With the checkpoint passed, the ship made it safely into harbor where, for the very first time, Noah and Mistral could fully see just how much damage had been done to the city.

 Several thousand tons of building had been washed into the ocean with many buildings simply having been torn up out of the ground. Survivors were helping to clear rubble by throwing damaged bricks into holes. It was slow work with the national guard present to help with the cleanup. Rebuilding had not yet started, infrastructure was down, and the only vehicles in the city seemed to be either military or street cleaning... and there was much street cleaning to be done. Despite the dent they'd made, it would be weeks or longer before the vines covering the city could be cleared away completely.

 Amy stared in awe at the destruction as two soldiers approached the boat.

Noah smiled inside that suit, Mistral was a marvel and so was Amy. He was surrounded by the best of the best and none could argue him out of that mindset. When the soldiers came close Noah stood up on all fours with that tank of a bed on his back. The wing encasements on either side looking for all the world like shipping pannels.

Like any good E.D.* unit Noah got off the ship first with a bit of a hop so he could drive his heels in just a tiny bit. He hadn't been on real New York dirt from before the whole land of the dead issue.

"Unit does not require escort. Provide documentation of your orders." He could half guess Mistral would be keeping a low profile. So he had to make it look good.

"Merde..." Mistral cursed beneath her breath upon seeing the shattered city washed into the sea and overgrown by vines.  The city had been corrupt, congested and took its toll on the world in innumerable ways, but it was still a monument to human accomplishment.  Its destruction was a tragedy, in every sense of the word.

Mistral raised her hood, shading her features as she became an unremarkable stranger whom the soldiers would deem unworthy of concern.  Even should they make note of her, it would not be for long while she walked behind a dragon masquerading as a large robot.

 The soldiers half reached for their weapons but did not aim them. They were clearly nervous despite the training they'd been give. "We were asked by the coast guard to escort Mr. Watson's daughter home along with... you.

 If you need documentation, put us in contact with your commanding officer."

The eyes went dark before Noah's normal voice came over the speaker. "The hell are calling me for ED? I was in the shower. Just carry on and get her home. If they are not really military you can handle it."

Noah turned the voice modulation back on and lowered his head in a grumbly way. "Carry on."

 With that seemingly out of the way, the two soldiers led Amy to a military transport vehicle with three more men in the back. They offered Amy a ride in the back, which she accepted. However, due to Noah's size (and Mistral's desire to remain hidden), they were forced to walk through the rubble strewn maze that was now New York.

 The truck went slow, allowing Noah to keep up easily on foot though Mistral found that she was forced to either jog or find a way to catch a ride on Noah without anyone noticing. However, the route they were taking took them by Time's Square...

…
…
…

… or, rather, the half mile wide crater that remained of it. No building remained. No rubble, no ruins... Even the sewer and subway systems had been torn away, causing the crater to fill with fetid waste water.

 The vines and fruit were thriving inside.

Mistral grew suspicious as the soldiers approached to escort Amy.  She asked Noah quietly, "This seems a large escorte militaire for the daughter of a former politician...  How do we know these soldiers answer to Monsieur Watson?  Was he notified in advance?"

Now gave Mistral a small mental nod as he sent a text message to the good Mayor. ~"Confirm the military contacted you as to our presence? We are about at time square now."~ Noah was fairly impassive at the amount of damage. At most he wanted to eat the fruits but that could wait.

He was fairly sure that they had been normal military as they requested mast at the mention of printed orders. Still, Mistral had a good nose for things so he watched them, overtly. Just like an ED would watch anyone who was armed.

 A minute later, there was a blip on Noah's tablet ~Yes. They contacted me. Getting things ready now.~

Mistral nodded in acknowledgment of Watson’s confirmation that the military escort was genuine.  When the convoy and Noah’s robot guise set out at a pace that would be difficult to sustain on foot, she said simply, “I will follow, then rendezvous at our destination.”  Then Mistral was gone.

The state of the crater formerly known as Times Square was unsettling to Mistral, particularly considering she knew herself to be partly responsible for the extent of destruction in this particular location.  How many had died when the spirit maelstrom descended and blasted this place off the Earth, and was it more than the storm would have claimed itself, otherwise?  Was the enemy mage she’d sought to destroy among the dead, or had he escaped?  She brooded over these troubling thoughts, but did not give voice to them for now.

When the convoy arrived at its destination Mistral was already there, waiting patiently and still incognito.

 Once their escort was complete, the military got back in their truck and drove away, leaving Amy, Mistral, and Noah in front of Yankee Stadium which has been transformed into a storm shelter.

 The mayor exits the front and the two look at each other for a moment before Amy sprinted forward and Henry scooped her up in a massive hug, spinning her around as he did so. Overwhelmed with joy, the two wept openly hugging again before Henry turned to the two of you. "You did it! You brought my baby girl back!"

