Darya calls a meeting. (Saturday Evening, After dealing with the Room.)

Darya sat at the kitchen table and fidgeted. Her hair was badly tied up behind her, her facial scar on prominent display. Unusually, she was shirtless, wearing only a bra on her upper body, which showed a secondary scar going diagonally across her chest from shoulder to hip.

In front of her sat her PDA, with some old news reports from eighteen years ago on the screen, an old data card, and a small datapad with the words `Yakutsk neurological" visible on it. She looked nervous and miserable, and kept glancing towards the door. She had asked the other residents to meet her here, but they hadn't arrived yet. In her hands she had a pillow, which she occasionally squeezed tightly to try and relive her stress.

From the floor below, there was the sound of a door opening, and an impatient voice saying, "--yes, fine, YES, calm down." There was a bonk, a clatter, and then the excited chirping of a tiny male voice asking questions, too low to hear. Eventually, a tired Sosie responded, "In order, no, no, yes, he'll be fine, aim for the arms instead, no, yes, yes. I'll let you out next time, I promise." And then, "If you can figure out the stairs, yes."

The cyberneticist walked up to the top floor. She mumbled something about blood on her shirt, walked to the freezer, dropped her navy blue Mule-tek on the couch, and opened the door to the refrigeration unit. She came out a moment later, shutting the door behind her with her dirty boot. Her arms were full; two frozen Smork smoothies, four conanas, a pack of twelve red bean and carbohigreat buns, and a few frozen Nutriyum bars. She unceremoniously dumped them on the table.

She slid into the seat opposite Darya, and didn't say anything for a while. She kicked off her shoes and drank half a Smork smoothie in a long pull. For a few moments, the only noise was a soft, "I got it. Do I move right then left? Whooah..! Whoooah! I got another one! I'm so high up! And agai--ow ow ow ow." The few bonks made Sosie smile. She glanced at Darya for a moment, looking over the scar before looking away. Sosie, normally pretty collected, seemed to have a complicated expression on her face. After opening and closing her mouth a few times, she settled instead on, "You should eat something, first. It's been hours since any of us had anything."

Darya took a bar without really thinking and began to chew on it. She got halfway though the bar before putting down and hugging the pillow.

"I'm sorry" She said, her voice muffled by the pillow. "That was all my fault."

Sosie furrowed her brow, and stood up so suddenly her chair fell over backward. She opened her mouth again, and closed it a few times. "No, no.. don't feel bad. I.. Let me tell you a story."

Unsuccessfully pretending that the chair falling over was an accident, she righted it and walked over to the Mule-tek. She rifled around in a a side pocket for a few seconds, and then walked back talking. "When.. when my sister and I were little, I mean really little, as far back as I can remember, she would cry all the time. She was so little, littler than I can ever was, and so scared all the time. Once, she broke one of the robots I was repairing. It was a shitty little cleaning droid, and it shattered into a dozen pieces. I was gone when it happened, but when I came back, she was sitting on the floor, hiding under our blanket, trying to put the pieces back together, apologizing and bawling her eyes out."

Sosie made it back to the table, but instead of sitting down, she moved behind Darya and very gently undid the tie holding back her messy hair. There was something almost timid in Sosie's actions. Her hands held a brush, beaten and a missing a few bristles, and very tenderly began to brush the tangles out of Darya's hair. "The robot was the only work I'd gotten in days, and her breaking it set me hours back. I was upset, since this was the only thing making us money, and we were tired of being hungry and cold. I knew I wouldn't be able to fix it in time, and we would lose the fee, the customer. But I brushed her hair, and said nice things. I couldn't work on the robot when she was upset, and she was so small, she didn't know what she was doing."

Using her fingers to gently untangle the last of the knots, Sosie said, "I taught her how to help me. She's as good as I am with computers, now. Better." She took a deep breath, and ran the brush once more through the now unknotted hair. "You're not a kid.. But if I couldn't be mad at Vi when she starved us out of food for days, how could I be mad at you for not really fucking up any more than I did last week." Sosie finished by putting Darya's hair into a neat ponytail. She sat back down opposite. She wasn't smiling, but her eyes were soft. "But I want to know WHY the hell it happened."

Darya looked back up at Sosie, her eyes watering slightly.

