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[Empiricist]

Yuki, Noriko, and Shef
"Oh, did Hideki forget to explain it? There's very little Jon assignment here, everything's on a volunteer basis, and as long as you fill out your quota it's all good. The quota's not too big so it's not going to be a problem unless your procrastinate." _(Evi)

Minato
"I see, if you do not mind me asking, is it more a matter of pay, or more a matter of accommodation? If it's the former, I may be able to provide some means of assistance." _(Vincent)
"Tsukasa told us that you've got some sensors in the prototype. When you can, there's a lounge we need you to check, something in it was outputting so much spirit energy the scryer became audible."

[Strider03]

"Oh. Right. I think I got a bit of that, just didn't process it fully before. Hourly quota, or number of jobs? Something else?" Shef had pulled out his pager, and was messing around with it, to see if it indicated some answer to the question he was asking. Probably a little rude, he realized, after he was halfway through.

[IamanElfCollaborator]

"Pay, really. Trying to get money sent back home.

Then, Minato quickly types in a message on his phone in response.
No problem. I'll check it out as soon as possible.

[Empiricist]

Yuki, Noriko, and Shef
"Weekly, so you've got a bit of slack, just don't take it for granted like Fleur." _(Evi)

Minato
"I see, and what manner of qualifications do you have? I may be able to arrange for you to meet some potential employers if you wish, not to discourage you from this job or anything, merely trying to help." _(Vincent)

[IamanElfCollaborator]

"Just fresh out of university. Ah, listen, do you mind if I duck out a minute? Parents want to talk and I'd rather not talk in front of you. Private things."

[Empiricist]

Minato
"Take all the time you need." _(Vincent)

[Empiricist]

Having acquired the excuse necessary to leave, Minato bids Vincent a hasty farewell and heads off to find the lounge, texting Winter and Enn quickly back.
"Sensors, huh?"
"You guys know exactly where the lounge is or am I just going to have to trust my belt?"

"It should be just outside the Servant's Quarters."
"There's a lady reading a u-uh, l-l-lewd-"
"Porno-mag. Lady Appleton should be present too assuming Shef hasn't sent her off crying."

"Right. I need to put the suit on to actually use these sensors. Shef sending the two of 'em off crying would be handy."
"Unless you've got a better idea."

"Shef should be done with his tour by now. We'll contact him and see what he can do."

"Right. If he can't do much, I'm going to need a quick distraction of some kind. I'll think of something. For now, just get Shef to lure them away from the lounge. Yoake's already almost blown our covers by accident, I'm not blowing ours on purpose."
".....Karen's probably chewed out one of us by now. Can't give her any reason to be any MORE smug."

Shef
Tour's over by now. Winter contacts you via earpiece.
"Minato has less sensitive sensors on his suit. We can try using that to sweep the lounge but he'll need it to be cleared before he can do. Any chance you can handle it?"

Minato
"Understood. Contacting him now."

". . .sure. How long does he need? And where is Yoake, so I can be sure to not send them that way"

Shef
"Several minutes to be safe. Yoake is currently hiding near your position, in between her camera access and Requiem, she should be able to maintain her cover so long as no one finds the maid she tied up."

"Is it feasible to rope anyone else in to help?" At the same time, shef checks his pager to see whether there's any assignments there that he could feasibly ask for assistance with.

Shef
"Possibly."
Not too much unfortunately, all the jobs are a ways off so it could be hard to justify stringing them along instead of closer servants, especially since Mary is one of the people you need to distract.

"Who's currently in the room?" Options were his requiem, portals, or simply telling that they were needed elsewhere. The choice among these depended on the number in the room. Of course, there were other options, but they were increasingly destructive, and more likely to be founded on an unstable tower of lies.

Shef
"Unknown, though it could still just be the same three people, it's not been too long."

Shef heads over to the room, and tries to find a wall that would be behind most of the chairs or couches from what he remembers. He'll then create a small portal as a peephole to check who's in the room.

