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Starbound Flotilla     Amalgam, or as it was previously known, Epsilon Maiia Minoris IV a. This planet, full of dense forests and sparsely covered with small bodies of water, is what the moon claimed by AMATERASU Lunar Mining Facility 01 orbits (which would, of course, be Epsilon Maiia Minoris IV b). As such, it is the logical place to begin one's expansion. The region they've chosen is a small valley, a pleasant little spot that's neighboring the old site of the Glitch exodus that the Flotilla members caused last time.

    Noteworthy here is that the trees are multicolored, and bear massive flowers in lieu of proper leaves. Also noteworthy are the sparse bits of Glitch ruins that dot the small valley. The valley itself isn't too steep, and the sides can be easily climbed. The regions around the valley, the area at its base, and the regions below are designated for the construction today. A teleportation beacon, alongside an artificial warpgate, have both been established here; arrival won't be tricky in the least! There's already a small outpost setup; so far, much of the development area of the colony has been flattened effectively, several residential areas of varying aesthetics and types are set up, there's a near-complete power grid wiring them up, recycling areas in progress, and a basic craftworks area mostly complete.

    Today the group's off over near one of the under-construction areas next to the craftworks. Shipping and receiving! Guided invited from or through the warpgate, or from their residential area, the group will find the beginnings of a shipping rail leading into the valley walls, and into cave systems beyond. They'll also find the Starbound Flotilla, at work on construction!

    Pavo is the one who greets them. "Ahoy mateys! Avast, we be here for harder work today. Sailin' the bullion from the mines off to the refinery we're gonna get set up ain't an easy task. Core Fleet's job, we'll be layin' the rails, settin' the supports, ye don't worry for all of that. Yer job, get in there and figure what's ahead of us. If it's dangerous, ye get it outta the way, if there's profit in it, ye take it." She says, already at work on laying down rails heading for the excavated cave entrance.

    Moonfin also guides the group to the excavation entrance, and handles handouts of drilling equipment and lighting packs to those who may request or need them. "I provide, now, a singular and simple warning. Those of you who are veterans in assisting us, you will recall the frequency with which we find difficulty and unusual challenge. I will summarize the risk thusly: All inhabitable portions of the galaxy are densely packed with the detritus of old influence or the remains of ongoing influence, sourced to the rapid spread of civilizations. Expect to find something wrought by the hands of thinking beings, and expect it to prompt curiosity, offer value, or provide threat, but rest assured that this will be no instance of boring spelunking."
Sarah Parsle Hey look, it's a job.

Sarah LOVES jobs. Things have been super boring lately. This is why she's arrived at the Amalgam colony, looking around at the trees. "Those things are crazy. Do they make people go blind with how stupid bright and colorful they are?" Sarah asks facetiously. She shuffles along, looking over the construction of the colony and squinting here and there. "Hmm." She says noncommittally, before approaching Pavo. "Sup." She says to the Avian. "Avast ye captain, here to man the poop deck and all that jazz." She turns and takes a drill and light from Moonfin, nodding. "So we get rid of dangerous stuff and we get to loot. Sounds solid and straightforward to me."

She then gestures to Moonfin. "So make someone else go in front. Got it."

There is a low, slightly cruel chuckle as she looks back at the others present, measuring them up. "Looks like we're going to be fine. Lots of people to handle things. My confidence level is set to 'moderate tragedy with a chance of lack of disappointment.'"
Alexis Maaka     Kaz is busy hanging out back at base, doing some code work to figure out the defense grid for the new colony base he and Maaka are setting up. Maaka meanwhile is present for the briefing, sipping her canteen while her helmet's unfolded. THe cyborg nods, listening intently before she gives Moonfin a grin. "This ain't new to any of us, mate, if anything comes our way we'll figure it out. But yeah, best we be careful while scouting this place out." She says, hopping off her seat and loading up her EM coilgun.

    The rifle makes a satisfying *CLICK* as the bolt slides home, and the cyborg's helmet folds into place while her voice takes on a more synthesized tone. "This place'll definitely make my camo look interesting." She muses, noting the multicolored trees. It looks like some sort of weird space fairy tale forest out here, no doubt covered in nasties lurking about within the darker parts of the woods.

    It's best she gets this out of the way, after the shenanigans she got into on New Years she needs to get her stride back. That hangover was a bitch, even for a cyborg.

    Without further delay, Alexis begins to head through the entrance, activating night vision after she slings a drill over her back for later, rifle in hand as she begins to explore.
Nozomi Houken     A day of building was interesting for Nozomi; she's gotten herself a small home away from home, with... admittedly next to nothing in it. But it's something! It's hers. That's important. Today, however, is a day of something she's a little more used to: exploration! Dangerous exploration. Adventure. Something Taiga is good for!

    "I am well-suited to a scouting role," Taiga declares, glancing briefly at Sarah. He quickly ambles to the front of the pack, his sensors fired up and sweeping the cavern ahead as he ambles along. Nozomi, on the other hand, stays closer to the back of the group, where she'll be safe.
Eiko     Kono Eiko, syndicate member, recent invitee to the Flotilla and Adventuring Gal, is here today. Whether it was posted up one place or another doesn't matter too much. She's got a good, gut feel for fun, profit, and experience to be had. Connections, maybe, too. She can occasionally (frequently) use that kind of thing. Seems like there might be some familiar faces showing up, probably! Familiar voices, at least. Like Sarah's. May also have seen the back of her head while she wandered off to hunt a dragon. That cynicism definitely sounds like she's heard it before, anyway.

