Friends (and Enemies) on the Other Side (Unredacted)

> TO: LEVI JEANS
>
>

> FROM: FRANKLIN SALISBURY
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>

> I've asked VIchoides to analyse my report and redact where necessary, as well as all of my outgoing communications - after all, we don't want another situation like when I had to explain why I made a whole bunch of invaluable artifacts explode in Autochtonia. (Good times, though.)
>
>

> TO: LEVI [...]
>
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> FROM: TYCHOIDES' AI
>
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> After analyzing agent Salisbury's report, it is my opinion that it's best \*not\* to schedule any psych evals for agent Salisbury for the foreseeable future. He believes himself to be perfectly sane, and any opinions stated to the contrary are likely to cause conflict and decrease his effectiveness in the field.
>
>

## REPORT: Friends (and Enemies) on the Other Side

### PREFACE

Yes, I know, the phrasing in the report doesn't match the Technocratic world view or whatever. I'm just writing down how I experienced things - the higher-ups can spin things into whatever helps them sleep at night. Moving on.

### CHAPTER 1: One Foot in the Grave

It had been a few weeks since our 'correction' of the Gauntlet when our doorbell rang - which never means good news. Unfortunately, our feline defense team was eating at the time, so one of us had to answer the door. Eventually Levi, me, Tailor, Jane, and Dr. Raven all ended up greeting our visitor, Charon (you may remember him from the case we don't like to talk about and the case we're not allowed to talk about).

As it turned out, Charon needed our help with something - a formerly corrupted spirit (of the daughter of our resident freeloading ghost, Tom Hayes) was no longer corrupted, and she had information about the entity named 'Grandmother' (also from the case we're not allowed to talk about). We agreed to help Charon out, which is when he killed us. Rude.

Okay, so it's slightly more complicated than that - or much more complicated, we don't really agree on that. I've put the possible scenarios in Appendix A, but the most likely scenarios are that Charon mostly-killed us so he could transport our spirits into the Umbra disguised as regular dead (37%), or he did something that isn't listed in Appendix A because I have no idea what it could be (31%). From our point of view, anyway, we suddenly found ourselves in some sort of underworld version of Earth, where only dead things existed (like Geocities, dial-up, and my country's conscience), while on Live Earth, Levi simply walked off leaving our bodies lying there. Tailor, of course, came up with some semi-plausible explanation that allowed her to deny the existence of an afterlife and prevented me from claiming extraordinary-hazard pay for our time on the mission: "we died, and 'we' are actually echoes of our former selves that'll disappear eventually". Not like that stopped her from finding a way to contact Levi while technically not breaking any of the mission protocol rules, though.

After discovering that Levi somehow believed we were still on vacation in New York after our last mission, we decided to get on with the mission. Not like there was much else we could do, aside from yelling "what the FUCK?!" at Charon - which we did do, by the way, resulting in an apologetic speech about how this was the only way to get us in under the radar or something. Anyway, as it turns out, we had all the gear we were really fond of with us - in my case, that meant my tools, my Iron Man suit in bracelet form, Fridgey, and even the Ex-Wife suitcase, which we fortunately didn't end up needing. I don't really recall what the rest had with them, aside from Jane's torture kit (obviously) and Dr. Raven's revolver. In addition to this, Charon provided us all with black cloaks that would allow us to impersonate ferrymen (even Fridgey, somehow), and a screaming soul coin each (for alternate theories about what they might actually be, since "souls aren't real" and "you sound like a deviant" and such, ask someone who gives a shit, like Tailor - I was only interested in whether you can make them scream harder by running electricity through them (you can't) and whether they have other uses than currency (they do, but more on that later)).

