG. I was good and paid for my copies of the PDFs, but you can get them for free if you want.

The Nanoha Universe is pretty much in the Force series at this point. Things are mostly recognisable for that point in time, but I’ve thrown Time Nazis in there and that’s bound to make a mess.

The Time Nazis: Crosstime capable Nazis with jetpacks and plasma rifles. Now with added Eclipse Virus. I am cribbing from the Infinite Worlds Reich-5 write-up, then adding other Nazi horrors/Hydra type tech.

[Black Aeronaut]

Okay, thanks. That does help a bit, though I have almost no familiarity with Eclipse Phase and Infinite Worlds. Gonna have to fix that at some point in time. :p
EDIT: And now I'm wondering how many bricks will be shat if Benjamin from Fenspace shows up with a Roughriders Expeditionary Fleet.

[Bob Schroeck]

along with cloning tech from Shadowrun

Not from Paranoia? Alpha Complex has its cloning tech practically at "household appliance" level.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[M Fnord]

EDIT: And now I'm wondering how many bricks will be shat if Benjamin from Fenspace shows up with a Roughriders Expeditionary Fleet.

Not WoG - not yet anyway - but I'm going to advise not crossing the streams at this juncture.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Cobalt Greywalker]

OK, sorry for the delay. Getting this into any sort of shape was a nightmare, and I'm still not happy with it. But it gets me to the end of the first 'chapter', so to speak, and lets me move on to hopefully new bits of story.

---

Fate observed the Mobian Lieutenant (Leftenant being a pronunciation difference the existing language pack understood) as she put on data-glasses and read the holowindows’ details.

“Interesting.” The Mobian reached out and ‘touched’ the file belonging to the sniper. “This will be an interesting first interrogation.”

“Please explain why?” Signum asked, probably still maintaining contact with Agito and Hayate.

“She was not…augmented…by this Eclipse virus of yours.” The Lieutenant hade quickly read the file on the virus, which made Shamal’s theory about her medical training more pronounced but a bit incongruous when added to her investigatory skills. Maybe she was a military police officer with forensic training? “That implies that she was the controller for the group.”

“Explain please.” Fate asked.

“Nazis, of all types, have institutionalised notions of racial purity. Giving these abilities to those of pure genealogy is one thing, but they want the traits to be naturally occurring so they can strengthen the traits.”

“Sounds very much like the rulers of Ancient Belka.” Signum noted.

“I doubt they would find it more efficient to surgically graft a recalcitrant world-jumper to a control system just so they didn’t lose the resources put into them.” Eve said, zooming in on the sniper’s shoulder to look at the markings.

“You’d be surprised.” Signum said simply.

***

“And that covers the generalities of Time Nazis.” Colin manipulated the holograms again, ‘stacking’ the files to one ‘side’. “We’ve encountered four different groups so far, and none of them are what we’d consider good neighbours. Fortunately, they hate each other more than they hate us so they’re a self-limiting problem.”

Sitting on the other side of the table, Yuuno looked decidedly pale. Hayate didn’t look much better. Colin didn’t blame them. The little redheaded fairy was made of sterner stuff than the light-blue haired one, and was frowning thoughtfully.

“So, if there are people who can naturally transfer between worlds, does that mean there are creatures that can do the same?”

“Yep.” Colin replied. “Given that most of the time it’s an extension of their teleporting abilities, it’s a bit tricky to track them. None of the ones we do track seem to go far from their home world.”

Hayate had pulled herself together.

“Any more bad news Captain?” She asked with the tone of voice that suggested she knew she wasn’t going to like what he had to say.

Colin ‘slid’ out another set of files.

“This is the Domination of the Draka.”

***

Obersturmführer Gerwine Schaefer sat at the desk in the room, waiting for someone who could speak real German to arrive. Not that she’d tell them anything bar name, rank, and serial number.
The door finally opened to reveal the red-eyed blonde from the first attempt at communication. She was wearing some communication device in her ear this time, and followed by another blonde in a different uniform. This one was slightly taller, and had purple eyes. Another degenerate then.

“Greetings Obersturmführer.” The purple eyed blonde said calmly in German. “I can imagine you have questions, and so do we.” She passed another of the communication devices across the desk to her as they sat down. “This will make things easier. It’s a translator.”

Schaefer looked at it, looked at the other blonde, then reluctantly put the device to her ear.

“Gerwine Schaefer, Obersturmführer, 55923.” She said.