    "'Sup." This greeting is offered freely and regardless of familiarity. And to Pavos in particular, "Lot of potential profit in areas nobody's been to in ages. I like it." To Moonfin, "Right, gotta keep our guard up." That's another thing to remember when you're going in without reading the guide. She'll take some equipment, limited only by what she can reasonably carry. She's got tha backpack of hers with stuff in it and her sword, like usual. Her plasma gun's hanging from her waist this time, in easy reach.

    "Looks like we got someone on point already, no worries." she says to Sarah, when Maaka heads in. She's content to lag behind a bit, drawing and checking over her gun. The look of the planet doesn't, for whatever reason, get much comment from her. Taiga is a lot more interesting to her, maybe as a foreground/background focus thing. "Alright, cool. I'll just keep watch on your girl, big cat." And to Nozomi, "'Sup." After a moment, "What're you equipped with when you're not on Taiga, anyway? Need anything?"
Rory White     "A straightforward goal. We're using.... a train? Really?" It makes sense, when she thinks about it. But imagining it... that's the hard part. Going from flying around in spaceships to constructing train tracks. That's quite a shift!

    So says Rory White, standing near the others and wearing, well... nothing. Her current body needs no clothing. About five and a half feet tall, the sleek, somewhat feminine form of her Morph features a pearly white exterior that gleams in the sunlight. Large circuit-like lines flow up and occasionally zigzag around on it. these? Glow a faint blue. the same color as her long hair, although she's bound it up in a ponytail. Rather refreshing change of appearance!

    The body's clearly robotic, although that might be somewhat intentional. Although quite sleek, sections of the legs, arms, and torso are sunken or raised outwards at hard angles. Although it appears as armor, this is in fact skin. not that there's anything to hide.

    "That does seem to be the standard warning, Moonfin." Rory answers smoothly, resigned to the fact that yes, all expeditions seem to take turns for the worst. Which is why several weapons are clamped directly to the Flexbot's arms and legs. She's only brought a few Saucers for obvious drones though! they float just overhead.
Staren     Staren showed up early to get some work done assembling the industrial-scale fabber. The craftworks now has a great big box in it, which is of very little use without the metals and other materials to actually /make/ things from.

    After getting all excited, then realizing this and throwing a tarp over the thing to keep off any rain, Staren's been starting to assemble some kind of large, like maybe 10-15ft tall if it were finished, crude wooden statue with his matter manipulator.

    Just before mission start time though, Staren uses the teleporter, and comes back around the same time everyone else does, wearing his armor and carrying several belts and torcs with little air tanks on them. "As we're going underground into an enclosed space, I do have some light environment suits if anyone's concerned about toxic gasses or lack of air or anything like that... I dunno if Murasame corp actually demands we follow safety procedures though, or even what their rules are..." He just sort of sets them down in a pile nearby, then turns to look at Moonfin.

    "Your galaxy is certainly an... interesting one. I suppose if anyone's prepared for it though, it's... well, you and us."

    Staren shrugs at Rory. "Why not? A train is just a wheeled vehicle on a track. I was thinking that if we ever had any other worksites, a train between them might be a good idea anyway."
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa was excited today, it would be a double adventure for her really, exploring a new world some more and some things about herself at the same time. She's geared her selfg up and is ready to go. She's with Rory White though Kotone's wearing much as she normally does? She's a bit taller, and her face is quite differnet from the one that everyone knows her with. She seems in good spirits as she lookjs over the morph that Rory is wearing.

"Sounds like a stadnard run."

She's long got how crazy things can get and she grins widely for a moment as she notices Eiko has also arrived and she waves to her.

"Hey good to see you again Eiko!"

Kotone's voice is unchanged but just what /has/ she been up to?

She seems pretty chipper she notices SArah and Alexis are on board today as well. This day was going to be anything but boring she thought.
Corona Arclite Corona Arclite is a bit slower than others getting to the meeting point, because she had to swing by where said foundry was being built to drop off the equipment she had gathered from back home, hauled in with her steam powered utility truck. Which also had a payloader plow on the front which might come in useful later for clearing out land. But that's not we're interested in right now.

All the real action is over here, Corona ambling up with her breaker already slung against one shoulder. Shotgun and several tools close at ready hand, while anything else has been stashed away in her manipulator. "Looks like this li'l venture is ready fer a humdinger lyin' ahead."
Starbound Flotilla     Maaka and Taiga are the first ones in, and between them, get a pretty solid understanding of the underground formations based on how things seem initially. Around this world, it seems, underground formations involve a lot of post-non-natural fluid erosion, so there winds up being a whole lot of really weird verticality to the navigational process. A grappling hook or other vertical movement tools will be a giant help.

    There's signs of construction -- heavy girders rooting something in place, the chemical signatures of gradual metallic decay -- in the direct path of the rails, so it's possible that something's in the way. Alongside that, there's also the noise of beasts from a lower, but somewhat convenient sort of indirect path that might bend just to the side of the rail system. Gotta pick where to head, since they won't be making /two/ rails!