Shef
Fleur, Vendellin, and Mary as before.

Shef entered the room, and coughed. "Fleur, and. . .Vendellin, right? I believe Evi wanted to talk to you about something. Last I left them, they were near the kitchens." He twitched slightly, performing his signature glasses flare, without actually having them on. He felt a slight twinge as he did it, a side effect of not having the glasses as a conduit. When he was satisfied that they were heading off, he turned to Mary. "Could I talk to you for a moment?"

Shef
"Fine..." _(Fleur)
Fleur closes her book and Vendellin helps her back up the two leaving the room.

"Okay, I um, hope you're still not mad at me.... I do need to do something right now but I won't mind if you join me."
She begins walking off, walking off towards Yoake's location. This, could be problematic.

Shef nodded, and followed. "What do you need to do? Something I can help with? I'm not mad, fact that was what I wanted to talk about."

Shef
"Not much um, I left my jacket somewhere and I can't seem to find it."

"Oh, what does it look like? Anyway, I just wanted to apologize. You did nothing wrong, just lost my temper and overreacted. Completely my fault, and I don't want you to take it hard."

Shef
"S-sorry I must've been out of line... um the jacket's this thin grey hoodie I think I left it on a couch or something, would you mind helping me find it? I, um, can put it towards your work quota and everything if you want."

Yoake
You see an indicator move. You see movement through the cameras. Mary has just entered your section, Shef in tow.

"Barely said anything, how could you be out of line. I'm the one apologizing here." He smiled a bit. She'd probably apologize for saying sorry next.
"And no! You don't need to mark it on the quota. It's not hard, and it's not any trouble. Don't worry about it, let's go find it."

Yoake quietly contacts Shef. "Hey, mind moving her somewhere else? I'd rather not incapacitate another but I won't hesitate!"

God damn it. This was like the third time Yoake had contacted him when he had no way to respond whatsoever. So he didn't. He had a solution to the problem if they met up with her, but hopefully she could just find a good hiding space, until they were done. "Where do you remember having this jacket last? And where is that in relation to where we are now?" He set his comms to send out her response to Yoake, perhaps this would give some information on their location and how to remain hidden.

Shef
"I think I left it on a couch somewhere in afternoon, I'm not really sure where it was though. Iris might know, and I think she should be around here somewhere..."

Minato
"You're clear to investigate. We'll alert you if someone approaches."

Yoake
"Keep an eye on the cameras and tell us if anyone enters the Servant's Quarters."

"Roger roger!" Yoake put on a silly voice in reply to Winter, as she kept watch on the Servants Quarters. Be on guard for Mary, too, and be prepared to either butt smack or use Requiem if spotted.

Yoake
"Mary's looking for Iris and you have her pager. Be prepared to move."
A few minutes pass, nothing, and then...
"She's moving towards your position, get out of there."

"Darn." Alright, Yoake had a mission now. She held tight to the pager and as quietly as possible activated her Requiem, only pulling herself into it.

Shef
You walk into the room, taking point so to speak. Yoake is nowhere to be found.

"Hmm she should be around here somewhere... is her pager broken? Sorry, give me a moment."
She begins typing something on her pager.

Yoake
As you enter your Requiem, your pager's signal dies. Should be fine when you get back out though. You still have AI uplink though, so you're not blind either. Do you want to stay put, or make use of your Requiem to go somewhere else?

"Mind if we search for the jacket while you do that?" Shef will begin to search the different rooms if he gets an answer in the affirmative. For now, he'd have to either get in contact with Yoake, or find the jacket and provide distraction from Mary's current focus. he could achieve the former by splitting off to search, and contacting Winter and Enn, but he was concerned about the nonchalance with which Yoake had talked about taking her out. If her pager had no signal, that implied her requiem, right? Or that she'd broken it in a bid to not be found. In that case, it seemed she was resolved to hide. Thus, Shef would decided that he would split off in search of the coat.

Ah. Much better. Yoake twists her Requiem to a path and uses it to transport into a different room, hopefully unoccupied.