### CHAPTER 2: We're Gonna Need a Bigger, Well, Everything

Sadly, my plan to fish some souls out of the river Styx had to wait, as we were led through a town to the Twin Towers (at least Donald Trump didn't get a chance to put golden "Trump" letters on them yet). In the elevators, Charon explained that's where people ("deadple"?) got paid, which makes perfect sense, as they have to take the elevators to leave the building after work anyway. In Charon's office we met miss Hayes, who gave us more information about Grandmother - apparently it/she was devouring things and growing at a frightening pace, and unless we stopped it/her within the next few weeks, it/she would end up devouring everything in the Umbra, and then Earth. This is what we scientists call 'an extremely bad thing'. And of course the thing had fanboys, or 'followers' as they're known in religious circles, because if I had to deal with whiny Romans all the time, I'd want to destroy all existence too.

After discussing the threat and possible countermeasures, we came up with the following solutions, in preferred order of attempting:

* A: Somehow manipulate Grandmother into eating its/her own ass, getting stuck in an Ouroboros-style loop for all eternity.
* B: Destroy all matter surrounding Grandmother, trapping it/her in a void.
* C: Use a negative-energy cannon to blast away at it/her from a safe distance, keeping it/her from growing.
* D: Ask it/her nicely not to devour all of existence.
* E: Say "fuck it", grab Charon, head back to Earth, turn the Gauntlet back up to eleven, and hope it/she can't break through even after devouring the rest of existence. Also find or create some sort of energy source to replace the sun, and have Charon move all the ghosts that get stuck on this side of the Gauntlet to a place where they can't bother living people (that matter), like Antarctica or Texas. And somehow get the Syndicate to convince the NWO they don't need to be paid overtime for trying to stop the societal collapse that THE SUN DISAPPEARING will cause.

Plan C requires some explanation. See, conventional weaponry won't work on an entity that devours everything you throw at it. Obviously, anti-matter won't work, as its collision with regular matter will release energy, which it/she can then devour. The solution, of course, is to use negative matter, negative energy, or both. There's just one small problem (if you don't count that both are mostly hypothetical concepts): none of the tools we brought with us were actually capable of creating them. Fortunately, however, I realized that if I used my EM Modulator on itself, using a modified version of the hot-shotting procedure, I could distort the quarks, resulting in a quantum reversal of the polarity of the \*polarity\* (suck it, Doctor Who) of the EM Modulator, allowing it to create negative matter and negative energy through, in effect, a hot-shotted version of the hot-shotting protocol (Mark Watney ain't got SHIT on me). The procedure is described in more detail in appendix B. I tested the process on some of the bullets in Dr. Raven's revolver, making sure to only alter the projectile part and put a field around them that kept them from interacting with any matter directly until they hit the target. Since that didn't kill us all, I felt heartened enough to use the Negation process to modify the Beta-class particle cannons of the Resilience, and get started on the core of plan C: a Condensed-Post-Life-Entity-Powered Negative-Energy Cannon (schematics are in Appendix C), although since LASERs are actually LOSERs, we decided to call it a Soul-Powered Anti-Matter, or SPAM cannon, instead. As it turns out, you see, those soul coins things are remarkable sources of Prime Energy, and it's not like they're using all that energy for anything except screaming, so what the hey.

Since the Soul-Powered Anti-Matter cannon needs, well, souls, I used a net to fish a bunch of them out of the river Styx (not like there's laws against overfishing in the underworld). Apparently the water makes them more flexible, so they can be smithed into coins, or something. While I was working on the cannons, the rest went out to find someone who could turn the soul-fish into soul-coins. Along the way they ended up encountering, pursuing, and capturing that Texan guy's ghost. They brought him back to the Resilience and interrogated him. Oh right, I forgot - somehow Charon managed to bring over the ENTIRE FUCKING RESILIENCE when we pointed out there was no way we were going to face Grandmother on foot. Like WHAT THE HELL. Anyway, they got some useful information out of him (something something fighting a greater evil blahblahblah), and managed to see through the lies he tried to slip in. Whatever.

