4780/CC-SJ-1 Bunker Hill

CC-SJ-1 Bunker Hill
Date of Scene:	13 November 2016
Location:	Core Tellus <CT>
Synopsis:	Will invites some friends on an adventure. They find the remains of a long-dead civilization, terrible truths, and a new light to guide their way.
Cast of Characters:	William Pauwel, 941, Kotone Yamakawa, 571, Starlight Bandits, 151, 673, August Kohler

---

William Pauwel has posed:
                             --A FEW DAYS AGO--                            

    When Will said that Tellus was about as wide and open as places come, he wasn't exactly kidding. A few days ago, he would have met with whoever might've been interested in this little expedition outside the idyllic town of Gale, home to farms and fields as far as the eye can see. Or at least, as far out as is reasonable for most farmers to farm.

    Though things seem to be a bit more tense than usual. Or at least, there's an unusual number of aircraft in the sky; fleets of tremendous airships, each one sailing westward through the clouds to some unknown destination. Or maybe they're just on patrol? Curious. Regardless, Will would have emphasized that flying at the moment is definitely a no-no.

Apparently things may not be as peaceful as they seem.

    Not that those particular ships are particularly important for THIS expedition, though! After all, once everyone had gathered up, Will would have set them off, travelling due south from Gale, towards a veritable wall of mountains that loom on the horizon even from the plains of Will's home. Fortunately, none of the Tornado Prairie's namesake Awful Weather gets in the way, and the journey to the mountains takes only a couple of days.

    Will calls them the Barrier Mountains. They live up to their name; an enormous wall of stone and soil separated from the rolling plains by a series of foothills, rivers and forests. The trek through the mountains is nothing to laugh at either: days of transit from the fringes of the mountain range, beneath the windswept peaks, towards their mysterious destination.

                                  --NOW--                                  

    The fringe of a wide-brimmed hat peeks out from around a sheer cliff face. Somehow, it just barely avoids getting caught by the TORRENT OF WATER pouring down from somewhere high above. Apparently, the entrance to this particular ruin was BEHIND A WATERFALL. Of course it was. Where else would you hide an immense treasure trove!?

    Will peeks around the corner and shuffles another few feet off the narrow ledge and onto a much wider cave mouth. The whole place smells faintly of fresh spring water and the depths of the earth. "Alright, I think this is the place!" Will calls back over his shoulder, hefting a great backpack full of Stuff (tm). "If I were to hide a ruin, it would DEFINITELY be back in here. Probably further into the cave," he thumbs towards the tunnel behind him. "Keep an eye out though. If there're traps, they'd probably put 'em out in the tunnel too."

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    'Flying is a no-no'? Well that just leaves Mel in a weird spot, that's how she gets most places. She doesn't have any sort of ground vehicle; she's used to at least being able to set down NEAR her destination and walk in, or preferably just land where she needs to be. So in this particular case, she'll have to improvise.

    By flying low and slow enough that the Firestarter-C appears to be a hover vehicle.

    So that at least gets her to Gale, to meet up with everyone. After that, she'll probably be hitching a ride with someone or other. And/or walking.

    "...This is it. Really."

    Sigh.

    "Pauwel, you sure do pick the places." Calmly, Mel lifts up her hands, holding them at a diagonal with her right lower than her left. The waters of the waterfall suddenly begin falling at an /angle/, away from the mouth of the cave, as if hitting an invisible surface. Mel has made it easier to get in without getting washed away - or even wet. "Alright, folks, let's get inside, can't keep this up forever." She sounds pretty casual about it.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Once again Kotone was on another adventure on a world that wasn't her own world she had kitted herself out for trouble and had a few new things along with her including a spider like drone of some sort which had not proven to be too much of a problem though she did stick out in her stealth armour and well the spider like drone relaly did stick out. Kotone also is deploying a few of the cheap flying scout drones she's taken to using as of late and they get moving hopeflly scouting ahead for everyone else she'll also open up a tac net to anyone who can connect in some fashion to her's own.

"This is a new one you got a way with picking locations and right Mel, shall we get to it? Rory are you ready to go?"

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    The Crimson Spectre will remain in orbit as Maaka teleports to the surface. She'll be driving the rest of the way, tearing across the landscape with a sizable buggy-APC hybrid, a particularly menacing railgun mounted on top via turret as its engine roars.

    She matches speed with the Firestarter en-route, rolling her window down and throwing Brock a salute casually when she recognizes the Psi-Marshal.

    Once she gets there, the cyborg hops out with her EM CASH rifle slung, going William a cheery wave, even if her face is masked. "I got dibs on taking point, let's get going!" She says, approaching the waterfall and the cave behind it.

Starlight Bandits has posed:
    The Bandits are here! They've been quiet recently, owing to a series of jumps with Terminal Getaway taking them to the edges of the Multiverse, to places where news travels slow, if at all. But they're back in 'civilised' lands now, and are eager to get busy with standard Chaser duties!

    So along they tag with Will! Irvine fills the trip with song, strumming away on a guitar and singing such Chaser classics as 'Hiss Hiss BOOM,' 'Grandma Got Crushed By A War Machine' and 'The Stars Are Brightest When You're At The Bottom Of A Pit.' His voice is good, but he always half-remembers the lyrics and improvises the other half.

    When they finally arrive, and Mel splits the waterfall, Molly gasps! "That's amazing! Irvine, how is she doing that?!" Irvine calmly restrings his guitar as he answers. "It's quite simple Molly. Through the power of positive upward thinking, she is able to counteract the downward motion of the water." Molly gasps, and looks at Mel with wide eyes. "You're incredible Miss! Such powerful optimism~!"

    As Alexis moves in to take point, the two take out their own gear. Irvine pulls a mean-looking machete with a short-barrel pistol built into the hilt, while Molly affixes a hatchet to the butt of a large revolver, the head serving as a stock to steady her aim. They too go through the waterfall!

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Ainsley has come to attend the expedition, though she keeps herself well out of the way of the others in the adventuring party because she is not here in a combative capacity and she wants to record the expedition for the sake of having something written down for later reference. Which is why she spent pretty much the entire trek to the actual location scribbling down a map of the path to where they're going.

    Once they get to the entrance, she's all smiles and a wiggling tail. "At least it's just deadly traps," she remarks, happy that this has nothing to do with despair-inducing encounters with the concepts of sadism or other such messed up problems. It's just a treasure hunt.

    Ainsley spends a moment drawing little doodles of Irvine singing in the shower, a cartoonish picture she is unlikely to show to anyone, with a little note: 'Chaser folk songs???' She circles it once in her book.

    She closes her book only when the prospect of getting drenched by a waterfall occurs to her. Even with it diverted, she doesn't want to get the pages damp. Not a disaster but not fun either.

Rory White (673) has posed:
Rory's in a good mood today! Good enough that she could burst out singing if she was confident enough to do with other people listening.

    Good enough to do so if they weren't about to dive into a place that's as dangerous as they come. She's come wearing a traveler's cloak, the better to hide the fact that she's currently sleeved into a form that's far from human. Now that the group's finally reached their destination she neatly removes it. It FOLDS ITSELF UP afterwards, and the body she has to show to the group...

    Well. No clothes. No need for clothing. Shiny metal in roughly humanoid shape, no head to speak of. Instead a round mound with several glowing optics and sensors in varying directions. The hands, which WERE human, begin to... melt? They slowly change shape along with the rest of the thing, metallic flesh flowing and rippling jaggedly as millions of microbots change configurations. The robot topples forward onto arms that become forelegs.

    The Flexbot's gait is distinctly feline, a clear demonstration of Bio-mimicry at work. Rory White's shape vaguely resembles a tiger, except for the hardpoint-mounted weapon barrels sprouting from her back and sides.

    It doesn't MOVE like a robot should. Her stride's too fluid, too impossible. Even a real tiger couldn't bend and shift down the ledge the way she does, and certainly couldn't scale it nearly vertically...

    "I for one can't wait to see what we find in there!" At least the AGI's kind and clear female voice remains the same...

August Kohler has posed:
August Kohler is here! Wait, that's August Kohler? He's certainly more sullen than usual. And hasn't talked unless someone talked to him, or introducing himself. But, physically, he's the same! Except for his weird 'local' clothing and nine-gallon hat (too cheap for all ten gallons). It just turns out that there's no visible scars from the Huntsman encounter!

And so, when the group arrives at the Waterfall, August looks up at the water, and into his reflection. He feels into his soul..."Persona!" And out of his soul comes a robot in military dress, covered in burn scars and with a gun for a leg. The Tin Soldier floats in front of him, as the redhead entirely ignores Maaka, and replies. "I'll take point." And then the Tin Soldier will fly forward, attempting to spring traps with its body.

William Pauwel has posed:
    Will is maybe a little enthusiastic about getting to go off on another far-flung adventure. He even sings along with Molly and Irvine! It's... Kind of awful. He's not very good at this. In fact, he's kind of awful at it, but THAT'S OKAY. Even if he doesn't know the words, he can still kind of join in on the bits he DOES know.

    The addition of various vehicles makes the trip a little less tedious overall. For example, Maaka's ATV probably ended up being used to haul around a good deal of the cargo, because backpacking enough supplies to survive in the mountain is a REAL pain.

    "Yeah, yeah. Y'all say that now," he sniffs at all of his detractors and doubters, even as Mel's INCREDIBLE PSYCHIC POWER parts an actual waterfall. "But you'll be singin' a different tune once we get inside and this place turns out to be some kind've MOTHERLODE!" Clearly, Will's feeling the Positive Thinking.

    "Anyway," Will beams, whipping his TRUSTY SIDEARM from its holster. Its familiar, blue-white light illuminates the cave. "Let's get going!" It looks like Maaka and August are going to be knife-fighting for the position at the front of their column, so Will'll leave them to it. He stays towards the middle of the procession, shedding light and keeping an eye out for danger.

...Danger is apparently taking a sick-day.

    As they make their way deeper into the earth, things DO respond, sort of. What used to be turret emplacements spark and twitch as the group proceeds, and the otherwise pristine stone grows to become scorched with old, blackened carbon. But other than that, there's nothing in their way. It's almost eerie, the state of things. "...Don't tell me someone beat us to it," Will mutters under his breath. "This deep in the mountains, can't be."

    Ahead, there's a door. One of those big, mechanical gates that the Ancients sometimes put up in front of Important Places. It's... Slightly ajar. "Damnit," Will mutters, "Let's head inside. Maybe it's somethin' else."

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    "FOr Christ's sake." Maaka deadpans as August just goes right up front. "Don't cut through the queue, junior." She says bluntly, before she picks up the pace and ventures into the cave itself. She switches to night-vision once it gets dark inside.

    She cocks an eyebrow behind her mask at the open gate, tilting her head. "I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts they didn't get too lucky inside there. Everyone stay frosty." She says, cautiously approaching the gate and nudging it open with her rifle's muzzle and heading further inside.