    Also notable: Hostile wildlife, and a fair bit of it. Some kind of weird three-eyed multi-jawed spider-like creature colony populates the area between the excavated entrance and the start of the construction or the denser beast hives. When made aware of the spelunkers, they spit sprays of spikes at them. What lovely wildlife. Pretty flimsy carapaces, though, easy to put them down.
Alexis Maaka     Just before she vanishes behind a facemask, Alexis shoots Kotone, Rory, and Corona a friendly grin in greeting before she heads off to scout. The TAIGA unit seems like a good egg to work alongside, so she doesn't mind a little support from the robo-tiger. "C'mon, kittycat, let's go hunt." She begins to head into the cavern proper, slinging her rifle and beginning to get her grapple gear together.

    "Hey, you good for climbing by chance?" She asks TAIGA, motioning to her grappling wire before SPIDERS appear! "Guess that'll have to wait." She says, drawing her PDW. The 6mm machine pistol fires off a couple bursts at the creatures, Alexis going from spider to spider with each burst. "Lovely. Shoulda brought a flamethrower while I was at it." She mutters, seeking cover from the spikes.
Sarah Parsle "Yeah, lots of people here. That's good." Sarah replies. Syndicate members get waves of acknowlegement as usual, as Sarah readies up and proceeds in with the group. Staren, however, gets a wave from Sarah. "Hey, got anything in 'little kid' size?" She asks. She'll wear whatever he provides, at least. Not using protection when it's made available in her mind is just stupid.

Corona gets a glance too. "Humdinger? Do people still say that?" She chuckles though. She's not going to give someone with a shotgun /that/ much sass.

Once in the caves, Sarah holds up a light and tries to keep things pointed at points of interest. She glances around, examining the area intently as they punch through the small fries and get to the decision point. "Looks like something might have collapsed in here. We should be careful." Sarah supplies. "Anyone have doohichies for checking this out? Also, we need to pick which way we're gonna go. The other way sounds like it's full of things you guys need to murder. Opinions?"
Nozomi Houken     "Quite capable, yes. I am feline, after all," the TIGER unit replies to Maaka, digging his claws into the rock slightly in demonstration. Nozomi might need some help making the vertical descents, though if no one else can offer it, she can always just get a lift down on Taiga's back. Regardless, it's possible for both to continue on, so they do. When it comes to hostile wildlife, the mechatiger is quite well-equipped to handle it indeed. Sprays of spikes are responded to with glimmering yellow energy shots, at least until the robotic predator can dart in close enough to rend with claws and teeth. And it's because he's a robotic predator that Taiga stops at the sounds coming from the lower path, ears turning this way and that in a very organic way. "...another route. I believe I will be splitting off from the main group." Aaaaand leap.
Corona Arclite "People don't?" Corona replies to Sarah with a joking grin. She's well aware her world still uses a lot of slang others have left to the past. Then her ears flick up briefly. "Well now, can't let them have all the fun before we get to work." Admiring Kotone's new swag is gonna have to wait as she makes a short sprint to catch up with the others. And the signs of previous construction beneath the surface.

And the spiders. Can't forget about the spiders.

"Guess we gotta deal with a bit o' creepy crawlies ferst." Though instead of unloading one of her other weapons Corona pulls a metal cube out of a belt pouch, presses a lever to deploy a trio of spikey anchors from one panel of it, and then throws it at the side of the wall. Once it latchs down the whirring of clockworks clickclacks as it unfolds into a small turret that pops off shots at any spiders or other critters that get too close. "That'll keep anythin' from wanderin' up to the surface to hassle the raillayers."
Staren     "It's one size fits all," Staren explains to Sarah, handing her her choice of belt or torc. "Just press the little button, it takes several seconds to sort of grow around you. ...Well, she still says it."

    Staren considers their options. "Well, fighting down here might be dangerous, so I guess we should at least look at the other way, first. But before that: Spiders!" He's startled by their initial attack -- surprisingly few creatures /throw spikes/ as an attack -- it dings his armor some but after that he's ready to dodge. Staren reaches into his bag and tosses a plasma grenade at the assembly of arachnids, and starts looking for some sort of... nest or something to target. Do alien spiders have nests?
Nozomi Houken     To Eiko, Nozomi says, "U-um... I... have a can of mace, Commander Kuroyama requisitioned for me..." with an embarrassed duck of the head. So, in other words, basically nothing. She's not the most well-equipped girl without Taiga, really. There's a reason she sticks to the back.
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa says "I'm thinking of cloaking and spotting, I'm armed well enough for that, Sarah and Staren you want to follw up .... Oh god spiders should not get that big!"

She's already pulling her SMG out and pushing Rorya back a bit to keep her from the spiders. She sees Staren's grneade go off and while she gets a short burst of fire off? She's pulling back as staren suggested. She tries to get back and does seem concerned fore Eiko.

"Corona! Do you have any thing that might be good for squishing spider?"

Why did it have to be spiders? She tracks Corona's movments and keeps alert for more spiders she'll also ping to see if Rory's got tac net set up yet.
Eiko     Rory's a new one, so the robot has an unabashedly curious look-over from Eiko. Staren is unfamiliar until he talks, and Eiko places the voice. Another Flotilla member, good enough. She won't take one of the suits, but it's a considered risk.

    "Yo, Kotone." That face she remembers from the same runs as Maaka, a little ways back. Corona is totally unfamiliar, on the other hand. Huh, a foxlady with an American accent; would ya look at that. Not too long a look, though, since Nozomi's response has Eiko give a rather blank look before patting the girl's shoulder and saying, "Alright, just stick with me." Escort quest mode, engage. Giving the untrained girl a firearm probably wouldn't help much. Might have to work on that later.