Oh, and they ended up getting a bunch of soul-coins made by a local, although the procedure is apparently too complicated for any of us to reproduce.

Yet.

Muahaha.

### CHAPTER 3: What Big Teeth You Have

A few days later, we were as prepared to face Grandmother as we'd ever be - picnic baskets and all. And by "picnic baskets" I mean "a bag of soul coins" and "a cannon powered by said soul coins".

Unfortunately, calculating the viability of plan A would require actually being in the vicinity of Grandmother, so off we went, stealth enabled. We arrived at our destination about ten minutes later, and...

Well.

In my defense, nobody told me the Grand Maw would have EYES.

And look in our direction (sure, we were cloaked, but it/she still noticed us).

While eating... something that doesn't have any right to exist, let alone get eaten by something bigger.

Anyway, that's when I decided to forgo plans A and B for the time being and start blasting at it/her with the Beta cannons. Didn't seem to do a lot of damage, though - about as much as tiny insects slamming into your forehead while you're biking. So when agent Tailor complained, I suggested she get started on plan A while I tried to figure out how to annoy it/her enough that it/she would actually follow us so we could make an ouroboros out of it/her.

Agent Jane and Dr. Raven helped me with the cannons while agent Tailor performed the necessary calculations - and discovered the only route was too dangerous for her to manage on her own. Fortunately, VIchoides had come along with the Resilience, and could help her navigate the ship. Meanwhile, Fridgey was operating the SPAM Cannon (from the inside of the ship, while the cannon was affixed to the outside), and HOT DANG that first shot actually blasted a hole in Granny! Sure, it filled back up soon enough, but that certainly got its/her attention. Feeling encouraged, I relinquished control of my Beta cannon to the others and decided to aim for Granny's eyes (serves it/her right). Two well-aimed shots got its/her attention, and what followed was like a creepier version of a street race through an oversized corn maze.

With a few slick maneuvers, agent Tailor managed to successfully execute plan A. Which is a good thing, because on the sixth or seventh shot, the SPAM Cannon malfunctioned. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but when it was over, there was a pretty big hole in the hull, and I was missing one of my arms. So I guess it's a good thing that when Charon sent us back (Tailor managed to give VIChoides instructions on returning the Resilience beforehand), we woke in our regular bodies, and I had my arms again.

I'm a bit fuzzy on the impromptu debriefing that followed - I was more interested in the fact that the bag of soul coins had somehow traveled back with us, and in writing down the results of my experiments. I think there was something about Levi being upset that someone had managed to Jedi Mind Trick him, but whatever, he can handle it.

Oh, something weird also happened - apparently Dr. Raven decided to test the anti-energy bullets, assuming they were still in his revolver, which resulted in us finding out two things:

1. They were.
2. I may have dropped a few zeroes somewhere in my calculations. After all, negative matter isn't anti-matter, so when it hits a target, it \*should\* leave a hole in the target that had the same amount of mass as the bullet before it was converted, not evaporate most of the shooting range.

The second part is pretty significant, of course. We were shooting at a nondescript being, so estimating the scale of the blasts was tricky, but if we assume the volume of the blast scales linearly with the mass/energy-converted-to-negative-mass/energy, the Beta cannons, which will lose their 'charge' within the next few days, would leave what we scientists call 'a big fucking hole' in anything they fire at, and testing an actual SPAM Cannon would have to be done in the Umbra, as a mishap could easily result in a permanent Crescent Earth. I've already taken the liberty of providing R&E with a suitable test target, located roughly 300 million kilometers from Earth.

Muahaha.

### APPENDIX B: Creation of stable negative matter and negative energy, and modifying weaponry to work with them

[CHAPTER REDACTED; PROCEDURE SENT TO R&E FOR ANALYSIS]

### Appendix C: Schematics of CPLEP-NEC/SPAM Cannon

[CHAPTER REDACTED; SCHEMATICS SENT TO R&E FOR ANALYSIS]