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Kyoko Takada     It's not that there was a specific trigger for today. This was just the first opportunity to act on information already gained. Kyoko Takada puts out another call for assistance, though not too broadly. A few people might do better here than an army, so long as it doesn't escalate too far. She makes sure not to voice that out loud.
    An address. She got a lot of other information, some of which she makes available to those responding, but the part she absolutely has to share is the address of Tatsuta Nomura, the cop they've been stalking. It's the best lead she currently has on actually finding the guy, who has otherwise been more slippery than most people, particularly overt law enforcement, tend to be. That all started some time after the big arrest at the docks, along with every other strange thing noted in the data she shares. From the PD, there's been no official statement connected to him, nor has there been a statement about increasing unease and crime in the area, past the usual rumors, which merely grow worse with time and exposure to the Mutliverse.
    "I've never had such a useless stack of data for building a personality profile on someone." As usual, she's communicating over long-distance, succeeding in clandestine meetings via not being physically present. The city is well-populated, and associations between people are hard to keep secret, otherwise. "I've sent the address, along with the rest. If there aren't any answers there... we'll play it by ear. I just know that this isn't something I can leave alone, after getting this far."
    It's an apartment address, in a quieter, but still heavily urban area, judging by a readily available map.
A2     After outright making friends with the Yakuza, who seem like absolute gentlemen compared to herself (or so A2 thinks at the moment, not entirely wrong), the Android had actually received some significant information on this cop, thanks to their eyes and ears everywhere. Ostensible cop, anyways. Not a lot of it was helpful for tracking him down, but it sure was a hell of a lot more useful than nothing, and more importantly, it turns out to be pretty damn good for characterizing and anticipating him.

    Still in dire need of actual clothes instead of an increasingly re-stitched ninja cloak, A2 is on the site first, though she has info to confirm before she commits from her alleyway. "How did you track him down? The intel I got says that he won't stop staying at a different hotel every night. Is this where he's /supposed/ to live but /doesn't/?"
Nozomi Houken     Nomura went silent on them after the big arrest - more than just concerning for the case, this has had Nozomi Houken worried for the man himself. Taiga, too; there's any number of Multiverse-related reasons why he might not be communicating anymore, and none of them are encouraging. So after her other contact within the PD has sent her and Taiga some 'rumors' that paint a picture which suggests Taiga will be of some use? Well, receiving the address from Hibiki prompts a nearly-instant response of 'I'm on the way'.

    Already, Taiga is going down a mental checklist of things to scan for as they approach the apartments. Possession, some combination of replacement and illusion, mental domination, some other form of enchantment - there are just too many possibilities. He'll have to put his sensors to hard work as soon as they arrive. Hell, he's already giving everyone they pass on the street a basic illusion-and-enchantment sweep, just in case.
Starbound Flotilla "Wow, rude."
"That is, I am sure, more the fault of the police than yours, George."
"Still! Wow, rude."
"Hopeful. Well, now we can talk this out properly, right?"
"Mmh. This is a situation of violence."
"Aye, 'tis a worry ye should have. No guarantee who the violence comes from."
"Yeahyeah. Lesss probably gonna fight if jussst one of usss though!"

    And so George is the Flotilla member heading to the apartment, and the others are just waiting on standby in a van nearby. He has a package under his arm, long and well-wrapped, so that it doesn't arouse any suspicion when he heads to the apartment, jabbing a buzzer or hassling someone at a front desk or whatever is best suited to this particular type of apartment. He's just gonna get right up to the front door if he can, and get to knocking.

    Not that he intends to stop at knocking. If A2's worries are founded, and that guy just isn't here right now, he might even be mining-lasering the lock out of his door or something like that. He doesn't intend to fuck around with this situation. Wanted though he may be by the police, it's not like they still have an APB out on him or anything /right now/, so as long as he doesn't draw too much attention or stay in one place very long... Things should be okay, right?
Kyoko Takada     Kyoko answers A2. "What? Yeah, it's where he's supposed to live, for the past few years. Hotels keep their guest lists locked up, so I don't have to access to many of those. I can't tell you if he's there now or not, we can only find that out by looking. Unless you've heard something recent?" It's a safe assumption that the Yakuza didn't share the same info with her, probably because they don't have her number, which is probably because she doesn't want the Yakuza to have her number.
    Taiga will continue to find that a lot of people here register as mildly magical, more so when they're using the common forms of magic, which practically everyone does, off and on. He gets a stronger blip on the radar from spells passing through things like nearby CCTV. The sensors in those cameras aren't as sophisticated as his own, and probably wouldn't pick up any oddities even if they were directed at a certain apartment in the designated building. The reading is unclear; it's less like there's a supernatural entity in there, and more like someone has been using enough magic consistently enough to leave traces all over the walls, to the point that it's leaking out. It's probably not dangerous on its own.
    George walks right up to it. He jabs a buzzer. The buzzer is definitely working, he can hear the ding-dong through the door. He can hear other people, very faintly, but only in the apartments to the right and left. Someone has a very loud washing machine, but not so loud that it should prevent anyone inside from realizing he's there. Either no one's home, or they're just not answering.
Nozomi Houken     "...George?"

    Oh hey, that's the sound of Nozomi Houken seeing someone she knows. She and Taiga have both approached the door as well, only to find a familiar face there ahead of her. "Is no one answering? I'm not sure what else we could... ah, maybe if I speak up, he knows who I am, so..."

    Taiga, calmly saunters up to the door, sits down, and begins scanning 'through' it to the apartment inside as best he can. "Hello, this is the NHK. We are here to collect your monthly license fee. Please open the door." Nozomi just kind of quietly stares at him.
Starbound Flotilla     "Ohhhh, hey kiddo! Good seein' ya! Yeah, you take a crack at it if you wanna." George says, stepping aside to let Nozomi do her work, leaning against the wall and fiddling with the wrapping on his package. If the silence and absence continues -- though there's a solid chance it won't, given Nozomi's reliable likeability -- George pulls out his Matter Manipulator and activates its mining beams.

