4.6

4.6

'Toybox?' you asked, clearly unfamiliar.

'A collective,' Miss Militia said, stepping forward and taking the disc for herself, indicating the Joker image on the reverse. 'Independent tinkers who, at least in their own words, band together to maximise their own abilities without being tied down to either the Protectorate and its regulations or a villainous group who would have them causing trouble on a schedule.'

'Cowards, basically.' Triumph followed up.

At least you knew his perspective on things. You could appreciate someone being a little straightforward, even if his costume was a little ridiculous.

'And Cricket got this from them?'

Miss Militia turned slightly, as though adjusting something on her belt, before slipping the disc into a pouch; it fit uncomfortably, the shape not conforming well to the fabric.

'Presumably the Empire bought them, rather than her personally. While we have no detailed information on the financials of the Empire, I can't imagine Cricket, a relatively young and new member, could afford anything from Toybox herself. Iron Rain likely arranged it, potentially through Krieg.'

Cricket and Krieg, the two remaining individuals from your first ever confrontation with the Empire, were perhaps your own personal irritants. It felt silly to be as concerned by them as you were given their relative unimportance compared to figures like Kaiser, but their escape – even if you now knew how it might have been done – still grated on you massively and even if the escape moments earlier had been clumsy enough to reveal the hidden card up the sleeve, Cricket herself had done it again.

It would have been one thing if she had continued escaping by virtue of her skills. Her taut musculature and rehearsed movements made it clear that she was an expert in combat, and while you had a wide assortment of powers you had nothing bar a pre-emptive silencing that would hinder any nearby teammates and provide you with other blind spots in order to deal with it. She could slip away, and you would feel bested but not indignant. At least, no more indignant than you thought anyone had the right to.

Instead, however, she'd been sneaking out of conflict and out of your grasp almost entirely by trickery and someone else's work. Tinkertech barely even worked for anyone other than the people who had made it most of the time, and tended to need maintenance, so the idea that the Empire had essentially bought her out of your grasp on two separate occasions was galling to say the least and infuriating if you were being honest.

You managed to keep yourself under control, though. It wasn't really anyone else's fault, and it was the kind of simmering heat that you could suppress rather than an inferno.

'And they sell these. . . teleportation devices?'

'Apparently they do now. We aren't aware of any tinkers in their group who specialise in teleportation but they regularly add new members and old ones leave periodically. It's something we'll have to look into – I'll pass this one along to Armsmaster and see if there's anything he can learn from it. Perhaps not, but it's best to try.'

Miss Militia's professionalism stood in stark contrast to Triumph's dismissive snort.

'They sell whatever they can get money for, then run away when it's time to deal with the consequences. Rats off a sinking ship, f'you ask me.'

Without much to add, you left them to their investigations. While you wanted to get involved – in fact, if only because of their help with Cricket and Krieg, you wanted to make sure Toybox crumbled into dust – the reality was that you had very little knowledge on the situation and even less knowledge about what to do with it. For now, at least, you were going to leave things like giant independent tinker rings to their own devices.

Moving along before you had time to punish yourself for that pun, you looked at the scenes still littering the street.

The giant sword you had sent scraping along the road was still there, and you knew you were going to have to clear that up. Presumably it grew with the twins, unless they had an unusually permissive storage unit somewhere in the city to keep it, and the spear had shrunk, so either you had done enough damage to the sword wielding sister that her power was no longer working right or she had to be in contact with something when she changed size for it to go along for the ride. You suspected it was the latter, as she hadn't gone haywire once you hit her.

As the adrenaline of the moment faded and the frustration dripped away, you felt a little bad for that. She would be okay, of that you were sure, but you weren't sure if it was possible for her to get concussed in her giant form and if it was, you weren't sure how long it would last. Default for a member of the Empire, she was garbage, but you didn't want to maim anyone.

At least not by accident. You weren't stupid enough to believe that you could fight the world's worst villains, something the Protectorate did regularly and something you would be doing even if you had never joined, without occasionally hurting someone. Scary as it might be, part of you had already considered the day that you might be forced to kill someone. But when that happened, if it happened, you wanted it to be on purpose: a decision you had to make, so you could wear the weight of that responsibility and whatever guilt it brought for you or fallout for others. You didn't want to just move by mistake and kill someone. Nobody deserved to be an afterthought in that particular way, at least. If you were going to kill someone, you would grant them the dignity of looking them in the eyes when you did it.

