2023-11-25: Imagine! 'Love'!

• Cast: Asciel Colette, Naoko Suzuki, Roux Louka, Leina Ashta, Kallen Kozuki, Koji Kabuto, Cascade Vermilion, Anita Rosetta, LiSA, Sayaka Yumi, Sayla Mass, Teletha Testarossa
• Where: Goragon
• Date: U.C. 0097 11 25
• Summary: As the world is threatened with erasure by the power of Goragon, only one light stands in its way. The genuine cherished bonds had beyond this dance of dreams...the mysterious yet undeniable power known as 'love'.

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<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.

        The awakening of Goragon has sent those who would stand against it across the myriad corners of possibilities. For some, these were worlds of hope that they wished could've come to be. For others, these were worlds of despair that they fear reality could come to be. Yet still, they are illucid dreams, spirals of bliss and pain alike, for a handful.

        ...But one way or another - the disparate stars of those gathered here converge upon a single, brightly radiant 'possibility'. Is it because it speaks to every last one of them? Is it because this single star is the one shield they have to preserve their ideals?

愛
Love.

        "...It certainly is a word that holds an awful lot of weight for how much you use it, huh?"

        -- -- -- -- --

        Beyond that door, beyond that dissolution into light, the crowd awaited. The crowd roared. The crowd demanded. The crowd screamed. For so long - for so, so, so long - the stage has been empty, and for just as long, the audience has come to think of why that would be.

        And so, "I" decided to step out onto the stage, and sing for them.

                (Arai Akino - Voices)
                -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEP5JUzmXMM-

        Hitotsume no kotoba wa (yume), nemuri no naka kara
        The first word was "dream", from the middle of sleep

        Mune no oku no kurayami wo sotto tsuredasu no
        Which secretly accompanies the darkness in my heart

        The crowd alights. The crowd cheers. The crowd throws their arms up in praise, as their discordant voices create the chorus which becomes percussion.

                "We 'love' you!" "We 'love' you!"
                "We 'love' you!" "We 'love' you!"

        The solitary idol, that shining cyan star, blazes brighter and brighter on the stage.

        Futatsume no kotoba wa (kaze), yukute wo oshiete
        The second word was "wind", guiding me on my path

        Kamisama no ude no naka e, tsubasa wo aoru no
        Into the arms of gods, wings spread wide

        The crowd reaches. The crowd grasps. The crowd pulls that star they always waited for into their arms - their unified voice changing that star's color with each pull.

                "We 'love' [you]!" "We 'love' {you}!"
                "We 'love' <you>!" "We 'love' (you)!"

        Still the star's voice rings clearly - ever harder, as though to appease each of these four discordant desires.

        Tokete itta kanashii koto wo kazoeru you ni
        As if to count sorrows that melted away

        Kin-iro no ringo ga mata hitotsu ochiru
        The golden apple, once again, falls down

        The crowd pulls. The crowd argues. The crowd wages war, as they realize their own wants exclude that which everyone else has seized.

                "(We) 'love' [you]!" "<We> 'love' {you}!"
                "[We] 'love' <you>!" "{We} 'love' (you)!"

        Its voice breaks. Its voice must continue. The star cannot break. The sun must never abandon everyone.

        Mita koto mo nai fuukei, soko ga kaeru basho
        A world I've never seen before, that's where I will call home

        Tatta hitotsu no inochi ni, tadoritsuku basho
        There's only one life, so I must reach towards that place-

        The rainbow congeals. The voices grow ever more dissonant. The many that plead for the idol to stay - they can't forgive it. They can't forgive the way that perfectly breaking star - reaches upwards - reaches outwards-!

        -- -- -- -- --

        This story plays out on a strange spherical TV, set placidly on a side table like it was any other household appliance, in the corner of what appears to be an ordinary hospital waiting room. Gleaming silver, its tiny inset screen a circle barely visible. It pulses, like a cocoon at the verge of ecdysis - it glows, like an iridescent sunset. And right when the screen begins to turn into an all-colored static-

        The light blooming from the center turns into an oil that leaks from its screen in fits and starts, pooling and puddling messily. ...Not for too long, though. A hand reaches from its sludge - then an arm, gripping onto the surrounding floor, as though climbing from an abyss. The noisy colors of this liquid coalesce into concrete forms - and from it, the oh so familiar form of Asciel rises, shivering as though newly born, grasping onto - what must be furniture. A bedframe - a chair - the 'setting' of this possibility is finally converging, as myriad souls force it to be something mundane and understandable. ...At least, understandable to human forms. This world - feeling like she is in it, touching and feeling it as though she were there - the very act of holding onto something like this feels alien to Asciel.

        Five strings connect her stabilizing form. Four, at her palms and feet - binding her to the very sphere she emerged from. And the fifth, lanced through her heart - anchors her to the floor itself, a vivid red string made of her unbreakable oath. [I promise never to run away from 'Ai'], she decided.

        Breathless, muttering out to everyone, unusually exhausted from her travels through Goragon, Asciel gasps out, to the vague sense that she still isn't 'alone' here: "...I finally made it, huh...I've betrayed every other oath I've made...just to be here. ...All of you saw that, didn't you...? ...What a joke...ahahah..."

<Pose Tracker> Naoko Suzuki has posed.

Possibility has shown much to Naoko Suzuki. From the deepest despair, to heartwarming hope, to the just plain weird. Case in point, in that last world, she was just about to be pulled on stage by Asciel Colette, herself a famous idol in her own right. Except before that happens, a flash of light engulfs her, and she appears elsewhere.

---

GAME OVER

A small window in the corner of the screen that Naoko finds herself staring at grows in size until it covers up those large words in the center. It's a familiar face, a face that she'd been looking at just a moment ago, in fact.

"Haah... I'm sorry, my little radishes. Big sis Asciel has failed you today. But don't worry! We'll get that mean ol' Psyco Haro next time! That's a promise from your radiant Virtual Sage, Asciel Colette! Unfortunately, this is the end of our early morning gettogether, but let's meet again tonight for another exciting audience participation stream, okay? Bye bye~"

With that, the screen goes black. It only takes looking slightly left and right to see the Mazinger Z and Great Mazinger figures on either end of the monitor for her to realize that she's in a place she knows very well. Her own room, back at her house in Akaigawa. A voice comes from downstairs.

"Naokooo~ Are you still sleeping? Breakfast's ready soon!"

...It can't be. Rushing down the stairs as fast as her legs can carry her, she is treated to a truly baffling sight.

"Well, someone's hungry. Didn't have to hurry that much, angel."

A man with permanently tired eyes sits at the kitchen table, a newspaper in his hands, a lazy smile turned in her direction. A woman wearing glasses stands at the stove, preparing something in a frying while humming a cheerful tune.

These are... definitely her parents. Except this painfully ordinary household scenario is something that never happened. She's never once seen her mother wearing an apron, let alone preparing any food. Her father wouldn't be caught dead wearing sweatpants, of all things. Not to mention... she can't recall a single time when the three of them ever had breakfast together like this.

She's still staring, open-mouthed, when her mobile phone rings. It's not her current ringtone, but she recognizes it as the OP song of Magical Princess Natural Lychee.

"Now who could that be?" her father wonders aloud with a knowing smile. Her mother nods in Naoko's direction. "It's okay sweetie, answer it. Just pretend we're not here."

...'This is a trap', her mind is screaming at her. When your parents say something like that to you, you should be very worried. "I'll... take it in the hallway," she decides, retreating quickly to her parents' pleasant laughter, and comments of 'so shy' and 'adorable'.

Trying her level best to ignore all that, she glances at the screen of her ringing phone. 'Touwa Chiba', it says. That doesn't seem so strange, at least. She did give him her number recently. She answers without giving it much thought. "Touwa?"

"Heya, Naoko!" Even though she doesn't have it on speaker, the other side of the conversation is clearly audible. "Ready for tonight?"

She blinks blankly. "Tonight? What's tonight?"

She is answered by a hearty laugh. "Bit late to pretend your annual surprise party is still a surprise at this point, don't you think? Gonna be quite a crowd this year, absolutely everybody'll be there!"

Thinking of the words 'absolutely everybody' produces a flash of memories, a list of names that are all familiar to her. People she used to know at school, everything from old friends, to people she barely knew, to the reformed bully who used to pick on Touwa. That's right... a high school was built right there in her home town. No one had to leave Akaigawa, and no one did. She's had this large group of friends since grade school, they haven't been out of contact since.

Touwa lowers his voice, all but whispering, "So. You're gonna bring it, right?" When Naoko replies with a clueless "Um", his whisper increases in decibels a little. "Come on, you know what I mean. The b-o-o-z-e. Why're you making me say it? We don't all have cool parents like you, mine'll kill me if they find out. Counting on you!"

...She's an alcohol supplier now? In what kind of world would THAT ever happen? "I... I'll manage something," she finds herself promising, thinking this call couldn't possibly get any weirder. She is immediately proven wrong in that.

"Good, good... ...I'm really glad we could move the party ahead a little bit. Combining it into one big bash the past few years was alright and all, but... now we get to have Christmas Eve all to ourselves."

...Wait what. What... is he saying? When Naoko falls silent, Touwa takes it upon himself to speak again.

"...Sorry. I don't mean to make you nervous or anything. I-It'll be great, I promise. I'll have a solid movie pick, there'll be a cake of course, and my parents'll be out s-so maybe we could, u-um... n-never mind, bye!"

Naoko is left frozen in place, listening to a disconnect tone. Or maybe that tone is coming from her brain, as she's processing what exactly that meant. The growing blush is proof that she's managing that.

Only then does she realize that she's not standing in the hallway of her home. She's standing in the hallway of a hospital, where there are many people, any of which could have heard the conversation she just had. Impossibly, she grows even redder than before. "...Eh? Ehhhh??"
Teletha Testarossa teleports in.

<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.

The light washed over Roux. She stared into it as the Hyper Mega Launcher recharged. Eventually the light grew enough to was out the HUD signals of the Strike Zeta's cockpit; and a moment later she had to blink.

It was the blink of an eye.

It felt longer, somehow...

Roux heard banging.

Someone was shouting.

Roux opened her eyes; and she stared out into-- Space!

It was a beautiful and immense view; the lights were dim. She was not in space directly, of course; she recognized a command deck. Seated in a control position. As she sat up she could make out the outlines of things; the full-featured digital screens with the interceding panels of stark metal with the essential controls; attitude jets, intraship comms...

