A Method to his Madness

by Luna-tic Scientist

28 -- Specials

The flash of magic and crackle of gunfire reached a crescendo, then cut off. Now, do it now! Waits Until Sunrise stood at the entrance to the cell block and dithered, a sick fear filling his belly. The flight through the administration block had been sobering; not one of the gryphons were actually dead but, equally, they had obviously not been given the chance to fight back. How many ponies was this? One of those aircraft can't have held more than half a dozen.

He glanced at the side door, running a claw over the rounded lumps where the hinges and lock had been. It was like they had been cast as a single piece; the heavy security door was now no more than a seamless plate of solid metal. There was another flurry of muffled thumps from the other side. Looking down at the blunt muzzle brake of his underslung cannon, Waits slumped. It's not like a lock; I'll have to blast the whole thing open, pumping dozens of explosive rounds into it. It'll kill those inside.

Waits backed up, then turned to trot through into the cell block. Inside it was as he'd expected; a wide corridor lined with barred cells, some empty, many packed with gryphons. They all looked scared, but were without the belligerence from such a supposedly violent bunch. I guess that much gunplay will intimidate even this lot. He looked into the closest cell, rapping on the bars with his talons. "You in there -- did any ponies come through here just now? How many?"

One individual came forward, looking him up and down with suspicion. "You're not prison staff are you, soldier?" The gryphon relaxed a little, shifting his gaze and trying to look into the administration block. "What happened back there? Are all those bastards dead?"

"Knocked out. Well?"

The other gryphon laughed. "Pity, but I guess ponies always were a bit soft. Let us out and we'll fix that." There was a terrible intensity in the prisoner's eyes, and Waits took a cautious step backwards. "Yes, they came through here. Four of them; better equipped than you are, soldier-chick. They are going to stop whatever madness the Talons have started here."

"The Equestrians -- did they tell you that?"

"Not exactly... but right at the start the Talons paraded the pony prisoners through here. Why else? I hope they kill them all; after all, I'm damn sure the Talons have been killing us a cell at a time. You've seen them, right? Those guards, all distorted and wrong?"

Empty cells, with others packed to capacity. Guards that looked like strangely dedicated body-builders. There is something going on. He shifted uneasily, then took a grip on the bite trigger once more and stepped away. The gryphon hissed at him, but he ignored it, heading for the other door and the next block down.

Two floors later, he found them. Three ponies, with a fourth sprawled on the floor in the middle of a spreading pool of blood. Two gryphon corpses, similarly decorated. Crouching low, he slid the small automatic rifle back on its runner, then eased around the door frame, aligning the reticule of his cannon with the closest pony. I don't care how much armour you have on, there's nothing portable on this world that will stop a twenty-millimetre AP round. He took a careful grip on the bite trigger, taking up the slack.

And what if that prisoner is right? Thoughts of Dusty, dead and cooling on that rocky plain, made his vision blur and Waits nearly bit down there and then. I'll never know. Waits gently let go of the trigger, shifting it to one foreclaw, then swallowed, letting the anger wash over his fear. "Freeze, or I'll shoot!" he yelled.

The ponies jumped as if electrocuted, parts of their armour suits -- weapon drones, Waits realised -- moving independently. "Keep those damn drones still or your friend is dead!" he snarled, terror making his voice come out high and shrill.

The closest pony looked up, then did something that opened his helmet. Big yellow eyes, slit like a cat's, bored into his own. "Don't do that. Is that a flight suit? Are you from the air base the pilots hit?"

Waits' muscles went rigid, his throat closing up. "You killed them all! All those people I worked with for years, snuffed out at the push of a button. Why shouldn't I do the same to you?"

"This is war," the pony said quietly, "but not with you. Something rotten has grown up in Razorclaw, and it's infecting the whole world. Princess Celestia has gone mad and Luna is trying to stop her. The last thing I heard was that your military was poised to launch an assault on Equestria; mad or not, neither Princess will stand for that."

And you know what they did to the Changelings, Waits completed in his head. "Speak sense, damn you. No riddles!"

"Discord is loose in the world and he's doing something to... power the insanity, from right here, we think." The pony looked down at the corpse of its fellow, his body seeming to shrink slightly.

Waits laughed. "Your Princesses have gone mad before, and Discord is nothing more than a legend about some statue in Canterlot."

"Whether or not you believe me about Discord, there is evil here... I can prove it." He looked over his shoulder at one of the gryphon corpses. "Will you let me?"