Assured of a distraction, Minato begins to make his way towards the Servant's Quarters. In case something unexpected pops up, he looks around the area first before entering the indciated lounge.

Yoake
The world within your Requiem twists and turns becoming a jungle gym arena, a sort of mesh framework in the shape of the mansion and what lies within. You quickly hop on over to another room and disengage it.

Your pager quickly restores its signal and camera access is as simple a matter as retyping the password.

There is another servant now entering the section, a butler moving at quite the brisk pace. According to your pager, his name is Arnold Zimmerman, with the recently self-assigned task of Help Mary find her jacket. Due to where he's entering from, there's no risk of him running into Minato.

Shef
"Right, yeah, we probably should."
You begin to search for the jacket.

Minato
The coast of clear and you find yourself in the target lounge room.

"Okay, let's go...."
Minato unbuttons his blazer, his belt responding to his intentions as it transforms into its full Driver form. He wrenches the lever along the side gently. No poses or catchphrases this time, Minato didn't want to draw any more attention than necessary.
"Henshin."
Transforming into his armor, Minato looks around, hoping to pick something up. "Right. Let's see where you are...."

Minato
Carefully, you sweep the lounge, each and every corner. It shouldn't be hard to find, shouldn't, but you find nothing. In other words, whatever the source was has either fallen silent or left the area.
"Well, this complicates things."
"There were four other people in the room when the scryer went off: Mary, Fleurette, Vendellin, and Evi. Since Shef was with Evi up until then, we can probably rule her out."
"So, we're looking at something that might be on their person, and let's face it, if they're going to put it on anyone, it'd be the lady of the house. Got a plan Mister Gaia? Or do you want to frisk the maids to be doubly sure?"

"Well, that does complicate things. How are we supposed to explain this? Maybe I could hide in here, have Shef walk them past and my sensors could still pick it up."

Minato
"Hmm... that might be our only bet. Unless... hey uh, what if we wait for her to bathe and..."
"..."
"W-what? I-I was thinking that if her clothes were unattended we could sneak someone in with a portal or Yoake's Requiem and... W-why are you staring at me like that?"
"No reason~"
"R-right... um, it's your call though, we could have Shef and the others do a distraction and hope they don't see you..."

"if we have to do that, Shef's doing the sneaking. I don't trust Yoake not to do something weird. Let's hope this works."

Minato
"What's the plan?"

"Get Shef to lead them past. If I pick anything up, transmit it to everyone. We'll figure it out from there. If all else fails, we need their clothes."

Minato
"Got it."

Shef
"The lounge is clear, we think it might be on Mary. Can you get her to go into the lounge, Minato will try to hide and scan her."

"Knew it. Fine. Be patient." Shef murmured, hands cupped around his mouth in another room, so as to prevent Mary from hearing.  Shef will search two more rooms, then return to Mary. If he's found the jacket, good. If not, he had something that could loosely be called a plan.
Actually. . . Shef also takes a quick note of what Mary is wearing right now.

Shef
No dice. When you return you find Mary talking to a butler.
"Oh hi, this is Arnold, Arnold this is Linden."
"Ah, so you're the one who almost made her cry, haha. Been there done that, I don't suppose you've had much luck with the jacket?" _(Arnold)

Mary is currently still dressed in that maid outfit.

Minato, meanwhile, looks around for somewhere to hide.

Minato
Unfortunately the lounge doesn't really have anything that can fully conceal you from sight, the couches don't have enough space under them, and the coffee table while having a bit of space probably can't hide you from all angles either. You, may need to rely on Shef's Requiem or maybe a portal pass-by.

Minato quickly texts Shef something.
I'm going to need a portal. Somewhere to hide.

Before returning to Mary, Shef texted back.

Got it. How exactly? Portal to the under side of a couch, use your sensors through it? Elaborate what you want.

Something that keeps me out of sight, yes.

Meant what sort of range you need. Portals can be eight feet between entrance and exit. Pick a location, tell me where to put it. Need to go once you answer.