Ainsley (151) has posed:
    Ainsley spares a look of concern to August. Not while he's looking, but when he's trying to move ahead past the others and take point. The lizard woman has good reasons to be concerned, but once she's resigned herself to not being the one equipped for addressing them, she refocuses on the task ahead. Past the waterfall, she opens her book again and begins sketching. This time, it's not a map but a collection of drawings.

    She draws scribbles of destroyed turrets, of signs of battle. She gets closer to one of the turrets, careful not to get in front of it or too close to it while she records its design for the book. Once they get to the door, she draws that, too. A lot of pen-on-paper sounds from her direction, just constantly scribbling.

    "Now if that's not ominous..."

    She closes her book and places it in its leather case at her hip. The case is left open in case she has to summon her own Persona on short notice. She then rests her left hand on the handle to the longsword on her hip. Her nerves buzz with unease, worried about those going inside first, even if they're better equipped to do so than she is. Look at that frown! So frowny.

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    "That's... that's not how I'm doing it at all." Mel says, giving Irvine a slightly incredulous look. "I'm a psychic. I can move things with my mind. It's what I do." She falls in behind Maaka, but not far; she can easily put up a protective shield from here, and also shoot past the merc with her sidearm. The first broken-down turret probably eats a shot from her pistol, before she realizes what's going on and frowns. "The alternative choice," she replies to Maaka, "Is that they /did/, and they're gonna shoot the next heavily-armed party to stride through that door. Be careful." She's got her pistol at the ready, and of course her psionics can go any time.

Starlight Bandits has posed:
    The pair... don't seem to pay much heed to the real explanation of Mel's power. Either they've both accepted Irvine's explanation... or they already forgot about it. They do seem stupid enough.

    And then, as perfect evidence of that, as they stride through the blackened caves, Molly runs a finger down a rock (taking care not to chip her nail) and then... licks it. "Yup, that's soot all right~!" she says, as if there were any doubt.

    And then they stand before the ajar doors. "Fret not everyone!" Irvine declares. "If this place was properly plundered, the doors would be wider open to facilitate the movement of loot out of there!"

    That... makes a weird amount of sense. Are they really stupid?

August Kohler has posed:
After shouting at each other over the radio for a minute, August falls back into second position! The Tin Soldier does not, and instead just floats over and next to Maaka where applicable. Cheating! "What /were/ you expecting, Pauwel?"

The Tin Soldier mimes at Maaka as they approach the door, some sort of 'work together', before moving to help push the door open. Once they succeed, the Tin Soldier thumbs-ups, before moving to spring traps with face (it really, really wants to do that, apparently).

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone is excitd she's in a very good mood too she's ready for an adventure ans she's moving ahead seeing that Rory was in good spirits tht August was here and moviing again. She looks at August persona as he takes point and she nods. She'll take a moment to cloak and strt pressing ahead her spider like drone also moves along as she keeps her SMG ready as everyone is now heading out and they look at the door ahead and she tilts her head before shge moves to get inside.

<<Easy Alexis easy>>

Rory White (673) has posed:
"This door looks like it wasn't fully closed. It's very possible they went ahead of us, but never returned." Notes the Rory-bot who's padding along with the others. She slinks up next to the door... and extends a paw. One claw elongates with a camera appearing at the end to try and peek around inside... before she goes on in any further.

William Pauwel has posed:
    That is definitely soot. While the turrets are largely trashed, Ainsely might be able to get at least a decent sketch of them. It's pretty dark in here, even with the light that Will and the others are supplying, so she won't be able to get TOO many details, unfortunately.

    "Right!" Will says at Irvine's sage advice. Maybe optimism is just something that Chasers do? "If they left the door like this, then they'd need to be carrying loot out one man at a time. There's gotta still be all kinds of stuff in there. Come on!"

    "I was expectin' to have to fight THROUGH those turrets out there," Will answers August as he hinges the front door open and the group makes its way through. "'Course, now we get to think about how that stuff even got busted up in the first place. Careful, there's all kinds've things that'd love to have a place like this for a den."

    As the group presses on with Maaka and the Tin Soldier at the helm, they pass from the very obviously natural cavern into somewhere that is very obviously not. The doors lead past something that was very obviously once a security checkpoint, if the ruined body collapsed over the front desk is any indication. It's dessicated and decayed, obviously having been left here thousands of years ago. Beyond that and around a corner is a great hall of monolithic concrete and winding steel. Everything is a stately grey, punctuated by painted signs written in Ancient script, pointing this way and that. Th whole place is clinically illuminated by some unseen source of light. Maybe by the walls and floors and ceilings themselves?

    The place they come into is divided into two floors, each linked to the other by staircases at the far end of the room. Rooms wind around both levels, with glass windows allowing for easy identification of their contents. One appears to be a medical pavilion. Another an old hydroponics facility, though now thoroughly overgrown. The water, lighting and fertilization system were still functioning, apparently. One on the far side of the room is an armory, another nearby is festooned with capsule-like berths set into the wall-- sleeping quarters, apparently.

    The middle of the room seems to be a common area, with a few tables set up here and there-- though majority are set up as a sort of barricade facing the main entranceway. There are more scorch marks here, and several more bodies, each one covered in armor made of that familiar (to anyone who's been in this world before) black material.

    "...Alright," Will murmurs, switching his sidearm from a torch to an actual gun. "Looks like whoever was in here, there was a fight. And now... Well. Split up, take a look around. We might find something."

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    Maaka covers her corners, rifle sweeping and clearing in a very operator fashion. She notes signs of a struggle, as well as the intense age. If Chief and that undersea lab was any indication, this isn't the first time she's seen someplace this ancient in nature.

    She brushes dust off of a wall, before she follows it towards a staircase. "HYroponics, medical pavilion...this was some sort of lab, or possibly a compound for other purposes." She muses aloud, going towards a door on the far side leading to an armory.

    She'll investigate this room, not caring who accompanies her in.

    Kotone gets a simple, short message over internal, private comms. [I know, I know...just worried. About Samira.] SHe never uses the Commander's first name like that usually, this says everything.

Rory White (673) has posed:
"This... hm." Rory White paces on into the main chamber, looking around very carefully. The Flexbot-Tiger paws around, taking in the sights of everything and looking around at the signs of battle, the corpse...

    "The dessicated corpse leads me to think that they were killed a long time ago. Likely by an invader or uprising of some kind. After all they would have no reason to leave here since the systems are still working. Thus, someone killed them. A long time ago. This place could've been left to rot since then and so perhaps we aren't late. Further logic, there was nobody to remove and process the corpse according to whatever customs are in place. High likelihood this is a result of chaos following the great catastrophe that ended the Ancient civilization... but I am getting ahead of myself."

    Rory is recording EVERYTHING, especially the ancient writing. As they are HUMAN, she is quite sure that enough Argonaut endeavor - there's bound to be a linguist who loves a challenge - could crack the code. Failing that, enough pattern matching by AIs and filling in the blanks might lead to something...

    "Why is it in such better shape than the other ruins?"

Starlight Bandits has posed:
    In they go! The pair seem unperturbed by the signs of violence. Indeed, they immediately make a move for the bodies, rolling them over and checking any pockets for anything useful. Clearly these two have no respect for the dead, something Irvine only clarifies as he picks up a loose skull.

    "Gee whiz fellas, this place is spooking me out of my mind! Oh wait, I don't got one no more! HAHAHAH!" he says in a falsetto while making the jaw move. Molly giggles and applauds the macabre display before going to investigate the medical pavilion... before letting out a delighted squeal. "Irvine, I found the greatest treasure ever!"

    Soon she comes out... sitting in an office chair and using her feet to pull herself along. Irvine has a positively giddy look on his face as he rushes over to examine it.

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    Once it's clear they're not gonna be attacked, Mel decides to go have a look around.

    By telekinetically grabbing a table, stripping the legs off of it, and stepping onto it to use as a floating platform.

    She's getting a general look at all the various rooms, for the sake of seeing what's there; but she's also specifically looking for anything that looks like some kind of important office. Somewhere that'll have information access.

William Pauwel has posed:
Rory IS an amazing research-y robot type, so of course she'd be totally into a lot of this kind of stuff. The writing is easily copied into memory- no memetic virus or anything like that. Will is silent for a moment at her stream-of-consciousness logic, though shakes his head as if to clear it once she finishes. "That's... A good point," he murmurs, brow furrowing thoughtfully. "Maybe it's just because of how deep underground this place is? I mean, we're pretty much under a mountain right now."

    And then Irvine DOES TERRIBLE THINGS TO A CORPSE, OH MY GOD. "W-wh--" Will gawps. He's. He's not sure whether to laugh or to cringe or to just kind of stare for a little while, but fortunately Molly emerges with the BEST INVENTION EVER in time to distract him from the skull-chattering. Of course, Irvine does find all kinds of things on the bodies; a few ID cards, at least one of which looks PARTICULARLY important, a pocketful of loose change-- apparently the Ancients had coins? Or maybe those are something else. No weapons though.

    Meanwhile, Maaka peeks around inside the armory and finds... Well, for a marine like herself, it's a veritable treasure trove. The guns in here look /intact/ what few are actually still on the shelves. Most are covered in a thick layer of dust that must have accumulated over hundreds of years. But still, there are plenty of what must be grenades or similar devices stacked up on shelves, a few spare sets of armor, and a couple of decayed but intact assault weapons. Curiously though, some of the dust looks... thinner than the rest. Did someone come through here recently? If they did, it was still years ago.

    Mel finds what she's looking for up on the second floor. She ALSO finds another corridor leading deeper into the ruin, but she probably wants to find what she's after first. It looks like some kind of overseer's office-- no. She'd probably know military when she sees it. The way the desks are arranged overlooking the room below, the framed medal on the desk screams 'I am an officer and I want everyone who walks through these doors to know it.' There's a terminal built into the table that looks like it still has power and a chair for swiveling on behind it. Underneath the desk is where a hidden side-arm /should/ have been, but it's missing now.

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    Maaka takes a look at the old-ass guns she finds, and thinks for a second. Does she have space for this much firepower in her inventory?

    Fuck yeah she does, so she goes to hoover up guns and ammo like crazy, stuffing weapons into her inventory left and right. THis'll make either good additions to her formidable arsenal, or just stuff she can sell later at a good price once she gets them back into working condition. "Damn, if this ain't some nice scratch." She mutters to herself giddily, scooping up weapon after weapon, and ammo following that.
She'll have to think about snagging armor, but she does so in the end, stuffing it all in her manipulator before she dusts her hands off.

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    Well that's interesting.

    Mel steps off of her platform and onto the walkway proper, setting the legless table against a nearby wall. She's /very cautious/ when she steps into the office; in fact, she releases the tiniest little 'pulse' of telekinesis, like a gentle wind, to set off any traps that might be there preemptively. Only once she's sure it's safe, does she sit down in front of the console and start trying to dig around.