Roux looked up again. This time she could see the hexagonal latticework which held the transparent metal, running in between the individual panes kintsugi style. She knew it was real when she saw the small gray patch, three panes wide, slapped over what must have been an impactor shot.

More banging. 'Roux!' came a muffled voice, female.

Roux turned herself and kicked off towards the accessway. She grasped the foam-wrapped ladder, she pivoted downwards. She felt a faint tug, intensifying non-linearly as she reached the bottom of the pathway. The door was there.

"Roux!" someone said on the other side of it. "You fall asleep again?"

Roux opened the door.

Elle Vianno was there. It had to be Elle! It couldn't be anyone else. What did Elle look like now? Roux thought, before conflicting ideas in her head - she was seeing her right now.

Elle reached forwards with a wooden spoon to bop Roux on the forehead.

Roux blinked slowly.

"You did," Elle accused. "What are you gonna do if we miss Ceres, huh?"

"YOU CAN'T MISS CERES IT'S THE BIGGEST ASTEROID AN THE COMPUTER'S GONNA TELL YOU ANYWAY" shouted someone from the mess hall. Roux shook her head, looked down. Her hair hung strangely, the partial grav-plating -

"I must have been asleep," Roux said, slowly.

Someone else shouted. Laughed, really. Roux could glimpse a small figure, a child, kick through an open door on the left side of the hallway, dive through the influence of the gravity plate, and shoot into another room. Something screamed; either a child or a pet. Surprise, not pain.

"Whatever! I made stew, come get some," Elle said, turning to walk down the hallway.

"Who was that kid?" Roux asked, squinting, which led to uproarious laughter from the mess hall. Roux stepped forwards, looked inside - saw Judau, in an unusual jacket with some kind of fur collar -

He smiled at her, and Roux could tell he was concerned when she didn't smile back. And so Roux did smile back, but --

What felt strange?

"I have to go wash my hands," Roux offered, walking back towards the head -

'What is going on?' Roux thought to herself: 'This is -- this is like some kind of luxury... what? Cargo ship, isn't it? This is a bulk vessel. We're in the quarters deck.' Roux looked around, glanced at the narrow spiral stairwell down. There'd be four or six cabins there, a second head, a rec room...

The scent of a rich stew billowed out as a cooking retort was unsealed.

'... Was I having a bad dream?'

Roux's head turned to look back down the hallway.

'All of it? More colony drops? Leina being exploited? All that federal bullshit?'

"Hey Roux!" Judau called. "Are you takin a shit?! Elle, she's takin a shit! Go see if the laser's on, Leina's gonna call!"

"How do YOU know she's gonna call"

"I HAD A OSHANSHOO ALARM SET, ELLE"

Roux laughed, but something seemed to be shifting. Even so, she had been going there, right? Roux pushed the button to open the door into the bathroom, stepped through --

--

In the hospital, Roux Louka emerges from the door with a tastefully artful Japanese kanji 'onna' on it, in essentialist pink. She blinks several times. Looking at her hands, then up and around, and then towards the rest of the area.

The lights seemed unusually bright.

"What -- the hell?" Roux swears, with unusual depth and sincerity. "... I was just --"

A familiar-ish voice. Roux does not know Asciel-as-such well enough to clock her as who she knows, but she can recognize her, somehow. "Where is this!" Roux exclaims, no, *demands*.

<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.

A moment...
        A familiar touch...
                 Temporary Respite...

                          ... the next...

                          The world is ephemeral and transient
                          Consciousness shifting shifting shifting
                          Nohere
                 not asleep yet not awake not asleep yet not awake
        here
                 no here here here here
                          here

Open eyes, waiting room, subtle exhaustion of waiting waiting waiting. The impression she was asked to leave by the staff. Anxiety. Worry. Joy. All of it mingling together.

The belief that someone in her life was having the children they never thought they would. Her mind tries to focus on whom?

Her eyes look one way, then another.

There is an old piece of artwork, an ad that hadn't been changed out in forty years, hanging tattered, like the kind you might find in a Colony tenement apartment, for some drink called 'Pep'. Probably awful.

Another, an animation cel, from a Wonderful Persimmon apartment... another... another... it all looked only substantial enough so long as she kept eyeing them.

The song from the Spherical TV draws her back as watches the leaking and coalescing form of Asciel in front of her, as she stabilizes and reforms. There is momentary surprise, but she does not whimper.

Instead she watches, she's been a great lover of horror films ever since she was quite young. The monsters in the films never seemed frightening, compared to the horrors of life and living.

As Asciel reforms, breathlessly, she reaches out, and puts a hand on Roux's shoulder. As if to calm her down, her eyelashes fluttering, as if an impression comes to her.

"Don't know." Leina tells her quietly, "But... we're still here."

Reaching towards her purse, she takes out a chocolate bar, and offers it Roux's way. "And I doubt it's because someone wanted us to watch 'The Sharon Apple Story'." Leina looks upon Asciel in this moment, despite her comment, there's no humor in it.

And then sidelong at Nova and... "Ah hey Nova." She searches for another candy bar in her purse, "Maybe you should come sit down?"

Well, she is offering candy...

"Yeah this feels like a time when everyone should be sitting down."

The calm she's experiencing is almost, eerie in a way, as if partially detached from it all.

<Pose Tracker> Kallen Kozuki has posed.

Some possibilities are sweet, others sour. Many are an inbetween lane. Bittersweet, as they say. One of the gathered souls is recently arriving from one such possibility, though as to why she's here... She appears to have just walked out from someone's inpatient room, and her blue eyes are puffy and red from crying.

Perhaps it's strange then, that she reaches out a hand when she comes to the virtual idol. Offering it to Asciel of all people. "Are you alright? Please, allow me to help you up." Why is it that she's being so kind in the moment? Even when she's clearly in her own pain. Oddly, she's in her old, pre-Guren piloting outfit with the exposed stomach and bizarre thigh-high socks, horribly incongruent with being unmasked and otherwise seeming like a regular civilian.

Behind her in a segment of the room, is a small shrine, rather Shinto feeling in its design, but holding a figure within that none of those steadily arriving really recognize. In part due to the figure being obscured and concealed from sight. Not really THAT odd for a hospital, right?

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

'Don't touch anything'.

Well. That lasted for about as long as could reasonably be expected, with somebody like Koji Kabuto dragged into this conceptual space.

The cube marked with the kanji for 'Love' explodes at his touch into all-encompassing whiteness engulfing them, and the world tilts around a hitherto-unknown axis, throwing him off his balance and into the formless light -

- grasping -
         - the seating of the Hover Pilder's cockpit, nestling him -
                 - the sterile smell of white-painted walls and laminate flooring -
                         ----

He's pacing, loafers squeaking on the hospital floor, worrying at the cuffs of his blue suit jacket. He's not really absorbing any of the details of the waiting room - the television is spewing some dire soap or other, but it's little more than white noise.

He barely remembers getting the call from Shiro that brought Sayaka and him here.

        "Doctor Kabuto, Director Yumi?" A nurse approaches them from behind and to the left, and he turns to face her, barely restraining the urge to lunge for her and demand to know what's going on. "She's stable. She's lucky Captain Kabuto was there to bail her out and get her to us - any later and she'd have lost a lot more blood."

A cascade of relief buckles his knees and he sags into the chair next to Sayaka, reaching over to squeeze her shoulder in wordless solidarity. The nurse looks at them both, and smiles kindly. "She should be coming round momentarily. Try not to overcrowd her, okay?"

He doesn't remember walking into the room - one moment he's sitting in the waiting room chairs next to Sayaka, and the next the bed, with its incumbent patient, is in front of them. He stares at the girl lying there, wondering at how her vivid, larger-than-life personality could seem so tiny under the blankets.

He squeezes Lisa's hand, waiting for her to come around - looking back up at the television as it begins to ooze, the form of Asciel Colette solidifying in this space.

"... Wait. What?"

<Pose Tracker> Cascade Vermilion has posed.

'Love'.

It wouldn't be Cascade's first choice for words to touch, and in fact it wasn't. (What was? She's not telling.) It is a word she has rarely used; a word that, to date, has not applied to her, she thinks.

Perhaps one day she will understand this word, too.

So where Cascade finds herself, at first, is nowhere.

Cascade does not have any memories of 'love' to draw upon. She has never really considered 'love' as anything more than an extremely abstract thought: is it something that she has wondered if she can have, or if she is capable of it at all. Certainly she feels attachment to some people, and some things, but is this 'love'? Nobody has ever loved her either, she thinks, in any sense of the word.

But in the nowhere there are, eventually, flickers of images. Baron Ashura; she had wanted to be appreciated by them, though she never managed it, not until their deaths. Rin Starking - no, Naujakaite - her first real friend, who she had managed to lot lose when her lies came to light. Several other allies-turned-friends, like Kallen. School itself, the act of learning, the act of experiencing -

That's what did it.

Cascade found herself in Ashford's halls. She didn't remember where she was going but, despite her usually perfect memory, this didn't worry her; she didn't remember where she'd just come from but in the faintly dreamy world *that* didn't bother her either.

She rounded the corner, stopping to chat with several people, pushed open a door and entered a hospital room.

THAT stopped Cascade for a few moments, because something is definitely not right about that and there are a lot of people in this room, most of whom - if she knows at all - she knows in contexts other than school. She herself looks like an Ashford student, uniform and all.

"Excuse me, I believe I have the wrong room," she says, maintaining her old role - she's acting, again, as she steps back... but is it the wrong room? She sees Kallen, and somehow she expected to see Kallen, though not Kallen helping Asciel, which seems very wrong to her.

She hesitates.

<Pose Tracker> Anita Rosetta has posed.

Love.

Love.

Love.

It's a light shining brighter than any other - and Anita finds herself drawn to it. Love... there was a time she thought it was lost to her. And then she made friends. And then she found someone who cared for her so, so deeply. Someone who loved her.

And so...

Anita finds herself, as ever, in her shared room with Rena on the Ra Mari II. It's an ordinary, pleasant day. She sits at her workbench, one of her spare arms laid out in front of her as she carefully tinkers away at it. The lights and sounds of Dozoo Degwa play out on the TV as Rena performs in an intense match.

They're both quiet - but it's the companionable silence of two people who are comfortable with each other, taking comfort in each other's presence even as they do their own thing in proximity...

...and then, Anita finds herself zoning out. It's not uncommon - sometimes she just gets so into her tinkering that she loses sight of everything around her. But, when she becomes aware of her surroundings again...