"Eight feet, get me somewhere down the corridor and under the couch. There's nobody else coming, right?"

Got it. Should be just us. Going now, be ready to be near portal in corridor leading to back of couch. You'll have ~30 sec, text if done sooner.

Shef put his phone away, and headed back, seeing that there was a new arrival. And he'd said that there'd only be him and Mary. Hmm.

"Hi, nice to meet you." Shef shook the man's hand. He grimaced a bit, betraying a small bit of shame at his actions.  "No dice. Do you want to stay here and keep looking, and we can go get Mary another jacket? Be pretty surprised if you had this mansion and only one good jacket."
If everyone agrees, Shef will head off with Mary to grab her another coat. If there's disagreement, Shef will use his Requiem to get them to agree.

Now, if there's a route past the lounge in order to get a new coat, they will go that way. If the route to grab a new coat is in the opposite direction of the lounge, use Requiem to get Mary to go to the lounge. Once there, Shef will try to get Mary to sit down on a couch preferably with a wall behind it leading out to the corridor where Minato will be. Then hold a portal open for thirty seconds or until he receives a text.

Minato slips out, heading towards the corridor to head to the portal.

[Empiricist]

Shef
Well, long story short, you end up having to Requiem both of them. Arnold twice. Mary three times. Didn't need to grab another jacket, didn't need you to accompany her, didn't need to sit down. All three things happened anyway.

Portal opens, Minato scans, portal closes. Done.

Yoake
Three servants are now inbound on Shef and Minato's position: Vendelin Krall, Fleurette Abspoel, and Evi Stephanidis. They're moving at a fairly brisk pace.

Minato
Scan complete. You get results, and that is all you get. Text on a screen, dots on a chart. Meaningless, meaningless to everyone in this entire mansion, everyone but you. There are no answers on the screen and there never will be. And that's okay. You accepted this long ago. The world will not give you answers and it never did; answers are not what you are told, answers are not what you are given, they are what you find, what you find within yourself. It is when you think, when you take all you have learned, all you have experienced, and use it to bring meaning, meaning to words without meaning, that you understand, when you truly have an answer. It was then, when you understood that, that you became a man. It was then, when you understood that, that you knew what it truly meant to be a hero.

It is not enough to have strength. It is not not enough to have willpower. You had to have knowledge. You had to be able to bring meaning, to forge your own answers, and understand the world around you. The principles behind the stroke of a sword, the reason behind a spell, the more you know, the more you understand, and the more you understand, the more you can accomplish.

And it is this, the sum of all your experiences, the wealth of all your knowledge that tells you this seal, is a fucking abomination.

No really, it's bad, it's real bad.

It's well, imagine someone wanted an icebox, but didn't have an icebox, so they used a refrigerator, except they didn't actually have a refrigerator, they just had a bunch of toaster parts jammed together into what can't even be charitably called a refrigerator.

What you're basically looking at is a quasi-curse. Except instead of using false souls, it uses a phantom. And instead of an actual phantom, it's like, half a construct. Like, it's a construct, or rather, a mishmash of constructs, that is completely missing its actual physical body and powered by a shard that you're pretty sure it wasn't built to handle. It's just this tangle of spirit conduits bound to an object.

So, what can it do? Well, it's got shielding, fairly heavy duty shielding, and between that and the sealing, it's still got a lot of power left unaccounted for. Can't figure out what though, the shielding you can tell from the system,leaking, or perhaps more accurately, violently haemorrhaging, but the other components haven't activated yet so right now you can't get much of a read on them.

Okay so that's annoying, but it's not exactly a problem. So, what is the problem then?

Well... y'know how it's bound to an object? Turns out the object in question, is Lady Mary's panties.

[IamanElfCollaborator]

”....you’re kidding.”

[Empiricist]

Minato
"Is something wrong?"

[IamanElfCollaborator]

Minato links his comms up to Shef.