August Kohler has posed:
As the group begins to split up, August /ignores/ Irvine's macabre, instead moving with his robot self towards the hydroponics room. He first checks the door handle. If that fails, he Tin Soldiers the door. Once inside, August does a cursory inspection of the room, and then begins checking the machinery and plants to see exactly what they are.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
<<I am too and August has had a rough time of it himself>>

Kotone keeps moving and checking out the chamber for a moment she pauses looking at the corpses.

"It makes sense when your in surival mode you won't generally risk your life to burry the dead unless it's to contain a virus or something akin to tht."

Kotone records everything she sees as normal, right? Sh tilts for a moment.

"No one found it till now? Some sort of maintance system?"

She ask as she keeps on moving and looking about to see just what they got there to look at.

"Will? Rory? This place could have been sealed until we got here too preventing anything else from getting in right?"
She starts to look about Irvine is doning she backs off a bit and starts to look about for any techinal things she might be of use for but it might be best for her to beak off and search her self.

<<Maaka you find anything of interest?>>

With August heading out to the Hydroponics? She's going to check out the living quarters and her spider drone skitters after her.

Rory White (673) has posed:
"The door was ajar, nothing barred entry. The evidence is inconclusive regarding when someone last visited. However..." Irvine and Molly's shenanigans earn nothing more than a pause from Rory. She might have frowned in Synth mode, but that's an impossibility as a Flexbot-Tiger...

    "However, anyone who might've come before did not do so with the intent of scavenging. If they had, the dead would not have to wait until now to be searched. More things would be in disarray, and the machinery might not be functioning so well. Alternatively, they would have set up security of their own... ... or they might still be here, still exploring in other levels. Ah! Don't wander off alone!"

    The Tiger-bot dashes after August Kohler, deciding to follow him to the Hydroponics. Because nobody should go off solo in a place like this...

William Pauwel has posed:
    MAAKA GETS EQUIPPED WITH: FIREPOWER. The weapons appear to be energy weapons of some kind. Just looking at them, the assualt weapons' output seems impressive, but somehow less so than Will's Solano? Weird.

    Meanwhile, Mel encounters a man who is very obviously bad at actually Being An Officer. He's very obviously probably some kind of desk jocky, judging by the lack of traps and the fact that apparently he decided that he didn't need a log-off timer on his computer. Of course, much of what's actually ON the computer is kind of... Hard to read. The whole thing is full of jargon and unusable, Ancient language. Though somehow, a few words do stand out as readable- or at least, close enough to modern writing to be legible. "Command Center." "VICTORY." The guy also seemed to have on his equivalent of Alt-Tab a browser filled with several dozen pictures of a specific, adorable cat. It's white and fluffy.

    There's also a facility map. It's... Big. Many of the rooms appear to have been blacked out, with corridors leading there indicating that they may have been cut off. Sealed off, maybe? Several other rooms are flashing red. One, at the very center of the facility- but not far from this room- is glowing blue, and has that same word on it. 'VICTORY.' But... this place is way too large to just be a laboratory.

And this was an officer's room, so...

...Military?

    Meanwhile, Will has just gotten news of a mysterious ash-pile in the medical pavilion, and slips inside (with Molly and Irvine!?) to check it out. But while he does that, August finds his way into the hydroponics lab. The whole place seems to be... overgrown. Massively overgrown. The plants sprouting from their pots are festooned with a veritable cornucopia of different vegetables and fruits and... And they're all growing from the same stem. Each one completely healthy.

    And yet each pot has its own, individual label and associated picture. Tomatos here. Potatos there. But each tomato plant is growing potatos, and each potato is also growing tomatos, and all so much more.

    The residential room is a mess. Moreso than any of the others. There are bodies strewn around all over the place, people who seemed to have been struggling to get to their beds. Curiously, some of the bed-pods are missing. As if they were disappeared into the holes in the wall. There are buttons on the sides of each of the pods- keypads, apparently, with a single red panel. One is still flashing.

    The medical pavilion is much in the same way as the armory. The supplies are all still HERE, though vastly diminished. Stacks of medkits are depleted, and the fridge is bare of all but the last dregs of liquid medicines. And yet... Some of this stuff seems freshly claimed. The dust is disturbed. There's ash on the floor-- wood ash. From... "...A campfire?" Will breathes.

"There WAS someone else here," he says. "Someone was here before us. But why'd they leave without taking all this gear?"

August Kohler has posed:
August harvests a sample of each different vegetable, and also some seeds, looking for something to store them in.

Starlight Bandits has posed:
    At the very least, Irvine put the skull back where he found it! As for the ID cards, he has a very skewed idea of what is and is not important. At the very least, he announces "Hey everyone, I found some of those magic cards with people's faces on them!" The coins are pocketed, he's sure he'll find a use for them elsewhere.

    Meanwhile, Molly does indeed show Will the ash pile in the medical pavilion. No she's not getting out of the chair.

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    [Found a shitload of energy weapons. Probably military issue if I were to guess.] Maaka messages back, exiting the armory once she has her spoils. SHe'll be quick to study those guns when she has the chance, mostly to figure out their capabilities and such, before selling most of them. She'll be Going to the living quarters, to track down Kotone, maybe get a look around while she still can. "Find anything, kid?"

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    Tappity-tap. Huh. Okay. Hmm. -oh my god, are you shitting me, cats. Ancient lost technology of an advanced precusor socity, and even here, /internet cats/.

    Mel quietly shakes her head. "We never change, do we?"

    But more importantly, a map. A map, with a place indicated that looks very, very interesting. Mel takes out her pocket smartcomm and snaps an image, shifts the map, snaps another. She's taking all this down before she steps out of the office, up onto the second-floor walkway.

    "HEY PEOPLE, I GOT US A MAP! THINK THERE'S A ROOM ON HERE WE SHOULD TAKE A LOOK AT!"

    Having declared this in her 'getting the crowd's attention' voice, Mel then lifts her 'platform' up and floats herself back down to the ground floor.

William Pauwel has posed:
    August finds a handy dandy NANOWEAVE BAG. It recieves the vegetables and seeds handily. Apparently they just had these things lying around... Or maybe they were meant for exactly what he's doing now-- harvesting vegetables. August's harvest looks delicious and tasty, as it should.

    Will emerges from medical with a complex look upon his face. This place doesn't make sense; if someone did come here, why didn't they leave with all this loot? Maaka found a bunch of guns-- those go for TONS of money. There's medical equipment all over. The facility itself is massive, too. Maybe they found something more valuable and got the fuck out?

Too many questions. Too little in the way of answers.

    But Mel seems to have found a way forward! And Irvine's got stuff that will PROBABLY HELP in that regard. "Alright, let's get a move on iff'n we're done. We can take another look on our way out, but I'm in the mood to get to the bottom of this mess."

Rory White (673) has posed:
"Fascinating! These plants... the labels are wrong. I wonder, could they have somehow cross-pollinated and mutated in the millenia? But who or what is doing the pollinating? Or perhaps it was a bioengineering experiment that went wrong..." Rory, too, decides to gather a few samples. Her Flexbot body is sufficient to store a few tissue samples - a few leaves, a few seeds where manageable...

    "These plants could be extremely useful if they can survive the Weston plant's soil. I will definitely try cultivating them there if they're safe. But an actual functional hydroponics facility? This is a treasure trove for William's people. A reliable food supply even in winter."

August Kohler has posed:
Once he's out of the garden with his food, August approaches Maaka. "Got a pistol you can spare? I'm otherwise unarmed, outside of the flying tin man." He stares with a blank face. He's actually serious!

Meanwhile, the Tin Soldier goes and pokes at Irvine and Molly. They're interesting. Let's see how they react to a miming robot ghost. Also, August follows around when the majority of the group finally goes forward.

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    Maaka thinks about it. She REEEEEEAAAAAAALLY thinks about it. THen she eyes August, before producing a laser pistol pilfered from the armory. "Here, don't point it anywhere you don't wanna shoot though." She says, offering the laser gun grip-first to the kid. "And don't say I had anything to do with this."

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
<<Oh man I'll have to get a look at some later if you'll let me have one??>>

Kotone meanwhile is now on her way to check out the living areas and to see what she can find there. She moves past the bodies trying figure out why they were trying to get to their beds and she halts for a moment.

<<Found ... what the hell? They were trying to get to the bed pods and some were missing here...>>

She goes to chck the key pannel to see just what's going on with it.

William Pauwel has posed:
    Kotone investigates the keypad and the shiny, candy red button. The pretty, glowing button. But she somehow resists the siren call to press it, and so she is SPARED WHATEVER FATE MAY HAVE AWAITED HER. But people are moving, mostly because Will is getting tired of cryptic clues and seems keen on discovering what the blazes is even up with this place.

And that's why he's hovering over Mel's shoulder.

    'Looks real interesting indeed.' "VICTORY?" Will whispers at the map on Mel's screen. "What's so important that they'd call it something like that?" Maybe it's what they used to win the war? "If... If it's what I think it is, then--" He twitches a bit. Or rather, his lips twitch a bit, widening into a downright manic grin, "Mel. Mel do you know what it might mean iff'n it's what I think it is? It means we're all going to be legends!"

    Will is... Giddy.

So giddy he doesn't even notice when they make their way down the corridor. So giddy he doesn't even realize it when he steps on what looks to be another scorch mark on the floor, only for it to crunch with a sound like sand or ash.

He's not giddy enough to fail to notice the terrible sound that follows, though.

    It's like a high, keening wail. Like a note played at the very top end of the human audible range. Will winces as it screeches out a stacatto noise. Rory would identify it as... some kind of short-range auditory handshake protocol. "The blazes--"

The layer of ash vanishes in a whirl of black smoke.

    Movement from behind. From ahead. From the vents in the ceiling. Smoke begins leaking from the dessicated bodies strewn across the floor. Dessicated. They still had flesh. They /still had flesh/ but no weapons and with the smoke billowing, they begin /rising./ Each one rattles as they lift, like marionettes on invisible strings. The black smoke coalesces over their hands and out of their sunken eyesockets and hollow jaws, hardening into jet black spikes.

    As they rise, they begin to move. Faster than they should, their legs sweep forward amidst currents of swirling smoke. Others begin literally crawling out of the walls, throwing open ventilation ducts and scrambling into the corridor. There was a trap-- but it wasn't the kind of trap laid to protect something.

The kind of trap it is is far, far worse.

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    Per her own advice, Mel is still being cautious. But with the map to show everyone, she's not going down the corridor gun-first. She does, however, reach out and give Will a brief, light two-fingered 'fwap' on the back of the head. "Hey. Focus, Pauwel, focus. You never know what the hell might hit us, we're not safe until we-"

    NOISE, oh god. Mel is immediately covering her ears, grimacing. "Owowowow shit-" For a short while, she dares to be optimistic enough to assume that will be all they have to deal with. Needless to say, she's not so lucky.

    "...Pauwel, what the /hell/ is with your world and freaky spiked undead things?!"

