Auster's Arc

Auster wakes up in a hospital bed, surrounded by the party, all dressed in clown costumes, and comically massive clown shoes.

Auster has lost the ability to move, but Omega enters the room and magically cures him.

Auster is then transported to a black void, where he merges with, and becomes Omega.

## Auster's Actual Arc

### **Session 76:**

**Intro:**

* Auster and Cleo received a call from Rex Losa and Vomot, begging the two of them to talk to Auster. When Auster approached them, they asked him to meet with them. Along with this, someone named ‘Kyrie’ is seeking him out. While apprehensive at first, after hearing about Kyrie, Auster insisted on meeting them. Moth asked who this ‘Kyrie’ is, to which Auster explained that she’s his ex-girlfriend.
* Kyrie: mercenary, “cool” according to Auster, well-trained with a gun (hence why Auster doesn’t use guns – she shot, he used his sword).
* The party get the go-ahead to follow Rex and Vomot’s ship.

**Meantime:**

* Cleo apologizes to Sandy for her treatment of the latter (in Session 75). She also asked Sandy what she and Daz are hiding from the rest of the party, trying to reassure her that she too will keep it a secret. (After a high Talk roll), Sandy reveals her true identity as Sally Pill – Rens’ younger sister – to Cleo. Cleo… feels extremely bad about essentially torturing the sister of the person she’s in love with.
* Sally says she doesn’t mind who knows who she is, as long as Rens doesn’t know. She explains further: she doesn’t want to add another worry to Rens’ life at a time where they’re already under a lot of pressure.
* Moth asks Auster “How the hell did you get a girlfriend?” – apparently, she tripped him down the stairs.
* Cleo asks Daz to come to the bridge, then argues with him about his decision to keep Sandy’s identity a secret from her. They bicker, then settle down.
* Cleo… asks Daz not to fuck Sandy, despite that not being something that ever went through Daz’s head at all.

**Arrival at The Equinox Centre:**

* The Arktos follows Rex and Vomot into The Equinox Centre, an asteroid base. Some variants of Imontoid ships are also in the shipyard they dock at, among other strange ship models.
* Rex leads the party into the luxurious lobby area of some kind of mini-city, hosting a wide array of people from different species and walks of life. Funnily enough, including Gary Sr.’s language teacher.
* Rex’s Imontoid contact asks Auster if he’s willing to meet privately with the two of them and Kyrie. Moth points out the danger of splitting the group up in a place where, as the Imontoid described, “Everyone wants to kill you”, but the Imontoid explains that everyone is under strict orders not to kill anyone. Auster agrees to the meeting.

**The Meeting:**

* The Imontoid leads Auster to the meeting room, explaining that Kyrie will be arriving soon.

**In the Meantime: Party POV:**

* Rex shows the party around, eventually sitting them down at a café table. He expresses how relieved he is that he isn’t dead.
* Rex also explains that everyone in his group in The Equinox Centre has a chip implanted in their brain, used to maintain control over them. This group started out as an “underground murder crew”, handling assassinations, led by the Imontoids. After the party met Vomot, the Imontoids were made aware of their existence, and wants them dead due to their messing with the timeline. Kyrie is a member of this group… essentially everyone who could possibly want the party dead is in their group. Apparently, that also includes Alexander Simms (Vortech’s former CEO).
* Rex *also* explains that the asteroid has defensive technology designed by Dr. Jackson – it’s perpetually one second in the future.

**The Meeting, Continued:**

* Auster overhears that Kyrie is a member of this murder-group. He’s normal about it.
* Kyrie enters the room: she instantly goes to hug him, saying that she’s heard about his current situation, then shoots up at the ceiling, destroying a previously-invisible security camera.
* When Auster asks why Kyrie suddenly left him, she explains that she was kidnapped by this group, occasionally being forced to do jobs for them. After she found out about Auster’s status with Eclipse, she organised a way to meet him.
* Kyrie asks Auster to break her out of the group. Auster agrees to help. Since the chip in her brain can alter memories and personality – even turn her into an Imontoid – she needs it out. In Auster/Cleo’s comms, Cleo mentions the possibility of getting one of the people who created her to help Kyrie, but options and time are limited.
* Kyrie decides that the best way to move her inconspicuously to a place she can get the chip out is… to go on a fake date with Auster.
* Rex also wants in on a chance to escape: he’ll ‘supervise’ Auster and Kyrie, which adds some more credibility to the plan.

**Post-Meeting Meet-Up:**

* Auster informs the party of the plan, meeting with them in the café. They all order hot chocolates, apart from Rens, who gets Moth to order them a coffee (Cleo tells him to order a caramel macchiato, specifically).
* Rens notices something with their Tagger Nanites: Gary Sr. is exploring the lobby of the Equinox Station. They choose to check up on his status every five minutes.
* Alexander Simms spots the party in the café, understandably angry at them for what they did to him. Before leaving, he spits in Zirka’s face.
* Rens looks again at the Tagger Nanites: Gary Sr. is standing still in the lobby area of TEC. He then… disappears from the Tagger Nanites’ view. Rens instantly gets up and leaves to look for him, followed by Moth and Cleo.

**Interrogation:**

* Rens, Cleo and Moth run to where Gary was last tracked, finding Gary’s old English teacher tinkering with him (deactivated), using a remote control to do so. With Rens’ permission, Cleo uses her Slowtime to run up to the teacher and apprehend her. Rens and Moth follow behind; Rens picks up Gary.
* Once apprehended, she explains what’s going on: the Imontoids left Gary’s teacher the technology needed to control the Garys – she’s using the remote control, which is the only device they can use to do so. Cleo threatens to let her bosses turn her into an Imontoid if she doesn’t tell them how to fix Gary, but this teacher was brought up in Imontoid culture; she *wants* to become an Imontoid. It isn’t a threat to her.
* Rens injects the teacher with Squeal, and then asks her about her deepest trauma in an attempt to waste her one topic that she can refuse to talk about. She describes the bullying she faced growing up in an Imontoid school. In excruciating detail. After Rens presses her enough on the severe abuse she suffered, she eventually caves, refusing to talk any further about the topic.
* With that, Rens can freely question her on how to help Gary Senior. Imondrone parts were implemented into Gary Sr. to use as a way to tap into his camera (which caused the light flickering in his eyes). It’s simple to get those parts out – just a couple of chips and pins to take out, avoiding damaging the other parts of Gary. The pins are red, yellow and white. Remove whites, then reds, then yellows. Take the pins out before the chips. The green diamond at the top of Gary acts as an on/off switch.
* One detail about the Imontoids: the teacher is from the far future. A rhyme she thinks Rens would find useful, particularly for Auster:

> Anger fuels the powers that be,
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> The coward forced to kill their friends,
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> Sent the spy to the planet of the sea,
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> Nobody to help in the end.
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> The woman is not who she seems,
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> Do all you can to stop the bloodshed,
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> Just as everything seems fine for your team,
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> Everyone you know is dead.
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> Not to worry though,
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> New friends are abound,
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> Perhaps some you already know,
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> All is now safe and sound,
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> Except for the screams of the dead in the back of your head.
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* After the teacher passes out, Moth puts her in the recovery position. Cleo talks to Rens in private to discuss what to do with her, but don’t settle on an idea.