    He can hear a loud washing machine, and so as it rises and falls in its noises, he can sort of get the rhythm to it. He won't be able to stop anyone inside the apartment itself from realizing he's there, but at least he can keep it down for the neighbors. As it rises, he pumps power into the beam and tries to lance through the door's lock. As it falls, he lowers it to a lower setting. The end result should be that the beam winds up being near-undetectable to neighbors while he just melts a hole where the doorhandle used to be, and then tries to shove the door open... A hand still somewhere near that package, just in case. What's in there? Well, about what you'd expect for gun-runners. Nothing pleasant, just in case.
A2     "No." A2 starts off, unhelpfully, to Kyoko. "Apparently, that asshole's been everywhere around town, even tourist attractions, and only checked in at work the last time anyone saw him. Chances are he's not here, or someone else is. If he isn't, we raid his place. If we get lucky, we take him. If someone else is there, we take /them/." she states matter-of-factly.

    From outside, she looks for the closest fire escape, balcony, drainage bend, or really anything that can support a few hundred pounds of weight, to his apartment's window, and gets platforming, trying to limit her jumps to being just high enough to make the next one in order to minimize the sound that'd come from an explosive full-building double hop. Arriving there, she isn't going to be particularly sneaky about looking through it, or even cutting the latch off, considering George has the door. Where would anyone run to?
Kyoko Takada     Getting through the lock isn't too difficult, with mining lasers at hand. The door opens, revealing a reasonably spacious apartment, for the area, and a lot of mess. The place is big enough for two or three people, but it's hard to guess how many people have been living here. If they were highly resistant to the sight of trash and lack of clear counter space, it could be just the one.
    In fact, there is someone here, who appears only after someone walks in. He looks like he hasn't been getting much sleep, and is a little more scraggly than last seen, but still clearly recognizable. George saw him, living in an improvised shack with a smart solar power setup, some time ago. He's clearly in a panic, waving his arms and--not shouting, but trying to keep his voice down while talking loudly in a contradiction that fails to quite do either. "Woah, you guys can't be here! Aw, shit, shit... you gotta leave!" He looks to either side, but doesn't see whatever he's looking for, before running into another room, still cursing.
    There's a couple of seconds to react to that before Taiga's sensors go off. It's not in the direction the man ran off in, but in the walls, as a portion of the vague signature from before coalesces. The figures that drop out of the walls and ceiling don't look like anything more so than imps, or perhaps goblins, all of three feet tall, colored in a dull red or blue, dressed like savages, bald but with wisps of grey beard, and carrying crooked and dented spears still taller than they are. They try to drop right out of the ceiling and onto the human intruders, attacking to wound and maim rather than kill outright, if they either allow that to happen or someone has the presence of mind to notice. Taiga lacks the same anatomy, and they instead attack whatever part of him they can reach.
    A2 gets to see the somehow even more startled face of the same hobo who'd just run off, as he's trying to open a window. There's a vertically-challenged figure with a spear bounding up behind him, though it stops and looks at A2 half a moment after he does. The human's mouth is agape. The imp recovers first, and takes the time to aim a kick, though the back of the man's legs is the only target in its reach.
Nozomi Houken     "Please do not run. You do not possess the necessary speed to-" Aaaand he's running. Taiga makes a noise that might almost be an irritable rumble... but then his ears and nose both snap upward.

    "George, be advised. A spell has just activated. Summoning type. Please watch your hea-" And down they come.

    The first imp to descend will fall right into a volley of energy shots from the TIGER's cannons. The second will reach his back successfully, and get in a quick stab between armor plates that leads to a shower of sparks - and then it will immediately discover what happens to something that jumps on a tiger's back and starts stabbing. Fun fact: cats can turn very quickly in place, even turning themselves upside-down. Not-so-fun fact: cats have very, very sharp claws. Anti-supernatural cats have very, very sharp anti-supernatural claws.

    Nozomi makes a startled noise and sort of stumbles back several steps; thankfully, she hadn't gone in to begin with.
A2     Having private seats to a special kind of shitshow, A2 remains perched at the window just long enough to figure out what's going on; namely that George knows this guy, almost definitely from the docks since that's where they had been working before, and that the apartment is not only trapped against intruders, but that the hobo man apparently is one.

    Good enough for her. When he runs for the window, the goblin sees her and hesitates for just a moment, which is already too much of a mistake. A2's slimmer sword materializes out of thin air with an electrical thrum above her head, pointed and angled down, and with a gesture, she sends it piercing through the window like an arrow to skewer the imp against the floor. Considering this will almost definitely smash the window to pieces. Her next action is to grab the hobo under arm and vault down with him to ground, currently being a significantly less rough captor. For now.
Starbound Flotilla     George smiles broadly and in a friendly way as he strides in. "Ohhhh, hey! Good seein' ya!" He says, with a cheerful, friendly tone, hand still somewhere on that package since just because he likes the guy doesn't mean he isn't /wary/ of the guy. "We gotta-- Huh? Woah! Fuck!" And George suddenly has a tiny gremlin coming down from above! Thankfully, Taiga is well capable of averting that disaster early, because he's able to roll to one side, smashing his package and tearing out a pair of high-tech gauntlets and an electrified baton.