"Slowly," Waits growled, talons tense on the trigger. The pony took careful steps to the body, turning it around so he could see the head... heads. Next to the gryphon's head, almost nestled in the crook of its shoulder, was the pale blue head of a unicorn. The remote trigger dropped from nerveless claws and Waits stood up. A trick, it's got to be a trick.

The pony knelt down, brushing the pony's short blue mane with his muzzle. "I don't know what the gryphon was called, but her name was Rose. She was taken from Razorclaw city a few days ago, and now she is this." He looked up, tears in his eyes. "Where is the rest of her body, pilot? Look at what was done here and tell me it is right."

Half in a trance, Waits walked across the cell block and stood in front of the corpse, staring down at the mismatched heads, then looked up at the female prisoners in their cells. "Well? Was this their magic?" he demanded of the huddled, broken mass, ignoring the choking noises from the kneeling pony.

One of the prisoners, looking a little more alert than the rest, shook her head. "N-no. There is something below us... sometimes I can feel it, in my head." She shivered, burying her head back in the mass of feathers and fur. "It did this; we're only things to it," she said, barely audible.

Waits took an uncertain step backwards, rump sinking to the floor, then looked around and saw he was at the centre of a circle of those weapon drones, flattened, multilegged things with gun barrels for heads. "What's your name, friend gryphon?" said one of the others, an earth pony mare by her build and voice. "I'm Blevie.”

"Waits Until Sunrise," Waits said numbly, unable to keep his eyes off the armed robots. "Now what?"

"I'm sorry about your friends, really I am, but we're going to have to tie you up now," Blevie said, voice distorted a little by the plastic ties dangling from her mouth.

"We could use a non-pony witness, all things considered," the unicorn said, eyeing him speculatively, "and another gun wouldn't go amiss. I'm Nightstorm, by the way." She popped open her own helmet, revealing a bloodstained muzzle and offering a wry smile. "We're not really operating with the sanction of our government, if that makes a difference."

"There is no government," the cat-eyed pony snapped, standing up and flexing bat-like wings. "Chirr. You couldn't pronounce my real name." The pony glanced to Blevie and the restraints. "Well? What's it going to be?"

===

After they left the female cell block, the appearance of the structure changed. No more painted concrete slabs and beams, but worked stone, stained by water and streaks of brown from ancient iron fittings. The lights, feeble things spaced too far apart to really do more than accentuate the darkness, were tacked across the ceiling with messy blobs of adhesive and, despite being modern solid state devices, had been fitted years ago.

"What was this place?" Chirr muttered, throat still sore and resisting the urge to send sonar pulses down the dimly lit corridor. At the far end the lights gave out completely and the gloom, coupled with the flat, even temperature of the stone walls, was giving even his suit's wonderful optics trouble.

"Started life as a fortress, back... a thousand years ago, maybe? Some king probably had it as his pride and joy," Waits said, padding along at his side. He still wore the boost suit, the thing bulky even with the removal of the engine and fuel tanks.

Behind him were Blevie and Night, their concession to security if he wasn't being completely truthful about wanting to help. The unicorn's horn glowed gently in the dark and her mouth moved, subvocalising the same nonsense syllables Chirr had heard her use back at the aircarrier. I hope she's in better shape than a few minutes ago. At least she's managing to walk in a straight line.

Night gasped. "Another one, ahead," she said in strangled tones, stopping dead.

'Halt.' Chirr dropped to a crouch, waggling his ears, then opened his mouth to repeat the order for Waits, but the gryphon had already stopped and was staring intently at their destination. A glance and a lip curl sent his exoweapons scuttling forwards, their ammunition tanks already filled with an alternating mixture of explosive and armour piercing.

It bounded out of the dark at the end of the corridor, covering the distance at a frightening rate. This time its speed was little help; in the narrow space, without room to dodge, it was an easy target. Six exos fired, short bursts at their appallingly fast rate, placing patterns of shots to fill the whole corridor, joined a moment later by the shocking thunder of the gryphon's cannon.

The exo's guns were efficient things, near silent apart from the crackling roar of each supersonic round, and had no optical signature; not so Waits' cannon. The muzzle flash stabbed out nearly the length of his body, lighting the dark space and freezing the charging monster like a strobe light. A shell of red light surrounded it, bright sparks and shockwave flashes rippling over the surface like it was behind a curtain, but it obviously wasn't enough.