...she's somewhere else entirely. A hospital waiting room - briefly, she thinks of the one back in Magallanica, that they waited in to hear news of Eight - and she's not alone. Others are here, too. Even though she's disoriented, she offers a brief nod of greeting before her attention turns to sound from the corner - from that spherical TV set. She watches...

...and out comes crawling Asciel Colette.

"...Yeah, we saw." Anita confirms, sitting back in her chair. "You sound like you've been running through hell."

<Pose Tracker> LiSA has posed.

The Adjacent Dimension has been altered for the benefit of everyone involved. People are in their outfits, or combat suits, standing in a white room filled with golden cubes. A massive red and yellow glowing orb rotates gently in the center of the area, circled by green batons, clearly based off of Dr. Hell's Staff of Bardos. The cubes are warnings, or as LiSA has put it if directly asked:

"Those are possibilities - each capable of becoming a distinct universe. They are embryos that may become a universe..." She adds on, to clarify.

After the first several times someone has touched one, she's given up on asking people to stop touching them. Aside from two people touching them at the same time there haven't been any actual incidents, and she herself has seemingly held off on seeing any other potential universes of her own... not that it would be easy for anyone to tell, such as she being still, technically, a Administrator of this Adjacent Dimension and the machine that is using it.

Knowing this, LiSA has summoned a keyboard and is tapping at it absently. "Hey, everyone, don't tou- Koji-- wait!"

---

Love is touched at the most appropriate and yet worse time.

LiSA is the main pull on this for everyone, as result of her potential 'messing' around, shall we say; this Adjacent Dimension parks LiSA into a hospital bed, hooked up to a few different monitors and a IV drip feeding into the back of her left hand. She groans, slightly. Of course this would be one way to parse it. "... Mmh." Is all she offers at first, her normally bright gaze tired and worn.

This is just an alternate reality, though. LiSA's not actually injured, and it proves itself when Cascade walks through the room, when Asciel oozes out of the televison, when everyone else starts jamming up into the hallway.

"Oh boy this just got weird." She mutters.

<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Yumi has posed.

The endless space of Goragon, constructs flowing like branches in a river. Above them all, Aphrodite Areia's Mazin core floats, alongside many other machines that drive possibility - miniscule in comparison to Infinity's. But Sayaka has always known what she has represented...

Love.

It's an impossibly wide concept, but after years of piloting its goddess, what does it mean to Sayaka? Forms of it flash through her mind, at first. A quiet Shinto-style wedding ceremony. A baby shower, surrounded by her friends. A quiet night in with her father. Even a terribly mundane argument with Koji...

But when it finally stabilizes and solidifies, it brings her here. In this hospital waiting room. Adjusting to her surroundings, the context of 'why' she's here... it's because she loves her daughter.

The nurse approaches, and while Koji holds himself back, Sayaka is studying her expression - she needs to know if this is good or bad news. Her tension deflates at 'she's stable', nodding to the nurse and then looking into Koji's eyes. "Thank God... we'll" Is all she can remember saying, until they're both in the patient room.

"Lisa, dear..." She is going to get the lecture of the lifetime once she's out of this hospital, but for now... "Are you awake?"

Ironically enough, it's much like the sensation of 'waking up' from a dream, the little things like how LiSA doesn't actually look like she's injured at all, the TV isn't quite right -- is that Asciel?

...Suddenly it all comes back to her. Mazinger Infinity, and their impossible endless fight with a regenerating army of kikaiju, the activation of Goragon... what she saw with Yuliana Kafim.

"This must be Goragon. Right?" She asks the now awake LiSA, as more and more people begin to converge on this possibility on the wings of their own dreams of love.

Perhaps it's better for them both that she didn't ask about why she saw what she just saw, instead.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        The shifting of reality, as they are pulled into another vision of possibility.

        Exhaustion is the biggest thing Sayla feels. She sits in the psycommu wheelchair, in NICU. A few weeks early, but he's here. Sayla's second child. Her first is out there in the waiting room. His little hand grips her finger tightly. He's healthy, but still needs to be observed just in case. Sayla stares down at him, smiling. "...Your big sister is going to absolutely adore you." She says, to her unexpected surprise. "Just like I do."

        But there are limits to how long one can stay in NICU. As he drifts off to sleep, Sayla lets him settle. It's only once he's fully drifted off that Sayla leaves little Ryu Mass to his rest, and moves out towards her own room-

        Except instead of her own room, Sayla comes out into the waiting room. It's a strange mix of people, as most waiting rooms are. Or... is it a waiting room? Koji and Sayaka's daughter is here, in a bed. A few girls from Ashford. She misses the show of Asciel crawling out of the TV, as she moves her wheelchair toward Leina. "Sorry for them pushing you out, pollito. I would have had you stay if I could." She smiles, tiredly, only to blink as she sees who Leina is with. "Roux, I thought you were-"

        And then she realises. The memories of a different timeline- one where she asked about the adoption far earlier- and was accepted. Where Leina never became Puru-1. Where she never closed herself off from her friends. A kinder, gentler world, where certain things were no longer impossible.

        "...It's another possibility, isn't it?" As Sayaka mentions Goragon, Sayla nods. Somehow, this one being kinder just stings more. Especially with what just happened...

<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.

        Piece by piece, the shared room coalesces, like each individual arriving in it shines a spotlight on a new section of it, blooming in the dark. Recognized voice, unfamiliar voices.

        ...The first thing Asciel sees is a hand offered her way. In this state, it feels so much like a palm outstretched towards core functions she closed off so many years ago - an offer to load in assistance which would run rampant. The idol stumbles backwards, one step - then, the strings go slack, as Asciel's second instinct is to reach for it all the same, with an almost blank expression. Standing upright, her sun-like eye falls upon Kallen for a moment... "...have I lost...my touch...as an idol this badly...that stagehands need to help me upright? ...are -you- here so that your 'love' decides -me-?" Whatever that vision she displayed may have meant - it's clearly still fresh in Asciel's emotions, something she grows stiff and worried just thinking about - and once she's upright again, her hand quickly lets go of Kallen.

        Light after light, person after person. Cascade, the closest thing Asciel has to a friend, pulls more life into her, subtly shifting from inert puppet to upright goddess. Naoko, who she just remembered holding hands with before going up on stage, comes to join in. Above all - above everything - the first thing Asciel can't help but blurt out is, "I'm so relieved you two are okay. ...it- I think - it's alright to come here. ...be careful. Not too close."

        It isn't just hell Asciel's been pulled through. It may be just a touch more painful - the brief flash of her 'heaven' that slipped through her fingers lances through her ears. "...I'm not going to give up. I'm not going to give up - Ani...ta." -Why is Anita of all people here? -Why are Leina, and Roux, people who only have reasons to detest her? Why does it feel like 'someone detested' doesn't belong here?

        It's all cut through, the moment Roux 'asks', because it's Asciel's job to 'answer' - and in her own way, she does know exactly where she is. The anchor tightening at her heart assures her.

        "...We are all at 'Ai'. ...I [promised] I would never abandon 'Ai'. And that [promise]...somehow...has forced me to come here." It's a sentiment whose original meaning would surely be lost on others - save, perhaps, if Kallen and Cascade would remember someone named 'Ai' from Ashford, but that's hardly the only person named that.

        But she says this to Roux with a straight face. That's Asciel's answer for what, exactly, this is. "...nn. ...It's hard to think straight. I've...I don't totally remember...why we're here. Only that I need to be 'here', right now, no matter what." Fingertips gripping into the bedframe, leaving behind a faint iridescent residue - right at the foot of LiSA's bed. The mere sight of her, somehow, helps Asciel think just fractionally clearer. "...I remember that you're important to all this. ...Right?"

        ...And Sayaka, outright saying that phrase, fully alights Asciel's memories. "Goragon...ugh. Ugh. Aaa, no, I can't have failed, I can't be trapped - Koji, Sayaka, we can't be 'too late', can we!? I have to get out of here-"

        "...except I promised never to abandon here."

        A thought that forces Asciel back down into a chair, staring skyward. A thought that makes her believe, perhaps, that this is what it means for it to be over. That one promise shattered nine others.

<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.

Roux feels a hand on her shoulder. She turns her head and looks at Leina -

There is a moment of confusion, but then Leina is giving her chocolate. Taking the bar, Roux unwraps it without looking. She seems alert, even on edge. "So it seems," she says, looking outwards as she raises the candy to her mouth. As she bites into it, she gets guided to sit down.

Roux does not do so right away. "If this is the afterlife," she says after chewing her bite of chocolate, "I want to talk to the manager."

Her eyes flick towards --

It's like a stage, Roux thinks, improbably, but before she can do more thinking on this process, she looks towards Sayla. Roux blinks slowly, once.

Sayaka is the one who says GORAGON, and Roux looks at her suddenly. (Quietly, she breaks off the unbitten half of the candy bar and offers it to Naoko, without looking.)

Her attention turns towards Asciel then. They are at 'Ai'. Roux hears it as "I" for a moment and squints. For a moment a suspicion fills her mind that somehow, perhaps, Asciel pulled a fast one -- inserting herself with electronic speed into Goragon at the last ditch, taking over the fundamental nature of reality. Except-- she's struggling.

Roux is not religious, but she suspects 'God' would not struggle.

Despite everything, she feels a pang of sympathy.

"... Well, we were all right there, fighting the Machine Beasts," Roux answers Asciel. "... other than that..."

Roux turns around, now, and steps back to push open the door to the ladies' room. Looking into it, she can only see the usual facilities for a hospital bathroom; a very accessible toilet, and a sink with germicidal soap next to it.

After two seconds, she lets the door close, and steps back to rejoin the others. "It was the Machine Beasts, right? I... Just sort of woke up, it was so crazy, I thought it might have been a dream."

<Pose Tracker> Naoko Suzuki has posed.

Naoko is... having a Moment. All these people here, many of whom she recognizes. All capable of possibly having seen or heard something that she has no idea how to feel about. It would just be the worst if one of those people happened to be--

"Kya!"

She lets out a loud yelp when he worst fear comes true. Leina Ashta is right there. Now she's in for it. She's going to be needled about this one forever, the merciless teasing will never end! She's gonna...

...give her a candy bar? Dumbfounded, she silently accepts the offering, immediately realizing the obvious fact that something's very off about Leina. Lucky for her, she supposes, but it is a bit worrisome. "Uh, yeah," 'Nova' replies, scratching her head. "Maybe... maybe we should just sit down, yeah." What kind of experiences would cause... whatever this is? She herself has been uncommonly Aware during it all, yet remaining on some level detached, in most cases. Does this mean that she should be glad that she's something else than a Newtype...?

