The most powerful song magic is really the weaponized power of love. Thus it makes sense that in the world of Ar Tonelico, relationships are Serious Business. Especially for military people. Well, encouraging fraternization in the ranks worked for the Spartans... However, because of this, they're more aware of love as something that affects threat level.

Take the three people I listed earlier (although Kyle's dead). The tower would already have an ID for them as humans as moderator access, and then they became reyvateils. This would likely activate what Mir did to give herself the Teiwaz rank and the ability to wander around in the tower's systems. However, finishing the level 9 cosmosphere also connects a reyvateil to the tower, since it shows they have the stability to handle that kind of power. And it's the level 9 cosmosphere avatar that is actually doing this: the conscious self of the reyvateil doesn't know what's going on within them.

So, give Mir's ability to access the tower to two people with undeveloped cosmospheres. While Mir, and not just her level 9 avatar (not that she has one: level nines come into existence after the other cosmospheres are completed), is able to go into the tower, I'm betting that cosmospheres forming after someone got moderator access could create a bug that would cause the tower link in the cosmosphere to be created already open. Now take the usual sort of crazy avatars, only more so since they weren't formed properly, and give them the ability to wander around in the tower without Shurelia there to stop them.

Given the description of the relationship between Frelia and the goddess maiden, it seems as though Exec_SolFage is meant to give the Holy maiden a controlled version of this reyvateil moderator access, giving Luca certain limited powers, while Mir's version was designed to give Mir as much power as possible and remove Shurelia's ability to do anything about it.

"Commander Leard? The prisoner has arrived." And the question was what to do with him. The Great Hall of Platina's cathedral served several functions, including courthouse when someone exercised their right to be heard by Lady Shurelia and the city's ruler. It was tempting to have them tie the virus to something outside while he sent some of the pages, who were still too young to activate as reyvateils, to go fetch the piece of furniture they used for securing prisoners and put it together. It had to be somewhere near the front of the storage room: they'd executed Kyle just before this blasted plague happened.

"Where there any incidents on the way?" Leard asked instead.

"No, but I wouldn't press our luck." The way leaving him outside for too long would. They'd brought him in too fast for miscreants to gather. "Although it would be interesting to see a real, live mob in action, exciting the populace is the last thing we can afford right now, in light of… recent discoveries." That she wasn't going to discuss with Ayatane right behind her. Riots had been common in the years before Mir's uprising, so a large portion of the old tactical doctrine was devoted to dealing with them. It had been so long since Platina had a riot that there was only a brief chapter on them in modern doctrine, but Colonel Jade had always been interested in ancient curiosities, which had brought her to the attention of Kyle Clancy and then she'd brought certain aspects of his research to Shurelia's attention.

Leard nodded. "I want everyone except the colonels to leave at once. Dist, lock the doors. Jyu, come here. You two, secure him as best you can."

Jyu was technically a former colonel, but he'd insisted on coming out of retirement and Leard couldn't afford to refuse the help. His wasting sickness was the result of getting hit with one of the forbidden weapons Kyle had dug up, and he'd spent a good deal of time figuring out how to work around it before Shurelia had ordered him to retire. Leard nodded for him to sit down on the first step of the dias. Jyu, Unohana's attack dragonet, and Colonel Dist's minions were the only things in the room that could stop a fully trained knight, let alone a virus. Dist had gotten out of mandatory bed rest since he'd always been a scrawny little runt. He'd figured out how to hack some of the tower's defense robots and used them to fight for him.

There was also Jade, if worst came to worst, but that was a last resort, Leard thought as she knocked at young Ayatane's… the virus' legs with her spear. "On your knees."

Unohana was the one to secure his legs, since she was used to securing the injured or hysterical for transport, and Leard hoped it was tight enough to hurt a bit, although she was too professional to cut off his circulation. Pity.

"Where is the hymn crystal ReNation?" he demanded once the virus and the room were secure.

The virus' head had remained bowed until he asked that question, but this made him look up. Surprised it was going to be that easy? "Bishop Falss kept it in his private office."

"Where is this private office?"

"Attached to the church in Nemo. It's in a chest that requires a code to open." The fact he was trying to keep the contents of the chest a secret when all his plans were spelled out in his diaries for anyone who could get back there to read had made Ayatane curious, when he'd investigated the traitorous bishop on Mother's behalf.

"Commander?" Colonel Jade interjected.

"Yes?"

"I strongly suggest that we retrieve it as soon as possible."

"Of course." Leard nodded. "But if you're stating the obvious as a lead in to trying to convince me to let you go, the answer is no. Radolf, Krusche and Harmonica are familiar with the church and the lower world. The one reason you would be helpful is the reason you cannot be allowed to go."

"I am familiar with Director Clancy's methods of concealment. I might spot something they wouldn't."

"True, but you're not the only one here who worked with him. Colonel Dist? I'm putting the mission in your hands."

"Me? Why yes, Commander." He'd have to take only the robots that could fly, but that would still be an impressive force to lower worlders.