    "We're getting gobbled?! What the hell! First it was the tech-demons and now it's paleo-gremlins." He calls out, barely avoiding a heavy slash over his chest with a quick dodge. Taiga is the one who will be dealing with the bulk of these while George just tries to keep distance and smash a few of them away, often resorting to throwing stuff from the counters and suchlike. What /is/ up with the state this place is in? He tries to assess the nature of this apartment in the panic-level time they have available, to see if any leads look more enticing than following the hobo he knows.
Kyoko Takada     "It sounds like you're finding /something/," Kyoko says. "I'm checking hotels, but no luck, yet, and I can't break too many of them without making more noise."
    "Gah!" is all the hobo says, apart from "Who?!" The imp doesn't say anything, as A2's sword kills it instantly. The blood is a much brighter red than its skin. Her captive doesn't say anything more even when they reach the ground, which android acrobatics ensure she does very quickly. She might want to remember that squishy human people can't take the same impacts, when she lands, or it'll be even harder for him to say anything useful.
    Taiga blasts his first target. The apartment walls can't take a whole lot of beating when it comes to military tech, though it won't be a major problem so long as he doesn't hit any supporting columns. The neighbors, either way, are quickly noticing. As for his second target, it fares little better, unable to take a second strike before being sliced apart. The spears are weirdly dangerous for how damaged they look, if understandable given that they're formed from some manner of magic, but the imp-flesh isn't that sturdy at all, and the blood is likewise a stark red over dull, blue skin.
    Three down leaves only another four more, with a red-and-blue pair trying for furtive anti-dangerous-beast tactics on Taiga, flanking and going for a stab if his attention shifts. The other pair try to run George down after his initial dodge, though he's keeping away with all the piles of junk there are to throw at things. A fifth arrives from the room A2 just attacked, and tries to slip around Taiga and through the door, toward Nozomi.
    They certainly don't seem worried about their dead comrades, which have failed to do anything as convenient as fading away into sparkles. The remaining goblins(?) giggle, which they do in not-quite-unison with creepy old man voices.
    Besides being a total mess, the room doesn't say much. It does look like someone was eating here recently, someone who eats cup ramen, and like someone has been sleeping in the bed through the door the hobo had rushed out of at first, which is kept a little more neatly than everything else. The junk includes a lot of junk mail, fliers and ads, piles of sales and coupons, clothes and dishes and a few maps of the city. They lack suspicious markings.
Nozomi Houken     The imps attempting to flank Taiga are going to be almost as disappointed as the one attempting to bypass him entirely. In a situation like this, the robot's first priority is Nozomi. As soon as he's taken care of the one on his back, he turns and vaults for the door himself; rather than risk Nozomi's safety when the hobo has already left the building, he skids to a stop right outside and calls a simple, "Nozomi." They've been working together long enough that she doesn't have to ask. She climbs up onto his back instantly, and then he turns to leave as fast as he can.

    The plan is to employ the 'up and over' approach, leap-slash-climbing up to the top of the complex where he can go down the other side and rendezvous with A2. Assuming there's no more nasty surprises along the way, that is...
Starbound Flotilla     "Woah! Shit! Watch it!" George moves to make sure Nozomi isn't threatened too much, but it looks like she has that well under control on her own. George himself sees little that could warrant an immediate investigation and so he moves fast with Nozomi and Taiga! Since he can't get a spare moment to don his armor, he better get clear, because without Taiga here he's actually at some substantial risk! And in this case, that means attempting a ROBUST STRIKE! The pair that intend to pin him down suddenly need to contend with the microthrusters built into the gauntlets that enhance his strength. He slings a pile of wrappers and paper at one. "Ha-HA!" Of course that's going to be ineffective. Then he follows it up by abruptly launching one of his gauntlets straight through the storm of trash and at the creature's face! It's a ROCKET PUNCH!

    He then tries to leap right through the opening and dive over the gremlin, dash to the room the hobo exited in, and follow the rest of the group. Only once he's in mid-air, diving out the window, does he seem to realize the folly of what he's done; it takes him a moment to overload his other gauntlet, point it at the ground, and use it as a retro-rocket to slow his descent enough to tumble to the ground somewhere near A2. "Hey! Hey! Don't forget George! I need to be not forgettable in a deadly situation!" He calls out. "What the fuck is going on here?!"

    The van, elsewhere, is lighting up as the rest of the Flotilla ready for danger, checking around to see if anything's gotten called in as they rev up. A2 and George are, if things are okay, likely to have the big unmarked van rush over to them, screech to a stop, and open the side door invitingly. "Floran isss a driver, vroom vroom!" Comes a happy voice from within. Wait, are they just improvisation-accidentally kidnapping the hobo guy?
A2     A2 is not very good at remember, or in fact, assessing in the first place, how much squishy people can take. They did not exist until very recently, after all. Of course she's trying not to smash any of the outside structure and plummet to the ground with a very loud crunch (which would be the pavement and not her), and she is carrying the hobo guy underarm instead of over her shoulder, so there's a bit of give with each nauseating jolt. By the time they reach the alley, he might be pretty sore and a little sick, but with nothing broken.

    Immediately, she pretty much throws him up against the wall, not even need to produce her sword again to get her point across; that's for people who need to look intimidating by brandishing a weapon, not someone who looks like a near-permanently shellshocked machine by default, especially when they can leave a handprint in the bricks beside his head.

