Noah was already trundling around his Fabratory, blessed be Sal for the name, as he sorted the creature comforts he had the twins go get for Hook and crew. It was going to be a hell of a patch job but it was the absolute least that can be done for as much of a beast Scar had been. He was truly the definition of the MVP when it came to saving the innocent. It would be a bad thing if Scar woke up with a bunch of upgrades but he had earned them and would get them as he saw fit.

Noah started by hooking Scar up to a number of external systems. Between defrag with his own memory backup unit, to brain dance to act as a barrier so his mind wouldn't boot up into his body. Even onto external power just to make sure that every base would cover.

"Grey my dear, I may need your soul printing. The thorns poked holes in his ghost and it's not something I can do on my own." In most cases this would require a factory reset but Scar had well earned every effort to save him.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:47, Fri 03 July 2020.

 Grey approached when called. "'Kay! I'll need some ectoplasm before I can print any soul patterns though."

 Once given the ectoplasm, Gray ate it as though she would a bowl of pasta before a whirring noise emanated from within her. Soon she was spitting out a continuous stream of... ghost, for lack of a better term... until she bit down and stopped the printing process.
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 02:36, Fri 03 July 2020.

Noah leaned down and gave her a tass in the shape of a slushy to make up for any power cost she may have had in printing the soul stuff. "Thank you kindly Grey, couldn't do it without you." Noah took a long breath while he started getting into Scar's systems. Military tech always had its ways of turning sideways on the operator if he wasn't careful to set up lots and lots of backdoors as he went.

"We should be dropping one of the passengers on our way to go see the collector. I can only assume the supernatural world is in an absolute war in NewYork. So... I can only assume they are going to show up here and try to take control of you as no one knows who you really are." He sighed, "I am of the opinion that such people should be considered hostile intruders. But information is key in a war."

"Is containment an option? If you quicksand them can you drain them of mana until they cant cast magic?" Noah was planning long long LONG in advance.

 Grey took her slushy and slurped on it happily as she considered Noah's request. "Yeah, I can do that. Just eat the magic and keep the person? It's a little harder depending on what my opponent is. Father always tole me to aim for the head if it had one 'cause they couldn't fight back after the head was gone."

Noah nodded, "And yet he let me live even though I was trying to steal tech from him."

"If it is someone or something that can do you harm or if you think there is a chance they could bind you, you have my encouragement to snuff them out like a candle. It's the morons that dont know any better that I worry about. Young mages with no chance of doing any harm to you should be taught a lesson before being sent on their way."

"Like I said, I can already see them gearing up to show up here and try to figure out what you are. For all they know you're a giant matter spell."

 Grey tilted her head to the side. "Neat. Maybe I can take them volcano diving with me. Mother said she couldn't go."


 As Grey slurped on her slushie, Scar's systems began to slowly reboot. However, mush of his OS now contained corrupted data.

Noah set the core systems to defrag while the back up system was spooling. It would isolate damaged clusters and make life easy. He started working the ghost blank, bringing in the same webbing he used to extract bits of Grey from Mistral. He wasnt so much patching as he was sealing th eww cuts made by the thorns. He wanted to retain as much of scars soul and programming as he could.

Layers worked better than patches for such. He poked his keyboard to boot brain dance, no sense on cold Turkey hard boot.

"Mom? Mistral? I'd say run space a bit for adventure with her before you go lava diving. Dont know if even I could manage lava. Liquid rock gets heavy. I think adventure would do you two good."

As if summoned by speaking her name, Mistral said, "We will have time for such expéditions, but not just yet."  Noah hadn't been aware of her presence but there she was, sat casually in a corner of the Faboratory as if she'd been there all along.  Perhaps she had been.

Mistral's attention was fixed upon the brass mirror held facing upward in her left hand, above and within which she examined a tattered tapestry of Spirit resonance, picking through its details.  As she pored over the pattern, she asked a seemingly non-sequitur question, "Grey... do you know where Scar dabbled at pottery?  I should like to see what he has made."