Something got through, although if it was from the ponies or Waits wasn't certain. The light flicked out and the creature tripped, sliding to an untidy halt half a dozen metres away from the lead exoweapons. The whole front half was gone, pounded into an unrecognizable mass of bone, feathers, and the occasional scrap of bright yellow fur.

"Is that it?" Chirr asked, not moving. The last time this had happened they had been hit by another one, just while they were checking the body. The second had been hiding in a small room off the corridor, and it was only Night's quick reflexes in slamming the ancient door shut that had given them enough time to kill it before it was upon them.

"Can't feel any others," she said finally, turning in a slow circle.

The bastard's playing with us. The same old arrogance as in the stories. Well, that's been your downfall before, old snake. Chirr averted his eyes from the corpse, letting his exos scuttle down the corridor for a visual check. "Looks clear to me."

"There is something else; more magic... feels hidden, like a veil over a light." Night shivered, staring down through the floor. "So strong--" She swallowed, then looked away.

"You only just felt this now? I thought you witches--" Waits flinched at the sudden sharp glances. "Sorry. Why now?"

Night pawed the ground. "I don't know!" she snarled. "I meant what I said about a veil." She jumped over the corpse, striding forwards to push past Waits.

So he must be here, and must know we are, too. Chirr accelerated, overtaking Night. Of course he knows... how in Tartarus is this ever going to work? Trailblazer's beacon, slotted into one of his external carry loops, bounced a little as he cantered, and he became very aware of how small it was. It took six ponies and all the Elements to get rid of Discord last time... and all we've got is a machine that they were still trying to fix when we left the Express.

===

A hammer-blow of sound and force, intense enough that Echelon's vision wavered into the black. A continuous thrust under his hooves, strong, like he was back in the centrifuge, but not more than he could withstand. The noise, after the initial concussive thunder, subsided to a roar, not unlike that of the main engines, but it was what he couldn't hear that made Echelon twist inside. Willow was silent; gone were the terrible, heart-rending screams, replaced with nothing he could hear over the solid fuel emergency rockets.

By Luna, let this work. Let me not have killed her after all this.

Most of the systems were dead. The armatures, normally so alive with the airflow over the Loup-Garou's wings, were rigid, like a corpse in the throes of rigor. They had sprung open, folding his wings shut and holding them against his flanks. The G-socks were still operating, although on residual pressure and slowly softening, now they were disconnected from the fighter's systems.

There were no windows in the crew compartment, as it had been buried in the heart of Red One. His entire view was synthetic, normally pumped to high resolution displays that cupped his eyes, but all those electronics were offline. All he had left was the fibre-optic backup; heavily shielded by passive, nonlinear optics as a defence against flash or laser blinding. The resolution was poor and the field of view distorted by wide angle lenses, but at least it was something.

The sun was up, and in the wrong part of the sky for the time of day, but at least it illuminated his surroundings. There was the Claw, listing badly to one side, but still in the air. Black smoke boiled up from a section near her nose, and the long, angular shape was precessing slowly, her engines obviously unbalanced. Got you. Echelon spat out the eject controller and grinned savagely, imagining how much harder it must have been for her point defences to stop a ten-tonne engine moving at supersonic speed, than some fragile missile. She's not out, but we bought the Express a few minutes peace.

The roar of the pod's rockets died and all sensation of weight went away as the thing started on a purely ballistic trajectory. The whole crew compartment, a lifting body teardrop designed to self-stabilise even when thrown into a high Mach airflow, had thrown itself clear of the fighter when Echelon had bit down on the eject paddle. Rocket motors, things that bore more resemblance to oversized fireworks than the level of sophistication in the fighter, had fired to lift them clear of the impact point, a self-contained mechanism designed to cope with disaster even at zero speed and zero altitude.

Nervously, he scanned the sky, looking for any signs of the gryphon Shredders. There had never been any real conflict between the Equestrians and gryphon nations, but they had plenty of experience of fighting amongst themselves, and had developed a set of protocols to deal with enemy combatants. The Palace had signed up to them as a show of support for all parties involved, so, in principle at least, they should not be greeted by a burst of railgun fire.

Of course, that was the previous government... who knows what mistakes might be made in the heat of the moment. Perhaps I should ditch the aeroshell early. The ground beneath was rocky, a mixture of ridges and deep, forested valleys, and not the best of places to land the pod. Reaching a decision, Echelon twisted his wings just so, popping them free of the armature in preparation for the next stage. An escape pod for my escape pod. Stretching each wing as best he could, working out the kinks left from the high-G separation from the fighter, he grabbed hold of the eject paddle again, giving it a sharp twist.