    Immediately, the PsiMarshal lifts her hand and sends a wave of force down the corridor. She's being careful not to hit any of her allies, but anything /else/ in the blast is gonna have to deal with a couple dozen tons of force.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa knows in the multiverse the shiny red button may well be her doom so she's going to break off from pushing it, it's time to get moving.

<<Looks like people died trying to get to the beds and the pods are going I'm thinking something contaminated the complex and the few lucky ones managed to use the escape system here to get our or I think it's one>>
E Damn it that Red Button is tempting as she moves to catch up with everyone else she also cringes at the sound from whatever Will has triggered and now she starts to go for her weapon when warnings go off on her HUD.

              W A R N I N G NANOMACHINES DETECTED! W A R N I N G              

Kotone goes cold she's been to Rorys earth and she knows what hell nanotechnology weapons can do.

"NANOMACHINE CONTAIMATION!"

She calls out in warning and opens fire on the risen dead as they come for them. She was right people were trying to get out before something horrible killed them. This has gone from creepy to nightmare fuel. She now rebound off a wall trying to keep away form the undead as she opens fire. With Mel giving her a good set up she'll start firing more bursts down at the horror things.

"No idea if they are infectious! I'm going to err on the side of YES!"

It's not coral thank God, it's not Coral.

August Kohler has posed:
August gets ONE LASER PISTOL, which he safely stores on his person. Hopefully he won't get framed for attempted murder again! As the group proceeds, the Tin Soldier sweeps for traps. But then, they find the worst trap of all. Nanozombies! August steps backwards towards the exist, while the Tin Soldier mimes a roar (it does not actually roar). And then it sweeps forward, aiming that gun wildly in every direction containing the nanoswarms.

And it fires. Literally!

A sweeping wave of fire roars forward, attempting to burn through the swarm. If any try to duck or jump or anything, the fire is pointed to hit them. "GO! EVERYONE GO!"

Starlight Bandits has posed:
    Irvine and Molly were hanging out on the first floor with their precious bounty. And by that, I mean that Molly was sitting in the chair as Irvine spun it, turning her into a whirring top of blue and black. That is, until the dead start rising and the nanomachines start to filter in.

    Looking down at one of the corpses, Irvine raises a foot and stamps down HARD. "Your time is past, chum! Best lay there and be properly dead!" As everyone starts to evacuate, he stops Molly's spinning and pushes her along with them!

Rory White (673) has posed:
Rory comes barreling out of the hydroponics section at full charge, all four legs pumping and clanging against the ground. Her sensors aren't fine enough resolution to detect Nanoswarms except where they're most concentrated, and that worries her. Her Flexbot's own defenses won't hold against a Nanite-based deconstructive assault. In a panic she directs most of those internal defenses to guard her Cyberbrain with everything they've got.

    What she doesn't understand is... why are these Nanoswarms ANIMATING THE DEAD?!

    "Revision to previous hypothesis, dessication and decay could be caused by Nanoswarms. So much for that theory! We must retreat! Now!"

    The Tiger does have fangs though. Rory's multiple weapons barrels aren't just for show. They're actually railguns. Internal mechanism shift Ammo types after a moment, loading her limited supply of Jammer rounds.

    She pelts everything that moves liberally with them!

    These rounds don't penetrate or explode or cause much damage. They STICK and emanate electromagnetic scrambling signals. With any luck it'll destroy the nanites' ability to coordinate with each other and get these corpses dropping like flies...

    ... But it's not much use against the mobile swarms themselves...

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    "Ah FUCK!" NANOMACHINES seem like a good enough reason for even Maaka to make a run for it. She lets August handle the swarm of microbots, and she bails, grabbing Kotone by the arm as she runs. "C'mon, ain't worth letting these things get into us!" She hollers, before she runs like hell is at at her heels.

    To be fair, it is on some level.

William Pauwel has posed:
    Spiked undead indeed. Mel's telekinetic shockwave SLAMS into the undead down the corridor. Their flesh seems to unravel like tattered papyrus, disintegrating into a grotesque mist of corpsedust and nanotechnology. But they don't stop. The whorl of material sweeps back around and swaddles their staggering bodies as shattered bone and torn flesh are harpooned by black spikes and knit back together. It stuns them for a moment- long enough to break past, but...

    "I don't know, damnit! This is only the second time!" Will complains back at Mel. "Why is it that every time you come along, it's always zombies!?" The Solano barks a reply at the rising tide of blackening corpses. Blue-white plasma catches one of the host tattered host bodies as it starts to repair itself. The thing catches fire, reeling back as if to scream-- but it continues to regenerate even as the black tendrils are begin to burn. Kotone's shots find purchase as well. One bolt catches the black-matter within one of the shamblers, shattering its cohesion and causing the host to reel back, as if its strings were cut.

    Fire seems to be a reasonable answer to these beasts. August's MARAGI- variant blasts into the swarm, which seems to briefly lose coherence. Long enough to cause a corpse to stagger and briefly fall to the ground, but perhaps not long enough to stop their crushing advance. More begin to crawl out of the side-rooms, several bodies rise from the tube-room and shamble into the main chamber. Irvine's foot comes down HARD on one of the corpse's heads as it begins to rise, but more of those tendrils seize the broken shards and begin tugging them back together

    The tide seems to stem, however, at Rory's prompt use of electromagnetic rounds. The bolts smash into their intended targets without issue, and a cacophony of electronic noise fills the chamber. The swarm reacts poorly, losing cohesion in its entirety...

    Before each corpse begins emitting that same handshake protocol and the swarm immediately comes back together. It's using auditory signals as a backup for its electronmagnetic communication!?

    "Damnit, we can't turn back now!" Will yells over the din. "The room's too dang big, too many of them. We'd get buried alive!" Indeed, the swarm seizes upon its opportunity to attack, lunging at the most obvious targets-- August, Kotone, Mel-- and attacking with razor-sharp claws! "We need to get somewhere safe, regroup, plan! Come on!"

    Will... Perhaps unwisely charges down the corridor, pelting regenerating corpses with plasma as he moves. "If there's something important in here, it's probably in a sealed room!"

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    "Look, just because I have the world's worst luck doesn't mean this is /my/ fault!" Mel has already dialed her pistol's yield up to max and is taking shots wherever she can, but frankly, even that's peanuts compared to the kind of force she can output just by smashing them with her mind. And just now, she used enough force to splatter a normal person, but all it did was force these things to pull themselves back together. So the answer is obvious.

    More force.

    Around four times as much, to be a little more exact. The lunging nanozombies get within about ten feet before slamming into the wall of telekinetic force that Mel unleashes. This time, it's her full strength. A hundred tons, enough to pitch a battletank through the air a couple times over, and spread out enough to blow back the entire wave of them. "Everyone start falling back! I can keep them from getting too close while we move, but we're not gonna be able to hold out here forever!"

August Kohler has posed:
Oh shit, fire's not working well enough! There's only one solution...more fire! August WAS going to ignite the Tin Soldier and pull off a kamikaze, but Will requested something different that would probably work better. Therefore, that rifle begins spraying flames in a horizontal line, forming a massive wall of FIRE. And also draining poor August's SP. The human side of the equation, meanwhile, moves to escape with the others, the Tin Soldier miming with a hand 'wait for me!'.

Starlight Bandits has posed:
    Things are bad, even the Bandits can tell.

    "Molly."

    "Yes Irvine?"

    "We'll have to say goodbye."

    "I know..."

    And with that, Molly hops off the chair, and the two get to work. Grabbing fire extinguishers from the walls and producing myriad explosives from their bags, they got to work with rolls of duct tape. In moments, the chair is wrapped up with enough explosives and contents under pressure to make a fireworks factory blush.

    In synchrony, they give it mighty KICK, sending it rolling towards the shambling hordes and nanoclouds. "Burn it NOW!"

August Kohler has posed:
Now it's time for the ultimate sacrifice. A true friend, one who is willing to give up their life for others. They will be recognized along with Shadow Klaus and Panzercat as 'cool people'.

August ignites the chair on fire as it becomes wheeling towards the swarm. Rest in peace, rollychair.

Rory White (673) has posed:
".... Distressing. That's far beyond what my nanites can do! Who DESIGNED these?!" It reminds her of... things. Things she'd rather not remember. The Tiger starts padding backwards. An A.G.I. Rory might be, but she's capable of the full range of human emotion. And right now...

    Primal fear and old traumas are at the forefront of it. She briefly ponders turning tail and just bailing wholesale... but no, she regains control of her instincts.

    The life of an A.G.I. like her begins with training after all. Solid training to recognize and control her emotions and not make decisions based on them. Devoting all the processing power she can to thinking through this one, she remembers something important.

    "... This Morph is equipped with a disassembler nanoswarm hive!" A disassembler swarm. It's not typically very effective as an offense. It might not help at all - she has no way to tell just how the opposing nanoswarm will react. She'd have to imagine competently.... anyone smart enough to design these must have accounted for an opposing nanoswarm, right?!

    Well, only one way to find out.

    Rory goes dashing along with Will but her steps are measured.

    The moment she has an opportunity she stops near one of the corpses he blasted. A panel opens on the Flexbot's shoulder and a blue mist pours forth. A tiny amount of her Disassembler Nanoswarm. It descends upon the infested remains with directives to rip apart foreign nanites.

    It's not self-replicating, but it may be just the weapon she needs if this enemy swarm didn't account for opposition!

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Things are getting hot Kotone shockingly has experiance weith nanotech weapons and she's opening fire when she can but she looks to WIll. "WE'll get over run here I'm agreeing not to give up but we need to pull out for now!" She opens fire on them more.

"We are dealing with some possible Titan level bullshit here!" In someways this was still better than her Halloween, at least she came here expecting trouble. She's dealing with Zombies agian it's bad but it's just bad news here she is moving to pull back now but she's intending to maybe be the last one out...

William Pauwel has posed:
More force.

    Mel's casual tremendous telekinetic might is enough to flay flesh from bone, but for these things, it's a mere inconvenience at best. But when she adds more power on top of that, when she turns air solid and blasts bodies across the room with force enough to /liquefy/ ordinary human beings, that's something else entirely. Her power flings the corpses to the far end of the chamber, pinning their slurried bodies against the wall.

And then August sets them all on fire.

    The swarm gurgles and struggles to escape the flame, but it, too, can do little against that kind of telekinesis. Mel can't keep it up forever, maybe, but she may not need to. She just needs to keep it up for long enough.

At least it cleared a path, even though more corpses, unbound by Mel's telekinesis, begin to fill the gap.

AND THEN

THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE

    THE ANCIENT ROLLY-CHAIR, with its maximized comfort and efficient, ergonomic design, and full range of rotation and reclinement, is sent sailing into the room and the crush of shambling corpses, piled high with enough explosives blast a hole in a mountain. Then August sets it on fire.

The explosion is... spectacular.

