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Your arm is extended. You hold a gun at the end of it. The gun is pointing at your own back.

A hundred metres beneath you, an old fisherman raises his hand to his eyes. A strange shadow scares away the fish.

Silence diluted only by the hiss of a spinning disc. Jaws slacken, never to close again.

The golden shade, the screaming boy beaten by his fellows...

Ultra Violeta loses sight of Portofiro, twinkling softly into darkness.

Your controller paces the small area behind her desk. Her Novessa colleagues are surprised -- so rarely is she on her feet. You are all that fills her mind.

A vacant pale green chair in the corner of the living room. A photo frame at the base of a shrine. And a wooden box buried on Portofiro's third tallest hill.

Like the hallucinated directives that guide the Paleolithic huntress as she sets up her fish weirs.

She looks out over Novessa -- bleary eyed, searching.

The groundskeeper will find the body. A gloved hand will erase any record of his report to the authorities.

It descended like a vile comet from the stands above: white, planetary, drawing its own aureola of discoloured liquid as it spun. Only in the instant before impact did you realise what it was...

In the smouldering wreckage of a schoolhouse, a screaming child writhes under the limp, heavy body of his teacher as their world burns around them.

As she looks over her deteriorating wares, Carmuna pulls her shawl closer and glances towards the shrine of Canopus. She could've sworn she heard familiar music.

Beyond the edges of the universe, falling into a tourmaline haze.

Shining with a film of sweat in the orange glow, the lovers twirl and stomp. Cheers, singing, the thrill of the crowd. Ash rains on trashcan drums.

Far below the normal region of air traffic, almost skimming the dark water, a shuddering cargo plane crosses the Noscorrentes Sea, lights dimmed.

A race of primitive sophisticates wanders through the vine-covered ruins of Portofiro. Impeccably dressed in fabrics the secrets of whose production has been lost, they skulk around judging each other's fashion while the day's strip of rat meat dries on the line.

A mind churning in perpetual consumption of itself.

Your true enemy has yet to reveal itself.

On the deck of a boat bound for the Illuminated Empire, a young woman contemplates throwing herself into the sea. The water is cold, dark, clear.

The huntress flips open her satchel with her left hand, holding the cliff face with her right. She plucks three large eggs from their nest.

A sudden breeze slices through a man's skinny calves. There is a dim but dawning awareness of pain through the soles of his cotton socks.

Across time and chasm, a garbled signal reaches you.

Just two. One of which is entirely optional.

Across town, a pair of eyes blink in the rhythm of an undying machine.

Kneeling on a stranger's rug, small body wrapped in a towel.

'And you tell her -- if we pull this one off, all will be forgiven!'

'And you tell her -- if we pull this one off, all will be forgiven!'

On the second floor of a failing photo outlet, a pair of green eyes widen, catch a glimpse of the impossible, then cloud back over.

He has only a mother. Who will very soon be receiving an unstamped postcard, announcing that her only son has been sent on an overseas assignment and may be gone for a very long time.

In a dim underground office in Novessa, a woman in her mid-thirties lifts the right side of her headset tucks a strand of loose hair behind her ear.

A gray, wrinkled hand holds a red pen, drawing circles and arrows around the capital cities of the Eastern Republics.

In a nearby office, a middle-aged woman lifts her glasses, focusing on a younger person sat behind a large desk. The woman's insides burn with a malice that is realised as rhyming couplets pieced together in her head.

The ancient huntress raises her hand to the troupe behind her, stop. She felt the soil move, bouncing with the force of a megaloballer's gait. A meat they dare not hunt.

Naturally, if this were the Paleolithic, and if you were the Paleolithic huntress, you would experience this sensation all the time.

The ghost-remnants of a consciousness long lost, impressed upon the only part that's left.

Not for the last time, you sense.

A voice from the dirt. Bullets in stucco behind him. Ears ringing, throat tight with panic. He shifts in the muck, clutching his gun, and whispers a prayer to an unnamed star: Not here. Not like this.

You become aware of an infinitude of tiny movements. A total convergence on your surroundings -- all drawn to you, here, right now...

You're in the presence of a power utterly beyond your comprehension.

Final epoch of the Pleistocene age. The measured, even breath of the huntress is the only thing that could betray her presence as she stalks the dire tiger in tightening circles.

The padlock on the door breaks easily. Dust motes in the air, a sneeze, a flashlight shining around the darkened room -- threadbare velvet, faded posters, a broken glass box office window.

Grey hairs at twenty-five, a memory of the barber who came in to trim daddy's moustache twice a week... two hours does seem a long time for such a small job...

All across the world, subjects of the Illuminated Empire are looking at trees like this, and thinking of home.

Ask the paleolithic part of your mind: Would the ancient huntress stalk the megalosloth with this band?

Flicking ashes out the window.

A woman leans out the open window, shivering in the cool evening air. She tries not to blink. They've had to pack so quickly, this is the first chance she's had to try to memorise the view she's mostly ignored for the last six years.

The last thing the peasant class of Saskia saw before the bombs in close-up -- Ultra Violeta's face winking at them from behind her trademark 'V' salute.

Songs can haunt you longer than people. All the way to the end of a life, on perpetual loop in the background of your mind.

Four young women bound in holding cells. The interrogations have not yet been violent, but they have been ruthless.

78 skill checks - ZERO PARADES field manual