Noah kept walking up as he sent a ping to Mistral's slate, making sure to record the moment for everyone. It was hell on ice getting to this point. He sat down like a giant cat and waited a nice long time for the happy reunion. "Is there someplace that we could speak without the presence of itchy ears?"

 Wiping the tears away, the man grinned. "Of course!"

 He led Noah and Mistral into a VIP box of the stadium that had been converted into an administrative office of sorts. Out in the stadium itself could be seen thousands of refugees who had not left when the storm hit.

 From the look of things, the military had been evacuating them as there were spaces for far more people than were there now. Henry, eyes still red with tears of joy, pulled up a seat for Amy and took a seat behind his desk. "What did you need to talk about?"

Noah tilted his head side to side, "I am sure you are aware of the nature of my Cabal but how much do you know? Enough to take on merit when I talk about things that would otherwise be horse feathers and fantasy, that I am speaking from a place of understanding and first-hand knowledge? I don't want to invoke your disbelief but I need you to trust what I tell you."


He set that bed unit down next to an outlet just encase. "There is a lot to go over as your daughter is unique beyond any expectations you may have."

 Henry paused for a long moment before looking between Noah and Amy. He then stopped and took a long, deep breath. "I've seen enough to know that there a great many individuals of extraordinary ability in this city. I also know enough to realize that you're not actually a robot."

Noah nodded once and let the visor up that covered his eyes. Grey did amazing work but there was always something to looking someone eye to eye. "That makes things a fair bit more simple." He took a long breath to even himself out. "You'll find there are blocks on her memory. They are there for good reason and should not be pressed outside of the care of Talion or Myself. She was witness to people who are now paying a horrific price for their deeds."

"But from within the memories, I want you to know that your daughter took a horrid situation and used the tools she had to lock down three of her assaulters until I could return to recover her with an ally. Amy, you may not remember it, but I do. You are brave beyond words, resourceful, and even when the chips had been cast and long gone you still took action when anyone else would have given in to sorrow." He nodded once again.

"I speak with authority to state clearly that her soul and her mind are both intact and entirely present. The recovery was done entirely with her consent. There are, however, extensive replacements to her body. I will leave percentages out of it but at this point, Amy is one of a kind."

He paused a moment, "Shall I continue?"

An anonymous figure stepped out of the background and resolved into Mistral as she arrived just prior to the reunion.  She appeared next to Noah and lowered her hood, freeing a shock of white-and blue hair, then greeted him quietly.  When father and daughter were reunited at last, Mistral's breath hitched despite her best efforts.  She leaned against Noah while looking on with moist eyes.  She had no idea how to reply to the Henry's exclamation of joy directed toward them, so she simply nodded an acknowledgement.  Quietly, she remarked to Noah, "Whatever other calamités we have been party to, we have righted this wrong.  Well done, mon dragon."

Mistral followed Watson as he led the way to the VIP box of the damaged but surprisingly intact sports stadium, and looked out over the many refugees.  It was a concerning sight, but it seemed that at least they had received food, shelter and medical care to get them through the aftermath.  To Watson she said, "You have done much for these people despite the destruction of your city, Monsieur Mayor.  Tout à fait admirable."

With that said, Mistral was content to leave the explanation of Amy's new state of being to Noah.

Before the revealtion of Dragon Noah and the "Amy is a Synth" bombshell:

 Henry nodded and smiled. "It was the best I could do on short notice with all that has happened recently."


 Henry blinked a couple of times and looked at Amy. She held up one of her hands. "That's why I couldn't come back immediately after they rescued me. They had to get me a prosthetic body."

 Henry looked at her for a moment and then to dragon-Noah, seeming to be more shocked about the revelation than the dragon in the room. "She's a synth?"

Noah shook his head, "She is no more a synth than you are an ape. She is more like me and like Judge Harker and his false heart. In my case synthetics make up a large portion of my body but my mind and my soul are here." he tapped about where the unit was for Amy on his own torso. "And I dont mean that in some woo woo religious mumbo jumbo. Her soul is located right about there. Her mind is similar. She is very much still Amy, your brave daughter."

"She is a hybrid like me as what was done forced us to do our best and far better than doctors could do. There are four of us similar to her. One hybrid born. One who is many at once. Myself who is the first human to transfer to a hybrid body. And Amy who survived and thrived."

"There may need to be a change in the laws to identify that a person once in conception is always human even if they have more than fifty percent of themselves replaced. But she is a hybrid, not a synth. Synths have souls but they are thin and hardly defined. Amy is a human mind with a human soul. Piloting a prototype body of both flesh and machine. Just as I am a human mind and a human soul doing the same."