Despite the general turbulence of your fight, most of the surrounding area was in decent shape. The only thing that had been seriously damaged were the buildings you had been thrown through.

You winced thinking about that. So focused on Cricket, trying to do too much yourself, you had been overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of things going on. Maybe if you had the opportunity to do things again, or if you had better knowledge going into the fight, you would have let Regent and Skýla get more involved; Cricket was dangerous, but you had a feeling that the reach advantage Regent's staff gave him over a kama and chain was probably sizeable, and with his ability to contort people to his wishes working properly against a normal person, he would have been able to mess with her lightning reflexes fairly well. That would have left you and Skýla with a twin each, and after seeing her square off with Hookwolf you were confident that she could overcome one of the twins if needed.

Perhaps the one with the sword – the spear was annoying to deal with.

More surprising than the general good shape of the area was the lack of civilians. Thus far whenever anything had been public, you had turned around after finishing with it to find a watching crowd of Brocktonites lined up the streets.

No such thing had occurred here. Maybe it was the presence of the black vans and the armed men keeping them away, or maybe the destruction of the buildings had caused people to assume an evacuation protocol – however informal they might have such a thing – but either way the result was relative quiet.

Nothing about you was stupid enough to assume people hadn't seen it from afar, but nobody was gathered on the immediately visible spaces.

As you turned the corner to head back towards the buildings you had impacted, you realised where they had gone.

Stood at the foot of the first building, which had a Penumbra sized hole all the way through it, was a group of maybe a dozen people. Some of them appeared frantic, holding what you could only assume were their possessions, and others appeared excited, their phones out snapping pictures in the finest of resolutions available to the cell phones of 2011.

'Penumbra!' One of them yelled as they caught sight of you. 'Penumbra, are you okay?'

You nodded, overly focused on the destruction until the memories of reading through the PR handbook flooded into your mind. Verbalise things, you reminded yourself. Even if they sound really obvious.

'I'm okay, thank you for asking. As are my teammates. The Wards are well, and the Empire has lost two of their strongest today.'

The words made you feel uncomfortably Aegis, and you wondered whether he walked around with the taste of ash and dust in his mouth at all times or whether he had learned to enjoy the flavour. It wasn't enviable.

The subsequent crowd crush was unpleasant. People swarmed around you, questions blurring together into a slurry of syllables that washed over you in a torrent, covering you more than the brick dust did. Between inane questions about how much being put through a wall hurt and requests for photographs, you heard a few people asking about how long it would take to repair the damage and whether anyone inside was hurt. More reasonable questions, but not ones you knew the answer to, at least not yet.

After tolerating it for a brief time, trying to answer as much as you could but being cut off by follow up questioning time and again, you managed to push through the crowd and exit in front of the building for yourself, taking a look at the damage.

Altogether, it wasn't as bad as you had worried. It seemed as though that, aside from one specific spot, most of the structural metal was intact and it was the thick slabs of concrete and brick that made up the walls between the rigging that had been destroyed, and you were sure it wouldn't take forever for that to be fixed. Looking through the hole, you didn't even see any personal items or living spaces, so you were fairly sure that nobody's bedroom got bulldozed.

If it had been, you were sure that it was something the PRT would be able to deal with, at least for the most part.

'Don't worry, everyone,' you said, voice rising above the ongoing tumult. 'Thank you for your concern, but things should be calming down immediately. Fenja and Menja have been taken into custody. If you have any personal concerns regarding the damage, please contact your insurance and the PRT to work out any claims you may have, and provide support for those who may need it. Remember,' you swallowed, the words sour on your lips. 'It's our job to take care of you, but your job to take care of each other.'

It was the worst sort of discomfort. Nothing you had said was technically false, but the PR manual had been quite adamant that those words in that specific order were important to maintain maximum crowd contentment and absolution of legal responsibility for you in specific. The final sentence had been a recommended slogan for times exactly like the one in which you found yourself.

You were never saying it again, and if you overheard Aegis saying it, you might boomerang him into the ocean.

Hideous plastic sentences.

'Penumbra!'

Blond, with a bowl haircut under which shone two blue eyes, you recognised the face instantly and wished you hadn't.

'Penumbra! I just wanted to say that you were awesome. Like, really awesome. I know you got hit but you just walked it off, it was like something from when Alexandria fought The Crusher, do you remember that from a few years ago? Anyway, I was just wondering if you had time to talk and sign some stuff, I have some questions about the boat graveyard. My little sister too, she would love to have something signed I think, maybe we could do that.'