    Fire-extinguishing foam is released by the primary detonation, which rapidly and explosively expands, volatilizes and contributes to the secondary burn. The first boom stirs up thousands of years of dust into the air, which is all set alight by the second.

The ante-room explodes.

    Like, just actually, truly explodes. The ceiling cracks, crumbles, and begins collapsing. Dozens of corpses are buried under tons of smothering earth in an instant.

...Well.

That was a thing.

    Meanwhile, Rory unleashes a nanoswarm of her own upon the shamblers still lying in wait ahead. One swarm meets another, and Rory's begins picking its target apart... Before the black smoke adapts and begins a counter-attack, dissassembling its attacker in turn, and repurposing their parts for replacement units...

    And then Will starts shooting at them. At the points where they mingle. Blue-white plasma sweeps through the swarms and sets them ablaze. The black smoke takes especially poorly to it, giving Rory's swarm the opportunity to finish off the dregs.

    More clawing in the walls. Faint, but growing louder. There are still more out there... But then they reach a door. A great, sealed bulkhead with a card-reader at one side. "...Here. Mel, is this the right place?"

Indeed, it is. VICTORY lies beyond, just waiting to be revealed.

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    "You're telling' me!" Maaka says, drawing a 9mm with her offhand as she fires upon the horde of nannies. She's not stupid enough to think that'll stop them, but maybe they might slow down a bit from pistol rounds as she and Kotone escape.

    "Fuck, this is why we don't use nanobots lightly in my world!" SHe says, dragging Kotone to safety as they run the hell out of here. Thankfully, Rory, WIll, and August manage to save the day in time, at least for now anyways.
    Vayo con dies, Rolly-Chair. We did not deserve your majesty.

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    "Looks like it," Mel replies. "I'd rip the door out but we wanna be able to close it afterward, get it open fast!"

William Pauwel has posed:
"Key-card reader," Will mutters, as he moves towards the console. "Mister Irvine! Y'all still have that one you found!?"

Starlight Bandits has posed:
    Irvine and Molly don't look away as the chair explodes. It deserves to be watched remembered. The man half-hears Will's words and produces the stack of cards, handing them to the boy.

    Then the two square up, weapons drawn and pointed. There's no way they went down just to that.

William Pauwel has posed:
    Indeed, there's no way that's all that there is. Even as Will starts swiping cards, the noise of /things/ scraping against the walls grows louder and louder. It's made worse with every 'bee-beep' and every rejected security clearance the card reader makes.

Another denial tone. A nearby vent bursts open and a corpse crawls its way out. Another, and the soil begins to shift as black-clawed hands scrape their way out. Another, and a half-dozen fall out of a panel in the ceiling.

Then. Finally.

                                    BEEP                                    

    The gate slides open with the churning of millenia-old gears. "Go," Will shouts, "In! Everyone in!" He's the first across the breach, himself, and swings over to one side where another console waits.

Once everyone's in, he swipes the card again.

A zombie reaches in just as the door slides shut-- and severs the limb at the elbow.

...Safety.

But... Where are they?

William Pauwel has posed:
    The chamber is... Even larger than the room they'd first found themselves in. The domed ceiling is vaulted high enough to contain a four-storey building at its uppermost point. Pillars rise from floor to ceiling to hold the thing up against the tremendous weight of the mountain above.

    On the ground-level, there are a great number of computer consoles built into cocentric, circular desks, as if to allow everyone working to face the center of the chamber-- or away from it. The walls of the room, perfectly cylindrical and stark white, save for some long-abandoned holographic monitors, rise toward the ceiling above.

    In the middle of the room is... A hole. A great, terrible gap where there, by all rights, should have been SOMETHING. There are even what look like interlocking bolts to keep that something in place, but it's gone now-- which is impressive, given that that something evidently was large enough to extend several floors below.

There's another sealed door at the far end of the room.

Claws swipe futiley against the steel bulkhead behind.

And there.

In the corner of the room. Tucked into the outermost ring of desks...

Is a chair.

Rory White (673) has posed:
THROUGH THE GATE AND TO SAFETY! ... but Rory White isn't comforted whatsoever when there's a SEVERED NANOZOMBIE ARM in the room. She directs her own nanoswarm to target it for DEVOURING.

    Against the giant quantity outside, this would undoubtedly be a completely one-sided losing battle. HERE though, she can ensure that this thing is completely neutralized.

    Not that she needs to devote all her time to that, only a sufficient amount of attention through her sensors will do.

    The rest of her attention's on the room. What of it she can muster. For the moment she is...

    Uncharacteristically quiet. Just standing there on all fours, the robot feline is completely still apart from the nanoswarm defenders at work...

    THAT REALLY RATTLED HER and she needs a few minutes to gather her focus again.

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    The moment Maaka is through the gate, she slams against the wall and covers the others as they run through. Once everyone is through, she will go and grab whatever is in reach that's heavy like a chair or a heavy crate or whatever at the door to keep it blocked.

    She'll also be swapping her EM rifle for a welding torch from her manipulator, just in case. At least until she realizes they may NEED to go through that door to exit this place. "...dammit." She pockets the torch, drawing her 10mm sidearm as she looks around, approaching the console. "Looks like an admin room of some sort, given the consoles." She muses, then looks to the hole in the floor. "Why the hell not. Give me a second, guys.

    She produces a flare, setting it off before she drops it into the hole to test how deep it goes, depending how long it takes for there to be a plunk noise of the flare hitting solid ground.

    Hearing claws, she levels her pistol to the OTHER sealed door, keeping her distance. "Okay, nobody open that door."

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    In the door in the door IN THE DOOR-

    Mel rolls through in a practiced motion, coming out of it with her sidearm up and ready. But it's closed, and they're safe, and...

    "Some kind of hangar?" she mutters. It's not long until she wanders over to a desk herself, deciding to see what she can get out of the console; though she does glance up at Maaka, waiting to see the results of the flare test. "If there's nothing with teeth, claws or guns down there, lemme know. I can go down there and take a look."

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone is pulled along by Alexis aqs they now get to cover she slumps down to the ground panting, more out of habit than actual need but she's looking freaked. "That ... was some nanotech horror, I thought what is saw on Rory's earth was bad news but this?" She's shivering at this and just trying to calm down and she's not yet starting to look about, it's mroe she's getting herself centered again. "All right Yamakawa ... calm down."

August Kohler has posed:
Once they're in the room, August immediately takes a survey of their surroundings. There's a hole. A sealed door. And a really high ceiling where it is /really dark/ up there. That isn't ominous at all! Time to shed some light on things. With fire.

The Tin Soldier leaps upwards, bullets firing at a pillar, attempting to chisel FOOTHOLDS in it. If it can make somewhere to stand, it'll climb up, and then aim that gunleg upwards, standing on the regular leg, and begins spraying fire in the air. If, during this mad gout, any torches or anything are spotted, the fire is directed there.

August could have really just used a flashlight.

Starlight Bandits has posed:
    While everyone else is doing that whole 'safeguarding the area' thing, the Bandits observe a moment of silence for their fallen compatriot, hands over their hearts as they carve the memory of their brief time with the chair into it.

    And then they turn around and see the other chair.

    They both stride up to it, silent. Molly takes a seat while Irvine spins it sedately.

    "Hey Irvine?"

    "Yes Molly?"

    "This chair has quite a legacy to live up to, doesn't it?"

    "Mmm, it certainly does."

    What do you mean they're not helping? They're keeping out of the way aren't they?

William Pauwel has posed:
    Maaka would be waiting by the pit for a while. The flare just keeps going down, down, down into the depths of the mountain. Its light might have seen bright when she had held it, but within a few seconds, the dark below seems to swallow it up completely, though as it falls, Maaka would likely see what look like pipes or some kind of conduits jutting out of the walls of the shaft. When it does finally make a sound, it's so faint that only properly augmented senses would even have a chance in hell of detecting it. It's pretty clear that something WAS definitely here, but whatever it is, it's definitely gone now.

Fortunately, nothing dangerous is actually down there, that she can see. Nothing moving, anyway.

    Separated from the rest of the swarm, Rory's nanites have little difficulty digesting the zombified arm. The thing stops twitching relatively soon thereafter. Apparently that door is proof against nanotechnological swarms, because they're clearly not seeping through.

    A cursory glance of the room gives some idea about what this room was used for. Many of those holographic projections seem to be maps. Specifically, for anyone with any military background, they look like strategic diagrams, with forces arrayed across a strangely familiar landmass. It's Tellus, with regions marked out in various colors all across the map. Various shapes indicate the presence of what must be force mobilizations. Arrows are attached to each shape, directing them across the map-- But it's... different. The Tellus on those projections seems younger. The landmass seems larger in these projections, more defined. How much has the world changed over the years?

    Walls of text are the next order of business on the walls. They're largely unreadable, however, to people of the modern era. The jargon scrolling across the windows is likely full of codespeak anyway. But there is a lot of information here. This place was Important.

    Meanwhile, August is commiting HORRIBLE VANDALISM upon a priceless historical relic. The pillars are vulnerable to being shot, it seems. Or rather, vulnerable enough to blow footholds and hand-grips into them. The Tin Soldier shoots up into the ceiling, but the only torches that he might be able to find are all electrical. These people weren't medieval! The puffs of flame do, however, briefly illuminate an enormous set of bulkhead doors at the very top of the room, immediately overtop the huge pit in the floor.

    While all this is going on, and while Will catches some badly needed breath, the Bandits go and claim a chair as their own! That chair will feel so much pressure over the foreseeable future. So many people it'll have to carry. And someday it, too, might be expected to make the ultimate sacrifice.

...

They might spot, over in that direction, what looks like an old, decaying, and very thoroughly stuffed backpack leaning against a nearby table.

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    "Nothin'." Maaka says after a long pause. She waits to hear something, anything, from that hole, before she shrugs at Mel. "No need to bother looking that way, whatever is down there has to be long dead. Hopefully anyways." She says, approaching the consoles. Codespeak codespeak codespeak. THis is mostly useless jargon and Maaka knows it, before she begins to sift through the data...if only out of curiosity.

    She only stops HACKING to look up at what August and his Persona are doing, and she just mutters, "Fuck are you doin?" She's never going to understand some people.

    At least, until she notices he's making a means to climb up the pillars. She holsters her Kama before she approaches the pillar. "Kotone, take over for me on that terminal. I'm gonna go for a climb."

    Her suit's gloves begin to adapt their properties before she adheres to the pillar, paramagnetics doing their job so she can climb up the pillar like a Friendly Neighborhood Wall-Crawler from Queens, as oddly specific as that sounds, until she stops at the bulkhead. Once she's up there, she begins to look around for a control pad of some kind she can hack to open the doors.

Starlight Bandits has posed:
    In the course of her languid rotations, Molly spots the stuffed backpack. "Irvine, launch me over there!" Her partner, obliges, grabbing her by the arm and slingshotting her! Her trajectory is curves, making her drift along the edge of the hole before ending up right next to the backpack.