"It's an old story, that involves my family. But..." she paused and sniffed "I want to tell all three of you, and I'm not sure I'll be able to do it more than once, so do you mind if we wait for the others?"

"I don't think I'll want to hear it more than once." Sosie smiled a little, and turned to look at the stairs. The others would be here any minute and--Oh, there was a glowing green eye staring at her. Excited at seeing her and Darya, Dusty said "Hi! That was ea--" and proceeded to fall down the stairs.

As Ida walked up the stairs, she spotted Dusty tumbling down towards her and grabbed him before he could fall any further. "Careful now," she said with a slight smile on her face as she set him back down at the top of the stairs facing away from them.

Ida then turned towards Darya apologetically. "Sorry for how the mission went... It's obvious the stuff going on there had importance for you, and I wish I could have thought of some plan so we hadn't ended up sort of working at cross-purposes there. Next time I'll try harder, I swear."

Darya, still hugging her pillow, looked up when she saw Ida enter and smiled very slightly despite herself. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a shimmer, and turned her head to look at it. She sighed.
"Pinkie, you could have said you were here." she muttered at the shimmer, before picking herself up and grabbing the memory card off the table and walking over to the media area and putting it into the display, causing a picture to flash up on the screen. It showed a young Darya, scarless and smiling, playing with some cybernetic parts.

Motioning to the other's to follow, she sat down in front of the TV, cross legged on the floor.
"There is something very important I want to tell you three, something that I want you to promise you will do. But, to do so, I need to explain my history first." Her voice was quite and unsteady.

"`Demeter` is a chosen name. I changed it shortly after joining Lanzar. My original name was Baranova, and I come from a family of five. My mother, Natalya Baranova," she pressed a button on a remote and the picture changed, showing a serious looking Russian woman, with very similar facial structure to Darya. "She was a doctor working here in the Eastern Bank." She pressed it again and the screen showed a smiling young man in a suit sitting in a chair at a party. Again, the resemblance to Darya was uncanny. "Leo, my brother, was working towards becoming an agent with EI." She pressed it again, and it showed a picture of a woman who looked part Chinese part Russian, laughing, seemingly at the same party as Leo. "My sister, Natasha. She's..." Darya had to take a deep breath and audibly choked back a sob. "She's a telepath, and she's currently in the Yakutsk neurological hospital. She's the one I want to talk about."

She hit the button again, and a Russian man appeared on screen. "Finally, there was my father. Dr Taras Baranova. Cybernetician at the Tracer Li corporation." Her voice was filled with anger, far more than any of the others had seen her before. "That was his name before he cast off his humanity and gave himself to the machine. He is the one who killed my mother and brother and gave me this scar" she said pointing to her face. "He is the reason why my sister has spent the last eighteen years in a coma, and he is the one called `Altruism`."

Sosie left her smork on the table, and followed Darya with padded feet, stopping only to pick up an eager and talking Dusty and fiddle with something. His voice stopped immediately, but this didn't seem to concern him as he just began to run as energetically as before.

Taking a seat on the couch, Sosie glancing at the screen with dark eyes, keeping her gaze mostly on the back of Darya's head. She could count to five, but stated instead, "Your father is in the Cult of Machina." There was no need for it to be a question.

"He had been for a while. And he wanted us to be in it too." She spun around and faced Sosie. "He was supplying the cult with cybernetics for years before I found out about it. Then, one day, they attacked a cybernetics shop while I was there looking for parts for him. That's where I got the scar across my chest."

She began fiddling her fingers together. "I was fourteen at the time, and just a normal human. I was lucky to survive a chimera attacking me like that. It was when I was in hospital and my family were visiting that he told us he was a member of the cult, and that he wanted us to join him." She shuddered. "We refused. He got angry. A group of chimera's came in. Grabbed us. He took us one by one into another room. Tried to convert us. Mum and bro went first. They died. Then he took sis. She was left in a coma. Think her powers kept her alive." Her words were fast now, and even tilting her face down couldn't hide the fact that she was crying. "Then they took me. Held me down. Began to cut me. Then the UIG arrived. Melenbrach entered. Saved my life. He ran. Escaped. I was left with sis. Needed money. Started bounty hunting." She stopped and sobbed for a few moments, before reaching up and drying her tears. "must be a leak."