He kept going. You recognised Greg from Winslow, though you had obviously not seen him in some time, and he had been nice enough at the core even if he had been awkward and annoying then too, but somehow he was worse now that you were a hero and you were acutely aware of how awful it would look for you to vanish into the sky before he was done talking.

But he was never done talking. The words came spilling out, one after another, and you found it difficult to even latch on to what he was saying.

Eventually you capitulated to signing – in his case, a few printed pictures of yourself and Glory Girl; you recognised them from weeks ago, when you had been on the Boardwalk. You wondered if he had bought them then or if they were something he had printed off himself, but you didn't question it: you got the feeling that if you asked you would be given a quick run-down of the entirety of parahuman memorabilia before you could extract yourself from the scene.

'By the way,' you said, 'I'll be doing a question and answer session on Parahumans Online in a week or so. If you can think about your questions and narrow them down to a top handful, I would be happy to answer them at that time. For now, I have to return to headquarters and debrief.'

The expression on his face was a mixture between overjoyed and dismayed and you weren't sure how to read it; you had thought you had been throwing him a bone, though you supposed in the short term it was a brush off.

You really did need to get back to headquarters though: just as soon as you collected Regent and Skýla.

Doing so was simple enough, and the three of you made good time on the journey back to headquarters. Rather than load into the trucks or attempt to fly again with them in your arms, the three of you simply took the streets. You weren't particularly far from headquarters in the first place, though far enough that it was certainly a trip, and it gave you the opportunity to talk.

'Regent,' you began, 'good work there. You kept the one with the spear well occupied, for the most part.'

'Menja, you mean.'

That was, in fact, what you meant, though you were slightly surprised that he could tell them apart. It was one of those things that had never stuck for you and you didn't get the sense of him as someone who would put in too much time.

'Menja, yes. Thank you. I know you had some doubts about whether things would work, but it turned out for the best.'

'Nah, I fucked it. Worked well at the start, went to hell near the end. If I had been on top of things she never would have put you through the buildings but hey, what can you do? You took it alright.'

While he wasn't wrong, you also didn't want for him to get too down on himself. That said, the more you thought about it, the more you realised he wasn't – you weren't sure if, outside of his power related hang-ups, he got too down on himself about anything at all. Everything he had said seemed to be an honest evaluation as far as he saw it, without making value judgements.

You weren't sure where he got that trait from. Tattletale didn't seem like the kind of leader who would favour it.

He was right too. You did take it alright, all things considered. No damage at all, let alone the kind of damage that might last.

'Is that something you've had trouble with forever? Working with unusual bodies?'

'I haven't done it much but yeah, that's part of it. Something like a barrier.'

'Maybe if we ever get around to boosting your power, you'll find it a little easier.'

If you weren't still on high alert after the fight, straining your senses to make sure you weren't ambushed, you probably would have missed the tiny skip in his step.

'Maybe.'

Friday, 1st April

You woke to the sound of your phone, cacophonous against your pillow.

After returning to headquarters with Regent and Skýla, things had gone along in perfectly normal fashion. As nobody had been truly hurt, there was no need for medical, and the three of you had found your briefing largely cut down due to Miss Militia and Triumph's coverage of the major points, particularly as they regarded the actual capture and transportation of the twins and of the involvement of Toybox. All you really had to do was justify your decisions regarding the civilians from before the fight, and your actions that had lead to the strategy you had picked.

Overall, you weren't sure that Piggot approved of your desire to keep the Undersiders out of the majority of the fighting, but you weren't particularly sure that you cared either.

Afterwards, you had returned home and slumped your way through the living room and kitchen and up to the bathroom for a shower. By the time you finished and got down, Dad had not only returned from work but had brought Chinese food, a luxury that you weren't willing to question. Though he was concerned about the fight, he had yet to see it – having been at work most of the day, still coming towards the end of his duties at the Brockton Bay Dockworker's Association, he had heard on the radio about the conflict but that was all there was. Seeing you healthy and safe, if somewhat ruffled in old pyjamas, seemed to satisfy him that your recounting of the details was accurate enough.

The news, when he eventually turned it on, had verified it too. Though a nasty shot of the buildings and their damage had been included, there hadn't been any footage of you going through the walls and nobody had named you in specific. Despite you having told Dad that you were the one who was thrown, the disarticulated nature of it all seemed to kill off a lot of the concern that you expected.