    "Who are you and what were you doing there?" Straight to the point. "Spit it out, asshole. If you know something, you tell us right away and you don't get hurt."
Kyoko Takada     Taiga makes a good choice, or at least an immediately effective one, leaving the assailants intact but far behind. Whether or not they're willing to leave the apartment, they at least aren't in a big hurry to. George delays any such action further, knocking one across the room with his rocket punch, and fleeing the remaining and largely health four. They do follow after and look out the window (still quite broken from A2's attack) and peer after him, but the peering isn't followed by leaping, so he's at least momentarily safe. Everyone has a chance to join in the interrogation.
    Fortunately, the man lives. "I'm, I'm Kaguwa, Nobuyoshi." He looks properly intimidated, though inconveniently confused. "I don't know! Nomura, he said I could stay there, and then... I don't get it, but please, you have to get me out of here. Please! They'll find me if I stay in the city, it's some kind of curse. I don't get it, I haven't understood anything for weeks now. You've blown their cover, and now, now they'll kill me, if I'm lucky. It was bad enough being some demon's minion." The man clasps his hands together, closing his eyes and shivering. "I don't know how much more of that... Aw, shit..." He opens his eyes again, looking toward George. "I remember you. Just... what? What the hell is this?"
    A2 gets a text message, from the same source as sent her the info awhile prior, reading, "Hey, it's me. Just checking in, you still need that update? Word travels fast through some vines, and word is that a big robot cat walked by, one last seen around here the same day we met. It must be what made me think of you."
    There's not yet any sirens blaring. Some people are shouting, but the apartment was several stories up, so it's hard to tell what the neighbors are shouting about. The hostile creatures have yet to reappear, even on Taiga's sensors.
Nozomi Houken     Taiga is padding up to A2 and Kaguwa around the moment he starts spilling his metaphorical guts (and a certain Floran becomes fast and/or furious). "We can see to your safety. As you are now a witness, I'm certain we can justify measures taken for your safety. However, you will need to help us in return. I-" Nozomi's voice cuts across without warning. "Taiga." The robotic tiger silences immediately, and then she steps forward instead, doing her best to look Kaguwa in the eyes. "...I... I don't know what's happening. But Nomura's... he's not a bad person. He doesn't deserve... I don't know what they're doing, but he doesn't deserve it. Please. Anything you can tell us."
A2     "The hell does-" A2 visibly has to process for a moment (in the figurative and literal term) at the fragmented and ridiculous story. "He told you you could go to his place, and /then/ you lost your memory right? So he set a trap?" Demon possession? Some kind of remote hijacking then? A2 at least has a point of comparison for that. "So whatever the hell those were took over you somehow and now they're going to clean up the loose end, is that it?" As soon as the words are out of A2's mouth, she can feel her blood boiling. She had put the pieces together and said them just before she'd really thought to appreciate their meaning, and when that part catches up, she immediately, viscerally hates whatever is going on here.

    She turns to Nozomi, grabbing Kaguwa again. "How are /you/ going to ensure anything?! I saw you back then! You were working with those useless morons!" Clearly she has decided the police, or at least a member of the police, have orchestrated this particular act of exploitation, and cryptic statements about "they" and doesn't really dissuade her from the line of thought. "He isn't going anywhere near them /or/ you!"

    As far as she can tell, the Flotilla wasn't working with or for the police before, so that's good enough for her. She breaks for Biteblade's suspicious van, throwing her 'captive' in the back seat and then climbing in to make sure he doesn't get taken anywhere weird. "Move it!" she yells, clearly intending to leave poor Nozomi in the dust as an accidental patsy. If she has the time, she'll shoot back a message to her contact. A very simple one: "Where?" Either way, it'll answer if he'd just seen Taiga going by a few minutes ago, and if so, where the contact is, or it'll indicate something even weirder is going on.
Starbound Flotilla     "Hey man, take it easy! We've got warmed seats, even, it'll be a great ride." George says, winking as he dives clumsily in. He's badly cut by the gremlins, and Seft immediately sets to work on cleaning his wound and getting him a little less wounded, making panicked blips and bleeps. The man himself isn't really restrained or anything, but the interior of the van's backseat is full of now five people and far more weaponry than should be packed into a van.

"Worried. George! What happened in there?!"
"I got /gobbled/."
"If he's being targeted like that, we don't have long."
"We should perhaps move swiftly out of the city, in that case."
"Aye! Set sail fast, matey!"
"Floran putting petal to metal!"

    The car's Flotilla contents groan, then the car itself peals out, screeching as the whole thing tries to move A2's mass. Luckily, bigger engines than meager automobiles kick in, and the high-tech van blazes away. Biteblade and Pavo are in the front seats, and they're making a beeline for the nearest outskirts of the city, just blindly trusting that they need to get this guy out of here as fast as possible.

    "So what the hell was that about? First it's tech-demons, now it's goblins, what the hell's the genre here? How's that work?" George says, getting his wound wrapped by Seft and hoping against hope that they're not about to need a car chase.
Nozomi Houken     When A2 turns to yell at Nozomi, the effect is immediate. She shrinks back like a frightened puppy, visibly intimidated. "I- I-" In the same heartbeat, Taiga takes a simple but pronounced step to one side, such that he is now directly between A2 and his user. He speaks as calmly as ever, but the protective body language might as well be a neon sign. "Are you saying that you trust neither George nor yourself to see to this man's protection? You are included in the 'we' I was using. This world's police force has potentially been infiltrated - there are those inside willing to pass along information, but their hands are tied, and I find myself distinctly distrustful of their higher echelons."

    One ear flicks, and Taiga cants his head slightly while he speaks. "The only way he will be safe, is to be removed from this world until the responsible parties can be found and brought to justice - and for diplomatic reasons, the military that owns me would not be able to provide that safekeeping. We would be required to report it, and then they would demand his return. Therefore, you and the Flotilla represent a much safer venue. If you have an issue with this, by all means, feel free to voice it."

    There is a pause of precisely 2 seconds.

    "To me. Abusive comments toward my user will be disregarded."
Kyoko Takada     "I remember things," says Nobuyoshi Kaguwa. "Most of it, I think... it just doesn't make sense... Nomura didn't make sense, he's the one they possessed, and then he left." He looks at Nozomi, his expression no less pleading than hers, but A2 is proceeding with the kidnapping. "Dreams, he kept saying his dreams were at fault, but it was..." He babbles, barely coherent. George talking like a normal person, neither a robot nor visibly upset, seems to calm him down. "Sorry, I just can't... figure out what's going on... but I should have known not to trust a deal like that. Said he wouldn't need his apartment. Said I could take care of it. He said a lot of things."
    A2 gets a quick answer. It's not even an address, just geo-coordinates, but those work just as well for anyone who can make use of a local network, which is trivial for most involved. They could find out more through any of several means, or they could just drive there. It's not, however, outside the city, which is where they're currently driving. It's inside the city. In fact, it's a large manufacturing plant, well away from the residential areas. Kyoko is now getting their GPS feed, but that only tells her where they currently are.
A2     "Shut up." A2 responds, cold and immediately, unyieldingly unreasonable. "Don't tell me what to /do/. There's no way I'd listen to a /machine/, even if you weren't working for the wrong side." she spits. "We're taking him, and if that suits you fine, it's a coincidence, nothing more, so get lost."