Explosive bolts popped in a rapid sequence, starting at the tail of the pod and working towards the nose. In less than half a second the raw, cold outside air slapped him across the muzzle and ran icy claws along his flanks, making mane and tail thrash wildly in the slipstream. His wings, folded tight against the sudden surge of air, extended slightly and the flight magic took hold, passing along the semi-rigid traces linking him to Willow. The cold air must have done something, because there was movement transmitted along those rods.

Echelon glanced backwards, nearly shouting out with joy. Willow was moving, slowly, like she'd just awoken from a two-day drinking binge, but she was moving. "Hang in there, filly! I'll have us down in a moment." Blood was flowing from her nostrils and was being whipped along her muzzle by the slipstream, but she nodded, blinking and uncertain in the sunlight.

===

Equilibrium gritted her teeth. The patterns had multiplied in her head, and were far too complex for one mind to manipulate while still holding on to the ones she'd already calibrated. She reached out sideways, spreading into an adjacent volume that was different-yet-familiar. The resident presence made room as she moved, but there was something else; the distant and vaguely distracting echoes of Neighmann's body, wracked with tremors, came back along the link.

"Neighmann, what--"

Manny Fold, his voice inconsequential amid the buzz and howl in her head, moved to support Neighmann as he collapsed against the rough walls of the summoning circle's waveguide complex. Libi had her eyes shut, but the motion disturbed the interplay of magic in the crystal-lined tunnels, throwing Pi, the fifth 'special' out of the tenuous approximation of alignment she'd managed to achieve. "Stay rutting still!" she shouted. "This is hard enough without you screwing up what I've already done!"

"Stay cool, Equilibrium; you'll do it," Manny said quietly, "just got to get your mate more comfortable. Take it easy with the sharing; back out if he starts to fight it."

Don't tell me to take it easy! Libi wanted to scream the words, but just squeezed her eyes tighter, trying to hold back the tears of frustration that were trickling down her cheeks. The errant thought made the tottering collection of magic, a task not unlike building an arch without internal support, fall further from optimum. First Delta, then Tau, escaped her control, filling the narrow space with shrieking dissonance before Manny damped the power flow. "It's too hard; it took the Princesses to set this up before, I can't--"

There was a soft touch at her throat, the gentle nibble of teeth working their way down the line between shoulder and neck. "Luna thinks we can do it," Neighmann said muzzily, his words distorted by a combination of the hold she had on his body and a mouthful of her close-cropped fur. "Don't dive right back in; stop for a moment and think. What is making this too hard?"

"Complexity," Libi whispered, "I'm trying to visualise six, eleven-dimensional arrays by looking at three-dimensional slices through each of them. I can see why Celestia couldn't help the Nightmare, and why it took Twilight and all the others to use them after that."

"We don't need you to use them; the rest of the hardware will do that," Manny said quietly. "With the final module aligned, even for a moment, the rest of the system will take over."

Libi slumped, resting her chin on the top of Neighmann's head as he continued to nibble at her throat. "You don't understand. Every time you move, or the Express moves, or the weather control systems change their parameters, it makes a little bit of a difference to the patterns within the circle, and that affects the modules. Not much when I'm just working on just one, but the effect is squared with two, and so on." Oh Luna, I'm so tired. If only I wasn't having to do all this by proxy. "By the time I get to Rho -- and you know we leave it until last because it's so rutting sensitive -- only perfection will do."

Manny was silent for a moment. "With the Express stationery and the weather systems off... how long do you think it will take you?"

"Thirty seconds, a minute or two." Or an hour, or a lifetime. "Maybe never," she said, reluctantly.

"Take a few minutes rest; I'll talk to the Admiral," the engineer said, backing up a few steps and turning away, his horn glowing dimly as he operated his communicator.

Libi could hear the doubt in his voice, and the carefully controlled frustration at being completely unable to help. The gryphons will have an easier time hitting us, won't they?

Yes, love, Neighmann replied through the sharing. Don't think about any of that; what's important is that we do what we're here to do. Let the crew take care of the rest.

Manny returned, a serious expression on his face. "Are you ready? Do as much as you can; hold three or four modules together and we'll wait for the beacon to be triggered. After that they'll stop the engines and everything else for you."

Libi's ears flattened and she swallowed. Don't waste it, she completed in her head, reaching for Alpha, solid, dependable Alpha, and optimised it as best she could, joining it to Delta, then Tau.