    Immediately, she picks it up and starts methodically laying the contents out. She's surprisingly neat for a bizarre criminal.

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    "More a matter of curiosity," Mel replies to Maaka, "But if the drop's /that/ long I'm not even gonna bother. Not unless we /need/ to know." So instead, she wanders over to the far door, to try something no one's tried yet.

    Using the knob. Or the keypad, or whatever. She's gonna try and open it the easy way.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone would watch the flare goe down but it seems she's starting to recover her wits more she's back on her feet and shaking her head a little bit. She has to wonder how deep things is as she only hears the faintest of noies as flare hits the bottom. She now turns to record the maps and text displays. Sure they are in Jargon but they are imporant and if they find a way to translate them later. She also takes a peek at August for a moment and one eyes what August is doing, with the hand holds but the fire? That's got an eyebrow raise but she needs to get back to work.

"What the heck was this place for with defences like that and I think I get what happened with the bunk house..."

Rory White (673) has posed:
Now that Rory White's coming back to her senses proper, the panic receding, the feline robot shifts at long last. One paw in front of the other, she starts roving through the chamber, making sure to thoroughly examine every inch of the walls and surroundings - and thus, record it for later analysis. Every letter on every wall, every layout detail. it'll all be fit enough for a VR reproduction in the future!

    Whether that'll be of any use remains to be seen.

    What she does settle on is... the maps. Instantly she begins an analysis, matching the given continents against her current cartographical knowledge of the planet obtained from orbital surveys...

    If the divergence points can be picked out, then perhaps locations marked on the map may yield future scavenging opportunities! Among other possibilities!

William Pauwel has posed:
    APPARENTLY MAAKA IS PART SPIDER. Like her (possible) distant relatives, she skitters up one of the pillars and comes to the bulkhead in the celing. It's definitely large enough that it could easily have accomodated whatever it was that was in the floor. Having come all the way up here, she notices two things. One: There are markings in the celing on one end of the bulkhead, like something had harpooned itself into the dome. Two, there is in fact a keypad right next to what looks like a lever of some kind. One that WAS beneath a pane of safety glass, but it's obviously broken now. There's a slot to accomodate a keycard of some kind, too.

They might have an escape route yet.

    On the other side of the room, Mel would find herself staring down what is very obviously another set of double doors, almost identical to the one they entered through, but this one is completely silent. Nothing apparent is trying to claw through from the other side. There IS another keypad here, but it's notably more complicated than the simple numberpads on some of the other doors. This one is a full keyboard mounted to a wall-terminal, and there doesn't seem to be a keycard reader either. This one, evidently, was meant to be somewhat more secure.

    Kotone would find the computers to be difficult, but not impossible to hack. Strange for a facility like this one, but it becomes obvious why once she's in. The security suite seems to have been swapped to some kind of military default, and trying to bring up the original is impossible. Files not found, apparently. In fact, many of the applications no longer function; she finds many that seem like they could tap into some kind of tactical network or computer database, but each of those fail utterly when she attempts to access them, spitting out the same set of errors. 'Strategic Analysis Unit - NOT FOUND.'

There are a number of archived files, however, that she could probably pull off the computers. With the security system bypassed, it's not a difficult task.

    Meanwhile, Rory analyses maps for FAST TRAVEL INFORMATION. She finds several facilities scattered across the planet. Several are in familiar locations, now associated with major population centers. Others are hidden in more esoteric locations; though it's unlikely that these are civilian holdings, given the context in which she finds them. But disturbingly, many of these places no longer exist. They are located in the vast desert that covers a large portion of Tellus' interior, or are located off the southern coast, on land masses that... No longer ARE.

Of these places, in the modern day, there is no sign.

    Will busies himself with combing the rest of the room, searching for something that might have been left behind- a body, maybe, or some indication of what this place really was. While he does that, the Bandits ARRANGE THEIR LOOT.

    The contents of the bag are largely mundane. A bedroll, a few canteens full of by now stagnant, unpotable water, rations that have gone bad. There are a number of weapons, too. Many, many weapons. Some of them are clearly hobbled together by some country gunsmith, but others are far older, and seem to have been refurbished for use. There are clothes... for both genders. It looks like there used to be room for a climbing kit and a set of explorer's tools, but they've gone missing. And... There's an old, leatherbound journal.

It's not locked.

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    Mel runs her fingers along the double-door, investigating it for durability, She looks around the edges for seams. She wanders over to the keyboard to fiddle with it a bit, and see if there's anything she can figure out. It turns out there's not.

    So Mel Brock stands back several paces and holds out both hands, takes a deep breath, and curls her fingers.

    Incredible force wraps itself around the doors. Right up to the maximum she can produce with her limiter still in place. Glimmers of purple dance and shimmer faintly and occasionally, like watching purple sunlight reflect off the waves of a lake that isn't there. The Marshal settles her psychic grip in on the doors for a moment, readying herself like a weightlifter about to put their muscles to the test.

    And then she heaves. Heaves with every single gram of force she can muster, enough to fling cars by the dozens. She's trying to rip the damn door right out of the wall. Right /through/ the wall if need be.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa doesn't attempt much to get into them she just looks to get visuals on what she can she also does notice a lot of the network is missing and the SAU is gone? Was it destroyed? Wast it removed uin someway. She took a momentlonger but she'll check the files tht she can pull off. She'll keep them in a drive that's not a part of her cyberbrain to be on the safe side.

"I pulled some files we can look at later and some sort of Strategic Analysis unit which should be in system is just gone. 404 pretty much."

Starlight Bandits has posed:
    Irvine walks over as Molly goes through everything! The canteens are opened and sniffed, right before she tosses them over her shoulder, same with the rations. The clothes are checked by both, Irvine taking the men's and Molly the woman's, holding them against themselves to see if they might fit!

    Is this how they have so many costumes?

    "Now we're talking!" Irvine exclaims as the guns come out! He and Molly methodically check each one for ammo before pointing them, checking the balance with gun twirls before setting them down. And finally, Molly picks up the journal. Kicking off from the table, she rolls around the room, calling out, "Story time~!" before opening it up and reading aloud.

August Kohler has posed:
Now that Maaka's handling the bulkheads, August moves towards Mel. He fiddles with his laser pistol, as he stands beside her, covering her. It is during this time that the Tin Soldier stops spraying fire everywhere and also leaps down to August's side. If Maaka needed that light...well, she should have said something!

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    Maaka had only acquired this to get a way to run across walls, BUT climbing up them works too for her purposes. SHe switches to night-vision in the absence of any light, scanning for details. SHe takes note of the keypad, but doesn't do anything just yet. Pointing to the markings, she makes a curious noise. "Someone was up here too." She mutters, before she leaves the escape route alone for now.

    The reports as to what this place is make Maaka's synthetic blood run cold. She had heard stories of WMDs before, but in her world such things were still unthinkable, especially after the mid-2000s.

Hehe sighs heavily, before she slides her way down to rejoin the others, going down with a last-minute boost to slow her descent enough to avoid a painful fall, and dropping with a three-point landing.

    She draws her pistol immediately after Mel begins to open the door, covering it along with August and his Persona. "Holy shit, Brock..." She says, watching the Psi-Marshal work with some awe.

William Pauwel has posed:
    Hundreds of years, this facility's stood here, largely unmolested. Hundreds of years and barely anything has done so much as scratch it. And then some jerk-ass psychic unleashes the full force of her tremendous telekinetic and power upon what is very obviously a door that's NOT MEANT TO BE EASILY OPENED.

    Raw force alone probably wouldn't be enough to do the job. The Ancients built their facilities to withstand the crushing grind of the ages themselves, made very sure to leave very little room for leverage. But psychic power does not need leverage, as such.

    Old magnetic bolts hold the door shut against Mel's will, but the points at which the door was anchored into the wall are significantly less well fortified. Slowly, the thing is shaken free. Mysterious alloys screech and groan as Mel pulls. Power conduits flash and shed white sparks as they're suddenly severed. It will take some time, it will take a great deal of effort, but soon the door is off its hinges and tossed aside.

As that tremendous clangor ceases, one might notice that Will has suddenly gone very pale.

And the Bandits read on:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G0ZDPuz0it_-e9EN5EPkTRIBCutleP3G94zcHVML-NQ/edit?usp=sharing

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    At the end of it, when the door finally rips free, Mel carefully, slowly shifts her arms over to the side, causing the ripped-out chunk of door and wall to float to one side, where she sets it down.

    She's breathing pretty hard by the end of this; that constant, straining exertion of all the power she has is a lot different than quick blasts and bursts or telekinetic barriers. "Guh... gimme a sec," she mutters. "Feels like they built that thing to survive the apocalypse." Was that a joke?

    She does glance up at August, though, adding, "Anything down that way?"

Rory White (673) has posed:
What very useful data! Rory's optics blink and flicker a few times as she pours over it and files much of it away. She's already working in a part of her processing to figure out good spots to investigate next...

    And horrified at the implications.

    She's brought out of her thoughts by the sound of a HORRIBLE CLATTER not too far away. Even at that distance, Mel's Telekinetic MAYHEM is a noisy thing! She dives behind one of the projectors and glances around, but doesn't immediately find the cause.

    So instead the ROBOTIGRESS clink-clank-pads over towards the Starlight Bandits... to listen.

Starlight Bandits has posed:
    Molly's voice is light at first. But her tone becomes more neutral as she reads on. It's easy to accuse the pair of being stupid, but they do keep track of things, and this journal is full of key words relating to someone in this room.

    Gale.

    Solano.

    Wordlessly, the woman rises from her chair, walks over to Will, and hands him the journal. Irvine meanwhile, examines the room critically. "No bodies. That means they made it out. There is an exit. Take heart chums!" he shouts over the cacophony that Mel is making right now. "WE'LL MAKE IT OUT OF THIS!" And a big old thumbs-up to punctuate it.

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    Solano. Gale.

    Will.

    Maaka looks over to Will as she listens to the journal, and a knot in her stomach forms. She's frowning and that's evident even with a mask that looks more like an angry skull than anything else. She opens her helmet up, eyes bearing sympathy, as she approaches Will.

    And then she hugs the Chaser. A very big-sisterly hug around his waist. "I'm sorry." She whispers as she comforts him.

August Kohler has posed:
August investigates the pit, quietly listening to Molly as she reads. He shoots fire down there to illuminate if needed, and tells Mel the outcome of whatever he finds, before returning to Mel. "Let's go take a look, shall we?"

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone looks as Will goes very, very pale she's got hte info she pulled off hte computers to look at later and is now going and she makes for will looking very concerned. She also listens to the journal as well she has an idea of what's happened, and she now htinks she understands with a very sympathic look on her face but she's not going to hug him Maaka's already on it.

William Pauwel has posed:
Not like this.

    Will's hands tremble around the journal as Molly hands it over. Coming all this way, after so many years, looking high and low. No, not like this. He didn't want to find out like this. Nobody would. "I--" He chokes, moisture gathering around the normally implacable Chaser's eyes. "I thought... I knew they were still out there, but..."