    The plasma gun gets put back away for the sake of climbing, since Eiko doesn't have anything special in that regard. Sure, she's very mildly superhuman and adventuring has gotten her in great shape, so she can climb and jump, but she needs both hands free to do much of either. She has rope, but that'd make for slow going, with this group. Just as well she's not in front, with that kind of handicap. She's free to help Nozomi along for most of it, though. Mildly superhuman, and all.

    Given some forewarning, the gun comes back out, and she's a pretty fair shot with it. Thin armor breaks down with a hiss, and the unlucky targets get reduced to so much briefly-glowing green goop. She has to pick her shots carefully, using the extremely uneven terrain for cover. She's not too gung-ho about this part and will only do it as needed, helping cover the back lines.

    "Huh, more stuff to clear out down there, I guess." It doesn't look like the spiders have anything really useful to harvest, so she'll leave that extermination portion to Taiga. "What's the intended route look like? We need to start drilling soon?"
Starbound Flotilla     The spiders are a bit of an inconvenience, but for the combat-capable Elites, they exist mostly as a footnote: 'By the way, this is a dangerous cave!' Their spikes are easy to take cover from, their carapaces aren't up to withstanding most firearms, blades, energy bolts, or grenades. They're also not swarming, but they might, if the group chooses to handle the hive instead of the construction ahead. After several rounds of low-difficulty encounters, they seem to have mostly been scattered to the lower areas. Taiga will be headed there, it looks like! Corona's covered the possible resurgences. Any nest is going to be farther below, likely far enough that they can build over it if they need to.
Starbound Flotilla     Further ahead, in the constructed area that some seem to be voting for, one can see the signs of what look like very lightly decayed... Apex facility? Well, at least, those who know the Apex construction methods would recognize the smooth, tiled futuristic metal that begins to grow more common than the girders as the group advances further towards the construction that's jammed in front of the path of the railways.

    There's an odd sparking noise -- some kind of active power -- further towards the decayed construction, though no lights on. This seems like the edge of something else, though; the group won't have to traverse the whole construction, whatever it is, just what appears to be one small wing of it. Something worth investigating another time, or pushing further into right now, regardless? Up to them. For now, there's a heavy off-white metal chunk of hallway supported on decaying girders blocking the path, and who knows what inside.
Corona Arclite "Take it from an engineer, we oughta check how stable this area is what it's made outta before we decide iffen we're goin' through or around it." Corona sets the Breaker aside for the moment, instead snagging her analyzer device from her belt and flipping it open. "Cuz how well it holds up and iffen it can be dug through is gonna matter." With the other hand, not wanting to risk accidentally smashing something apart, she fishes a tuning fork out of a pouch instead of going for the vibrational hammer.

After a few paces she gives it a light tap on a heel to get the tuning fork vibrating lightly, then crouchs down and smacks it more firmly against the floor. Between her analyzer and her own resonate hearing she should be able to tell how solid the ground the facility was built on is.
Sarah Parsle Sarah opts for a belt. Belts are handy. The environment suit does its thing, and Sarah hauls forward. The ecto-youth deals with attacking spiders by not getting in line of sight to them. She has tanks for that. Despite this, she has set down the drill to one side, getting out what looks like a medical saw crafted from a handle connected to a folded, half-complete jigaw puzzle. The JIGSAW is her current weapon of choice, but it's melee range, so she sticks to sticking and moving.

Sarah nods to Corona as she gives sensible advice. "Awesome." She pokes around at the broken down facility walls, frowning. "This is giving off some prerry strong 'abandoned lab of horrors' vibe. We gonna crack this thing open and loot it, or what?"
Starbound Flotilla     There's a pretty extensive hive down here, which means these aren't really spiders so much as insects of some broader sort. They're getting more numerous, and the hive walling is getting more common, as Taiga descends further and further, but there's a general rate of escalation to it that shows that the core hive isn't too close. It also seems, oddly, to be set off to the side over a bit closer to the location of that neighboring Floran encampment that the drones spotted earlier. And, speaking of Florans, it looks like there's been some excursions down here. Simple arrows lodged in hive walls, spears jammed through insect husks, a few trails of sappy blood leading out... It's a lead! Taiga now knows that this hive is in conflict, in some capacity, with the local Floran tribe. might be worth investigating another time!
Staren     Spiders are easily dealt with! good. And then he stards heading on to...

    A decayed /Apex/ facility? "Hoo boy..." Staren doesn't sound exactly delighted to find this. "I don't like this. But if we don't check it out, it might bite us in the ass later. Who knows what kind of horrible science experiment might be hiding inside, ready to escape as soon as this rusts a bit more?"

    And that's /Staren/ saying this. Seems the last Apex facility he visited /really/ made an impression on him.

    "...Probably better to find out now, though, then have something break loose after we're all set up..."
Alexis Maaka     Once the last of the spiders is taken out, Alexis reloads magazines before she begins to head towards the constructed area. "This looks familiar." She muses, holstering her PDW and brushes some dust from the cavern walls. She hopes to find some sort of sign as to what kind of place this was. She assumes lab, probably got some dark shit deep down inside.