Perhaps that was simply how it looked when a Dad started to get used to the idea that his daughter was indestructible.

Or perhaps the vicious way he attacked his noodles said that he was simply trying to keep things under wraps. Maybe he'd never get used to things.

The news hadn't, however, spent the majority of its run-time talking about your clashes with the Empire. While a parahuman battle, particularly one involving giants, always got its time on the air, it was a grim fact about Brockton Bay over the years that people had simply become inured to the damages of cape fights and the drama they entailed. Indeed, compared to past years, things were at something of a downswing; even with you throwing a thirty foot woman around near some apartments, those who remembered the days of the roving Teeth and Marquis' command of the city, and even the old visitations of the Slaughterhouse Nine, weren't particularly impressed or captivated. At least beyond passing.

What was intriguing, however, was good old fashioned violence.

Yellow tape. A sobbing woman, speaking into the microphone, shaking. Swarms of officers. Teeming, seething masses of blue bodies, like flies around a corpse, milling in and out of the yard. The gate clanged open and shut in the background. The woman cried again. The reporter turned to the camera to speak.

A man had been murdered. While they didn't show any pictures, for which you were grateful, they didn't have to; the lawn was slicked red and great blotches of the colour coated the porch and steps of the house like a Rothko.

An image of the man came up – boring, average looking, but for cold black eyes that could have almost convinced you that the photograph was taken post-mortem, were you not convinced that whoever had been attacked looked nothing like that anymore. Nothing like a face.

Justin Bormann, the chyron read. Pharmaceutical analyst for Medhall. Police were, for obvious reasons, treating it like a homicide, though they had no current suspects and were not willing to reveal any information they might have had, at so soon a time. The woman who had been crying was his wife, and she was lead away in tears to sit in the back of a vehicle; she couldn't go back into the home, which was no longer a home and had become a crime scene. It no longer belonged to her, but to the men and women in the neoprene foot protectors and smocks.

Justin Bormann, alive yesterday and dead today. Torn apart.

Justin Bormann, pharmaceutical analyst for Medhall.

You hadn't even needed to ask yourself a question before sending off a tip to Armsmaster. Iron Rain had struck again; civilian identities were not safe, to her.

Armsmaster had called back. It was for that reason that you were woken up, just before nine in the morning according to your cape phone's clock, to the vicious rattling of the blasted device, and you clicked to pick up the call without even stopping to clear your throat or find your glasses.

'Yes?'

'Penumbra, good morning. You are needed in costume near the Richard Anders' Memorial Hall; Kaiser has been sighted and he is not alone. You are not to engage, but to stay out of sight and await the arrival of several other dispatched Protectorate members. He doesn't appear to be doing anything directly illegal, but there is a gathering crowd and so there is risk.'

As he spoke, you recognised a metallic undertone to all of his words and cursed. The bastard didn't even have the good grace to be awake himself as he pulled you out of your own slumber. If someone was going to wake someone else up, you thought, it was their just desserts that they had to be awake too in order to do so. What he had done was a violation of the natural order.

The instructions, however, were far too clear and far too striking to allow yourself to be delayed by aggravation; you rolled out of bed immediately and swayed on your feet.

'I'll be there.'

Throwing your phone back down on your bed, you grabbed your spare costume and helmet and began to get dressed. Your primary still needed rinsing from the debris of the previous day, and the backup was a direct replica in every way, so you didn't feel particularly hard done by. It was odd, though, to note that you were becoming somewhat attached to the original.

Dad, already at work at such a late time in the morning, was largely incommunicable, and so you called his office and left a message informing him that you were going to be out with Armsmaster near Medhall but decided to spare him the details. None engagement, as far as you were aware, and you had every intention of following that instruction as long as it was possible. Should things change, as things often did, you weren't going to be the one who could be held responsible for it all.

Heeding Armsmaster's recommendations for subtlety, you decided to forgo a direct flight overhead. Instead, you stuck low, phasing through walls where possible and emerging into shadows, using their textures to reduce any footprints. Though you were not supernaturally fast on foot, your enhanced strength allowed for some truly exceptional leaps that provided the facsimile of rapid movement, and when you were going somewhere as notable as the Memorial Hall, situated on wide roads with open paths, you weren't overly concerned about the possibility of running into a wall or a dead-end.