    She is, however, not quite patient enough to wait for the van to speed off before relaying the coordinates to Biteblade. "There's another one just like that thing out at these coordinates. Contact though it was this one, but it's right here in front of us and running its mouth. If you're gonna haul ass out of here, I'll jump out when we go past."

    "So someone else is at the top, trapped him, and then duped you into joining the assembly line on mind-controlled rubes. Whatever. We're getting you out of here either way and we'll figure it out from there." she says to Kaguwa, before kicking Biteblade's seat to get the van going.
Kyoko Takada     Arrival.

    It's still urban enough, but this part of the landscape is on the rundown side of things. The road, at least, is in good repair. The fence around the manufacturing plant, not so much. It's easy enough to break through or hop over, however one chooses to handle it. There's a vast parking area on the other side, though no vehicles to be found. It wouldn't be too much of a walk by public transit, but the emptiness is still telling.
    "It's closed down, of course. The plant shut down about three months ago. There's probably some stuff to steal, inside, but only if you can move heavy equipment. It looks like the new owners plan on reopening the place, but couldn't get everything lined up, so it's just left like this." Kyoko explains, shortly after getting the coordinates for the location. "Why he'd be there... if he didn't bring a team, he's not going to be able to steal anything, so probably not that. It doesn't look like Nomura's made a habit of robbery, anyway."
    There are a few entrances, but it matters little which is taken, since most of the inside of plant is one gigantic, multi-story room, anyway. Catwalks and assembly lines are everywhere. Automobiles in various stages of proto-existence move to the sound of heavy machinery. Robotic arms whir, twist in precise motions, manipulate the metal chassis, and return to attention. Workers in red or white shirts and hard hats inspect or manipulate machinery, moving among the lines and largely ignoring the intruders over the deafening din.
    "I might need more sensors on-site," Kyoko sends, "but on the other hand, you might be stepping into something I don't want to be anywhere near."
Nozomi Houken     It's peculiar. After so easily being shouted into retreat by A2 and being so withdrawn in general, Nozomi seems to have completely flipped her stance - she spends the entire ride glaring daggers at the android, something the Flotilla would know is entirely unusual for her. But then, knowing her, they can also probably guess why.

    She doesn't see fit to make an issue out of it, though; as soon as they reach the plant, she's out the van and onto Taiga's back, and Taiga is off at a run for the fence. Just a straight up-and-over. As soon as he lands, those ears and that nose are working, and the robotiger immediately replies, "We will keep you appraised of what we find."
Starbound Flotilla     Albert is the one who traditionally focuses the most on keeping Nozomi safe and happy, and even the ball-of-rage Apex doesn't really know what to make of Nozomi's anger, it's so unexpected. But given how their own allies have certain beef with A2, it's definitely not surprising to them that A2 would trip one of the few things that could make Nozomi actually be /aggressive/.

    George knows what to do when it comes to a place like this. The friendly hobo is going to be taken out of the city as fast as Biteblade can roll this van to the nearest warpgate, which means it'll be a while before the rest of the Flotilla get out here. George himself is bandaged up a little from his scuffle with the gremlins, and has finally had a chance to armor up; he'll be the Flotilla-member who deploys fully here. He wears a futuristic combat EVA hardsuit that glows a gentle red at the flat faceplate, obfuscating his identity that is a little better known among the police force now!

    He lances a cutting beam off his Matter Manipulator right through the fence, carving a hole through it quickly to catch up to Taiga soon, though the machine clearly outpaces his speed. He taps the side of his helmet, giving Hibiki sensor feeds, camera feeds, etc, and then surges in. And yet, as he takes rocket-boosted leaps onto side catwalks and mid-story entrances, he finds himself moving into a more active zone!

    "Wait, hold the phone Hibiki--! What the hell?! I thought this was closed down?!" He says, ducking on one of the catwalks and trying to move in ways that at least won't attract attention. He checks around, peering, glancing, trying to discover more. He has a theory... Check joints for robotic aspects. Check ears for weird non-human aspects. Check uniforms for strange out-of-place medieval or futuristic bits. Or just anything that seems... Off-genre. What is going /on/ here? As he does this, he checks around for places there might be records; offices, terminals he can hook Hibiki into, and other suchlike. He wants to get there and get her informed fast.
A2     Regardless of what A2 thinks of the Flotilla, if much of anything at all, they're doing what she's saying and not overtly taking Nozomi's side, so there's no pressing reason to be aggressive with them. True to her word, when the van skates by the factory, she just jumps out without waiting for it to slow, and lets Biteblade speed off into the distance. This is obviously an absurd thing to do with heels, but like magic, she doesn't even end it with an action roll. Truly the technology of the far future is a marvel.

    She jumps the fence without difficulty, being meant to keep people who don't casually leap 20 feet into the air out, though that's only marginally quicker than George just lasering through the thing. When she's inside, her passive sensors are already constructing the complicated place into a relatively usable 'minimap', making it easier to navigate, and most probably picking up on and marking obvious signs of life or hubs of mechanical activity. This info she can actually upload to Kyoko, though it's sort low-res, more like a sat-map with dot markers than a high-fidelity recording.