    "Yeah, might be a good call." She agrees with Corona, nodding to the fox-engineer. "I'll take point, see if I can find a route in." She says, before beginning to advance further into the facility with her eyes and ears alert, head on a swivel while she raises her PDW once more.
Eiko     They get past the spiders, and find the much hardier obstacle of a metal hallway. "Huh, future-ruins. Neat." Eiko considers between her drill and her Flotilla-issued matter manipulator. Neither seems like a quick route in, so she moves slightly off just to see if she can climb through some damage and take a quick look inside. She's not totally wandering off--"Be just a minute; either come along or sit tight." To Sarah, "Loot it if it's a good idea. Not enough info yet. Might come back for it later, depends on how far it goes."

    She figures that by the time she's finished taking a look, Corona will have determined whether or not they can break their way straight through it.
Starbound Flotilla     Tune to the foundations and the stone under them... Check... And slam. The waves that reverberate back indicate that the foundation of the cave structure is reasonably solid; it'll last another 40 or so years before strain gets too much. They'll figure something out another time, but it's also not especially resistant to things like excavation explosives.
Rory White     By the time that Rory's reached the cave system, she's decided to swap to a six-legged walker form. The Flexbot changed as she walked. sprouting extra legs from her belly and slowly reassigning mass and machinery. The microbot construction takes time to alter form and relink. In the end though she goes from being a mostly-human-looking-robot girl to... a human-sized mecha-bug with mounted weaponry. A Matter Manipulator for mandibles, one laser mounted on its belly and another on its back. Both have full aiming range.

    TShe reacts to GIANT BUGS with ruthless application of LASERS. Not HOORAY RED BOLTS FLYING THROUGH air lasers. The kind of real science lasers where things just appear to burst into flame for no reason whatsoever.

    Yeah, her lasers are mostly invisible.

    "This is MUCH better for underground navigation. MUCH better. I feel far more stable!"
Nozomi Houken     Eiko sticking close to Nozomi has her looking rather grateful. Staren, on the other hand, briefly gets a look that can best be described as 'quiet terror' - whatever he said to her privately seems to have had pretty much the opposite of the intended effect. But she's still moving along well enough, so that's a good sign.

    Taiga, meanwhile, keeps fighting his way up the tunnel for a good while, but the increasing rate of insect attacks is enough to tell him that he doesn't want to be going too much further on his own. So after clearing a couple of them out, he ambles over to an arrow, 'sniffing' at it for a second or two before pulling it out of the wall with his teeth. He'll bring it back to the rest of the group.
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa is glad to see Eiko here she's been good to run with in the past an she's proven to be fairly friendly, well to the Flotilla at the very least. Kotone is now curious about the ols Apex base they have found. She doesn't take long to get intereted and she looks it over.

"Now this is something I want to check out, but your right Corona. We need to make sure things are stable first before we got loot happy."

She looks to Sarah for a moment.

"Wouldn't be the first time that happened with something related to an Apex base. Still we should clean it out one way or the other. We can make use of anything that's not bad candy in there."

She checks her gear again and starts to see if the lab has any wireless signals she can find and get into.

"I'll see if there's anything I can hook into on this."
Corona Arclite Corona Arclite stands back up, tucking the tuning fork away and making a few notes on her device. "Ah'd reckon avoid using the heavy demo-charges goin' through here, but fer the most part it's got load bearing stability fer quite some time yet." She turns her head to the others. "Iffen someone wanna check the place out, make sure no leftover mad scientist stuff -- no 'ffense, Staren -- comes crawlin' outta it, probably a good idea. Ditto fer that hive down below."

With that settled she adjusts her goggles, and starts moving forward again. Still got plenty of surveying to do, and the sooner they get through it the better. They're going to need those mines up and mining as best as possible for the colony to be a success.
Starbound Flotilla     Eiko checks out the walls. Nothing IMMEDIATELY present in terms of existing breaches, but once she checks a side-cave or two, or breaks out the Matter Manipulator, she finds much more damage that is navigable. It's a bit rough -- jeeze, that is some jagged-ass rebar -- but, conspicuously, it doesn't seem to have been created by anything trying to escape, but rather natural decay and creatures attempting to break through the walls.

    Inside, an utterly dark laboratory area. "TESTING OFFLINE" flickers on and off silently on several screens. Aside from that, most of the hallway chunk that's here looks like a waiting area for something ahead. They can bypass it; others seeking to explore will have the chance to follow along the hallway, with its assorted posters and displays (APE FLU IS NO JOKE, BIG APE IS WATCHING, etc) and get into whatever's past that area. Also furniture! For those needing to furnish their homes with Miniknog Standard Issue Furniture, which even microbial decay refuses to touch.
Staren     Rory's a spider now! "Huh." Staren comments. "That is a neat trick. And a little creepy."

    When Eiko and Alexis go charging in, Staren's quick to follow. As one of the people who encountered the Holo Ones, he considers himself at least /somewhat/ more prepared for what might be inside than some of the others, but really, he has no idea.

    With all the possibilities going through his mind it might actually be something of a /relief/ if it turned out to be killer robots or a physical, shootable monster.

    He also starts looking for a computer terminal or notebook or the like. Anything that might tell what was going on here...
Starbound Flotilla     The arrow that Taiga has can be analyzed later, presumably by folks like Rory. Recently crafted, and more recently used based on the relative decay and chemical interactions between the bits of husk and the rough-hewn metal arrowhead.