But his father's on the run from something he couldn't explain.

But his mother is suffering because of the same thing that turned all these bodies into monsters.

And it was years ago. Years.

     His arms shake when Alexis pulls him into a hug. He doesn't resist. The wind's been knocked out of him. And so he does what anyone else would do upon learning... That.

He sobs. He cries into her shoulder.

But who wouldn't?

...

    But there is a vault here. James had made that abundantly clear in his notes. And it just so happens that a certain psychic completely bypassed the need to decipher the lock. Likely because the door wasn't opened properly, the vault itself is pitch black except for the light August brings with him... And one other source. The inside is almost disappointing, in a way. It's certainly large, and home to a good deal of treasure. There are more weapons here, possibly to ensure that those operating the control room had a means of defending themselves. The walls humm with activity, and appear to be server racks or some other set of computing hardware. But the most curious object is at the very back of the chamber; a strange device that contains a glass cylinder, inside which is something that looks like a glass marble. Cables snake up and down from the top and bottom of the cylinder and reach for- but never quite touch- the bead.

    It gives off its own light. A calm, blue-white glow, which neatly illuminates the incredibly complex network of lines criss-crossing its interior. Electricity arcs from the sphere to the tendrils, as data scrolls down a monitor inlaid into the containment device. The cylinder is removable, apparently. It's just sort of... socketed in there.

    ...Upon closer inspection, it's clear that there are dozens more of these devices stretching out in either direction, but all of them are lifeless; either the cylinders contained within are shattered, or are missing entirely.

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    Mel finally stands herself up straight again, and turns to look at Will and Maaka for a moment before just... looking away. She's got that handled for now, and he needs it. So for the moment, she's gonna head into the vault.

    After a few moments of digging, she comes out with a personal communicator not at all dissimilar from a smartphone, holds it up, and taps the screen. The light it puts out isn't all that great compared to a proper flashlight, but it's something, at least. Enough to get her in there, where she can approach the glowing blue... energy core? Data core? Containment cylinder? She's not sure.

    "Hey, Catnip 5000, could you c'mere a sec? Want to see what you can make of this."

William Pauwel has posed:
    Firelight illuminates the pit, because August's idea of a thorough investigation is to shoot fire into mysterious places to see what's inside. Just as Maaka's flare did, he would see a number of different conduits and pipes that seem to have been drawn away or disconnected from some kind of central object. Along the walls of the cylinder, there are what appear to be rail-like tracks that lead all the way into the depths below.

Rory White (673) has posed:
That form of address is quite a bit much! In fact it takes Rory White a few moments to realize Mel's addressing... her. because Rory White was so thoroughly scanning through the revealed vault - shining lights on everything that sprout from her body as she goes along too - that she was taking it VERY slow.

    But she does turn to Mel... and quickly bounds over.

    ... which brings her to the matter of the... crystal?

    "The intricacy and the lightshow suggests that it's either used for data storage... or an artificial neural network. This is also similar to a device Will showed me that I believe was a q-bit communicator. Quantum entanglement. My guess is one of the three... we'll have to examine what it's CONNECTED TO!"

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    "Jeez, quantum entanglement... even back where I come from, that's not cheap, /or/ housed in anything this small." She blows out an impressed breath. "I'll let you do that part, you've got a better head for tech than me." Leaving that to Rory, the PsiMarshal turns to head back into the main room, just as August is preparing to make a Dumb Decision. All on his own? That's just not acceptable.

    As she walks past one of the desks, the flat surface rips itself right off the supports, casually dumping any terminals still on it. It floats alongside Mel until she reaches the hole in the middle, whereupon it floats over the hole at precisely the right height for she and August both to step onto. "Going down, ground floor. Spiders, mysterious rails and possible escape routes." Looks like she's going down there after all - it does seem to be the only way out.

August Kohler has posed:
Damn it, why won't anyone let anything horrible happen? What are they, good people?

As Mel makes them an elevator, August just looks at it, looks at her, and steps on it quietly replying. "Thanks." And then, waits for the descent. Too bad there's no music.

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    "No kidding." Maaka muses. "Back home you need a computer the size of a buick to handle that level of programming. Not exactly something you can stuff in a rock." She says, before she lets go of William. However, she does remain close in case he needs further support. That's why she's here, after all.

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    Maaka is stopped from backing off because of Molly. She wiggles weakly in protest, but she just sighs and takes it. "Y-yeah...she's actually right for once." She mutters, not believing her own words.

Starlight Bandits has posed:
    Is it hug time? Because Molly is all about hug time! She wraps Will and Alexis in her arms and HUGS! She's viciously strong despite her size and actually tries to arch her back to lift them both up. "Get all those tears out now William~! That way, when you see them again, you can greet them with a smile!"

    But, Mel is here to provide a means of descent. "Thank you madam! We'll be sure to list you in our tales as our elevator attendant!" Irvine says, without a trace of mockery in his voice to Mel. Clearly, this is a great honor! He gives Molly his hand to help her onto the desk before stepping on himself. What a gentleman.

William Pauwel has posed:
SORRY AUGUST, PEOPLE CARE TOO MUCH ABOUT YOU.

    Mel is able to tear one of the desks out of the ground easily enough (they ARE anchored in there, just a little bit) and sails both August and herself down into the depths of the earth. The shaft is... Expansive. It goes down a very, very long way, and as August said, there are indeed what look like rails that reach from the bottom of the shaft up to right where the thing terminated in the room above. The conduits that fed into the shaft are more obvious, now. Many of them appear to be enormous cable bundles, all fiber-optic in nature. Others look like they were used to carry some kind of fluid-- a coolant, maybe?

    Regardless, it isn't long until they reach what seems to be the bottom of the shaft. It's... Actually kind of cramped. The whole floor is only about a meter larger in radius than the hole they jumped down into. Looking closely downward, there's what appears to be a key-card face-down on the floor.

The air seems... Damp, down here.

Upon closer inspection, there appears to be panels inset into the walls; it looks slightly ajar, and large enough to fit a particularly short man.

    Meanwhile, up above, Will is being hugged and comforted by not one, but two women. His eyes would be bulging at Molly's sudden bout of titanic strength, but he's busy wiping the tears away. "...I'll-- I'll be okay. I'll be okay." He doesn't sound okay. "We can... We can do this when we're out, okay?"

"I just... I just need a second," he sniffles, "I'll be okay."

    In the Vault, Rory is busy examining a staggeringly advanced piece of technology. It appears to be some kind of... Diagnostic tool. A very specialized one. The readout on the screen is largely in machine-code; it's running simulations, testing computational power, decision-making, and fine-tuning parameters where they fall short.

Apparently it's been doing this for...

...Several hundred years.

It had finished around a thousand ago. It's probably safe to abort and remove, if she keys in the command.

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
She now looks concerned here but she's not close enough to will o give him what he needs nbad there is still the vault which a certian psychic get the lock popped and she watches what happens next. She'll take a more closer look and see only one thing remaining the others are all off line it looks like.

"So do we grab it or do we leave it? Will it's yout call on this. and ... I understnd Will."

<<Rory need a hand with that?>>

Kotone will move to catch up with her long time friend to see if she needs any help with it. She'll come in to take a closer look and seriously wonders what the heck have they dug up?

Rory White (673) has posed:
"... It couldn't be..." If Rory White wasn't as adept as she was at analyzing machine code on the fly, this would be largely useless gibberish. As it is however... the feline's optics flash with interest. Matter ripples across its shoulder, extending into a long, thin limb with simple digits with which she begins carefully tapping keys.

    Directives: 'End test.'

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    And the ground floor they have reached. Mel steps off, and opts to leave the loose panel to August; she herself takes a look around the bottom of the shaft itself, then holds out her hand towards the keycard. Unless there's something preventing it, she'll pull it up into her hand, shake off any dust, and give it a curious look-over. "But what the hell did they house down here, though? It looks like this was a holding shaft for something so they could raise and lower it, but... I mean, yeah, the 'something' is gone, but so's the apparatus to raise it. That's weird."

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    Wheeeeeeee

    Maaka stays stone still as Mel carries them to the ground floor, letting August handle the panel. She looks around, landing at the bottom as she kneels down. "Hmmm...bit small for my size, maybe we could get Kotone through here?" She wonders, helping pry the panel right off, assuming it leads to any tunnel.

William Pauwel has posed:
    Rory deactivates the test-computer. Fortunately, with her familiarity with computers (being a stunningly advanced one, herself), she can decipher the code structure well enough to give the right command. The capsule pops loose, the little sphere at its center glowing faintly as the energy feeding into it is removed. Apparently it has an independent power source too? How strange.

    Down in the shaft, Mel has picked up a keycard! Like any proper investigator in these sorts of situations, she turns it over to see who it belongs to. There is no hole for a crank on the other side. Instead, there is a rather pale-looking individual who is... not QUITE human. His features are too compact for that, his skin far too pale. But it does read a phrase Mel would recognize: 'Chief of Maintenance.'

    The panel comes away easily enough when Maaka lifts it away. There is indeed a tunnel there! The air coming from it also smells damp. Damp in a somewhat earthy, vaguely... salty sort of way.

Starlight Bandits has posed:
    Down in the hole, Irvine peers into the briny blackness beyond the hole! "Aha! Surely this is how... that man got out!" he exclaims. Holes echo, and he doesn't want to say anything Will might overhear. "If you'll all pardon me, I'll check it out."

    And without even waiting, he's climbing in and wriggling to get through!

    Meanwhile, upstairs, Molly nods to Will, and produces an embroided handkerchief, wipes his face with it and pressing it to his nose so he can blow it. How motherly she is.

Rory White (673) has posed:
The only problem with the crystal being loosed to... do what it's supposed to do now is... Rory White has no idea wHAT exactly that is. Others here are now focused on further exploration, but she's found something that her entire principle demands she devote full attention to.

    If there IS an AGI here, it's her moral duty to see to it than they don't languish in a forgotten facility, trapped and doomed to insanity. They'll need... mobility. A community. A purpose if they don't have one already.

    So for now, the robo-kitty seats herself in front of the 'AI Core' as it's been described...

    "... Who knows if that's equipped with a microphone.. can you hear me?"

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    "Hey, guys, I found the maintenance keycard." Mel looks straight up the shaft, thoughtful. "Wonder if it'll open the blast doors. If it does, I can get us out of here." She pockets it, then turns to watch Irvine do his thing. "...Gonna be alright in there, man?"

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa looks to Rory for a moment and she moves up to help her firend with getting it out of here. "Wo what do you have here an ai of some sort? Rory? Think we can hook it up to VR space once we get out of here and try to talk to it in infomorph form? I'd be willing to work with you on that, also need me to carry it till we get out and you get something with hands again?" She hears they may have found some other things as well.