"Why does stealing this junk jump to mind? Is he supposed to be the kind of guy who does that? More importantly, there's supposed to be some kind of damn robot cat here, and not the other shitty one. Why?"
Kyoko Takada     Even from outside, Taiga's sensors can tell that something strongly supernatural is inside the plant. The whole place is under some kind of influence, though it doesn't read the same as the apartment. The workers inside, along with some of the manufacturing equipment, are clearly magical. A quick comparison against all the people he's been scanning up to now will confirm that the readings on the workers is abnormally high.
    George asks about the obvious contradiction. "It... is?" Kyoko answers. The workers continue to mostly ignore George. A few at least glance his way if he's already in their field of view, as he necessarily is, but he isn't obstructing them, and they seem content to leave him be and continue the busy work of making cars. If they're saying anything about him, he can't pick it up over all the noise. They all look and move like you'd expect a bunch of auto factory workers to look and move, without any clear signs of either robotic or organic inhumanity. They universally wear slacks and t-shirts.
    The inside of the plant is a jumbled mess to look at, but with A2's minimap data, Kyoko can sort through it and send it back to George, pointing him to the offices. They're on the upper floors, overlooking the lines of workers (obviously robotic and otherwise). The factory arms all show up as active machines on the android's sensor map, with the workers being harder to make out as anything, but having some presence. To A2's question, Kyoko says, "It's the only reason I can think of for someone to be here, and it still doesn't make sense. Neither does anything else he's done, so I'm reaching. No, he hasn't been stealing anything, so far as I can tell. Huh? What was that about a cat?"
    George can reach the office area without much further trouble. Or, her could, if there weren't people standing directly in the way of the door. One white-shirt with a clipboard talking to a red-shirt.
Starbound Flotilla     "'It is' like you're not seeing what I'm seeing? Or 'it is' like all the records say it is?" George says, sneaking about. "Regular ol' normal humans... How's that managing to be weird..." He mutters, before moving straight on towards the offices. Door stuck! Door stuck! Dammit. George can't get through over there. Luckily, George historically has had a good time with getting through in other places. He has no idea what sort of supernatural shenanigans or influence are being pushed into this, but one hopes it's not the sort that will resist his Matter Manipulator!

    He's gonna try to circle around and mine through one of the walls if A2's map can stay coherent with that. The noise of a mining beam should be lost among the distant sound of industrial equipment, he hopes, sounding like just another welder when he tries to cut into the wall with a rather dull light and slip through, intent on scouring records to see if they match up in any meaningful way with Hibiki's data... Or give a hint about the source of this influence.
A2     "My contact said something about seeing a robot cat around here that reminded him of the shitty machine we're already stuck with." A2 replies impatiently. "If it's supposed to be a dump for him to steal from, that intel is outdated. It's working and the bastard is probably running it, or the bastards controlling him are." She looks around for a second. "No idea what they want with cars. I don't get it."

    Genuinely at a loss of why anything she sees is here, or what the point of it is, A2 ends up wandering around without much of a lead, scouring the floor for anything that matches the description of her Yakuza text, and then the floor above, mostly avoiding the clusters of worker dots on her radar, but they oddly don't seem to pay much attention to her in the first place. "Come on. I don't have time to waste on this." she mutters to herself. At least, the minimap does update when George starts messing up the terrain. It's a useful feature, newly functional after cannibalizing fresh sensor equipment from a dead Android.
Nozomi Houken     After a long several seconds of scanning, Taiga simply declares, "Be advised. Heavy magical presence within the plant. All on-site personnel confirmed, as well as multiple pieces of equipment. Be prepared for supernatural threats." It's a spoken warning, but also broadcasted, so that George and A2 can benefit as well. But while A2 is blithely just wandering the factory floor, Taiga opts to move up to the rafters, where he (and Nozomi) will be much less visible. From here, he can perform more in-depth scans; he's going to try to analyze both one of the workers, and one of the machines, trying to figure out just what's going on here.
Kyoko Takada     George makes his way around, and so manages to avoid triggering an alert. He instead triggers the discovery of the POI, officer Tatsuta Nomura, as Kyoko is quick to confirm on audio-visual. The man is standing alone in the office, dressed in a three-piece suit and pushing buttons. It doesn't look like he knows what he's doing. It doesn't sound like he knows what he's doing, either, as George can hear him muttering, "Why? Push the... then, next... watch the screens, flip that switch, push the... next? What was next?" He's got a steady stream of self-narration going as if his voice needs the exercise. He's got his back turned, but George not being exactly a stealthy sort, Nomura turns around. "It's... it's you!"
    And that triggers the alert. Taiga's sensor data matches up that the workers who stop what they're doing are also the ones with the higher magical readings, as one after another turns, looks up one way or another, and then transforms. The transformations are sudden, less like a body morphing and more like a veil ripping away, and the masked, winged figures are as quickly described over the party broadcast line by Kyoko, "They're tengu. It's tengu this time. Where did..." She trails off as the first of them turns and attacks the nearest intruder, the act quickly followed by one stern-countenanced, long-nosed mask after another, the factory continuing to function otherwise even as they take to the air with the squawking of crows. Slack-wearing workers manipulate machinery, inspect the processes, cars move along the belts, robotic arms swivel and apply welds, and white and black wings carry staves covered in rings, swords and spears at their targets.
    A2 gets the most attention and the most action, having wandered effectively into the middle of everything. A black-winged attacker rushes at her with a katana, while three more thrust with spears from different angles, and a cawing bird-faced humanoid strikes with either ends of its staff immediately afterward.
    Taiga gets somewhat less attention in the first couple of seconds, but he's not gone unspotted. His attackers are forced to come at him from limited angles, but they move with great agility in even this confined airspace, touching their feet against the catwalks or ceiling and bringing a pair of spears from above, another pair from below, and a volley of arrows from well off to the side, a long, white-haired tengu delivering the latter.
    George doesn't get any immediate attention, except from Nomura, who is mostly just surprised to see him. Complex and contradicting emotions play over the officer's face. And then the door bursts open and the white-shirt with the clipboard becomes a white-winged, masked figure in anachronistic clothing menacing him with traditional Japanese swordplay and aggressive shouting at each slash.
Nozomi Houken     Taiga utters a noise that might be irritation. "Tengu. Nozomi, hold tightly." As youkai, they don't have any particular weaknesses - all there is for it is good old-fashioned combat. But while the terrain is favorable, the situation with Nozomi as his rider is not. He vaults from one beam to the next, focusing purely on evasion, seemingly looking for something while he does. And then there comes a moment where he suddenly stops, directs his cannons upward, and opens fire; there's no tengu anywhere near his line of fire. Just the ceiling. The ceiling, where he can blast open a hole and leap out, just long enough to deposit Nozomi on the roof.
A2     Her search of the factory floor fruitless, the first and only sign of anything wrong that A2 is privy to is when George uncorks the disaster waiting to happen. She jolts sharply as the alarm sounds, yelling "The /hell did you do?!" without searching for an answer. The moment that her --what a human would call "danger instincts"-- turn on, there is an old, deeply ingrained air about her, cold, unthinking, empty, and yet primed to the thinnest sliver of pulling the trigger.