    It is hewn out of ship hull alloys. The gleam might be recognized by the astute.
Starbound Flotilla     Alexis, as the Soldier for the scouting here, won't find Eiko's entrance because Eiko gets it first, but she WILL be able to identify all the various points where it looks like turrets are meant to mechanically emerge from the walls. Messing with them now might trip them off... But she'll recognize the danger that might occur when they unfold from the interior surfaces. Important for later. She can map out all the danger points though, for when the facility is fully investigated.
Alexis Maaka $TAlexis frowns intently as she spies what look to be turrets. That's going to make this awkward, but she's come prepared. She picks up a stone from the ground, tossing it towards them to test how effective their guns are while she watches from behind cover. Until then, she begins to make notes on her map. The zone Taiga mentioned gets a big 'NOT GOOD, STAY AWAY' while the turret zone is marked with 'Turret section, good concealment' in her internal map.

    She also begins to look for some sort of connection towards a power box or a mainframe she can hack to disable said turrets, better to be safe than sorry.
Starbound Flotilla     Still some active wireless signals, Kotone can be the one who finds them. No hardpoints, but there's a few stray signals she can find. Abandoned personal wifi is a bit more useless but shows that this place hasn't been manned in a while. More immediately relevant is the facility's own network, with which she can hack out some guest permissions to find the current status. It's on reserve power, several dozen years old, and looks like some kind of mobility and defense technology testing services are still online. The other wings... Very smartly seem to have incinerated everything inside as soon as power failed.
Sarah Parsle Sarah brings up the rear on Team Facility, her light flashing in the darkness as she continues to be dedicated to the basic needs of 'not being goddamn blind'. So it is that she edges around with the others, looking over the tech and nodding. "This could be cool. Staren, anything useful to find out what happened here?" She looks over to Eiko and Maaka. "How are we looking on local defenses? See anything important?" She turns to Corona and nods. "No explosives, got it." She waits for the all-clear before she begins examining the tech in more detail, however. She is one of the more vulnerable people on the team and is allergic to little things like 'rotary laser cannons'.
Staren     "That's what I'm looking for." Staren replies to Sarah. "Didn't these guys take any /notes/?"

    If Kotone's sharing her access, he sees if it can get them a map that might indicate where to look for such things.
Sarah Parsle "Of course not, Staren. That would be /easy/. Did you think we were here to dig up the remains of sensible people?" Sarah snarks back.
Starbound Flotilla     Terminals! Terminals, strewn about on various desks and in side-lab offices further inside the darkened facility, show Staren that there's what appears to be some kind of testing area past the waiting area and initial labs. It's still on reserve power, but apparently there was some kind of pending testing sequence. If they lock in the testing sequence for a brief time, they can pull enough power to grab some of the gear before this wing of the lab self-incinerates the testing materials like Kotone has found the other wings did.

    So, it's sort of a one-way trip. They can access the testing materials, but it will lock them in a testing sequence -- which appears to need resolution through a successful test -- to leave the testing area. As for what happened, it looks like this area was purged rather violently; security records show that most of the inhabitants were slaughtered by what appears to have been some kind of combined force of Floran military (Florans have a MILITARY?) and Ring of Thorns enforcers.
Rory White     The instant the others start getting networking going, Rory's on the case through the Mesh. She starts downloading EVERYTHING into secure quarantine storage (just on the off chance there's any sort of dangerous malware to worry about...). Maps. Footage. Logs. Everything.

    Bug-walker Rory has little trouble keeping up with him, though this mode of locomotion's undoubtedly a little creepy.

    "We can make several assumptions about why a secure, underground testing lab would have self-destructed. Most likely, they were working on something very secretive, AND very dangerous. They were willing to sacrifice all progress for containment?" Rory's unsure. There are several other possible ideas brimming in her mind. But right now she's investigative mode. As one thought thread follows the videos along with Staren, the rest of her's combing the terminal area for any useful evidence like dropped weapons or pieces of them. Analysis might be useful after all!
Staren     "Ah, /Finally/. Here we go." Staren sits at a terminal and gets to work, alerting the others to his findings -- and saving those security videos for later examination. "So... basically, the other wings all self-destructed. This one seems to be in a state where it was about to run a test on some robots or something. After we've stripped whatever else we want... People can enter the testing area in place of robots, try to steal everything they can while still completing the test, and then book it out of here before the place goes up. Or we can just leave the testing area alone." he shrugs. "In any case, it seems there is no /immediate/ danger, at least."
Starbound Flotilla     The turrets... Are actually inactive! As long as Maaka doesn't try to shoot them while they're vulnerable, it looks like they just won't do /anything/. But they are a risk point; it may be a good idea to find some security access and get them deactivated! Or, possibly, have some engineering sorts deal with that. For now, a risk, definitely something to keep in mind, but mmmmmostly okay. It's something to consider in the future tactics.
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa gets a good dela of information which she's quick to share with the rest of the party. She checks over things one last time then moves on, while remianing connected to the system. She'll do what she can though the footage of organized floran soldiers that /worries/ her also the fact there seems to be Ring of Throns mixed up in this too is worrysome. She makes sure to save this on a secure directory on her cyberbrain.