Noah's eyes closed, his head jerked down, his shoulders jerked up, but he locked his arms down as to not rip the webbing. He turned his head slowly and smiled at Mistral. "Right, so I can still have a jumpstart to my heart." He smiled wider as he contemplated affectionate revenge. "Speaking of adventure I pulled up my old dnd set for the kids and a number of classical fiction books for Hook himself. Though I am reluctant to part with a single bottle, think he would enjoy one of the cases of Girl and dragon?" DND the game that never ended.

 Grey nodded. "Yeah... but they made me leave because they didn't want me to eat the clay."

 Grey showed Mistral the location on a map. It had sustained damage in the storm and was now closed.

Mistral smirked at Noah's surprised reaction, and turned her pale eyes up to him for just a moment before returning to her study.  It wasn't the first time she'd enjoyed startling him, and wouldn't be the last.  She nodded distractedly in answer to his question about the planned gifts.  "Hook will enjoy the books, certainement.  If you think the children will enjoy this D et D then I will trust your jugement.  I have not played."  Her pronunciation of the abbreviation of the famous tabletop game sounded like 'day et day.'  At the dragon's concern over sharing some of their supply of Girl and Dragon wine, she glanced up with a speculative look and then deadpanned, "Let him try une bouteille de pinard to taste.  I suspect he will not like this vulgaire vintage, but we may acquire better for him."  Mistral's put-on disdain toward the aptly-named supermarket-shelf wine brand was a running joke between them, but in truth she rather enjoyed it.

Mistral dismissed her Spirit research and arose to give Grey an affectionate brush of silvery hair in thanks for providing directions and even a map to Scar's pottery studio, "Merci, ma fille.  I will return a bientôt to assist in the reconstruction of Scar's soul, then."  She made for the exit to the Faboratory, but turned in the doorway and asked, "'They?'  Did others join Scar in his pottery?"

---

Investigation to explore the damaged location and have a look at Scar's pottery, searching for pieces that seem personal to him or that he was proud of:

• 03:13, Today: Mistral rolled 4 successes using 6d10 with the World of Darkness nWoD system with a target of 8, rerolling 10s with rolls of 2,7,9,4,8,10(+10,7).  Wits + Investigation.

 Grey nodded. "Yes. There was the teacher and three pretty ladies in the studio. They were being all lovey dovey with Scar but I don't think he noticed."

Noah smiled and nodded, "Some of the best games in the world branch from DnD. It is Dungeons and Dragons after all. And we can get him a bouquet of wine until he finds his liking. Though... if the stories are right a tea set and a load of teas will set his spirit alive. He is of royal blood after all."

He nodded at the mention of Mistral returning to help. "I will get his memories updated and defragged so we are ready one hundred percent. It may be a bit jarring for him, like going from being just fine to straight intensive care on the mend." He smiled wide at the strapping young lad attracting attention.

Noah set the final run to the braindance for the backup before booting Scar up on the remote unit. It was far better to do new memory integration separately just to be sure there was no unrecoverable trauma. He keyed up the false eyes, ears, and voice. "Scar, you live? You should be in the backup brain dance. Figured you would enjoy the English market setting." Death really wasn't dead with a synth. Alyssa came back from just a finger after all. "Once you're ready we can update and do a slllooowwww download to your body."

 The remote boot up went off without a hitch and soon Scar appeared on the screen in the middle of a street with shops everywhere, each place designed to be a place where goods are made and sold within.

 Strangely, Scar's digital representation looked nothing like his synth form. Instead, he was nothing more than a vaguely human, masculine, glowing humanoid form. As he looked around the simulation, Noah could see the scar over his eye and that his eyes were gray.

 "Hello? Where am I?"

Noah adjusted the camera so Scar had a view but not of his own body. "You went down defending baby Alex. Pixi thorns, I shaved a bunch so we can make you a weapon out of it. Eye for an eye and all that."