    Though it is unfortunate that she draws the majority of the tengu defense, it's best that it be her, being by far the Elite best equipped to handle it on the scene. Her combat systems kick into high gear, running smoothly for the first time in many months with their recent overhaul and reboot, letting her perceive the rush coming from all angles. Too many from two different sides to physically defend against, and a mix of simultaneous and staggered. Blocking any one of them is accepting a spear to the back of the side no matter what. It's well thought out.

    So she has to trust that another, untested system, is in working order. Coming from every direction, A2 watches the tengu closely, her posture lowering slightly in anticipation, and at the last second, she seems to dematerialize completely, vanishing in an explosive flash and discorporating into a chaotic flurry of flickering, ghostly images, scattering in every direction. The cluster of weapons meets on each other, where A2 reappears out of thin air a few feet out of the way, landing as if she had from a twisting leap. So it works. It'd have been messy if it didn't.

    Not intending to give them a second chance, her sword buzzes into existence in her hand, and faster than blinking, A2 lays into the crowd with a rapidly flowing chain of brutal and expertly aimed strikes, pivoting from tengu to tengu with every blow aimed to kill instantly, wasting no motion on feints, clashes, or strikes that aren't certain to dismember or bisect. There is no hesitation about her, no restraint, and clearly, no concept of 'treating enemies as individual foes'. Her swordsmanship is expert, elegant butchery.
Starbound Flotilla     Swords! Swords! George has to assume his combat stance faster than he normally could, and then quickly displays some aspects of his own particular brand of superhumanity: Robust combat. Robust combat, a hand-to-hand martial arts style developed in zero gravity, emphasizes above all else obfuscation of movement, disregarding of concepts of up and down, and slamming people onto, into, or through furniture.

    STEP 1: Assume a combat-ready stance. That means obfuscating movement, a fluid stance that introduces so much chaotic motion in his readiness that it's impossible to tell what he's getting ready to do. He doesn't have a lot of time to get the chaos into his motions; he's likely to pay a price for that.

    Step 2: Disregard concepts of up and down. As the encroaching creature threatens him with the sword, his thrusters activate dramatically. He leaps up, trying to evade the incoming blade strikes with a side motion, though it's likely they'll fine a way to shear painfully through some of that EVA gear. But what's important is that he end up over the man's arm, with him mid-slash.

    Step 3: Slam them into furniture. With a stylish mid-air twist he troes to yank the arm and slam the bird under him and onto Nomura's table, trying to pin him to it or crush him through it. There's enough force and weight to snap it in half if it's a regular desk. His hope is to shut the computer down violently, and then either yank a hard drive or just hoist it under one arm like a football. He doesn't intend for this maneuver to take the tengu out for good, but he can hopefully stun the thing long enough to grab Nomura.

    "Wake up!" He shouts out. "Nozomi needs you, dude! Get moving with me!" He's gonna try to yank Nomura with a free hand and get him running out the door past the redshirt! Gotta get him to where Taiga can save him!
Kyoko Takada     Focused purely on evasion and defense, Taiga manages to make it out. The roof isn't warded against energy cannons, so it's just a tough factory ceiling, and is quickly broken open. Nozomi is at least momentarily safe up here, as all of the tengu, along with other suspiciously magical sensor readings, are inside.
    Conversely, A2 focuses on offense, and it is effective. Only one, bisecting strike is needed at full power for each assailant, and the most they can do to stop her is to interpose staff or sword, rolling with the onslaught and merely being thrown forcefully away from the parry. Most, however, don't. There's something as off with the tengu self-preservation instinct as with her own, as more of them respond to her tactics by rushing her with spears or iai strikes from different angles, not working together so much as crowding upon her. With most humanoids, more then half a dozen armed assailants surrounding one target runs diminishing returns. With the tengu, flight and high mobility, they surround her from a greater distance, rushing in at essentially random points. They are as accepting of death, in response, as any enemy she's likely faced. So long as she keeps at it, she won't have to hunt anyone down to clear a wide area of factory floor.
    Not all the tengu are on the floor. One manager-type (prior to dropping the disguise) is in the upstairs office, getting a quick slice up into George, though his armor is going to negate most of what would have, to a less prepared combatant, been a crippling blow to the leg as he vaults over. As is, it's not enough to his counterattack. The desk does break, having not been designed for such fancy maneuvers, and Nomura steps away reflexively. The hard drives are just where one would expect them to be, and so a motion that doesn't mind destroying most of the rest of the machine in the process is sufficient for grabbing one before the tengu can get back up.
    Nomura is reluctant to move. "Wait, I can't..." but starts stumbling after the EVA-suited captain anyway just from force of momentum. The red-shirt outside still looks human, just looking to either side, searching for something that has nothing to do with George, as he fails to react to Flotilla member and cop rushing past.
    From what Taiga can tell, most of the workers are barely there. They're more of a magical effect than people. The ones that transformed are youkai, or close enough that he can't tell the difference, strong enough in presence to be individuals despite how little they care for preserving that life. A lot of the workers in other parts of the factory also have those same, higher readings, but none anywhere near where A2 is fighting. All the ones who did, transformed.
A2     Already splattered in blood, A2 doesn't so much as blink when the tengu rush to their deaths, trading their own lives for so much as a stab at her. It's something she got used to long ago; the mindless assaults of the Machines, having no concept of mortality, and no fear of losses, as any number mowed down could simply be replaced. She fights them much the same way, albeit as more skilled (though less coordinated) opponents than most of the simple-minded robots.