Instead, you focused on making good time without being overt. The plan was to get close and then allow your heat vision to take over for your regular perceptions; though you weren't sure if Kaiser's armour would show up as warm or cold, due to it being metal, you were sure that whomever he was with would be a reliable orange blaze in your sight and by such means, you could even track him from well beyond eye-shot, assuming all else was as expected.

The plan worked.

Watching him from behind a building over the road, his motions were tall and confident. You had yet to see Kaiser's armour in person, and perhaps you still weren't truly seeing it, at least not in the conventional way, but you were sure that the gait was memorable enough in its own way. He held himself upright, shoulders back, and you thought to yourself that he seemed a fair amount taller than Max Anders had been when you met him in Medhall recently. Perhaps even as tall as Armsmaster himself.

He was flanked by a number of others. From behind cover, you couldn't tell who each of them were, but you recognised one who was significantly shorter than the others – one you assumed to be Othala. The rest all hovered around a similar height, fairly close to Kaiser's own, though perhaps somewhat shorter.

They were, all of them, stood on the raised platform at the top of the steps towards the doors of the Memorial Hall. Gathering in front of them, slow at first but gradually growing in size and speed as you watched, was a crowd, just as expected. Through the motions of his arms, held high and stiff, Kaiser appeared to be commanding their attentions like the conductor of an orchestra.

As you looked on, the Protectorate began to arrive; Armsmaster and Miss Militia, together on their separate motorcycles, but shortly thereafter joined by Dauntless and Triumph. A show of force, you felt, particularly with your own inclusion; a subtle reminder to anyone attending Kaiser's parades that the Protectorate was capable of putting big names on the ground too. Hard hitters.

With their arrival, you moved to join them. No chaos had yet broken out, and from the stationary nature of the crowd, you were beginning to think that none would.

'Armsmaster.'

'Penumbra,' you noted that the buzz in his voice was gone. You were glad that he had at least seen fit to wake up before operating a motor vehicle. 'Kaiser has apparently been giving something of a rally for the last half an hour. If he is to be believed, the attack on Medhall is representative of an attack on American industry, orchestrated by "savage interlopers". Transparent attempt to garner support, but I believe we can understand why.'

You certainly could. With Victor and Rune gone, the twins arrested, and whoever Justin Bormann had been apparently annihilated, his own faction appeared to be taking almost as much damage as Iron Rain's had been dealt. He needed a show of force, and unlike Iron Rain's vicious attacks, Kaiser seemed to be happier to strategise; to play the public sentiment, build his support, and then strike back as opportunities came up.

That didn't appear to explain the attack on Cricket the day prior, but it was entirely possible that the twins had acted on opportunity, or that things had gotten out of hand. Perhaps their job was to get to Cricket the same way someone – Cricket, Stormtiger, Iron Rain herself? - had gotten to Bormann.

As you approached the crowd alongside Armsmaster, you began to hear Kaiser's diatribe become clearer and clearer; his voice was deep, but obviously distorted by the metal of his helmet and you were sure that his real voice sounded markedly different.

The armour was sharp, pointed, with the brow raised in a crown; the metal was, at all points, ornate with spines and spikes, detailed in brutal form, but clinging to his body closely enough to allow him full motion. The clinking was surprisingly loud, even from a distance, as he threw his hands up in support of his latest statements; the crowd, seemingly more divided by the minute, alternately cheered his proclamations and booed his more subversive statements. There was a storm cloud in the air.

'We aren't here to start a fight,' Miss Militia spoke as she came up on your other flank. 'In fact, to prevent one. If we were to try and fight them now, civilians would be injured en masse. Kaiser would not hesitate to harm any of them if he felt the need, and his lieutenants would act alongside him. Look at them.'

You could tell she was right, and as you were finally close enough to work out who was with him, you didn't doubt her. Krieg, there in his gas mask, stood bolt upright. Othala, stood next to him, as though she were being guarded. On Kaiser's other side, a couple; a tall blonde woman whose hair barely peeked out from beneath a black hood, shadows cast down across her face and body by a heavy cloak. Her figure and high heeled boots gave away her gender, but very little else did. Next to her, a dark grey cloak covering a body outfitted in much the same way, with the feet clad in combat boots fairly similar to your own.

Night and Fog.

Gesellschaft, it seemed, had taken a side.