The work continued, each additional module increasing the complexity by an order of magnitude. Optimise one, then reoptimise the others in a cycle of alternating attempts that resulted in all being slightly out of true, each modification changing the others in ways that were not quite predictable. What little fragile calm and confidence she'd managed to gather evaporating under the strain, and she paused for breath, holding on to Alpha, Tau and Phi, while Delta slipped from her grasp and Pi went into one of its phases of chaotic oscillation. Again.

Love, what if the initial patterns you set for Alpha or Delta are wrong?

Neighmann's thought was distracting, and Phi started to pull away. Libi reached for the slippery pattern, pulling it back with gentle nudges. Then everything I'm doing is a waste of time, she thought dully.

But you said they are all interdependent, yes? So it's possible that what looks optimum for an isolated module is not what the combined set requires?

Libi's mouth dropped open. It would be like climbing a mountain by only going up. If I'm only on one of the hoofhills, I'll never reach the summit. That means-- "Neighmann, you are going to get the ride of your life when we get out of this!"

Confused joy came back down the link, but the mare wasn't paying attention. Rather than make delicate alterations to Phi's pattern, she reached in and shifted Alpha radically, watching the others respond. Without the need to be slow and careful, the changes could be made with lightning speed, and Libi quickly built up a crude map of the group's interactions. A few minutes of frantic work later and she had Alpha, Delta, Phi and Tau more perfectly balanced than she'd managed with all the previous hours of careful experimentation.

There was a light touch at her shoulder and Libi opened her eyes, smiling at Manny as he nodded appreciatively. "We've picked up the beacon," he said. "The engines are spooling down. I'm going to feed a trace of power into the summoning circle, just enough to key in on the signal." Little vibrations came up through the floor plates, and the subliminal hum, always at the edge of hearing, faded away. A different noise, not really a sound, but part of how her mind was interpreting the rush and boom of the weather systems also vanished, replaced by something far closer and more hair-raising.

The crystal-lined catacombs of the summoning circle came alive; waves of light chasing along the walls like shoals of colourful reef fish swimming in some shallow, sun-dappled sea. Through Neighmann's shadow sight it was almost hypnotic; those coloured patches on the walls mere cross sections through far more complex patterns that filled the volume. "That's a tenth of a percent; can't go any lower," the engineer said. "You okay?"

"I'll manage," Libi said, distracted by another set of quick-fire alterations to the patterns she'd built. It's a shame we couldn't have done this earlier; everything is twisted again-- There was a rapid crack-crack-crack, then the deck lurched under her hooves. Not the gentle vibrations she'd become used to, but the hard, bone-numbing shock of landing on a too-hard surface. There was an explosion, thunder-clap loud, followed by another and a crackling roar.

She gasped, nearly losing everything she'd built so far, but the patterns in the circle didn't change. "Don't stop!" Manny shouted, voice barely audible over the background howl. "If you are going to get this working, it has to be right now!"

Libi's muzzle twitched, the faint scent of something acrid was in the warm air. Metal oxides, she thought, that's a superconductor fire, then pushed everything except the spellcraft patterns out of her mind. Pi was the next; still changing in those strange, semi-random formations it was prone to, it forced Libi to make more adjustments on the fly. The presence of the other modules, obviously close to some pinnacle of alignment, seemed to do something to those little outbursts -- not taming them, so much as accommodating them.

There was a beauty to the almost complete array; the way the modules reacted to Pi's shifts and all shuffled around, like they were all partners in some complex, formal dance with rules that an outside observer could only guess at. Libi's excitement built, and she reached for Rho, trying to slot it into the final space.

It wouldn't go. Oh, come on! Not so close! Libi made changes, to Rho and the others, but there was no sudden connection, like in Neighmann's memories of their original installation. Libi shuffled her hooves, mind casting around for something, anything that could give her a handle on this problem. These are supposed to be artificial versions of the Elements, and there was something about the original patterns being recorded during the time they were wielded by Twilight and the others, back during the Nightmare's return.

It's almost like these things have different personalities... Libi's breath hitched and she jerked as if electrocuted. Tau. Twilight. It can't be that simple, can it? She started to pant, heart thudding loud enough to hear, even over the background of explosions and the odd shrieks of twisting metal.

That was Calculus' favourite Twilight-Elements quote, Neighman thought, in the vague way of a recently awoken sleeper or the heavily sedated, magic is the key.