"Commander…"

"Colonel. This is not the time." For your little rivalry with the second division commander. "Dist, leave at once, but have Aurica remain here."

"Of course, sir." He unlocked one of the side doors and slipped out, locking it behind him.

"You're going to restart the tower? With ReNation?" It couldn't be that simple.

That got the virus a tug from Unohana and a whap from Jade. "Please be quiet unless you are asked a question." Unohana seemed sweet as ever, but now he didn't even rate a name, let alone being called Little Aya.

"We don't have a choice. According to Mir, you're the one who ensured that."

"What did Shurelia do? ReNation only counters Suspend, but if she used Suspend reyvateils should no longer need diquility." Diquility countered the effects of the energy field on systems that couldn't quite handle it. No song magic field emanating from the tower should equal no need for diquility. "They would be effectively human. If she did something else, ReNation won't help." He'd assumed that she must have done something unexpected, to counter Mother.

"It was Suspend." Leard looked at Jade, who looked about as unhappy as he was. This confirmed their theories. "We could have survived without access to the hymn fields and grathmelding. There are ancient methods of creating medicines and other materials. However, grathmelding is the only means of creating diquility. Currently, access to Ar Tonelico's server is impossible, and none of us have access to Harvestasya." He hoped Sol Marta had switched over to Harvestasya without a hitch. Metafalss had enough problems as it was. "However, there is another server. It was constructed before the end of the Second Age."

"Infel Pira?"

Ayatane had reminded Leard of Kyle. Such an intelligent boy. He probably should have seen the betrayal coming, with a hint like that. "Yes. The Infel Pira server was designed to be infectious. Jade?" How much should we explain?

"With Ar Tonelico down, all reyvateils switched to broadcasting their requests for power to anyone that would hear them. Sol Marta was designed to send songs and power between Ar Tonelico and Metafalss. Without proper security or encryption, every reyvateil on the tower is open to receiving power from Infel Pira. Receiving power from it doesn't automatically cause the virus to overwrite a reyvateil's cosmosphere, but it's a vulnerability that only increases as the reyvateil uses that power. Fortunately, the hymn language of the tower servers isn't compatible with Infel Pira. Unfortunately, if the virus infects a reyvateil, it would give them the ability to use that language."

"In other words, we have the worst of all possible worlds. We have the power of songs, but not the ability to create the substance that would keep it from killing us. Not only that, but before very long we'll start having IPD outbreaks, and we won't have any sane reyvateils who can use song magic to oppose them." Leard really wished he could sit down.

He watched the virus calculate its options. Yes, doing this would revive Mir as well, so it wouldn't do anything to stop them. For now.

According to the tower's identification system, there were three reyvateils who could access the tower despite the security lockdown and sing ReNation. Aurica's moderator account was a clone of Mir's. Under no circumstances was he letting the Mother Virus' daughter revive Shurelia, after what her son had already done to the Lady of the Tower. His account had also been given the teiwaz label, but singing that powerful a hymn would kill him. He'd do it, for Lady Shurelia's sake, but hopefully it wouldn't be necessary.

That left his son.

Joy.

"So. What did you do to my son?"

"Besides what you already know of?" Turning him into a reyvateil, possessing him and kidnapping him? "I didn't put him into a coma… well, actually, I put him into comas while I wasn't there to keep him from exerting himself or escaping, but if I still had the power to do that to him, he wouldn't have escaped in the first place." He'd generally been respectful in front of the commander, but Leard wouldn't buy that anymore. The flippancy he'd possessed when playing around with Lyner wouldn't suit either, Ayatane reminded himself. "When I possessed his body, his first level cosmosphere avatar acted rather… oddly. And then his eighth manifested right in the Crescent Chronicle and told me to surrender and come here. I suspect all of this is their doing."

Actually, yes, he could believe that. "You didn't put him up to any of it?" Leard asked, even though Lyner was fully capable of doing something like this on his own. And these were the childish, imbalanced, immature, insane aspects of his son. The mind boggled.

"If I still had the ability to influence his mind, he would be safe in the Silver Horn," Ayatane reminded Leard.

"What guarantees do I have that you won't take advantage of the dive to do to him what you did to the woman who raised you?"

That made the virus bow his head again, pretending guilt. "I have no excuses. I couldn't be here in Platina, much less get close to Lady Shurelia, without an identity. That doesn't change the fact that I harmed her. Greatly."

Unohana was not impressed. She was the one who had dived into her to do triage. After realizing how ridiculous it was to think that Ayatane wouldn't do something like that when he was a virus. There was no deeper violation than tampering with someone's mind.

"But Lyner is…" He paused. "Mother's plan was to kill all the humans here, and any reyvateils brainwashed enough to oppose her. I was the one who wanted to change you instead of helping her murder you. I will not betray my mother. My loyalty has always been to her." Now he met their eyes, fiercely insisting that he was no traitor. "So I will give you my oath that I will not do anything, to any of you, in exchange for her revival."

"You gave your oath to protect Platina and Lady Shurelia," Leard said.