"Sounds like a plan Staren, we loot everything ofuse then run the test, get what we can and get out there. Rory? Staren shall we get to it?"
Eiko     Eiko isn't activating anything on the party and isn't going in too much farther, though she is grabbing some furniture on the basis that she hasn't used this matter manipulator much, and needs some practice with it. Besides, might find a use for the stuff. Then she gets back out of there, to where Corona and Nozomi presumably still are, so they can get to the task of cutting the way through for the railway. Again, looks like matter manipulator work.
Sarah Parsle Sarah listens to the explanation, and frowns. "That's a hell of a thing to happen. Still, if that testing area is designed for robots, you guys are sure as hell going first. I'll bring up the back."

She looks around. "Second, are there any signs of anything that might keep us from bolting during the self-destruct? It would be kind of super inconvenient if the place sealed up somehow." Sarah is already planning to rampantly abuse her Sylladex in order to acquire loot if they actually do this shiz.
Nozomi Houken     Nozomi is still with Eiko, and so now is Taiga. Taiga has a Floran arrow with him, one apparently hewn from starship hull. He looks somewhat smug, somehow.
Staren     "Actually..." Staren looks around. "Since the situation is stable, and we have this much access... I think we might want to look through this data, see what we can find out about the test and the subjects that were /supposed/ to go through it, and yeah, any security measures that might... inconvenience us. We can come back better prepared for the test later. In the meantime..." Staren stands back up. "As you, said, looting!" He starts sucking up any terminals they don't need into his matter manipulator, for later study of Apex technology.
Starbound Flotilla     Corona moves on, which mostly means finding a breach on the opposite wall of the big chunk of hallway. Easy peasy, though. Clambering through won't be any issue, nor, likely, will the bugs on the other side. They continue to be sort of chump-change enemies. Further on in, there's a few points of relevance. The hive is growing way more sparse, meaning that she'll only run into things foraging for food. Additionally, there's the very interesting fact that there appears to be a Hylotl zen garden partway through here, making this a valid node for full construction of a secondary site!

    Unusually, there appears to be a strange carved multi-segmented slab or sealed threshold embedded in a chunk of stone wall. Portions of the cave around it are utterly refusing to interact with digging tools. On the front of it is a complex series of runes and glyphs, irregularly glowing and responding in incomprehensible ways to touch and proximity.
Rory White     "I was about to say! For once we're not in a time crunch. We should investigate the area. Search for credentials with better privileges. Or any evidence that things are more complex than we first thought. There's plenty of time for a full investigation to take full advantage of this discovery! In the meantime... maybe we should leave and scout the rest of the trail? Detour around for now?" Rory offers as she's slinking around the terminals, looking for anything odd.
Sarah Parsle "More prep? I'm in favor of more prep. There's no such thing as being too prepped. Check out all the prepping crap we're going to get done." Sarah turns away, grabbing some random minor Apex decorations. She'll send Noa the BIG APE IS WATCHING YOU poster just to watch him flip out. "Okay, so we've decided we're going around this thing then. Is the other path cleared out yet?"
Eiko     Oh, Taiga's back. And he brought them a present! "Hey, bud. Whacha got?" Eiko takes a look at the arrow, but the only Floran she knows doesn't use arrows, so there's not a lot she'll be able to tell about it. Awfully shiny, though. Doesn't look like flint or iron. "What's that thing made of?"

    Someone else will have to run an analysis on it, of course. In the meantime, she's ready to head on, and encourage anybody else who isn't looting or scanning terminals to do the same. "Gonna need our front people back out in front." And she'll be in the back again, with Nozomi and her plasma gun.
Corona Arclite A few good hammer swings is the most it takes to get any alien spiders out of her way, leaving Corona to wonder if this is like the caverns back on Brimsteel where the nastier critters tend to lurk the deepest. But there will be time for exploring that theory later. Right now she's focused on the surveying job, and use to doing this sort of task solo so it doesn't bother her much that the others are investigating the facility or the hive down below.

A few grapplings to get around the caverns and eventually the foxgirl finds herself at the zen garder. "Huh. Wonder if it's odd that there's so many bits of all the diff'rent races turnin' up here..." Spot looks like it would make a good waypoint... but what's that? She strots over to investigate the slab. Bet Moonfin would like to get a look at this. So she takes a few steps back, pulls out her manipulator, points it at the slab...

And just gets that *tingtingting* sound the manipulator bleeps when it can't actually pick something up. ".. Well, that wasn't expected."

With a huff she flicks open her device again, noting both the zen garden and the slab for later investigation.
Nozomi Houken     "A Floran arrow, if I'm not mistaken," Taiga replies to Eiko. "I don't have any sort of spectral analysis equipment built in, but based on visual identification I believe it to be starship hull. It would be a readily available material." Nozomi looks between Eiko and Taiga curiously, then reaches out a hand. "Ah, Taiga, here... this way, you can go back up front, right...?" The robot turns and gingerly deposits it in her grasp, with a gentle, "Thank you, Nozomi." And then he turns to head out to play the 'armed scout' role again.
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa says "We should take it slow I agree, lets take our time on this but also make sure this way is guarded. We don't want anything on par with the holozombies, breaking out here." Kotone shudders at the vivid memory has remianded with her. She is however trying to get as much informaiton as she can out of the network, maybe even better access. She's also looking about for key cards or other things that might be of use to them for getting more access to things here.

"YEs we can take our time for once."
Staren     After looting Apex technical stuff, Staren catches up. "A zen garden? How many different cultures were /all right on this spot?/ Sheesh..."