"Your body is repaired, and we have most of your circuits back to ship shape. We have a patch in for your soul so we want to ease you back into your body once we have all the things we need."

"If you like I can start the upload of your most recent memories. We can select them as we go."

"...You did a brave thing Scar. Alex would have been snatched up without you."

 Scar looked around and then down at himself. "Is this Lucid Dreaming?"


 Scar then reaches out and touches the shop and Noah can see the programming of the brain dance begin to activate. The program is being actively re-written as Scar begins to interact with it.

Noah smiled and let go of the reins of the program. "For you buddy? It is now." He even set up for Ally and bai to hook in if they cared to, to pose as the ladies from Scars memory.

Downloading could wait, Scar had some very well earned lucid dreaming to do.

 Aly and Bia hooked into the Brain Dance with Scar but, like most synths, their forms within were almost blank white and only vaguely feminine with features far less pronounced that Scar's form.

 The shop that Scar touched became a pottery shop and he sat down at the wheel to create. As he spun, Noah could see that he had begun engraving his own memories onto the pottery.

 From there, Noah had a clear record of what Scar did and did not remember. There were many gaps or corrupted bits that showed in the pottery he worked. Some vases and bowls broke as he tried to fire them, some were without decoration, but seeing what broke or was blank gave him a good indication that Scar only retained about 40% of his actual self after the attack.

 As Scar worked, Aly and Bia watched but did not interfere. Like with all synths, they rarely interacted with other synths unless there was a purpose behind it.

Noah clapped once and seemed beyond excited. Adaptive behavior and open sourcing. Scar was delightfully evolving. He reached over and pulled a hard disk. "Alright buddy. I've got a clone of your old backup. I'll keep a lock on the last two weeks until we patch the holes."

"We will go slow and having your memory locked in should make it easy work for the lovely lady Mist to reattach your soul." He cracked his claws. "I'm good at patching but her delicate touch is best."

He linked up the clone of his back up, never risk orignal software. "Incoming clay in 3..2... Hey, that's a good civi name for you, Clay."
This message was last edited by the player at 03:33, Tue 07 July 2020.

Mistral appeared in supernal haze in a discreet location not far from the ruins of her destination, and was disconcerted by the widespread devastation of the city.  She had witnessed the cataclysm and knew more than most of the colossal forces involved, but seeing the aftermath firsthand was alarming nonetheless.

Enshrouded by magic to misdirect the attentions of any onlooker, Mistral cut her way through the thick vines and ducked under a collapsed eave into the destroyed pottery shop.  The floor was littered with shards of shattered pottery, but many pieces remained intact, and her attention was drawn to a number of distinctive pieces.  There was a large vase, a few plates and bowls, and even a ceramic tea kettle, each one crafted to an astonishing degree of detail.  The pieces bore ornate carvings of a number of familiar figures, which brought a faint smile to Mistral's lips.  A young child riding a dragon, a large ship with tall masts, a mysterious hooded woman and a well-dressed gentleman standing tall.  The figures were deliberately stylized to remove identifying features, though they were readily identifiable to her.  On closer inspection, it was evident that these elaborate designs were carved by hand while the clay was still on the spinning wheel.  The incredible speed and precise manual dexterity required to create these made it an overwhelming likelihood that the creator was a cutting-edge synth.  Mistral gingerly wrapped each piece in a protective cloth and then spoke a spell to shunt them safely away into a place-between-places.  Her work here was done, and so she stepped back into a drifting mist and vanished as if she'd never been there.

Mistral reappeared in the Faboratory, where Scar was hooked into the Brain-Dance while his memories were restored.  She watched as his avatar constructed a familiar pottery shop and set to work at incomplete replicas of the pottery pieces she had collected.  She turned to Noah and said, "If I may, I believe I might be able to expedite Type's recollection."  She was unsure if Scar could hear her, but wondered if he would recall the French nickname she'd given him on the night of their meeting.  One by one she spatially-unfolded into local spacetime each of the works of pottery she'd collected, carefully placing them in a row on a nearby worktable, still covered in their protective cloths.