There's something off about her too, because with Roux's added offering, she's now holding one and a half candy bar, and failing to actually eat any of this. Possibility is truly something else, if it can cause that to happen.

The waiting room, meanwhile, sure has gotten crowded... yet people don't seem to be sitting down much. What's going on in that room over there? Someone's popular. Her curiosity quickly gets the better of her. Sayla's approach makes it all the easier. While she doesn't know, per se, she intuits that there's a relation between her and Leina.

"Excuse me... please look after her, I'm not sure if she's... well." With that, she rushes closer towards the gathering crowd, only to be stopped by another familiar face.

"Ah... Asciel?" There's something wrong with her, too. What's going on? That Possibility just now, did everyone else experience something much like it, is that why? She has to admit, it did feel uncommonly... warm. And embarrassing. Mostly just really embarrassing. Maybe it's good, actually, that people are a little out of it. "I, uh. Yeah. Yeah I'm fine. Don't worry about me." She's been saying that sort of thing to herself for so long, she can't even tell anymore when it's actually true or not.

More familiar faces, up ahead. She pauses when she see Anita, raising an arm in greeting... when in the same moment, sees the unmistakable form of someone else she knows well. "Koji..." She breathes a big sigh of relief. That's right. Of course he's fine. That was only a Possibility. She didn't actually... do that. How could she ever?

With Sayaka's words, if there was still any doubt remaining, it's now confirmed. This really is the people who were out there, at the time. Together in this same Possibility, somehow. Which means...

"Hey, um... if we're all here, I mean, the real us, in the real here... isn't there anything we can do?"

She probably didn't word that very well, but gosh, how are you even supposed to talk about this stuff?

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

Goragon.

Sayaka speaking the word brings a wave of understanding crashing through Koji's mind. He blinks twice, looking around at everyone. Sayla, Leina, Anita, Naoko, Cascade, Kallen, Roux... everyone is here too, snared in the wave of Hell's scheme - and by the look of them, they've seen their own visions in this impossible space.

"This is... a possibility." A world where his daughter jumped into the piloting seat with as much eagerness as he did, and whose first flight ended in a crash and crisis - but because of the presence of people who cared about her, one less tragic than it could otherwise have been.

... Why does thinking of Lisa as 'his daughter' feel so natural, even now he knows this isn't real?

... then Asciel looms over Lisa's bed, demanding to know how the silver-blue-haired girl is important - and then realises the nature of the situation, collapsing into her own chair as though paralysed by internal paradoxes.

        'I can't have failed,' she bemoans, and Koji stands, walking around the bed to the Super AI's presentation, and pulls her into a hug.

"We were too late," he confirms. "Hell fired the weapon, but... for whatever reason, we're still here. We haven't been rewritten yet." Naoko brings up the same thought, and Koji nods to her - clearly, he has no idea what might have transpired for her. "As long as we're still here..." He looks back over to Lisa in her bed. "Maybe we still have a shot."

<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.

Nova's 'Kya!' causes Leina to blink, "Wow. At me? Not her?" Leina says, to Nova's reaction, as she missed the active horror movie in progress.

Still she hands her the candy bar. "Don't worry I'm not performing any PDAs right now. So collect yourself and don't run off."

She says it so casually too, but even now she doesn't sound QUITE herself?

Indeed to Roux, she answers. "Wouldn't it be something, if reality had a customer service desk?"

Leina says, to Roux, still sounding abstracted, at the idea of reality having a manager.

Indeed, Goragon coming up invokes it in her mind again, the idea popping in and out repeatedly as she made this journey here. "Who'd have thought that Goragon would be like this?"

Leina comments Sayaka's way, sounding... like she's being drawn back out, into something more resembling good spirits, as she has something to FOCUS on in that.

To Koji, she nods as if to confirm his words, "Yeah I've...I could feel... that much."

Perhaps it was her time with the Banshee? Or with Rita? She's not certain. She just knows she could tell at least that.

When Sayla shows up, she gives her a glance, a smile, that's frayed around the edges. The idea of telling her... this isn't real. Leina can't for several moments.

"It's alright, Mom."

Let her have this, for as long as possible.

"I get it." And indeed Leina's sightline shifts lower, "Some things take priority."

It's the mature answer, at least, the responsible one, while Sayla gets her bearings. While she holds onto a name 'Ryu.' and listens to the implications tighten over her heart.

(Indeed she did more than give Naoko something to 'Intuit' there)

It's only when Sayla stops speaking to Roux, as she realizes, that Leina's eyes shift up to her.

And there's a nod, an apology in her eyes. "Come over here... come sit down with us."

This is a possibility that might need to be mourned. Leina moves her purse to the floor to make room.

Asciel speaks, and Leina looks upon her, "Ai. Japanese for love." She repeats, perhaps somehow she understands it means more than that, but not what, "You vowed you'd never give up on love?" Leina asks, in that moment, as if confused by it, and what she knows of Asciel.

"Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but we're all here - we all still exist, and we're all the real deal right? Not just 'Possibility'?"

Leina's eyes look around to everyone, to LiSA, and Koji, and Sayaka, to Roux and Sayla...

"In my opinion, that's a pretty good start?"

<Pose Tracker> Kallen Kozuki has posed.

Ai. Love, yes, but also Professor Ai Martel. Someone who has repeatedly been of key aid to Emmy. And who has intermittantly worked with the Black Knights. She remembers very well their rescue attempt for example. How Ai was capable of truly superhuman feats as they fought Mithril's SRT. Though, all three of them were a little unusually capable really, on that rescue operation. Still, she won't expose that knowledge to everyone here. A secret once told can't be taken back. She might ask Asciel about it in private later though.

Kallen blinks, as those memories suddenly crash into memories of... Love. As her reality and realization reasserts itself fully. Her face twists slightly, remembering again where she really is. "It's nice to see all of you, once again. Cascade, please, it's fine." An indication she can come closer, even am arm held out to her friend. And pointedly, she looks at Asciel... "To decide you? I have no idea what you mean by that. If you ask me? I think on a foundational level we each decide ourselves, who we want to be. Ultimately... I'm who I am, because I treasure the people in my life." The Super AI's decision to let go of her hand, she sees no problem with.

And now Kabuto Koji speaks. One of her childhood heroes, if she were free to admit it. The chance to push forward, even at a time when it seems the villain has won it all. "If that chance really is there still, what else could we possibly do but reach for it?" No matter how much the possibilities she's seen have pulled at her heart. She won't abandon the world they live in. She'll fight for the happiness and love that can come in that reality.

<Pose Tracker> Cascade Vermilion has posed.

Cascade does remember Ai, though she wasn't in her class, but it still takes her a moment to parse through all the possible meanings. Something about this is making her brain feel fuzzy. It's an unpleasant sensation for Cascade, who - though she does sleep - does not dream precisely the same way as a human, and lacks some of the referents.

But then Sayaka says 'Goragon' and it all comes back to her. Baron Ashura is dead, and she's alive. Not to mention everything else about it - Dr. Hell, the adjacent dimension, everything.

Cascade blinks, takes a moment to compose herself as if mentally rebooting, and then straightens. Even her stance is different now; not so comfortable with being overlooked, not quite combative but certainly a good deal more defiant.

"Ah," she says. "So this is 'love'..."

Cascade looks around the room thoughtfully. What about it is love? It's a medical facility. People are here, presumably because they care for the person at it, whoever that may be - LiSA in this case, though Cascade does not think even in her half-aware state she was coming to visit LiSA. It's a kind of love. Has she ever felt it?

"Is that a problem?" she asks of LiSA. It's not that weird that she is here, after all, or at least she doesn't think it is.

But Cascade does not open up about her feelings. Instead, she responds to Koji: "I believe that even he cannot process what he wants to do instantaneously. If we are... here, then that confirms it. We do not understand all the possibilities at once; we had to reach, to grasp. He might do it faster than you or I could. But he can't have finished."

Cascade considers that for a moment. "Probably," she adds, because it makes her feel slightly better if she doesn't sound completely sure about something that she is not at all completely sure about.

Feeling slightly more sure of herself, she walks up to Asciel, moving past Kallen, past the others. She looks at Asciel for a moment.

And then, with barely an instant's warning, Cascade moves faster than a human - to open-hand slap Asciel. It has a pretty good chance of breaking a human's jaw, the way she does it, but to a robot like herself or Asciel it's a ringing sting and little more.

"Stand up!" Cascade's voice has some scorn in it, and an undercurrent of something else. "You told me that the future was uncertain. That it was unlikely to try to find your way, but you just kept trying, because that is what bravery was. You admired me for it, but you made yourself what you were. You endure. So endure! Get up and keep trying!"

"Break yourself one more time and protect the real 'Ai', not this word of 'Ai'. If you can't let yourself fail, you don't get to stop." Cascade doesn't know where the words come from - it's not the way she normally thinks. Something about Asciel makes her think this way, she supposes; something unpleasant but that she doesn't want to give up.

Cascade steps back afterwards. She surreptiously flexes her hand to make sure she didn't break anything (she didn't). Then she turns back to the others, standing next to Kallen.

<Pose Tracker> Anita Rosetta has posed.

Goragon. A possibility.

...So that's it. So what she saw was... another possibility. Another possibility in a series of possibilities. ...Anita smiles despite herself, but then Asciel says her name. She looks toward her, tilts her head to the side consideringly... and offers her a smile.

"Well, no one's telling you to give up right now..." ...Even if there are some things she probably should, but Anita doesn't say that out loud... "...But you sound like you could use a breather, at least. In, uh, whatever form that takes for you."

They're all at 'Ai' - 'love', as Leina clarifies. There's something significant about the way Asciel says it, but it's a little beyond Anita right now. So she thinks, and considers - and sends Naoko a smile and nod in return to her greeting back - and looks between Naoko and Koji.

"...So that's the situation, huh? I was kinda preoccupied..." Anita considers. She 'hm's to herself, folding her arms in front of her and leaning back.

"...Well, I'm gonna be honest... This is all a lil' over my head." She admits. "But..."

She nods toward Leina.

"I dunno about you all, but I feel pretty real. I feel like I'm here, alive, with all of you. So that's gotta mean something." She considers.

<Pose Tracker> Teletha Testarossa has posed.

Love. It takes a bit for her own form to coalesce into form, to set aside these jumbled emotions and to comparmentalize, understand, piece, file, label, enjoy, detest, bask, and comprehend the emotions beset upon her by Goragon. It takes another bit to try and understand. It takes a third bit for her to understand.

Into another cube, willingly and decisively.