Libi started to laugh, the simple words bringing back the details of Professor Sparkle's biography, and the way she'd described how using the Elements had felt. Like the keystone in an arch. She reached in, deliberately detuning Tau, then optimised Rho as best she could, before slotting Tau back into the matrix.

She barely had to modify the pattern at all before something just went snap. In the mental space Libi was using to interface with the modules, crystalline shards of light sprang out from Tau, linking it to, and combining it with, all the others. All six patterns abruptly shifted, turning from a collection of parts to something more, something that had a life of its own and reached out to grab the barely active spellcraft of the summoning circle.

Harmony bloomed through the whole complex system, a six-dimensional star expanding like a crystal dropped into a supersaturated salt solution. Libi opened her eyes, grinning as the expression on Manny's face turned from fear to savage delight. She opened her mouth, but he was already shouting into his communicator, while barging forwards to hurry them out of the crystal-lined waveguide tunnels. "Bridge, this is Manny Fold at the Circle. Fire at will, repeat, fire at will!"

The magical power was rising rapidly within the waveguide, and random bursts of telekinesis lifted Libi's mane like a playful wind as she bent down to nuzzle a confused-looking Neighmann. Lights, of many and varied colours, played over his face, and he blinked up at her like a pony who'd been hit on the head.

Manny was less gentle. One forehoof lashed out, striking the other stallion on the shoulder, and he dipped his head in a threatening gesture. This obviously didn't have the effect he was hoping for, as his ears went back and his head darted forwards, teeth closing with a snap a hair's breadth from Neighmann's muzzle. The unicorn reacted on instinct, surging to his hooves and trying to escape, but Manny didn't let up. "Move, you useless lump of gryphon fodder!" he screamed, adding another lunge for good measure.

Equilibrium ran, Neighmann hot on her fetlocks, buffeted by the rising tide of magic within the circle. Manny chased them out, alternating between shouting down his communicator and snapping at the rump of whichever pony he thought wasn't running fast enough.

A blurred, frantic few moments later they were back out into the engineering spaces around the summoning circle, skidding to a halt as Manny slammed the heavy, shielded hatch closed with one hind leg. "Good work, you two," he said, smiling, all the barely contained rage from a second ago completely gone. "Wait here, I'll send a crewpony to take care of you." He cantered off, talking rapidly into his communicator.

"I haven't been chased like that since my foal years," Neighmann muttered, his confusion completely gone. He shifted his weight uneasily, ears pricked at the sound of another explosion, this one more distant and without any accompanying vibration.

"Worked though, didn't it?" Libi said, nipping playfully at his withers, then shivered as she had a strong sensation of something standing at her flank. "Oh my. Even without a horn I felt that."

"That's the specials, has to be."

"Is it going to work?" Libi's elation faded as the deck started to tilt under her hooves, dropping away like they were in a descending lift. "Even if it does, we're still at the start of a war."

Neighmann nuzzled at her throat, letting out a great sigh that ruffled the hair of her mane. "One problem at a time, love. One problem at a time."

Comments

[Luna-tic Scientist]

We're at the peak of it, folks!

I hope you are all well, or as well as you can be. I've been under lockdown for a week now, and am slowly going mad. Could be worse, though. I've still got a job and I've avoided getting infected so far!

[Blaster M]

Rainbow Lazer!

[Q07]

I'm so glad that Waits didn't mess everything up. I was so worried that he would somehow ruin whatever they were doing at the time he discovered them. I'm happy for echelon because his buddy still alive. We don't know what kind of shape she's in but at least there's a chance. Yay, libbi did it! It's not over yet, but things are looking up right now. I can only assume you are waiting to destroy all of our hopes collectively.

[Cozy Mark IV]

Best wishes to you and I hope you stay safer than your characters... Normally that wouldn't be much of an ask, but these days...

[krakentoa]

10159288
Fine here. This chapter was a joy to read. I'm not sure if I caught all the facets of the symbols/elements correspondence. Specially rho, I wonder which had a harder time fitting in.

[Luna-tic Scientist]

10176452
Glad to hear it! As for which is which, it's been a while since I wrote the thing, but if I recall: Pi (, obvs), Rho (, "because it's so rutting sensitive"), Alpha (, "solid, dependable Alpha"), Delta (, no particular clues), Phi (, if only because is sounds vaguely like 'shy') and finally Tau (, hopefully obvious!).
10165043
Ah, you know me too well. You'll see, soon enough.
10168195
That's all we can ask for, in the end. It's a world I'd like to see, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to live there. Maybe between catastrophes.