“The problem Obersturmführer,” The taller blonde told her in the same calm tone of voice, “is that neither of our powers have any agreement with your government. Thus, name rank and serial number will not help you here. The Draka will also not like you for stealing one of their wormhole generators.”

“It was rather loud.” The other blonde commented.

The slight delay for the translator allowed Schaefer to recognise it working, unlike the effect the first blonde had. She also recognised that the purple-eyed blonde knew a lot about the Gruppe. She realised that she’d landed in the middle of a joint operation between two crossworld powers, and that her squad’s actions had been ill-advised. That trottle Kurtz, jumping in like that.

“You’ll be pleased to know the Mule has been transferred off ship to proper medical facilities on one of our worlds.” She continued, and Schaefer’s stomach dropped further.

~ She is getting rather agitated. ~ Fate sent. Bardiche translated the telepathy, converted it to a short range radio transmission and sent it to Eve’s omnitool.

[That was rather the point.] Eve replied, typing the response on her leg via her hair under the desk. [Time to be polite.]

Fate smiled brightly.

“I am Enforcer Harlaown of the Time-Space Administration Bureau. My colleague is Lieutenant Mizuhara of the Mobius Group’s Scout Division.”

Schaefer kept herself from reacting. She’d heard of Mobius, but the Time-Space Administration Bureau? Its very name was ominous enough, but partnered with Mobius? And what was that about Draka wormholes?

***

Colin sat in the meeting room, organising files on the holodisplay as the redhead fairy (Agito he thought) looked on. The other Beebees had looked fairly peaky and had to leave the room. Honestly he didn’t blame them. There was a reason why threat training was stage-managed so much, with scores of Shrinks on standby. While the Nazis and Snakes were a bit dark for the nice-nice Bureau, getting them together without prep could be a bit much. And he hadn’t even started on the crazy stuff.

Infinity and Centrum would be a bit more their speed for now then.

***

Fate was frowning thoughtfully as she led Eve back to her office.

“Problems?” Eve asked.

“Trying to tie things together. Occupational hazard.” The red-eyed blonde shrugged. “From what information we have, it is unlikely our targets and the Nazi forces will ally.”

“Unlikely is not impossible.” Eve warned. “Nothing truly is.”

“Very true.” Fate agreed.

***

Yuuno ‘dug’ through the files, ‘copying’ them six at a time as Hayate frowned.

“So.” She said finally. “What is it you want?”

“Me?” Colin raised an eyebrow. “Get back to my retirement, but that ain’t likely. You probably meant the Bosses though. Formal relations would be nice, but we both know diplomacy takes time. Mostly it’s opening official channels.”

“Mostly?” Hayate asked.

“Mostly.” Colin agreed. “I’m um-ing and ah-ing on the rest, figure you want to take everything in and get to know us better before we discuss that. Gotta be careful about all those broken pieces of world view.”

“Man’s got a point.” Agito agreed.

“True.” Hayate sighed, slumping as the tension drained out of her. Then she perked up. “So, how would you rate Nanoha’s kiss?”

Yuuno snorted and rolled his eyes, but didn’t stop his archiving.

“A gentleman never kisses and tells.” Colin replied.

“Moo, you’re no fun.” Hayate pouted.

***

Official reply safely packed into his backpack, Colin waited by the ship’s teleporter platform for Eve to turn up. All in all, about what he’d expected for a ‘welcome to the big multiverse’ session.

“Everything OK Mizuhara?” He asked as the purple-eyed blonde turned up.

“Yes Sir.” She replied, then turned to the pink-haired escort. “Thank you for your assistance Dame Signum.”

Colin raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

“Thank you for yours Lieutenant, Captain.” Dame Signum returned. “The information you have shared will save lives.”

“Always a good thing.” Colin agreed. “Thanks for the hospitality, but we’ve got to get going.” He smiled wryly. “Priority delivery for this postman, y’know.”

“Indeed.” Signum nodded.

As the platform lit up and caused yet another headache, all Colin wanted was a nice not bath to relax in.

[Cobalt Greywalker]

So, I have an idea for the chapter of Colin's Tale (need better title). I'll run with it a bit to see how people react.

---

Chapter 2

The light of the glowstick cast odd shadows from the floor. It’s light barely reaching out to the nearby walls, let alone the corridor it was in or the hole in the ceiling.