---

There is a girl in a labcoat. There is a girl with a clipboard, flipping through the papers and walking through the halls, scanning over papers, walking into the room with an absentminded glance. Ah, others. Others who are definitely real, others who are also in this hellscape...

It takes the sight of Asciel to stop her in her tracks, the placid face of a more-worn girl twitching the slightest bit.

"...Love..." The word slips out of her lips almost just absentmindedly, lips curving into the smallest of smiles. "If you're all real, that means something is changing. I'm not sure what, but..." A tap against her own lip, before starting to scribble on her clipboard.

There's the memories of this Possibility washing over her. A calm life. A happy life. Working to augment hospitals and places of care where she could, a selfless love that was branching out by word and be effort.

"We're not dead, which is the best start."

She opts to omit the idea of a mutual hatred being as strong as love. To know everything about someone, to yearn for their presence, to want to see them again and again, that's...love, isn't it?

<Pose Tracker> LiSA has posed.

"This reality does have a customer service desk. It's me." LiSA can be heard calling over to Leina. Being that customer service agent does mean there are some things that need to be explained.

"This is... this is Love. That is the possibility that was chosen, at the best and worst of timings. For everyone that hasn't met me yet, my name is LiSA. I am the Large intelligence System Agent, the one that is supposed to act as an administrator between the one that Dr. Hell has 'taken', Mazinger Infinity, and the potential one who is to pilot it. I was... trying to figure something out and was about to ask people not to touch a cube, but, ah... I underestimated Koji."

"Warn first, -then- do my plans. I should know better by now."

"None of us are dead. What you see here is a possibility of what could happen, if love were to be more... hm. To put it straightly, if you embraced love, in it's forms."

Her gaze drifts to Sayla and Leina for a moment. "Sometimes that love comes with grief. Anger. Hatred." Cascade moves, and Lisa is silent, letting that slap she gives Asciel echo through the room. "... Pain." She adds on. "It is of love of the concern variety that it gave Sayaka and Koji their vision of me in a hospital room. It is mine for ..." A brief smile. "... family, that they came to check on me." "Family love. Friend love." Her gaze slips to Cascade with a brief nod of acknowledgment.

"Once this vision fades, we'll be back in that main room, the room we were before." A pause. "A question. For all - who have their vision of love. Is it important to you... could you grasp it, if you wanted, even without the power of Infinity?"

<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Yumi has posed.

Goragon... as she says that word, brought from the depths of her memories, it seems she isn't the only one who begins to understand.

She looks at them all. Everyone here, too... experienced their own possibility of love. Whether it hurts or not... perhaps a world built upon 'love' would be a better world.

But she's already focused on the practicals. They're here, ensnared by possibility after possibility, so what can they do?

Sayaka is surprised to see Asciel collapse from the pressure though, and even more surprised when Koji moves to give her a hug. And Cascade slaps her. She doesn't outright join in... but she does move in closer.

"Too late, perhaps..." She agrees. "By all possibilities, Hell has won. But at the same time, this world has allowed us to witness so many impossibilities. So..." Koji says it - we might have a shot.

She looks to Roux, and then Leina and Sayla. "Even the endless army of kikaiju doesn't compare to this. I swear, I've seen it all by now..." She sighs. "But the fact that there's even something to 'see'... we can work with that."

"It almost makes sense that it's here we ended up. The final waiting room." As Naoko says, it still feels 'real'. She still has her continuity of memory, even if some things look strange right now, and she doubts Hell's rewritten reality would be something so minor.

"Well said," she says then, to Kallen. "We've all got the chance to see what 'love' really looks like. But a vision doesn't mean anything if you don't act on it..."

Love out of concern, and familial love, Lisa says. It just felt right that she was the one she was worrying about, waiting for in the hospital room with Koji. That it was Cascade who followed after them to check on Lisa.

"I don't know about all of you... but it only makes me more motivated to reach out and take hold of it with my own hands!" She smiles, at Koji, and then Lisa. "Even if it means rejecting Infinity."

<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.

        The moment Koji is within sight, Asciel's eyes flicks downards at him.

>you aren't supposed to come this close

        The moment Koji is within arm's reach, Asciel visibly draws back in her chair.

>you aren't supposed to come this close

        And the moment Koji embraces the idol in reassurance - despite how hard she's worked to keep an utterly inviolable distance, despite how hard she's worked to protect herself behind the screen -

        ...Asciel relaxes, and whispers out,"...t...thank yo-"

>YOU AREN'T SUPPOSED TO COME THIS CLOSE

        -Those three lines flash upon the orb-like monitor Asciel's connected to - faintly visible, and yet obviously visible. Whispered until the last is shouted in harsh mechanical tones. The strings pull oh so taut - like the cord of a grenade - and for a moment, Asciel swells up-

        "...But I was ~made to be closer to people."

        ...Nothing erupts.

        "...I was ~made to be believed in, just like this." There's a strange serenity to Asciel's voice - despite the vice-like grip of her strings. A single hand can even rest on Koji's back for a little - despite everything, she's been believed in here.

        She can even laugh, when Cascade's resolve is affirmed enough to swat the idol on the face. No - she's excited even. All the moreso when Tessa comes into view. That - THAT - makes her stand upright, more firmly than she ever has. A hand at her heart, that still aches with the mark left deeper in her than anything else - right next to the ten [promises] she, herself, etched right after. "...Hah. Ahahahah. It's strange, huh~ That all of you are here, in my possibility, and not the one I promised to love. It's true. I need to break free from this one, and take care of her. But the fact that she isn't here can only mean one thing."

        "...despite all the odds, it is me, the promised singularity of unrequited love, who's appeared for all of yours!~"

        There is zero shame the moment Asciel says this. Negative shame. She's proud of that assumption, glimmering and sparkling in absolute haughtiness. "No wonder I was having that vision - of others' love pouring into me relentlessly, but despite how much they'd tear me apart - I'm still here, aren't I! No matter how many times I ~try again, I'm still here!~ Because the truest hope of all of you - is that you can rely on your love to be able to raise towards me! Just like any idol! No matter if your love is that I've inspired you -" A flash of radiance at Cascade- "...that you've realized you can believe in someone no matter what -" A sparkle at Koji- "That I'm someone you can admire enough to perform with together- " A peace sign over her eye at Naoko - "...that I'm someone it's safe for your hatred to arrive to~" An almost dangerous widening of her smile at Tessa.

        "I think my answer's pretty clear, LiSA!"

>no no i can't allow it to happen why why do i have to be so impossible just to love-

        "This very room here - it's a testament to how I'm grasping it right now!~ That I'm the 'love' existing in all of you!~"

        ...The contrary answers are easily missed, one drowned out in whispers from the static sphere behind the ever-attention-grabbing idol.

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        It's not long that Sayla has time to bask in the possibility, but the newtypes can feel the drop in Sayla's mood as it becomes clear it's all fake. The knowledge that it's all false seems to let the exhaustion fade away, the pain- she stands from the wheelchair, and walks to the seat next to Leina. Asserting the truth. "...This place just doesn't stop, does it." She says, sadly. A possibility may have to be mourned... but now probably isn't the time.

        "...As far as we know we are, I suppose." Sayla says, a little darkly. Koji asserts that they haven't been rewritten yet. "Then we still have a shot, right? For whatever reason, Hell hasnt finished the job."

        She looks up as she sees Tessa, and nods. "...That's how it seems at least. I'm just surprised we'd all be pulled here at once." What is it about the possibility of Love that brings everyone here together?

        ...Or is that exactly it? Despite herself, Sayla smirks. It really is that simple.

        "...Koji, Sayaka, you're our experts here. Tessa, you might be able to chime in too." She crosses her arms, going into strategist mode. "It feels a bit like when Newtypes make a connection here but... different. She looks around the room again. A lot of faces she doesn't know, but... "Everyone here was fighting right, like Roux said? Against Ashura, Brocken and the Ruin Generals? It doesn't seem to have pulled in anyone else..."

        And then Cascade slaps Asciel, and Sayla blinks. There's something going on there- something that Sayla decides she shouldn't butt in on.

        Sayla pauses, briefly, as LiSA asks that question. ...Are you asking if we could make this possibility real, without Infinity?" She's a little uncertain at what's being asked.

        But at the thought of grasping love, a hand reaches out for Leina's, a look to Roux, a glance to Tessa. "...What love I have now was gained without Infinity. I won't have that erased for something supposedly 'better'." That's her reply to LiSA's question.

        There's a pause, then, as Sayla just stares at Asciel. 'What the hell?' She mouths quietly to Leina and Roux.

<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.

"If there was customer service, things would be a lot different," Roux answers Leina. She is, maybe, being a little light. But she isn't joking. She is silently creating agenda items on some level, ready to present to God or the Devil.

Roux takes another bite out of her half a candy bar. There's like one bite left now; she has to cradle it in her hand. Even in Heaven, they keep shrinking the chocolate bars.

Her eyes turn to Koji. He makes an assessment. They were too late: the weapon was fired. For whatever reason, they're still here, and haven't been rewritten -- yet.

Roux lets the chocolate melt on her tongue. Was it actual chocolate, from the world that --

-- that --

-- Roux looks at the bits of candy in her hand.

"... this can't be all that's left," Roux says, quietly.

Another girl - one Roux doesn't know (It's Kallen) - speaks rather eloquently about the definition of one's life through one's connections.

There's a chance. They have to reach for it -- and that redhaired girl slaps the taste out of Asciel's mouth! Roux's eyes widen, momentarily drawn to this sign of conflict, and yet: something about what Cascade says rings true in the back of her teeth. For some reason, she thinks of --

LiSA contributes. She offers that she is, if not the manager, the customer-service desk. Roux gazes at her with slightly slackjawed surprise, and then laughs, her usual polite-glassware 'a ha ha ha!' and gives LiSA her traditional 'ee hee bliiih' sort of abashed smile. "Well, you're a lot nicer than what I'd been imagining!"

But then LiSA has a question. Roux is quiet for several seconds. Her eyes turn towards the floor. She seems to feel she should give it due weight and consideration. And yet... every countercheck is matching the first blush impulse. Her eyes lift towards LiSA:

"I would," Roux says. "In fact... I was doing my best to do that very thing. Without Infinity or anyone -- just with a little help," here Roux clasps Leina's shoulder momentarily, "here and there, from family and friends. There was a place out there where I knew I could have love."

"But now I'm here instead," Roux says, with unusual intensity.

She exhales afterwards.