Yes, Minato was a pervert. Yes, he had several fetishes, including maids. Yes, he wouldn't deny that he liked hanging out with women who were easy on the eyes.

But this. This was a step too far.
"Shef, get Yoake, because she's the only one NUTS enough to pull this off. The seal- you're not going to believe this- is in Mary's panties."

[spümpkin]

Yoake informed Shef of the approaching maids, and was then told what she had to do.

Of course she had to do it, because who else could? She had an incredibly specialist set of skills, one of which was getting flirty with girls.

She made her way to the lounge fairly easily, and once there... Well, she did what she knew.

Dashing at Mary, she launches into a passionate kiss, throwing one of her smoke bombs down and using a free hand (the other still wrapped around Mary) to pull down her panties and pocket them.

[IamanElfCollaborator]

Minato just reverts to normal form, trying to get away from the inevitable chaos.

[Empiricist]

Yoake
Aight, aight, so here's how it goes down.

First, Minato slips away, armor fading to naught. Next Shef drops a portal, he's gone, gets the hell outta there. So now Mary's just by herself, confused as all hell, and that's when Yoake rushes in.

"Iris! Your pager was- MMMPH!"

It is then, at that precise moment the three servants entered, to see what as far as they could tell, was Iris passionately kissing a furiously blushing Mary. The smoke goes up, Yoake's hand is going for the target, but then, with a sudden rush of speech, Mary seems to wrench right out of her grasp. A split second later, someone crashes against Yoake's face.

It was a butt.

[Now Playing:

The Battle Is To The Strong

]

It, wasn't the best attack, really, it was amateurish, but in the smoke it was a surprise, and it was made with surprising speed. Yoake finds herself staggering backwards, the attack, didn't hurt much, it's a poor choice to try and strike the master with their own moves, but it was still unexpected.

"EHHH..?!"

By the sounds of, Mary wasn't expecting that either.

Minato
"W-what was that?"
"Minato, what the hell was that? It looked like Mary just tried to hit Yoake with a Keijo attack."

Goddamnit. Those constructs, the Storm Minds, they weren't just disposable soldiers, they were collecting combat data!

Everyone
"A-a-attention all... t-there's been a situation... the seal seems to be in Mary's panties, and it's, using her to attack somehow. It's currently fighting Yoake in the lounge outside the servant's quarters."
"It has failed to pose an actual threat so far, but it may be able to jump to something else. We'll need to establish a perimeter."

Spoiler: Worldlines (click to show/hide)

Yoake
Status: Very slightly hurt, somewhat off-balance, Iris Fukui cover is on the verge of breaking
World Line: 6 6 1 2 6 6 1 4 5 6
Alterations: 3
Resolve: 3

Mary's Panties
Status: Fully shielded

Spoiler: Notes (click to show/hide)

Okay, gonna try out the newest system tweaks. Firstly, and this is the big one, if you don't use a hyper you can discard one result of your choice. And secondly, and way more situationally, you can burn one resolve point to power a hyper instead of whatever result it needs, this won't increase its power or anything though, so this is more an edge case.

Faith, Noriko, and Yuki can decide where they start off, as they've had time to move, they can start off anywhere that isn't around the lounge room or in a restricted area. Shef and Minato both start off near the lounge room. When you enter the area, I'll roll your Worldline.

And yeah, Yoake took drastically reduced damage because it was a Keijo attack and an amateurish one at that.

Oh and a general reminder, you guy are gonna have to be careful, all the NPCs here are mundane, so they aren't nearly as tough as you guys, and are far less receptive to healing magic.

[Chevaleresse]

Noriko sighed. She'd been moving back in the general direction of the loading dock - getting a better idea of what was in the area, that sort of thing. She wasn't sure if she wanted to scream, lay down and cry, or just throttle. . . someone. Possibly herself. Really, a panty monster? Apparently the video game she'd accidentally walked into was some sort of H-game. . .

Hopefully this wasn't her route.

She headed back toward the lounge, resisting the urge to transform and zip through the air.