A form fell from the hole, slowing quickly before landing softly as the arrestor in the climbing gear kicked in on the trailing wire. It swept the visible area with the rifle it was holding, looking deep into the blackness of the corridor’s ends before kneeling and pulling on the wire. It played out a bit before it cut off the backpack. With trained familiarity, the figure reached to its side, grabbed a matchbox shaped object and stuck the loose end of the wire to it before sticking the box to the ground.

A male voice asked over the comms.

Dr. Pinkerman replied clearly.

The lieutenant came on the line.

The captain sighed, putting his weapon away and attaching his armour’s ascent gear to the line.

***

As he came into the daylight of the dig site, Colin Green looked over the valley and how much it had changed in the last two months.

With a successful Contact, the TOA had pushed a FOB out to the newly named Parity (why that name eluded Colin, though he could make some guesses), along with two dozen archaeologists for a full survey. The second letter he and Mizuhara had carried was an open invitation to share the investigation. The Beebees had responded with a smaller but no less well equipped expedition, which had set up the other side of the ruins.

Eve Mizuhara hadn’t relaxed too much since he’d known her, but then again he’d always been a bit slow on connecting with new teammates anyway. Still, he’d learned quickly to read her posture and eyes to get a feel for her moods. Currently it didn’t look too bad.

“So? What’s up?” He asked.

“First trade sampler.” The blonde replied, causing Colin to frown.

“That’s a bit bigger than we normally carry.” He muttered. That was putting it lightly given it had been mostly letters and a selection of books so far. Depending on the selection, it probably wouldn’t fit in Maki’s hold. “Trade delegation?”

“Two days. The last parts for the portal anchor also arrived and they’re powering up in a couple of hours.”

“OK.” Colin sighed. “Squirt me the details to look over as I change, then we’ll go and see Suzuki.”

***

Commander Johann Suzuki stood inside the gatehouse, watching the scrying feeds as the two electric quad-bikes crossed the valley to his command. It wasn’t quite the desk job he’d been fearing, or the babysitting job his squad had dreaded, but it was rather boring most of the time. He could live with boring given his briefings.

The two quads rolled right up to the gates, stopping just far enough away for the guards to cover them. Johann knew that was deliberate, and as he stepped out the two Mobians saluted.

“Commander.” Captain Green greeted him.

“Captain.” Suzuki replied. “Lieutenant.”

“Commander.” The slim lieutenant nodded in greeting.

“So Captain, what is it today?” Johann asked.

“Dee Day impends Commander.” Colin replied. “Time for us to put our heads together and make sure things go smoothly. Or as smoothly as possible.”

“If the situation is going smoothly, you do not understand the situation.” Johann quoted, sighing. “I’ll get my staff together.”

***

The incessant beeping finally dragged Colin from his slumber. He blinked in the red glow of his omnitool’s priority hologram, just before a louder urgent tone snapped him awake.

“Sitrep.” He barked, answering the call.

“Sorry to wake you Boss.” Maki’s tone was business-like. “We’ve got an energy signature in the underground.”

“Please tell me someone didn’t press something.” Colin groaned, stripping off his clothes.

“Someone didn’t press something.” Maki’s voice was flat. There was a pause. “You asked.”

“Put a call into the Beebees, see if they can spare us a techie of their own. I’m grabbing a quick sonic then I’m armouring up. Poke Mizuhara while you’re at it.”

“Already done.” Maki told him, signing off as he hit the sonic shower.

***

Dr. Opel Oliver didn’t appreciate being roused at the middle of the night, especially with the 22 hour day NAW 353 had. Nor did he appreciate being man-handled by a barrier jacketed Sargent onto one of the Mobian buggies and dashing into the dark towards a now well-lit dig site.

Professor Ishmael Karif looked very dishevelled as Dr. Oliver was dropped off along with a pack of his gear.

“Karif, what’s the situation?” The fast drive in the cold night air had woken the doctor further and allowed him to think. And get worried.

“Oliver.” Karif picked a strap of the pack to help his colleague carry it. “About thirty minutes ago, a type seven energy signature started emanating from the twelfth basement level. We think it was in response to one of the Mobian survey drones we were using to map the tunnels. We pulled it back, but the signal stayed there.”

“Type seven implies Geomantics.” Oliver mused. “That could be troublesome, given the lack of other manatech.”

“Which is why we need you on the team. Just find, analyse, and make it safe.” The main entry tent was bustling as they got in. At which point Oliver blinked at the two armoured forms checking their packs as he was pulled in their direction. It wasn’t hard to recognise the two couriers.