Miss Militia was right, you thought. Starting a fight might cause more trouble than it was worth. But then, you couldn't help a small feeling that maybe it wouldn't. People might be hurt, of course, but you were sure that, if you needed to, you could stop Kaiser before things went too far. If you flew in at maximum speed and held nothing back. It wouldn't be nice, but maybe in the long term it was the right idea.

Thoughts of the news report from the previous night ran through your head again. The crying woman. Bloodstains on the steps, like the steps Kaiser stood above.

Maybe it was for the best that you didn't. That didn't mean you had to like it, though.

'The people of the United States have stood, fearful of the world for too long! How long, citizens, until we stand up for ourselves? How long until the true American, the conquerors who took this land for themselves in the first place, takes his rightful place again in the world? How long until we strike back at those who would pollute our land, our blood, and our economy? There are those who would see all American business go the way of Medhall. There are those, savages one and all, who would see America go the way of the feral countries of the East, or those scorched depths of Africa. These people are your enemies, citizens of Brockton Bay. These people are scared to say what I am saying – those things that we all think, in our private thoughts – for fear of being labelled and judged. I fear no label, I assure you. I fear no judgment except that of history, and history will be kind to those who work to secure the existence of our people, and a future for the American child!'

Kaiser's voiced echoed through the square as the crowd drew quiet, listening to his thunderous close, his right arm thrown into the air; a giant, metallic screeching sound came with the motion, and he swept his body aside to point in the direction of Medhall.

As you watched, the stricken and exploded shell of the building began to grow. The metal struts and supports that had been blown clear from the structure sprouted like plants in spring, and along a dawn chorus of hideous metallic cries, you saw the wireframe of the Medhall building take shape once again, slowly but faster than should have been possible. Kaiser was far, far from the building – far enough that it would have taken him minutes to reach it on foot – and his control and scale was still thus. You could see why so many had trouble dealing with him.

As the rooftop layers of the building took shape, still simply an outline, Kaiser turned again to his captive audience and absorbed the shocked silence before a handful of slow claps began to break the air.

And the citizens of Brockton Bay cheered for Kaiser.

Until they didn't.

Combat broke out in the crowd, and you moved with the other members of the Protectorate to intercede, desperate not to allow the carnage to spread or escalate; as you moved in, a thick metal sheet erupted from the ground in front of Kaiser and shielded off the Empire members from view. You left them to it; they could run for now.

Instead, you prized apart two grappling citizens; one, a taller man with glasses and a thin goatee who reminded you somewhat of your father, took the opportunity to tread on the fingers of the other – a man with an iron cross tattooed on his bald head. You found it simply impossible to dredge the depths of your emotional sea for any sympathy whatsoever.

The melee didn't last long, and cleared within only minutes. As fists had been thrown, the majority of the crowd had dispersed so as not to be caught up in it, and you marvelled at how often violence could erupt surrounding the Empire before they realised that the fascists were not the good guys.

Police arrived, bedraggled from the rush and the presumed pressure that was mounting on their own jurisdiction, with the Medhall attack and the Bormann murder seizing resources alongside their already strained war on drugs and the regular crime of a run-down city.

The storm cloud broke and it began to rain.

You asked yourself some questions.

Chances that Iron Rain responds to this within 3 days?

100%

Chances that Iron Rain responds to this within a single day?

100%

You passed on the information to Armsmaster, and he cursed under his breath. The heavy rain slicked off the hydrophobic surface of his blue armour, the clouds reflected in its sheen.

The skeleton of Medhall cast shadows across Brockton Bay through the dim light of the storm.

Actions Remaining:

- Do a PHO Q&A

- Do First Aid training with the PRT on April 8th

- Try your thinker power on Endbringers (after the Empire is done with)

- Consult the others on strategies for engaging the Empire

- Get in touch with Dragon to talk about the Birdcage

- Talk to Vicky and the Wards about the Q&A

Possible Example Actions:

[X][ACTION]Try to convince Armsmaster to raid the Memorial Hall based on Skyla's previous experiences and this

[X][ACTION]Investigate the murder for yourself: what could you learn?

[X][ACTION]Discuss Gesellschaft's taking of sides with (INSERT NAME)

Gesellschaft have taken a side, Justin is dead, and Kaiser is hitting the propaganda hard. Things are moving quickly, and we're getting close to the end of the Arc. Iron Rain's response is imminent and you can assume it's going to be unpleasant. She isn't willing to be subtle or play the long game, and we have confirmation that she's doing to act within a day. What do we do?