After another amount of time she looked up. "But he isn't important. Not right now. What is important is Sis." She got up and walked over to the table. "She can't be healed by normal methods. The hospital she's at has a procedure, but it is expensive. 500,000 credits. Too expensive for me normally. That's why I joined Oracle. I needed the money. Last week's mission gave me enough. She starts treatment this week. But..." She paused, and sighed.

"I don't know if I'll still be around when she wakes up. If I am, I'll take care of her. But if not, I need some people I can trust to take care of her." She looked up at the other agents. "If I die, while you take care of sis?" she said, sounding nervous and pleading.

Ida looked into Darya's eyes solemnly. "You don't even need to ask. Family's never really been a thing for me myself, but after all you've been through... All that's happened to her, especially if you're gone... I could never say no."

Sosie looked into Darya's eyes and felt her pulse immediately quicken, her hands instantly sweat. The cyberneticist could coolly handle a dismembered agent in a grimy Cult lab, but the second Darya seemed to get upset.. It made her feel ten years old again. When Darya looked away, Sosie took her first breath in what felt like minutes. Her voice was a pitch higher when she spoke. "Really, I was just going to put the future ownership of Dusty in my will under your name without asking, Darya. But.. that isn't the same as asking for this."

Sosie focused on Ida, and then dragged her eyes back to Darya. "I will, too. I haven't had to look after Vi for over fifty years, but I know what's it's like.." She looked away, for a second. "I couldn't imagine.. Yes, I will, too."

Darya didn't say anything. She couldn't. Instead she walked over to her coworkers and pulled them into a hug so tight, a normal human would have recieved brusing from it. She couldn't speak, but the noises she was making, a cross between a laugh and a sob, told them how she was feeling.

*Entirely too long after Darya moved to hug her other co-workers, Pinkie faded back into view. Something about the way Darya had spotted her had only made her want to disapear more, not to mention the... truths she had revealed*

The Cult fight a different War. I-i'd never wanted to disapear more than when I was down in those sewers, and I have run from a lot of things. And not been able to hide too many times.
*At least Pinkie has always known she was fighting to survive, it came to Darya from nowhere*

I will. No question. But you had better not do anything less than Everything you can to survive.
*Pinkie locked gazes with Darya, her expression picture perfect to the look she had threatened the undercover WF agent with*

Don't any of you dare do any less.
*Pinkie turned sharply to stare at a corner away from her, from the others, drew her butterfly knife and habitually as well as skillfully twilred it*

It's important to remember that between Ida and Darya, Sosie looked like a child between them, easily a head shorter. Still, she wrapped her arms around both of them, and squeezed tight when Darya sobbed. It was weak considering she was trapped in Darya's large armspan, but she tried none the less. The thing inside her that panicked relaxed slightly, though she didn't know why. Over the pile of bodies, she turned to Pinkie when she talked. Her eyes went from the knife to Pinkie's face. Sosie was not a psychic, and had never even considered getting the training, but her pointed look at Pinkie was clear as if she had spoken it telepathically, even as the latter faced away, Come on, you need to hug her too. Sosie held fast in arms and glare until she was at least sure Pinkie understood.

After a few moments, Sosie squirmed an arm free to stroke Darya's face, just a little, before saying, "But Darya, who will look after you?" There was a tiny smile on her face, though her eyes were wet too. "Your sister's not the only one who needs someone to make sure she's okay."

Darya reached up and wiped her tears from her eye. "I dunno." she said. "I just kind of take whoever I can get really..."

Sosie kept a protective arm over Darya, radiating Protective Big Sister from three inches below Darya's chin. She made a faux-angry face at her. "No. Now you have us."

*Pinkie didn't need to see the immenient future to know how Sosie would react if she did not do something at least. She has seen concessions demanded and the terrible price when they weren't paid, although why that applied here was beyond her.

Pinkie folded the knife but kept it in her hand and walked over, then after staring awkwardly for a few moments, patted Darya on the shoulder. Twice. Vaguely in the back of her mind Pinkie registered that she was being at least as inept as Darya had been with her wolves, if not unfathomably more.

Having removed her hand, Pinkie half turned aside and began twirling her knife anew, doing all she could not to fade.*