“Professor.” Captain Green nodded. “Doctor?” He held out his hand to shake. “Captain Colin Green. I’m sorry to rush, but the neutrino readings are still climbing. Rather hints at a fusion reactor ramping up, and I for one don’t want it to overload. Having a mountain drop on you is not my idea of a good time.”

“It is not.” Lieutenant Mizuhara stated, fastening down her pack. “Having a mountainside fortress collapse on you is bad enough.”

“Roger that.” Captain Green acknowledged. “Doc? Sorry to ask, but are you flight capable?”

“No, I’m not that lucky.” Oliver blinked, still a bit confused by the aside.

“Right, I’ll grab a spare climbing rig. Get your device linked into the comm net and downloading the app package you’ll need. The link’ll be emailed when you sync.” Then he briskly moved off.

[Black Aeronaut]

Not exactly sure what to make of this, but it smacks of something ominous.

[M Fnord]

Back-to-back conventions and jury duty are teh suck. But we persevere!

---

Dateline: Marlborough Club, London, Merrie Auld, 1871 or thereabouts (who the hell knows Mobius time)

From the Journals of Tom Olan:

Our gathering took place in the upstairs drawing room of the Marlborough Club, the place Prince Bertie had set aside for all business pertaining to the Second Compact. This evening’s meeting was a somewhat grim affair. We had hints and intimations that the esteemed Doctor Runcible, a gentleman scientist with connections to the Steam Lords, was currently tinkering with Forces Man Was Not Meant to Meddle With. What we didn’t have was proof, and without that (or the good doctor in our hands) all our investigations were worthless. Marieanne and I were ready to just go to the Runcible estate and start breaking things--go with what you know, right?--but there were… complications.

“Runcible’s backers are well-known and connected to London’s newspapermen,” Bertie pronounced. “If you move against him, the whole thing may be made public. The damage to the Second Compact could be considerable.”

“Okay, so we be quiet. We can do that,” I argued. Marieanne looked a little dubious.

“I’m not as sure, Thomas,” she said. “Entering will be quiet, yes, but exiting? Doctor Runicble has guards, and we might not be able to handle them without making quite the racket.”

“This sounds like our cue to pitch in,” offered the newest additions to our secret order of do-gooders. I wasn’t sure exactly where I stood with Sam Wildman and Flavia Nepos--the “Storm Knights” as Auberon had dubbed them and convinced the King to formalize--as they flouted the Great Game with almost terrifying good cheer. “We’re professional sneaktheives, after all. If you need incriminating documents or Runcible himself extracted from the premises, we can do that.”

“Or,” Flavia added with a thin smile, her accent wavering between Italian, French, Spanish, Romanian and back again. “If you’d just rather Runcible Manor burn down in a ‘tragic lab accident’” and I could hear the quotes “we can do that too. We’re quite flexible.”

Marieanne and I traded somewhat disturbed looks. Our business wasn’t free of bloodshed by any means, we both had blood on our hands but the sheer ruthlessness of the travellers from beyond the Veil was disquieting. I certainly didn't remember people that cold in the 20th Century I left behind. “I think, Dame Flavia,” Bertie said hastily, “that we should leave that distasteful option as the absolute last resort.” Flavia shrugged. “I have confidence that Captain Olam and Lady Marieanne can do their duty with regards to Runcible,” he continued, “what is needed is something to keep the papers busy while they go about their work.”

Sam and Flavia traded a brief glance. “I think we might be able to do that,” Sam said.

“Let’s say,” Flavia picked up the unspoken thread. “Just as a hypothetical, you understand, if the papers had something really salacious happen the night before. Say… something sufficiently outrageous at a Royal engagement. Would that be enough to keep any crimes at Runcible Manor out of the public eye?” I was floored. Deliberately start something, and at a Royal party no less, as cover? Marieanne’s shock was no less than mine, but I could see her experienced adventuress’s mind mind work over the angles.

“It could work,” she said slowly. “But it would have to be quite scandalous to divert attention, mon Roman.”

“That’s the easy part,” Flavia replied easily. “If you’re willing to play along, Your Highness, I’ll need five hundred pounds cash, a week and a letter of introduction to your tailors.” Bertie looked a little confused, then he laughed.

“Dame Flavia, you have my support,” he said happily, clapping his hands together. “This has the makings of a capital jest! Mother will be furious!”
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"