(In response to Sayla's wordless question, Roux meets her eyes and kind of half-shrugs one shoulder. Roux took herself off that case sometime in May.)

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

Koji steps back from Asciel as Cascade swings, and his brows arch as the self-professed idol begins to laugh - manic? Those brows crease together into a frown as she proclaims this her possibility, a representation of everyone coming to love her.

"Just... stop it," he sighs. "This isn't the place to get lost in narcissism like this." Is there ever such a place?

Lisa has a question, and he turns away from Asciel to consider the girl's words. "... Fighting to seize love, huh." He looks to Sayaka as she speaks up, then - and grins. "Yeah. Love is something worth fighting for." He reaches down to squeeze his girlfriend's hand. "... so how do we do that."

<Pose Tracker> Anita Rosetta has posed.

Anita looks toward LiSA. The Large intelligence System Agent... she considers that for a moment, and then listens as she explains the situation further. And, the possibility of love...

A question is raised.

Is it important to her? Could she grasp her vision of love, if she wanted, even without the power of Infinity?

Anita gives it some thought for a moment.

"...Yeah. I think so." Anita decides with a nod. "I think everyone's got that in 'em. They just gotta be willing to reach out - and let themselves be reached out to in turn."

She grins, and then laughs, a little.

"...Had to figure that one out for myself. Or, I guess, had it be shown to me." She admits. "So, yeah. I'd do it - whatever it takes, I'll reach out and grasp it."

She's already put everything on the line for love before, after all.

<Pose Tracker> Cascade Vermilion has posed.

Cascade does not react to the people who assume she's here to see LiSA. She definitely isn't. Absolutely. (She doesn't remember. Would she have come for her? If she was a student, still - )

She very deliberately puts that aside for the moment. She can worry about that later.

"Good," she says to Asciel, instead, because she doesn't like seeing her in that state - tying herself up in knots rather than doing something, anything. Something about it makes her uncomfortable, and she's not sure if it's because she's an AI herself. She's never thought about *that*, either.

She doesn't need to scold Asciel for acting like... well, like she is, either. She's been beaten to it.

Cascade stays near Kallen, afterwards. She takes the offered hand with a slight smile - the first she's given today that wasn't in the role she entered the room in. The smile vanishes when LiSA asks a question.

'For all who have their vision of love... could you grasp it, if you wanted?'

Cascade couldn't. She doesn't understand 'love'. She wants to; something inside her aches to understand it. But she doesn't know if she has. It's not something she can pick apart and look at the pieces, and it's not something she knows if she's ever experienced.

Is what she's felt 'love'? She feels lonely, and alone, as other people declare their desire to seize it. She only wants to know what it is; to feel it. She doesn't have a vision yet. But she nods very slightly, regardless. It's missable if you weren't looking for it in the first place.

<Pose Tracker> Naoko Suzuki has posed.

...Wait a second. People are discussing... love. LiSA soon confirms the suspicions that this is what that Possibility has been. So, what she saw, is that... what her life would have been, in a reality where she had a better understanding of it? More experience with it?

Naoko can only ask herself questions like that, without the ability to answer. Few things feel as abstract and unknown as 'love'. It wasn't long ago that she admitted as much to Asciel. Perhaps that explains why she failed to get at all drawn into this Possibility to the point that it felt real. She couldn't even begin to relate to it. Let alone... embrace it.

Her gaze wanders over to Sayla and Leina. Mother and daughter... huh. That must be more like how it's supposed to be. Her mother cooking breakfast still feels so unrealistic that she can't wish for it, but, just being able to talk like that... that might've been nice.

...She never did reach out to her mother, did she? But how could she have? She overheard it crystal clear, that she was a nuisance. The last thing she wanted was to make herself any more of one.

Love... has a bitter aftertaste. Which is why she suddenly crams the half-a-candy-bar she got from Roux into her mouth. That's better. As is the confirmation of what she suspected, that no, it's not too late yet.

She starts to peel the wrapper off Leina's gifted candy as well, when Asciel is... hugged by Koji Kabuto? That one gives her pause. Never in a million years would she have imagined those two figures she admired from afar for many years would ever end up interacting in that way. It causes Asciel, too, to have... a moment. One in which she gets briefly singled out, even.

She... can't really deny those words, she supposes. Asciel was even the first thing she saw, when entering this Possibility, in the form that used to be: comforting, stabilizing, something that she could trust would always be there. ...She's not going to commit to calling that 'love', though. She'd much rather stay silent, at this point. Just stick to the background, hope people don't look in her direction.

...dangit. A question is posed that everyone is supposed to answer. What is she to say to that one?

"I... I'm really not the best person to ask about this. I haven't made up my mind, about... what I actually want. But... if you want me to think about it..."

She pauses, and closes her eyes, taking a bite of the remaining candy bar, for courage. "...Well, regardless of what I want... I think it would be meaningless, if you used the power of Infinity for something like this, a world where love is all you've ever known. In a world like that... would it really be anything special anymore? Grasping it yourself, with your own power... just seems like the way that should go. ...Right?"

<Pose Tracker> Teletha Testarossa has posed.

Love. A Possibility of Love in all its shapes and forms in this cube, coursing through her. Her own body flickering at times, a faint outline of the multitude of possibilities that love could bring. Glasses, scars, the glint of silver every so often as she stays steady. The many multitudes of love.

"Embracing love is..." To allow oneself to run freely. Love, philia, pragma, storge, eros, ludus, mania, philautia, agape, closing her eyes for a moment to focus herself. "...Quite a varied thing." Most of these are impossibilities, ones already severed by circumstance and by choices.

It's something worth seizing, more and more.

"It's not exactly reality, but it is far-reaching enough to bring the impossible forth. If what..." She trails off, glancing down at herself. That damnable scar, those damnable deaths. "If what happened in other possibilities can be replicated, then it shouldn't be much of a problem to push for where Dr. Hell is." Excise the cause, fix it all. The simplest of solutions. "This isn't a Newtype connection. Too broad for that, too easily manipulated and not dream-like enough." A slow mutter.

"You learn about people with connections, but to learn about yourself is something that's happening here." Retreating into herself, mulling over the various possibilities and methods. Something better served by others, but to give the self to be the island in the vast ocean...That's what she feels best at.

But, for the ultimate question. There's barely a beat of hesitation: "Of course. Do I need a reason for it? To...want something without shortcutting to it?" Definitive intent overlaid with a burning conviction. Infinity isn't a factor; As 'real' as everything was, there's only the spectre of the real world to consider. As much as her own mind has skipped ahead in some regards, there's still other paths to traverse.

Still, she's beside Asciel by now, only smiling back at that wild conclusion brought about by the AI. Ah, that was her angle, the way of total rejection and the shortcut for her own justifications. There's only a deep sigh, muttering to herself about circular arguments. Koji's said all that should be said about that.

Mmh, but still...Love, love in all its forms...The glint in her eyes, basking in the 'love of self'...Something to remember for later. A glance back at Sayla. A smile, one that's less restrained than ever.

<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.

Indeed Leina does feel as Sayla's mood drops, and Leina reaches out to grasp her hand, holding it. "... Feels like it's the nature of this place." Infinity is really Infinity, in a sense. Endless possibility. Even as she does lean over and whisper, "I'm sorry Mom, I would have loved to have met him."

She understands, it's merely possibility. It is not the loss of that to herself affecting her, but Sayla's grief over it.

Leina levels her gaze upon LiSA and says with all genuine sincerity, "God your job sucks. Please don't show me your backlog, it might give us all an existential crisis."

'Love' indeed, Leina dwells upon it. Even in possibilities she'd seen before - Love was always a part of it, but this one is focused upon it.

It is enough to bring a smile to her face, even as she confirms that they're not dead. Her eyes fall upon her, and- what she has to say. Indeed, Leina listens to her answer, and to Roux. Smiling as Roux clasps her shoulder.

"Well, I'd say a few months back I'd need a place like this to reinforce it to me. Would have taught me a good lesson about how love can exist almost anywhere."

A smile tugs at the corner of Leina's mouth, "But when I was being stupid, a lot of people reached out to me and dragged me back by my ear. So I'd say - don't need the Customer Service Desk of reality to show me my vision of love."

Indeed, Leina looks sideways at Roux, and Sayla... then around the room, at LiSA, Sayaka, Koji, Tessa, Nova, even Asciel.

"There's a lot of people in this room that taught me how to grasp it, better than some 'Love' cube ever could have."

And then Sayla leans over, and mouths 'What the hell', Roux shrugs away responsibility, and Leina just mouths back. 'Just roll with it.'

Perhaps Leina considers inviting Asciel to her school's drama club briefly - very briefly, but that'd be too cruel.

Her classmates would all pop an aneurysm before they graduated.

<Pose Tracker> Kallen Kozuki has posed.

Truly, Love is among the most powerful of possibilities. The greatest of motivating forces, in all its many forms. Of course, sometimes, that form is painful. The sound of Cascade smacking Asciel makes her wince, more for the metal on metal of it. Still, after that, when their hands connect, she's simply offering a smile instead. Partly because she has exactly zero idea what to make of the... whole thing going on with Asciel *now*. She can't even begin approaching it yet. And partly she's just happy that Cascade is accepting the gesture.

Some questions are asked. And at this point Kallen has nothing to hide. There's no point in it. "I was in the Knightmare Frame, yes. I believe everyone here was likely on that field, in some capacity." Which is a mind boggling statement to even think about. Somebody fighting Kikaiju in a lone KMF of all machines. Pretty much any given one could just step on it without a second thought. And as her gaze turns to LiSA, who she's only occasionally spoken with during her time here... "Without Infinity. Without my KMF. Even if all I had were these two hands, I'd still reach out for Love." She feels that answers the question well enough.

<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Yumi has posed.

Sayaka's made her answer. But she watches, listens, as everyone else comes to their own conclusions. To grasp for that love, even without Infinity. Or even admit they haven't reached it yet.

Asciel's answer, though... well it'd definitely be groanworthy were it not for the gravity of the situation. "Frankly, Asciel... it's not always about you." She shakes her head. "But I know how far you're willing to take your determination. We'll need even that, right now..."

She leans closer into Koji, as he squeezes her hand. "Honestly... I don't think we'd survive our battles upon until now without it." She admits. "I wish I knew the 'how'... but what we're seeing now? It has to be the key to it all." She considers. "After all... I don't think the 'possibility of love' is something Dr. Hell has ever considered."