 As Scar printed his memories onto pottery, he lined them up on a shelf and, as Noah began to download his backup, he began once more firing pottery, engraving his memories and placing them on a shelf such that he could categorically identify all of his memories either complete or missing.

 As he worked, Scar spoke and Mistral could hear him. "That voice... it sounds familiar..."

 As Mistral sat down the pottery and worked her magic, she found that she could quite easily mend the holes in Scar's soul using resonance and the raw material Noah and Grey had already wrapped his body in... and, within minutes, his spiritual form had been repelled.

 The data stream became somewhat interrupted at that point as Scar began to look over his missing memories out of sequence, searching for the memory associated with the voice. "I am missing something, something important..."

 He began work on another piece. It was not quite as detailed as his lucid dreaming pottery or his real life pottery either. It seemed as though he were trying to construct a face to match to Mistral's voice...

 He was no longer focusing on integrating memories, instead focusing all of what remained of his cognitive power on constructing an image... but the image that he was creating was more of a composite of many people instead of what Mistral actually looked like.

Noah went wide eyed as he reached over to get the control unit he used to run proxy on a doppelganger unit. "Oh that's bad. Cascade failure.  Looks like your nature is actively corrupting his memory of you. We can double up a way to get around it without compromising you love." he offered Mistral the control unit, a mask of sorts with a head band.

"If you like you can use this to run the girls doppelganger program. Should let you be in there for him."

"We may also want to set the little statue of you he made in front of the camera to help him out."
This message was last edited by the player at 13:36, Tue 07 July 2020.

Mistral was well-pleased by the success of the restoration of Scar's memories and selfhood, up until the process short-circuited on the attempt to reconstruct memories of her.  She watched her own features fail to resolve on the rendering of Scar's psyche and muttered, "I ought to have anticipated this..."  It was no accident that her image failed to be captured by cameras, that she was overlooked even on an empty street, and that memories of her faded nearly before they could be formed.  She had worked hard to protect herself from all forms of scrutiny.  This failure of recollection was exactly what was supposed to happen, by her own design.

At Noah's suggestion to insert herself in the brain-dance via a visual facsimile, she shook her head.  "Non.  Mon obscurcissement accounts for this.  It will not work."  She arose and retreated to the door of the Faboratory, wringing her hands.  Mistral paused at the threshold facing away, then said in a carefully-measured voice, "I will not cause Scar's restoration of self to fail.  Excise me from his recollection, to allow the rest to return.  I will... meet him again, afterward."

Mistral rounded the corner out of view and faded out of awareness, so that none would see her silent tears.

Noah frowned but nodded. He moved the mic closer as he moved the piece he created near the camera Scar had access too. "Scar, I need you to slow down. Be calm and not impassive. Understand that the details are not as important as the core." he pulled over the cloth Mistral had covered her icon, right next to the dragon in Hope's they would create a neutral balance.

"Her name is Mistral. You know her. Dont focus on her form or identity. Focus on what she has done. A woman who gave you shelter when you had first met. Closed the door to demons. Saved a mother and child."

"Focusing on her identity will keep it in cascade failure. Stay abstract. Dont go to details go to events. By her nature she is hidden. But her mark on your life, that should be with you."

"Null values can still have meaning." Noah was silently cheering him on. It was a chance for Scar to evolve abstractly and for Mistral to keep a friend.

He had his hand over the keys to lock and isolate just encase.

 Scar paused from his pottery work. "Null values..."

 There was some quick work where scar began to work on an algebraic formula in pottery, firing it and setting it on a shelf before Mistral had ever made herself known to him... and then he began to carve zeros where Mistral's identity would have been.

 Once he worked through his identity crisis, the memory download could continue.