William Pauwel has posed:
    Irvine has boldly decided to brave the depths of the maintenance tunnels. He quickly finds that they are... Dark. Tenders are highly light sensitive organisms, and their preferred environs are rather dim overall. But there is still a thin contrail of light that leads ahead, past a number of side-passages even more cramped than this one, and around a distant corner. If he follows the light, that damp scent-- the scent of water-- would only grow stronger as he presses on, but he soon finds himself at an impasse! Or rather, at what appears to be a field of amber energy set up in the middle of the tunnel, and behind that, a set of bulkhead doors similar to the one up above. Almost certainly a security measure.

Conveniently, there is a panel with a card reader nearby.

    Up above, Will is released from Molly's warm, motherly hug with red eyes and tear-streaked cheeks. The handkerchief helps with most of all of that, and he sniffles into it when offered. He looks... Tired. Emotionally drained, probably. But at least he also doesn't look like he's about to break down. "...Thanks, Molly," he sniffs, "I... I needed that."

    In the vault, Rory busily stares down the glowing marble. It doesn't appear to respond to her address, at least at first. But then, after a moment, it... Pulses, emitting a low, droning sound with every flash of activity. A split second later, that same sound is echoed from outside. One pulse, then another from out of the vault.

Will blinks at the noise. It sounds again, unusually close by. He rubs furiously at his eyes and then grabs for the weapon at his hip.

He draws the Solano.

It pulses, and drones.

August Kohler has posed:
August was debating crawling into that tunnel, but before he could decide, Irvine did! Well, let's hope he doesn't get hurt. Instead, August stands to the side, waiting to crawl in and aid him if needed (he's fairly short, 5'8). But then, there's noises.

And as those noises occur, August moves onto the elevator. "Can we have an elevator going up, please?" The Tin Soldier meanwhile, unable to get up there on his own, begins tapping his foot to invisible elevator music. Except he doesn't produce sound, so really, his non-gun foot is just wiggling.

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    "Hey, how's it going in there?" Mel calls into the service crawlway. "Find anything?"

    She turns to look over her shoulder at August, then upward, and frowns. "Uhh... shit, I don't want to leave him down here alone." She looks to Maaka next. "Will you be alright down here with him?"

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    Maaka hears something coming. She draws her Kama and nods to Mel. "I got this, go ahead." She says, before she looks toward where she hears the noise. "The hell is that sound anyway?"

Starlight Bandits has posed:
    It's dark! But Irvine isn't afraid of the dark at all as he pushes through. Eventually, he reaches the end, somehow seeing the card reader immediately. He starts to wiggle back, until his hand is poking out. "That card please!" He wriggles his fingers for Mel to pass it to him.

    Meanwhile, back up top, Molly just smiles at Will into he produces the glowing, droning gun. She gasps. "I know what that is! That's... Irvine calls it the 'light of destiny.' Oh William, I knew you were destined for great things!" No sense of danger in this one.

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    Mel blinks. "The card? Yeah, sure, here." She hands it over to Irvine, before stepping onto the tabletop again and giving Maaka a nod. "Just give a yell if anything goes weird." She waits for August to hop on, and then starts taking them straight up to the top.

August Kohler has posed:
The Tin Soldier keeps foot-wiggling as the elevator rises. It only stops when August starts moving towards Will, the robot-man following along and running over to him. "Will? Put down the gun. If that thing's overloading, we need to get out of here." The Tin Soldier then proceeds to point his gun all around at everyone near Will, and fire! Nothing comes out except for the feeling that you are way sturdier. Defense buffs!

Starlight Bandits has posed:
    Upon receiving the card, Irvine immediately wriggles back in to use it on the scanner. Fingers crossed!

William Pauwel has posed:
    "The light of... destiny?" Will repeats. He stares down at the inner light flashing through the framework of his favorite firearm and knits his brow in thought. Now, ordinarily, he wouldn't be the type to believe in destiny, necessarily. Bit with all that's happened so far- the GPS leading him here, finding a /command center,/ his father's journal, and now... This.

"...Destiny, huh?"

August fires. This backfires, because Persona Defense Buffs don't care about physical or mental attacks, so all he does is STRENGTHEN WILL'S RESOLVE.

    "...Yeah, I think so," he says to Molly and gives just a little hint of a smile. He moves away, approaching the door to the vault, as the pulsing light grows stronger. Will lifts the Solano to the door as it... Comes apart. But not in the 'exploding' way or the 'spontaneously dismantles' sort of way. Rather, the gun's construction comes apart, suspended in a field of crackling energies to reveal a set of strange rings deep within its mechanisms.

    Tiny crystalline fragments within pulse and extend the halo of energy towards the gem in Rory's tendrils. It lifts away with a crackle of power and seems to be tugged through the air by that strange, energetic aura. With a final pulse, it settles into the rings and knits the gun back together.

There's a moment where everything goes quiet.

And then the Solano bursts with a sudden wave of brilliant, but ultimately harmless energies. Will shields his watery eyes as it passes, but when it does, the Solano is...

Well, it's visibly identical to what it once was.

...But.

...

    MEANWHILE! Irvine takes the key-card. He swipes the key-card! The energy field dissolves with a quiet *pop* shortly before the bulkhead behind it begins grinding open, revealing a... A cave. But not just a cave. The sound of rushing water is unmistakable, and if he steps out onto the ledge beyond, he'd find himself staring down what appears to be an underground river system, leading inexorably outward to the distant sounds of some mighty cascade.

...Unfortunately, it also seems like they might have to swim down-river.

Or, you know, improvise a boat.

Rory White (673) has posed:
With the crystal ZOOMING OFF, Rory bounds after it at maximum speeds without getting TOO reckless. Just in time to see it merge with the Solano and... ?!?!?!

    Well. That was... unexpected....

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    Well.

    Maaka is about to level her gun at the crystal core, and suddenly Solano falls apart. "The -fuck-?"

    She stares in befuddlement as she watches the gun fall to pieces, before it knits itself back together, as if by magic. She is past the point of words here, and at this rate anything's possible.

August Kohler has posed:
August did a thing! It wasn't what he intended, but it was a thing! He moves to barrel Will out of the way when everything begins glowing, but before he can intercept, it's all over. He intercepts anyways, with the Tin Soldier tackling Will and his fancy new gun to the ground. "Will! Are you alright?"

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone Yamakawa help Rory where she can but also does hear something is coming, she has her weapon out and notes to her friend. "Sounds like something's on it's way. We should make ready for it." She now is mkeeping with the group. she watches in awe as Will somehow tkae his gun apart and start to work with it. Then she watches the crystal she gazes on in awe at the whole thing. She's neve seen anything like this before. "Woah..."

Starlight Bandits has posed:
    Hey, it opens! Irvine wriggles back out and shouts out, "I've found a way out! It might be a bit damp, but it'll certainly lead outside!" Meanwhile, Molly is agog with amazement as Will's gun seems to be a magic gun! "William, are you a chosen one~?"

William Pauwel has posed:
    As the light dies down, Will draws his arm back from where it was protecting his eyes. The Solano crackles, an arc of lightning leaping briefly from the barrel to the floor. "...Uh," he says vaguely in the direction of his weapon and clutches the journal a little more tightly to his chest. "That was kind of... something?"

    He's about to say more, but then suddenly he's TACKLED TO THE GROUND by a mechanical hessian. Will makes a pretty solid impact, but the gun itself doesn't leave his hands. A solid grip is an important trait for a gunslinger. "Ow! August, what the heck're you doin'--"

A voice, hollow and tinny and otherwise largely devoid of any real inflection.

                      --==CORE PROCESSOR RESTORED==--                      
                      --==DATA INTEGRITY VERIFIED==--                      
       --==MAIN SYSTEMS: CONDITION YELLOW. MAINTENANCE REQUIRED.==--        

    "..." Will sniffs, rubbing again at his nose, but his eyes look more focused, now. He has something to focus on. "I," he says, only mildly disbelieving, "I think my gun is talking." He glances over towards Molly, and looks VERY CONFUSED. "I... Don't think so?"

He's just a guy with a gun!

    But more importantly than ANY OF THAT, Will hears Irvine's cry and jolts upright. "R-right. Let's get out of here." He starts to go, but then... Turns and moves to gather up what remains of his father's belongings.

...Can't just leave them here, after all.

"So, um," he asks at the Bandits. "Y'all have that teleport stick, right? Couldn't we have just... used that to leave whenever we needed?"

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    After Rory did all that talking about AI, Mel is not taking any real chances.

    She walks over to Will as he's gathering his father's things, leans down a little, and goes, "Hey. Hey, you. Can you hear us? Can you talk? Are you sapient, or just a particularly smart OS?" She's talking to the gun directly.

William Pauwel has posed:
Okay Mel talking to a gun is a little bit weird but-- "YES. YES. YES. NO."

Oh. Well, that answers that.

Will kind of stares at his gun like he's not entirely quite sure how to handle this situation.

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
R    Maaka stares at the gun. "...your gun's talking." She says, baffled. AI in guns isn't exactly something even SHE is expecting, though to be fair, that's mostly because nobody thought of it.

    She sighs, shaking her head before she heads for down to join Irvine in the tunnels.

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    Mel is quiet for a few seconds, then adds, "Are you a smartass?"

Rory White (673) has posed:
Rory White decides to speak up. "Wait, let's not leave just yet. We'd have a hard time getting back and there's still a few things to go over. Plus, this AI may have very useful information." She refers to them impersonally, but the AGI's tone still conveys a bit of respect.

    "Hello. AGI of the weapon, please identify yourself? I am Rory White, a researcher and engineer. The one who activated you, in fact."

William Pauwel has posed:
The Solano seems to consider Mel's question for a moment, before replying: "I do not possess a posterior."

So, 'yes,' probably.

Rory asks a question, herself. The gun answers, which is normally lethal, but in this case is not. "I am the Core Processor Unit administrating Terminal Judgment. 'Judgement' is an appropriate name."

Kotone Yamakawa has posed:
Kotone is just sititng back now it seems Will's gun has an ai or some some sort and it's taken the name judgment it also seems to be sane too from it's long time left here deep in the earth. That is good news it's not ranting baout the end of flesh. "Hello Judgement, I am Kotone."

William Pauwel has posed:
"I am Judgement. Greetings." At least it's polite enough to respond to casual conversation! Will frowns a little bit as he collects up the rest of James' belongings, "Well, I've been calling y'all Solano for years now, so--"

"I am Judgement."

"...This is gonna be an interesting relationship."

Mel Brock (941) has posed:
    "Not an unsolvable dilemma, here," Mel points out. "Just think of Judgement as a passenger inside the Solano. Judgement can be Judgement, your gun can still be Solano. Problem solved."

William Pauwel has posed:
There's a pause. "Acceptable, I suppose." Judgement replies. It beeps twice. "As long as the 'Solano' is restored to full functionality as soon as possible." Will shrugs at Mel and the gun and THE WORLD. "...Well. I was intending to... work towards that, at some point."