"Lady Shurelia is still alive. It was never Mother's plan to kill her, when the tower needs her. As for Platina, you are what you are now because I wished to protect all of you." He added two, quiet words: "Especially Lyner."

"What is my son to you?"

"He is my partner." Now he bowed, probably as deeply as he could without toppling over and looking ridiculous. "I can't ask for your approval, but you are his family. So I wish you to know that I intend to offer him a ring."

Platina was no stranger to unconventional relationships. About the only rule was that everything had to be between consenting adults (or consenting teens, one or the other). Other than that, it was 'whatever makes everyone happy.' The idea of loving an artificial being like reyvateils had been viewed as perverted when the Apostles of Elemia were formed, so they didn't really have any excuse to object to other unconventional relationships. Not to mention that a reyvateil who had found love was a powerful reyvateil, and generally very willing to smite anybody to tried to get between her and him. Or her. Or them. The ideal was a guardian and a songstress protecting each other, hand in hand, but some people would rather be tailors. Or bartenders.

Viruses, now, that was a new one.

The effrontery of this unnatural creature, this, this rapist who had invaded and tainted cosmospheres, thinking that Leard would allow him to, forget trusting him to, protect his only child? The heir to Platina, and right now, most importantly, a tower moderator?

First he stared, then he laughed, a deep, hearty sound that he enjoyed until he realized that he was laughing so hard he couldn't breathe. Jyu was the first to realize something was wrong, and it was disgraceful for a Commander to be held up by a sick old man.

Before long Unohana was fussing over him too. "I'm alright, I'm alright," he managed to say, brushing them off once he managed to regain control of himself. "What nonsense is this… a virus, in love with my son?"

"I have loved him for a long time. I was his friend, even though I tried not to let him be mine. Then we turned twelve, and the girls started to change, and I thought that if he changed, we wouldn't have to fight." Ayatane sounded hurt by Leard's reaction, by the fear that it just wasn't possible, even though he took comfort from the memory. "I wanted him to live."

Jyu remembered Shun, and the reyvateils they'd mentored and helped find loving partners until the day Shun got a lethal dose and Jyu didn't. He would have died for Shun, and the only reason he had hung on this long, when so many days it was a battle just to take another breath, because he was willing to live for him, too.

Jade remembered breaking into people's houses, since she'd been practicing to break into the archives and armory and see all the stuff that was in the books, and finding a strange boy who wasn't anything like that stupid Dist who kept getting her caught. He wasn't scared of her, not of her hardness or her brilliance, not even when he made her weird costumes, because he knew she wouldn't hurt him.

Dist thought of Jade, pretty and perfect, scary and elegant, always elegant, even when they were children and he was always tripping over everything, trying to catch up after her growth spurt. And, well, sometimes he'd tripped because she only paid attention to him when he did something annoying, and teasing her was suicidal. He'd thought she was his, though, since she hated stupid people and he was the only person anywhere near as smart as she was. Except that scum Kyle Clancy. If he'd tried to make trouble, she would have said he was small-minded and jealous, and he had been, but it hadn't been his imagination that there was something slimy about the man. Nowadays, dear Jade might be happy with that oaf whose father had wanted a girl, but that didn't mean anyone else was allowed to touch her.

Unohana remembered a man who had captured and trained wild dragons, trying to improve the breed. She thought of all the excited lectures she'd sat through, drinking tea and making encouraging noises, and how the passion in his eyes had made her love every second of them. She couldn't forget the day she'd stayed late at the division office and gone home only to find that one of them had broken out in the night. It was how he would have wanted to go.

Leard thought of Lady Shurelia, who could never grow up. A small delicate Holy Maiden and at the same time the great tower that bore all of their weight without complaint or rest. There was no nobler thing than what she did. There was no greater love than hers for them. There was nothing as precious as she was, as pure as she was, the one who had lived through so much pain that they all could live. Nothing as beautiful as her soul, and if he could reduce her burden by one hair, if he could spare her one iota of pain, then he would die content. He wished he could let her stay asleep. If she woke up and discovered what she'd condemned them to in her desire to save them, she would blame herself.

They couldn't hide that he'd managed to affect them, and silence fell for a few, fleeting moments as they remembered the feeling Ayatane had expressed. It was not something that could be faked. It was not something that could be argued with.

Even so, it didn't make them any less suspicious of him, any less sure that he was a dangerous and poisonous enemy.

No: this was something that made him very, very dangerous.

None of them would have earned their positions if they hadn't learned to tap into the strength that made mothers lift carts to rescue trapped children, that let them fight or sing without hesitation or fear. That surety, that gave someone the strength of ten, that desperation that drove someone past their limits?

If Ayatane was telling the truth, then he had already moved mountains and done terrible things for love, for his mother and his partner. He would do whatever it took. He would not stop, not as long as they were in danger or unhappy. He simply would not.

These people were far better than Mir, who had so little experience with love, at running the kind of calculations that had made her tell Ayatane to kill Jade before Peony.

Mir was still the enemy.

But they were going to have to kill Ayatane first. If that was how he felt, then there was no way around it. Sparing him was not an option, although they'd already known that.