    Physically, she vastly outstrips them, exchanging strikes that simply overpower their own, defending in the motion of attacking through sheer power and reactionary speed. Not possessed of the power of flight however, A2 finds defending herself from above as well as the sides more difficult than normal. She makes a charnel house of those on the floor, though suffering stabs and slices to her shoulders, arms, and upper back in the process, fending them away from her head at a minimum.

    Spearpoints and blades strike what remains of her armour, badly worn and beaten, but intact enough for glancing blows to flash sparks instead of spurt artificial blood. Where the force shoves downwards into her body, she seems to absorb it with that uncanny kind of stability of a gyroscope, unfaltering in her assault, until only the flying ones are left, where her sword leaps from her hand and begins dancing and carving through the air, guided by sweeps and twists of her hands as if drawn by a puppeteer's strings, though in reality, gripped by rings of holographic grey, gold and black light.
Nozomi Houken     As soon as Nozomi's deposited, Taiga is back down and inside the warehouse - and with no girl on his back to worry about, the robotic tiger can go all-out. It's like watching a rubber superball bounce off the walls - or rather, the ceiling, the catwalks, the girders, anything to keep him in the air. The tengu have no room to move up here, and if anything, they have moved into the killzone that gives him the MOST mobility. So now they have to deal with a high-speed projectile seemingly comprised of nothing but anti-supernatural claws and teeth, and the occasional salvo of softball-sized yellow blasts comprised of both energy and magic.
Starbound Flotilla "Need extraction /fast/!"
"I see you have already gotten yourself in a complex spot in such a short time."
"Hmph. Of course you'd wind up in this."
"Less sass, more fast."
"Floran wanna fly vee-toll!"
"Avast there, matey, this is my bird!"
"Worried. Do you have Nomura? Can you--"
"Yeah! There's an opening in the roof, gun it!"

    George yanks Nomura's wrist and forces the disoriented man nearer the gap that has been made in the ceiling by Taiga, and tries to pull in closer on the violent rush of claws that Taiga himself has become, to get a little cover while he slams a patch over a sparking, damaged gap in his armor to keep it functional. George slips the hard drive into his Matter Manipulator, and then yanks out a heavy pistol. "Down on the ground, friend! Gimmie a bit, we're pulling you outta here!" George himself is on the defensive, trying to keep Nomura safe and somewhere near that openin in the ceiling... He casually does his best to memorize the motions of the swinging automated arms as he maintains some measure of defensive fire, in case he needs to use them in an emergency.

    Elsewhere, the Flotilla has sent out a heavy, armored VTOL gunship of sorts, meant to extract the group. They even tuned up the thrusters to carry the combined massive weight of A2 and Taiga! How quick they can get here is another matter entirely, but they'll be gunning as fast as they can to try to extract the group!
Kyoko Takada     They get their hits, and they die. They seem to die, at least. If there's something funny involving immortality going on, A2 isn't going to get to see it, unless maybe she decides to stick around for awhile. Most of the ones in the air still rush into melee range, only a few having ranged weapons (bows, exclusively) to strike down at her with. The population in her area of the factory has gone down, quite noticeably, but those that are there, the seemingly-human, continue to go about their tasks as if nothing's wrong. Scenery dressing.
    The flying have less defense against Taiga's mobility, surpassing the tengu's flight in this semi-confined area. Cannon blasts take out a few, but more fall to his claws, regardless of whether they menace with spear, bow, or sword. More enemies had appeared as he dropped out of the ceiling and began moving about the battlefield-slash-factory area, but even those are dealt with efficiently, with moderate levels of danger from counterattacks. As with those attacking A2, they attack single-mindedly, smart enough not to run into a weapon, but taking the chance if it gives them a better chance of landing a hit.
    The action below might be helping George get away, and the reduction in density of hostiles definitely helps. Nomura is twitching in a way that healthy people shouldn't, muttering, "I'm still trapped. I'm still there. They're not dreams! I saw you." His eyes track Taiga's frenetic movement. "And that. And her? I know you. But they locked me up." For his babbling, he has the intensity of someone who wants to be understood.
    Things aren't getting quieter, exactly, because the place is still a constant cacophony of machinery. But the tengu don't keep coming after a pile of corpses is made (so long as no further exploration and poking the nest happens). With very mild caution on the part of a few, time is given for extraction to arrive.
    There's still the matter of what actually to do with Nomura.
Kyoko Takada     Kyoko's contribution is purely behind the scenes, and it'll only come out later, under investigation, that officer Nomura apparently put in for an approved vacation to visit an alternate Japan. His reason for the visit is personal, and there won't be a big fuss over it on his home world. In the immediate future, he continues to mutter, though his frequency and energy in doing so is less than that of the friendly, confused hobo. He does give a long stare to each of the Flotilla members, and to Nozomi, half-coherently insisting that they've met, and that he can't get out. "It wasn't a dream." He continues to twitch along the ride back, expressions of pain coming and going, though he doesn't mention those.
    A2 is the only one he shows no sign of recognizing.
    Nozomi gets a boost to her funds from an "unknown" source. It'll be good enough for a specialist to do a check-up.