Yes!! No more attacking him please!!

He is going to conjure his motorcycle. Fortunately, his motorcycle can fly. He will ride it as fast as he can back to Lunabella.

Ugh. Both the psychotic headache and maybe the darts – the darts probably had something in them he doesn't know what – are making him feel horrible and achy and none of his nanites are working and also he's bleeding a little from the darts. He will try to figure out how to regain control over his tech but it will take a while, and he's not really in a state to be doing intricate debugging work.

Well, that was a layer of miserable failure frosting, to top the miserable failure cake today has been.

The people who were supposed to be handling CoNRAD are dead. They didn't have his weakness prepped to go on short notice from locations aside from the Mars base, which is … a mess.

On the one hand, they have a tiny bit more information about what sorts of tranquilizers can get past CoNRAD's defenses. Maybe. And they recovered the corpses in decent state to patch them and get them back into operation.

They have clearly learned a Valuable Lesson about remembering to count all metal as hazardous around their escaped metallurge. One which they really should have anticipated in advance.

It would be really convenient if they could have sent in, say. Sara and Kara, or Vesuviannelle, or Vix, or XIN. But the first three are bleeding hearts, Vix probably just likes a guy who makes his own rollerblades immediately after seeing someone use them, and XIN doesn't do fieldwork.

They'll try to have a better plan for next time.

Gah! What happened‽

Admins have called for a lockdown, but everyone involved is already fleeing. Campus security is responding. Two wounded students, no dead students, a few missing students.

The wounds are to a fingertip and some skin. Skin near the head, so there's a lot of bleeding, but it's entirely treatable.

Reviewing footage … for one, Professor Coriander was probably right about not using stock security systems from Alphazon, those logs do not match the ones Coriander worked on. In particular, Coriander's logs make it clear that the missing students were involved in shooting at the visitor. Joy.

They'll search the campus for stragglers and eventually reopen and clean things up.

CoNRAD can go back to Lunabella, which continues to be lunar and beautiful.

...okay he's back at Chasmapolis now. He is so tired. He thinks he's going to just lie down on the mosaic tiles now. He will dismiss his motorcycle and grab his battery.

Resting for several minutes and refilling his electricity and mana stores makes him feel a lot better, but he's still in a lot of pain and discomfort. Time to start seeing how he can Alphazon-proof his tech. He really should have realized that they would manipulate him like that – he has grown so used to having their tech in him that he sees it as a part of him. But it's not really, until he makes it so.

He wonders whether he should try contacting any of the people he knows about this, but he's not sure. He hasn't signed up with any of them, after all. So they probably won't help him.

If no one interrupts him, he's going to continue sipping electricity and looking at his Observer logs. Although he has eidetic memory, he doesn't have infinite working memory, so he conjures metal from nowhere to make floating plates – either containing notes or 'screenshots' where he impresses what he sees through the system on the plates.

Someone's going to ask him to move and gesture towards a chunk of the plaza with less foot traffic and more people hanging around.

He will so move! He's still regaining sensation and control over his muscles, so he just uses Metallurgy to plonk his body, battery, and floating plates over to where he's directed.

After half an hour, he finally figures out what happened and regains control of his tech. He changes his security keys, but he doesn't have the time or a lot of the legible knowledge on how to change the architecture and networking of his tech to make it harder or impossible for Alphazon to co-opt. He directs the nanites to patch up the holes in his body made by the darts and to clean him up.

He should not go back to Arcadia. Probably the people at Arcadia will be Very Mad at him, and there might be other Alphazon people there. And he probably shouldn't stay here either – not without a matron. It's not that far from Arcadia to here. They could reach him.

The Hawthorne witch proctor won't be available until four hours from now. Zamira is even farther away in time.

Hm. He could try running away again? Meeting with the Hawthorne witch proctor is not time-sensitive. He could rocket off into a random direction in space and then come back. Alternatively, he could set up defensive structures here. That would be New and Exciting. But he thinks that the people here will be upset, because it might destroy things and because it will obstruct them from moving.

What can he do during the intervening time? Ideas:

• Go to the library near Chasmapolis and do research on Alphazon-proofing his tech.
• Try to find prospective matrons other than Clothildis.
• Ask to see whether Hawthorne would shelter him, or get a proctor quicker.
• Try to Send Zamira for help.
• Try to Send Einodia for help.
• Figure out how emails work and email the Hawthorne woman that helped him.

He's going to return to the Chasmapolis information booth and ask the doll there whether or not there are other people, potentially in other places in Lunabella, that are interviewing potential clients. Aside from Zamira and Clothildis, because Zamira isn't here right now.

There sure are. She can even give directions to some of them.

Wonderful! Which is the closest one? He does not feel up to running today, and also cares about speed now, so he will simply fly to the location as quickly as possible.

Over here. He actually doesn't have to leave Chasmapolis, even, it's convenient.

He will fly very quickly and arrive with a puff of wind. What does the interviewer look like.

She looks like an older human woman playing a guitar. She seems to be having a lot of fun with it.

"Hello, Madam. Are you doing interviews for new prospective clients? I am interested. My name is...my name is Conrad," he says.

His nanites have fixed him up from earlier, so now he is free of holes or blood or dirt or clothing rips.

She stops playing the guitar. "Hello, Conrad, I'm Cumin. And yes! My matron Saffron is looking for new clients."

"What types of skills and personality is Madam Saffron looking for in her clients? Is she looking for some role or person in particular?"

"Not doing a special search, just the usual, the estate is doing well so she wants more witches. Good manners, adaptability, interesting skills. And between you and me, I think she'd be happy to have someone she could teach her Firecalling techniques to, but she does take plenty of non-sorceresses."

That's great!!

"My specialty is in Metallurgy, but I am also very skilled in Firecalling. I would be very happy to learn her techniques. Do you know what skills she would might interesting? Is she the sort to be more interested in combat, or crafts, or art, or performance, or research, or something else?"

"Oh, she likes combat and anything that'll look good to her friends or make a kiss, which is kind of a bit of everything. If you're a very skilled Firecaller and willing to learn to work with glass and colorful powders and fancy shapes and such, it'll probably make her happy, moreso if you get into forging and cooking food and such. At least if you keep it up with the 'madam Saffron' and whatnot."

"Most of my training has been in combat, and I have combat experience too." He has been in one (1) battle and won!! Or at least, successfully retreated. But that was his objective in the first place anyway. So that means he has a 100% win rate.

"I would be very happy to learn how to work with glass and colorful powders and fancy shapes and food. I would also be very happy to learn more about forging – I already have some skill in it. I have Metallurgy too. Can I give you a demonstration?"

"Such a polite young man! Yes, you may."

He will give Cumin the same Stirling engine demonstration as Zamira, setting a tiny fire underneath it, and levitating it, so that it spins.

"Aside from Firecalling and Metallurgy, I also know Windkeeping and Earthmoving. I have Psychotics and Waterworking too, but I have done very little work with them, and most of my practice concerned defending against them. I have Witchery 3, Hexes, and Aethernautics, and Integration and Gadgetry."

She'll applaud the demonstration.

"Sorry, could you explain Integration?"

"I am – used to be a part of Alphazon, so I have their implants, and can make and control them. For example, I have an eidetic memory from one, and also have tool fingers," he holds up his fingers, and his pointer finger turns into a screwdriver, then retracts to become a scalpel, then again to a laser pointer, then once more to be a normal finger, "and I can see light outside the visual spectrum."

He's going to hold his hand to his eye and disconnect it, and hold it out for her to see. He breathes out more black and sparkling red particles and a new one starts reforming in his socket. There is no blood.