    Oh hey. Glowing rune stone. Staren does his best to start systematically moving and poking at the runes, looking for /any/ pattern.

    Of course, it might just be ancient blinkenlights left to screw with people like him... or just meant as a pretty decoration.
Sarah Parsle It's about this point that Sarah shuffles up to join the others. "Hi there, guys. Looks like there's some serious culture clash rolling out down here." She says, nodding towards the zen garden. However, the rune stone immediately triggers Sarah's Puzzle Senses, and she draws over near it, looking it over intently. Patterns, triggers, visual references... "Hey, anyone have a visual reference on these etchings?" She asks the guys with actual local reference databases.
Starbound Flotilla     Rory will find several systems that need heavy cracking to breach. It'll be a while, given the semi-adaptive nature of some of their security systems and the heavy encryption on the files beyond, but it's likely that with several more days of analysis -- possibly via remote access, now that they can establish a relay -- she'll be able to pull some heavy data off of this and get a proper loot session worked out!
Starbound Flotilla     Eiko, of course, as a Veteran Dungeon-Diving Adventurer, has no problem bringing up the back, and with her gun's one-shot-kill on most of these insects, she's able to not just handily progress through behind Taiga, but also clear the path for the Starbounders and their heavy rail-laying. Handy! Quick! Lots of blood. These creatures don't leave much in the way of useful materials, but after the fact, the Starbounders will, as usual, harvest Pixels from them using their recently-killed organic materials. Useful currency! Easily exchanged for credits, or used to print other fun furniture.
Starbound Flotilla     Kotone gets to scavenging! The sections on the opposite end of the lab that this hall leads to are scorched black, blasted to ash and dust by auto-incinerators. But there might still be something to find here! It'll take several hours, most likely, to pull through the piles of ash, but hopefully, despite the Ring of Thorns looting the facility, there'll be some access codes, key cards, and similar materials to find that survived the flashburning.

    Rory is also looking for things! Over here in the unburnt wing, it looks like a combination of Florans eating the dead and Ring of Thorns trying to clear the place wound up losing a lot of the evidence and loot. As for what they were doing? It'll take a while to find the evidence, but an obscure, physical map that Rory might manage to find shows that there was a lot of bioengineering going on. Knowing them, they probably stumbled on some horrible dark secret. Thank christ the rest of this place had the sense to turn it all to ash. There's the distinct, perhaps slightly familiar feeling of secrets better left kept, without risk...
Starbound Flotilla     There's patterns, in the sense that poking one rune or glyph evokes roughly the same results consistently. Whatever puzzle there is here -- and that puzzle sense is right, it IS a puzzle -- is outrageously complex, though. Over here's a glyph that starts a recording of the past four inputs but it's the only way to activate this other segment, and here's one that inverts all activations but can only be used with a ten-input cooldown, over there's one that isn't an input and only activates every other input... It feels sort of like jumping into a puzzle game without a tutorial on one of the challenge levels. This Ancient Challenge Door is a hell of a thing, and even an expert puzzlegamer will still require a very long while to get this done. It does presumably have a victory condition, though, in all the glpyhs and runes being lit...
Corona Arclite Corona Arclite scratchs the side of her head with one hand. "Uh, yeah, Ah reckon Ah'll leave that one to ya sciency types, and stick to solvin' the practical problems."
Eiko     Eiko looks over the puzzle door after they press forward. "That sure is a thing, that will take forever to work out." She's getting a slight feel for it as she watches, but isn't going to sit down and try it now. It's... not nonsense to her, but too much to grasp right away. Since this place doesn't seem too dangerous, she'll go and have a look at the garden-ish area. Haven't seen one of these before.
Staren     Staren keeps notes of puzzle observations, but decides to let Sarah take the lead on this one. He looks around the area again... Could there be something here connected to the puzzle they missed? If not, perhaps he'll head further on for now...
Rory White     A map that talks about bioengineering sections is a grisly find indeed. Rory's manipulator arms bring it up close to her sensors and quickly scan it before she tucks it away for safekeeping. "Bio-engineering. That explains the extreme lengths went to ensure containment. Whatever was being tested on must have been extraordinarily dangerous. That may explain the attack suffered. Given the Ring of Thorns are pirates... their primary interest was probably raiding. I'm not sure if they were successful or not. But they were working with some very strange Florans! Florans are usually more tribal and savage... I wonder if Biteblade can shed more light on this? They're an exception, after all. Maybe there's more."

    But the idea that whatever was here ended up reduced to ashes makes her shudder. After the mess with the Holozombies, and the Erchius statues...

    <This place might be better left alone.>
Sarah Parsle Sarah doesn't seem to be particualrly put out by the absurd ruleset implemented on the door. She looks to Staren for a moment, and then begins to methodically document the operation of each glyph and how it works. "Puzzle door." She says. Staren inquires, but as well as responding over PesterChum she also talks aloud. "All puzzles have at least one solution, so it will inevitably be found. We have to work on basic assumptions. This door exists to A: Keep things in, B: Keep things out, or C: both. If A or C, then it's stupid to make a way to open it at all, therefore we have to assume B. It must have been intended to be opened at some point, therefore there is a methodology that will make sense to whomever put it in."

She continues to take notes, working her way through it as she lays out what is basically a functionality diagram.

Once complete, she picks it up and takes it along. "I'll work this out later. This is basically just an obfuscated logic puzzle, all I need to do is figure out the stupid gimmicks."