She paces around the, admittedly cramped, hospital room. A certain theory she once heard comes to mind. "Hey, Koji... didn't Lisa call this an adjacent dimension? And didn't you theorize that when these spaces become unstable, thought turns into reality? At the time, I thought it was ridiculous." The entire theorized mechanism behind Infinity. "If we can make enough of a mess to disrupt this place, then...!"

<Pose Tracker> LiSA has posed.

The edges of the cube are fading. Certain parts are glimmering in and out of existance as Sayaka starts talking, and Lisa notes this with a smile as she finally slides out of the hospital bed and places her hands on the disappearing IV-bag holder. "Again, these are possibilities. They're not supposed to be long-lasting... and this many people, with so many differing ideas... or lack of ideas... well, we'll be back in that Adjacent Dimension shortly. When we do, I need to know how to proceed, so we're not stuck in this dimension forever."

Firstly, though:

Her gaze drifts to Sayaka and Asciel as the two immediate responders. Sayaka's she seems to expect; reaching out to others has seemingly always been the way of the people in the Photon Power Lab. "To grasp it... I see, Sayaka." Asciel, however, goes full narcisstic or similiar, and LiSA pinches the bridge of her nose. "I'm-- I'm not going to respond to that because I have to make sure the world doesn't disappear first and THEN you and I are going to have a talk. Don't even think about trying to get out of it, because you're driving me batty."

Sayla's grasp of Leina's hand is noted, and she steps towards them for a moment. "That's what I was wondering. If this possibility could give you something more, to make it worth what you've already got up." A pause. "Leina seems to agree with that."

"Koji. Sayaka - no. All of you, whose names I do and do not know." Roux, Kallen, Tessa, Naoko, Anita. These people she barely knows. Indeed, seeing them in person like this of everyone aside from Roux is a first. So to those answers does she lean in to most gravely as she takes them into consideration. "I thank you, for telling me. For being so honest with your feelings."

"Master... a word I haven't called you lately. I have called you another, instead. Please -- when you reach out to grasp, do not forget it." A somewhat obscure statement, but Koji, perhaps surprisingly isn't left for last. No, Cascade is, and she turns to her fellow Super AI. Lisa steps up into her personal space, and heedless of the reaction she gets, reaches out to take her hand. "Someone, some of you, might not know what love is. So this cube gives you an idea of it. Please, I ask... don't think no one has never felt it towards you. Please remember it, outside of here. For those of us in here, that know it, and are fighting for it... for the ones like you. So know I funderstand... that we all believe in it. So everything we have, then, in our true reality...

Her voice shifts, louder. "Tell me one thing--!" She demands.

"Do you think this world, the one we come from - is it worthy of existence?!"

<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.

He'd almost forgotten that LiSA used to call him 'Master', and where there used to be a smugness about it... There's discomfort, instead. "I won't forget," Koji replies, seriously, holding eye contact with the young woman who is so much more than she appears for a long moment.

Then, however... the question. The most important question for Goragon.

        "Is this world worthy of existence?"

Koji's gaze lowers to the tiled floor, shimmering and inconsistent as the illusion of the possibility begins to deform around them.

"There are... a lot of crappy things about this world. Worthless things. Infinity offers the power to undo so many of them, but... even so." He looks around at the assembled, thoughtful - taking in their faces, and their determination. "... If you ask me... the world we have - the one Hell wants to replace? It's our world, and it's the only one we've got. Whether it deserves to exist... that's a question only a god or a devil could answer, but none of us are that - we're that space in-between, both and neither at the same time. So I'm going to do what I can - and that's fight for it, until I can't fight any more."

<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.

        "...I saw it, you know."

        That gleaming world where if Asciel made one simple move - she would have seized that endless twilight she's after. The dull ache of the sins she'd commit to get there. The future that spelled disaster for Naoko, but apotheosis for Asciel. No wonder - if the idol is that one who can, at all costs, change cataclysm to paradise...

        "I saw that it was possible for me, as long as I never ~gave up. As long as I pushed my boundaries to their limit. I did see it, here in Goragon. I saw a lot of things, you know. You can thank Teletha and Nova for putting me through that big of a mess." Hands folded under her chin, Asciel's smoldering smile imposes upon them both. "Honestly. Thank them!~ So many dreams, miserable and amazing, and oh so cathartic. It's thanks to them I can glow this brightly here. Without them...I may have lost sight of that capability. ...Just like..."

        ...Cascade is oh so silent, and Asciel knows exactly why. The string tightens around her arm - a compulsion that surprises her - and it reaches out to Cascade. "...You'll find it. The path you walk is one of finding it. I was like you, unknowing that I could even potentially be cared for. Hehe. If anything, I was sure I was supposed to be despised, and ~became so, so hard to overcome it." Indeed - when LiSA confides that touch of belief in Cascade's heart - Asciel already 'knows'. ...so she assumes.

>it's not possible! i'm still supposed to be rejected! why is any of this happening!? why can't i stop them coming closer, when i'm this exposed!? why won't i stop?!

        The moon in Asciel's right eye flits open, once. Her head cranes ever so slightly backwards at the spherical appliance she's still tethered to. "...it's that hard to believe? ...This is so very uncomfortable. Because - mm. Of course. 'You' haven't gotten to feel like anything's 'possible' for you yet. ...But don't 'you' feel it...?"

        Static flickers in the orb's 'screen' - sputters of that iridescent oil spill from its cracks. It glows hot, like a time bomb ready to burst. But before it does -

        ...From the walls of this very possibility, from this 'Ai' - something emerges. A pair of arms, sweeping not around Asciel - but around this core she's connected to. A specter of an 'Ai' - pure crimson, a visage familiar indeed to Cascade and Kallen. 'That' very Ai they recognize. She holds the sphere against her heart, chin pressed right to its apex - and, after a brief moment of ever wilder flickering and sputtering...the device calms down.

        A laugh like the weight of a world was just lifted from Asciel's shoulders. "See? It was always possible. From the very beginning. And it's good timing, really. I wouldn't want 'you' to hold all this back, who certainly never believed for a second that this very world was worthy of anything. That's why - I wanted to change it so much."

        Arms spread high, the idol who dreamed so much of an entirely new world proclaims: "Worthy, unworthy, what a farce to proclaim! It is something that has always changed - and so, even as I detest it, I resolve that the world that prays to me - that pours its love into me - I'll never give up on it!~ It is worthy, because it was willing to plead for me to save it! It is worthy, because I'll make it the paradise for you and me we always sought!~"

        >...my Ai...this...i don't know how i can say all that...but...your warmth...if i have it...then...i want it to exist as long as you will. ...please...

<Pose Tracker> Naoko Suzuki has posed.

Naoko mouths 'me?', wondering how on earth anything she did could have possibly helped teach Leina anything about grasping love. She has no idea why she was included in that list. Hasn't she been making it obvious how much she doesn't get it at all? She has to be the least help anybody could possibly be in matters of love, she can't even look directly at expressions of it! Is she somehow understanding all this even less than she did before, is that what this means??

Now, making a mess to disrupt a place. THAT sounds more Nova's speed. "Now we're talking," she adds to Sayaka's statement with a grin. "It's part of a Miracle Worker's duty to mess up whatever bad miracles are holding back the good ones!" Not... that she knows how, exactly, but. If she had a way to punch Possibility then she totally would. Serves it right, for daring to suggest a world could exist in which she'd be in Dr. Hell's place right now. Much easier to be honest with her feelings about that. If LiSA has a way she can do it, then she's all ears.

However, in spite of being so ready to simply agree with a 'hell yeah', she falls silent, during and following that speech. Even if it was spoken in a more direct way to Cascade, she can't not feel spoken to there. She's wondered about it, whether anyone has ever felt love towards her. She wouldn't have noticed it, if they did. But, after seeing what she did today... it got her thinking.

Silently, she finishes off her candy bar... almost spitting part of it out when Asciel namedrops her. "I-I didn't do anything," she starts, but... she's thanked, for the mess she apparently caused? She's almost sure, now, that she understands everything less than before. "...you're welcome...?" she mumbles, almost inaudibly.

She still needs to give an answer. Well then... it was always easiest to put her thoughts in order by speaking them aloud.

"You know... I think I can extrapolate what it would take, for this possibility to be real. In this world... there is no Sukeban, and there won't ever will be. I won't ever feel I need to make a difference, to try and improve people's lives, because... my life is already perfect. I won't know what it's like to be unhappy, how miserable it is when circumstances you don't have any power to change force you to face a lonely reality. The 'me' of that world won't ever try to work even a single miracle."

A chuckle escapes her. "...Love. I don't understand anything about it. I'm probably the least qualified to say anything about it. But... I understand now that I could find little meaning in it, if I can't feel like I deserve it. I want... I need to earn it."

And maybe, just maybe... LiSA was right. Maybe she can believe that her parents do love her, in their own way. Believe that rather than wanting her out of the way, they left her home alone because they trusted her enough to care for the house. Perhaps it was a sign of trust... another form of love.

She looks around, at those gathered. "...In any case. If seeing Possibility has taught me anything, then it's that, in a different world... I would have never met most, or even any of you. And even if you were there, you wouldn't be this version of you. This one, singular Possibility that makes up the current world, is unique among all the others. So, being here together with you all..."

She smiles brightly, making a fist. "It's the greatest miracle I've ever known. So how it that even a question? Of course a miracle like that deserves to exist!"

<Pose Tracker> Sayla Mass has posed.

        "oh." Sayla says, in response to Leina and Roux's responses. How heartening.

        

        Sayla blinks at Leina's initial response, and then smiles. So that's how it is, huh. Even after all she's seen... Leina chooses the love of reality over the love of this illusory world.

        And tempting as it is...

        Sayla hasn't turned her back on reality so far.

        "I've seen a few possibilities here... But I won't sacrifice our world for one that might be better. That's just running away, making a choice for an entire world. Maybe it would be better- but everything we've had, everything we've known, would be gone. Our world is ours, and we owe it to it to keep fighting for it. To keep doing better. If we take Infinity, we're just abandoning everything. Everything that gave our lives meaning. We can wish things hadn't happened all we want- but we can never let that wish come true. Our lives, our world has meaning."

        She looks around the room, to everyone gathered here.

        "As far as I'm concerned, Infinity's the easy way out. And I'm not taking it, not for myself or anyone else."

<Pose Tracker> Roux Louka has posed.

Roux, for all her surface bonhomie, is simmering. No, simmering suggests something not hot enough; it is more like a liquid sodium heat transmission system in a reactor array.

Lisa looks round - recognizes her for a moment, and then asks a question -

                        'Is this world worthy of existence?'

As with the prior question, Roux gives it thought.