"There was no alternative for the daughter of a father." He left out just how bad her old body had been and the synth that was piloting it.

 Henry stared off in the distance, trying to come to terms with what he's just heard. "Hybrids... just what did those people do to her?"

 He looked at Amy, concerned. She smiled at him but it was a sad smile. "That's one of the memories they've blocked off. Noah says it was bad."

 Henry's face and eyes began to turn red... not from anger, but from suppressed tears as the full horrible reality was being broken to him.

Noah nodded, "They are called Nephandi. Men and women who are the bold font on the phrase bad guys. They are actively hunted our kind, with extreme prejudice. In this case, we called in a Monday, a hunter-killer construct designed to do its job very well. After such, we made sure they suffered at the hands of their own devices and detonated the structure. Furthermore, we went back to the compound after to make sure not a single one escaped even in death."

"The soul of the remaining offenders have been turned over to Talion. The offenders have been cut down to the man." cept Fluffy buried their limbs out in the forest someplace...

"Look forward to the future to come Henry." He had to give him something to focus on with all that built-up mental energy. "What happened to her has been righted and your daughter showed a will rare in today's world. More than that she is so much stronger than any soul I have met today. She held the spirits of her captures so they could not escape."

"The reality is that she is amazing. If I could teach synths to be anything like her I would do so in a heartbeat. Thousands of sentient synths are abused every day but they still seek out human interaction without even basic rights."

"You want to do your part to ensure things like this never happen again? Synths need basic rights of sentients. They did this to try and become immortal. They captured synths to get the parts they needed but not a single missing synth was reported to anything more than damage control. If each one was treated as a lost sentient we would have been able to find their hideout long before it got this far."

"More than that hybrids need to be considered human. Some people out there are close to more than half replacement, we will all need clear laws to define us as still human or at least sentient. Your daughter, however, will pass for human forever. Others wont be so lucky."

Mistral remained uncomfortably quiet as Noah explained more about the Nephandi than she thought these two needed to hear.  To name them and explain what had happened would invite further questions, the answers to which they'd be better off not knowing.

When he'd finished she was quick to add, "Some matters are better forgotten, because to remember would only cause further harm.  I would sooner not give les monstres such power to wound, even after death.  To live and be happy while they are forgotten... this would be your victory."  Mistral herself could never forget the horrors she'd witnessed at the Nephandi compound, but she at least had the satisfaction of being a part of their destruction and seeing their souls given over to justice from their victims.  She could bear that burden so that Henry and Amy might have a chance to move on and be happy.

 Henry was silent for several long moments, enough for Amy to stand up and walk over to him, putting her hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her and then back at Noah. "In the past few years, I've seen some truly bizarre things, enough to know that you're not lying.

 … but you know people are going to say that I'm delusional. People buy synths that... that look like deceased loved ones all the time."

 He paused for a moment to collect himself. He looked up at Amy... "But you're right. The senseless destruction of synthetics needs to stop."

 Amy rubbed his back and smiled. "I think you might be right about that... but I think it is better to know the monsters that might be lurking in the dark than to just bury our heads in the sand and forget about them."

Noah pulled out one of his slates. "There is a program I designed called brain dance. Its used to give synths dreams. Think of it as lucid dreaming." he showed a picture of a number of synths barely outlines. "Synths. Few definitions of self but frames."

He then flipped over to show Amy fully formed in the same program. "Amy at the lake house program. Fully formed as if she was out in the real world. This is what it would be like for you in brain dance."

"People can say what they want, you'll never please the mob. But Amy is fully there, damn any who say different."

He nodded at her comment. "It is for that reason I would like Amy to act as your liaison to our cabal and through us others. If we have your consent I would like to train her, so that this never happens again."

"Your daughter is a hero sir. I have no doubt of it. Your happy ever after could spark a new age of prosperity. For your kind and ours. A future that will leave the world better for her, and perhaps your grandkids some day."

Mistral had a damn good point. But he had to push the mayor so he didnt get stuck and dwell. He needed a direction. "And let's be clear. No one will know about dear Amy. If need for a hybrid to appear it will be my neck on the line not hers. Let the world say I'm not a hybrid, only a fool would say otherwise rather than say I am as I appear."
This message was last edited by the player at 15:28, Wed 15 July 2020.

 Amy nodded. "I agree."

 Henry shrugs in defeat. "Well, it's not like I can say no. This is going to be a long and rocky road but I'll do what I can. Still, the disaster comes first. I won't be able to do much until we can start rebuilding.

 I was contacted by Alyssa, Talion's secretary. She told me that she would be mobilizing the blank synthetics to rebuild the city at cost. That should give me at least the ammo I need to make harming a synthetic a more serious crime."