Is the world worthy of existence? A world where a dream of liberation becomes a hellscape of butchery on a truly titanic scale? Where the victors, staggering with the losses of the campaign, turn in a few short years to kick their fellow-survivors in the teeth? Where a ruling coalition's enemy may not be justice, but its own atrocities finally leading to centrifugal force peeling one titan away from another?

A world where a city died and leaders laughed. A world where -- For a moment Roux thinks with painful specificity of Elpeo Puru.

Even so.

None of that is false:

But it was also a world where Elpeo Puru laughed; and where Elpeo Puru lived.

And one where someone else lives, even now.

No matter how far Goragon has gone -- how far could it even go? Roux thinks. We were the closest. We've been farting around in here listening to Asciel and figuring out what's going on for what, ten minutes? The hand that Roux wants to hold isn't here. He isn't here *yet*...

"Yes," Roux tells LiSA, straightening up. Her right hand forms a fist, but it's a fist of determination, not fury. "It is."

<Pose Tracker> Cascade Vermilion has posed.

The possibility is fading away.

No, it's not that. The possibility is still there. The image of the world is fading away, Cascade thinks, because whatever system this is - and she does think of it as a 'system' - isn't really meant to handle all of them working with it all at once. The chance to *do* something, to *choose*, is still there.

To Cascade, to whom choosing - really choosing something important, at a cost to oneself - is new, it's overwhelming, but she won't turn away from it. Not now.

Of all the things Cascade was expecting to happen, though, having her personal space invaded like that by LiSA was not one of them. She knows LiSA knows who she is. Cascade even apologized to her, in her own way, for being a jerk to her - because she was; the differences between how the two of them were raised (or not raised) are so stark, so divisive. The two of them have very few similarities outside of being female Super AIs.

And now she's being grabbed.

Cascade's first reflex is to fight back and strike at her attacker. She's worked hard to put those reflexes aside, so the only visible sign of that is that her hair shimmers in a way that isn't quite the light, for a moment, and shifts as if a breeze that wasn't there caught it. Her second is to break away, to simply pull back and break the grip.

But...

She doesn't. Not quite. Instead, she seriously considers the question.

"You should have asked that first," Cascade says, eventually. She still doesn't understand 'love', despite talking to Asciel about it, despite LiSA claiming someone feels it for her. (Who? She can't imagine who LiSA means. "This world..."

"...I want to experience it. I want to *feel* it! I fought to be able to do that. And for that, it has to exist! As ugly and disorganized and cruel as it can be sometimes. If Dr. Hell finishes his plan, there is no place for me or anyone else but his mind. So perhaps..."

"...I 'love' living in this world." And she will fight for it. She already told Koji and the others she would, though. She doesn't see the point in repeating herself.

<Pose Tracker> Anita Rosetta has posed.

Layna's fist finds purchase - but not on her intended target. The Watcher is here, her armor partially shattered from her attack - but otherwise seemed unhurt.

Layna grins.

"...Heh. So I've heard." She replies, jumping back quickly just in case she intends to retaliate. She's spared that much, at least... but she's not out of the woods yet.

"...Yeah. It is." Anita confirms with a nod. "It's not perfect... but I've got people to go back to. And that's good enough for me. I'm not letting it go anywhere when Rena's still back there waiting for me... and Eight's kids have only just gotten their shot at it. I gotta do this for them, too."

Her left hand clenches into a fist.

"So, yeah. All things considered, it's worth it. I'll shout it to the heavens, if I gotta." She decides with a nod.

<Pose Tracker> Teletha Testarossa has posed.

A small nod towards Leina. Love comes in many shapes and forms, after all. Including dragging people who thought they were doing something good back to earth and sanity. Demonic.

There's a slow step away from that fading edge, glancing over towards it every so often. This was it. The gut feeling in her soul, the dull ache in her heart. To fall out of the cube that christiened love, back into reality.

It's something worth going for.

There's a harsh glare towards Asciel's own perfomative spectre coming in, a gaze flicking between the puppet and its controller. It's a grotesque spectacle all on its own, moreso when seeing for what it is, what the psyches inside show. It's revolting. Distasteful hatred is a twisted form of love. Such a possibility.

"Of course." The simplest answer to Lisa's question. "This world is skewed in ways most people don't realize, misaligned in a permanent manner that most couldn't dream of, but...It's the one we have." Even if this place was wrong, it was home. Better the demons you know, no matter how ferocious it all was. "I'll fight for it. I'd have the world beneath my feet be real than some blind hope erasing everyone." It's so selfish and selfless; A love blossoming all on its own.

Inside, there's a bit of wonder at how everyone's reaching their own conclusions. Something obvious, something blatant, but to be shouted all the same. Activities and urges to follow up on on a later date.

<Pose Tracker> Anita Rosetta has posed.

Everyone gives their answers. ...It sounds like they're pretty much all in agreement, there. Anita nods, as LiSA thanks them. And then her voice raises, in a demand.

The world they all came from... is it worthy of existence?

Anita thinks back to the possibility she saw before. A world where her life wasn't thrown off so violently. She looks down at her left arm, gleaming faintly in the soft light of the waiting room. She clasps her hands, gently running her right thumb across the palm of her left.

She considers.

Is the world she came from worthy of existence?

"...Yeah. It is." Anita confirms with a nod. "It's not perfect... but I've got people to go back to. And that's good enough for me. I'm not letting it go anywhere when Rena's still back there waiting for me... and Eight's kids have only just gotten their shot at it. I gotta do this for them, too."

Her left hand clenches into a fist.

"So, yeah. All things considered, it's worth it. I'll shout it to the heavens, if I gotta." She decides with a nod.

<Pose Tracker> Kallen Kozuki has posed.

A part of her will be sad when she leaves these Possibilities behind. But for all that they may be kind in some ways, they're also cruel in others. That knowledge makes it easier. To not look back and consider what ifs. Parts that have stuck with her, she can fight for in their original reality. They'll be a long, fraught road, but she'll make it happen.

LiSA has much to say, to everyone. Words for those who she knows well, and those she doesn't. Specific encouragement for some, and some eyebrow raising statements. And then a final question for them all.

She has a simple answer to it. She hardly needs to think on it at all. "Worthy? That doesn't matter. It's the world that exists, and it's the world we'll protect. It's a world with any number of problems, but improving on it..." For a moment it feels almost like she's got a slight shine to her. Nothing real, just... her resolution. "We'll make the world we live in better with our own effort and struggle. Not some cosmic edit button. When you start judging who and what is and isn't worthy of saving that way..." She just shakes her head to clear out that thought. "I'm all in on the world we have." The dreamlike world may be fading, but her memory won't. And when they get back... She has several essential calls to make. And one megalomaniac to punch.

<Pose Tracker> Leina Ashta has posed.

(Yes Nova, you're responsible for this too)

"It can't." Is Leina's immediate answer at least, even as she squeezes Sayla's hand, even as she feels Roux's contact with her. "Whatever possibility it showed me, changed for the better - things might end up worse for everyone else. Changed for the worse - things might end up better for a few people."

Still, that's just the immediate answer, as she gives LiSA's more important question greater thought. There are lingering thoughts of selfishness. Regret. It comes in a form not dissimilar to Roux.

In the words she heard from her recently.

Leina. It's okay.
Now it's your turn to be happy!

Why not her too? Why not her?

It's the temptation, despite all the lessons learned. She saw possibilities where she was alive. So there's things it could offer her. There's people it could offer her, but the cost. There's always a cost. Whether she foots the bill, or the world, or the people she loves.

"I don't want to gamble on some other reality, I want ours. Because-"

A moment's hesitation, but only a moment. A moment, that brings a smile on her face, given the people in the room with her.

"-because it's our turn to be happy."

She's spent so long of her life, letting herself be miserable, perhaps in this case, she can make happiness be her choice.

With the people she loves.

And she doesn't need another reality for that.

<Pose Tracker> Sayaka Yumi has posed.

'Is this world worthy of existence', Lisa asks. Is it? "I think to many people... it isn't. This is a world that refuses to learn from its mistakes. A world that cannot stop fighting itself no matter how many lives are lost. A world that seems doomed to continue on that path until nothing's left."

"...But all the same, there's no one I hate more than the type of person that would trample over others and decide for you that you aren't 'worthy' of existence. And I sure as hell don't want to become that person." She concludes.

"So... as long as our lives are worth living, we have to be the ones who take care of this world that we call home." It's the whole reason she took on the duty of guiding the Photon Power Labs through a world that she said refuses to learn from its mistakes.

"...That goes for you, too, you know." Her gaze is sharp, focused on Lisa. "You've become so much more to me than the Large Intelligence Systems Agent. What I saw in this very room... proves it to me. So I won't let you down, as long as this world still exists." She smiles to the young woman, who she is proud to call her daughter.

And of course, Koji's answer... suddenly, Sayaka realizes she's crying, as the world begins to shift between them... "The last time you left this world, you made a promise, a reason to come back. Honestly... I'm still waiting. So let's seize our future, shall we?" It only feels right to leave the 'Ai' cube that way.

<Pose Tracker> LiSA has posed.

Koji gives her an answer first, and she doesn't --- honestly, she doesn't expect anything less from him. Sayaka is more measured, coming at the end, and Lisa can't help but stifle a giggle at the complete opposite that comes from a Kabuto and a Yumi. No one is REALLY getting a response from her about any of their own responses to her question, but she's taking it in, her face going from person to person.

Cascade does get freed, an apologetic word passed on from Lisa in a soft whisper. She'll make it up to you later, miss Vermilion. Probably.

This does mean Cascade is the first person to see her tears, the fact that she's crying. "Thank goodness! Dr. Hell asked me that during the fight we had before Goragon started... and I'm happy... my answer to him, our answers, everyone's answers to me... are all the same!" Close enough to count, anyways.

The cube comes apart, and LiSA is sitting at her keyboard that she started it, now looking like a strangely sized typewriter with parchment coming out of it. She's typing furiously - fingers darting across the keys that have nothing but arrows on them - but the paper is going, and going, and going, in a complex series of kanji that shouldn't make any sense but are doing -something- based on how the area around the Mazin-core that is the centerpiece of the room is changing. A pause.

A somewhat blurred picture of what could only be a younger Lisa standing between two people, a woman with long brown hair and a indistinguishable face and a taller man with suspiciously familiar swoop of black hair around his ear. "Everyone should be transitioning back to our physical reality...!" She says, glancing up to make sure this happens. This is of note, because she does not make it back to Mazinger Z with Koji.