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Priscilla     'The Maw of Tyrants', as it has been so colourfully called, as opposed to just 'The Njorun Crater' (proving either that the Confederacy had more creativity or that the Citadel was just more of a dick about exploding) is just as different from the rotting corpse of the Union physically as it is in its name.

    Rather than an undying cadaver where everything blends together as it rots while it regenerates, physically and functionally without the two necessarily corresponding, the Maw is is more like a colossal fracture in space; something broken rather than dead. Instead of refuse scattered around a crater of physical impact, pieces of what the Citadel once was are scattered around the space it used to occupy --and then some-- making for a thoroughly three dimensional nightmare of navigating floating islands, tumbling weightless debris, inverted mirror structures, or ones that aren't actually there, like the stars in the sky that really died millions of years ago.

    At least, even if it's more of a hassle to get to a point of entry (and even more of a hassle for the researchers to plot it out), it's not as immediately obnoxious to find one's way around once they get there. There's plenty of light from constellations of celestial bodies floating all around the region of ruined space, and no matter which way the chosen fragment tumbles and orbits around, it feels like standing on upright, solid ground. It also doesn't reek of impossible decay, so that's a plus.

    Considering the last attempt at accessing a common terminal had wandered into some kind of non-living pseudo predator using the bodies of explorers to maintain its data integrity and power supply, they've supposedly vetted this one a bit better this time. It's a chunk of land about the size of a shopping mall, walled in with arches and spires of marble and cobalt. Compared to Njorun's contemporary feel last time, this one is almost palace-like, with dark teak floors, long carpets, blue-burning chandeliers, and posh accoutrements that are equally abandoned. Instead of rotting, they're all subtly broken in unique ways; statues without faces, chairs missing a leg, desks cracked down the middle, plants with their pots split in half, flowers missing stems somehow.

    They also actually know where the terminal is this time. Specifically, they're actually going for an administrative data core, instead of spending hours futzing with broken civilian computers. It's down the end of a long hall of checkered grey and amber tiles, white pillars, and hanging orreries of lights, behind what looks to be only a pair of giant, mahogany double doors with brass knockers, just behind a big, semicircular administrative desk bank. That doesn't *seem* too hard (so it'll probably suck).
Crys Gattz There was an operation and Crys was happy to lend a hand here after all the Concord is why she didn't have issues getting the drugs she needed to stay alive and not rapidly age to death. So here she was armed fairly heavily a large claw was fixed to her arm and had a sleeve going all the way up to the shoulder. The Fal Claw looked like it belonged on a combat robot or a mecha with the heavy hydraulic systems that the blades were hooked up to. Crys seems to have no trouble moving along.

This place was creepy to the old elite even with what she'd seen back when she served the Union ages ago. She paused to look at a faceless stature before moving on heading down the hall.

Given her perception of her low status with the concord Crys would be taking point. If no one in the group stopped her, was she looking to take hits or just eager for a fight it was hard to tell with the one-eyed Newman sometimes.

"The stories I could tell about some of the builders of this place, though a few in the Concord might do better as I think they worked on it themselves."

She notes as she goes to the doors and pauses before moving with her off hand to open them.

"Might as well get this over with right? Let's see what's behind door number one..."
Septette Arcubielle      In contrast to her free-falling arrival to Njorun, Septette's movement here is a bit more refined: she ping-pongs between spinning fragments with precision leaps, never maintaining a static orientation in her inertial dance until her final approach.

     She bleeds off most of her incoming momentum with a flare of microthrusters, and lands almost gracefully on the hard tiles. "Graceful" is relative, of course- her knees bend deeply, and even then the tiles spiderweb with subtle cracks- but it's something. Once she's united with the rest of the party, she (as usual) insists on taking point, despite knowing nothing of the former Citadel's layout.

     "I never thought I'd visit this place under such circumstances. Almost peaceful, isn't it?"

     Of course this is going to turn out to be a horror-dungeon. But she'd likely consider that 'almost peaceful' anyway.
Staren     The remains of the Citadel is pretty damn dangerous. On his first visit, the security system tried to suck Staren into some kind of black hole gate.

    Ideally, he'd prefer to scout through a tethered remote drone like with the Prospekt mines, but the nature of the Citadel's ruin makes that difficult. So instead, he's put together a sort of... high-mobility add-on for his armor -- a combination jetpack/power pack on the back, with auxiliary thrusters here and there, some are repurposed test thrusters incorporating hyperglass for even more thrust.

    He can only hope it's enough.

    Those he recognizes get friendly nods. Crys's comment gets a vaguely assenting 'Mmh.'

    Septette he's surprised to see. Happening to show up to one mission is one thing, but two? "Did Priscilla invite you to protect us from more illusions?"

    Anyway... he's fine with her taking point to open Door Number One if she wants. If anyone can survive whatever ridiculousness might try to surprise them, it's her.

    After a moment Staren asks, "...We did make sure this door doesn't incorporate a security system that's still mad at me, right?"
Stella     This place makes less visual sense than Njorun, but it fits more with Stella's perception of 'broken', at least. It's that.

    Arriving, probably, with Staren and Septette in some shape or form, the crystal golem immediatly tests the ground for proper contact, to see how much metal and 'ground' is in the area, unable to fully trust her eyes to reach a conclusion. It probably won't be helpful, per se, but she's curious, and also it comes naturally to her.

    "Why would the security systems be mad at you?" she asks, though, as Staren moves towards the door like it's somehow a bad thing. It's just a door, right?
Staren     Staren looks at Stella, blankly. "I was a member of the Union. That makes me an enemy in the records of any security systems left here. The first time, a gateway animated and tried to suck me in and everyone else in the party." He looks around. "We have a couple more Union people here this time though, so at least it won't all be focused on me."
Lezard Valeth Lezard's along for the ride this time. And what a ride it is. The Sorceror of Midgard traverses through the shattered palace, the broken environent looked upon askance. The better directed intelligence serves to keep things on point, and he looks to his fellow Concord to examine the area (and help with scouting). He happily lets Crys take point, the Sorceror a firm believer in the ancient technique of Polish Mine Detection.

"The place is broken and ruined. The evidence speaks for itself." Lezard says. "I remember what this edifice used to be like just as any of us would before the event. It doesn't matter now. At the moment, all that matters is what use we can extract for it. Sentimentality is wasted on most objects."

He simply asides as Staren wonders if he's going to be targeted again. "If you are, simply take the security systems far from us." Lezard comments, then points ahead. "Crys, go see if the hallway will attempt to annihilate you. Or the door. Or the contents of the room. I am sure one of them will try." Hey, at least he's warning her.
Priscilla     Comparative to Njorun, the Citadel is much more mineral-friendly to Stella. Aside from the decorative paneling and various luxuries, almost all of it is constructed of some kind of stone or metal, and a somewhat lesser percentage of this area is bullshit adamantium or orichalcum or the like compared to the snowflake materials the place they visited in Njorun was comprised of. They also aren't all melting together like a necrotic slurry either.

    "Yes, Sir Staren." Priscilla replies, a little bleakly. Fortunately for thee, despite whatever flattery thou might obtaineth from it, not every single corridor of the Citadel is built to knoweth of thee. Asides, I see little issue with Lady Septette's attendance. She was, after all, indispensable the time last, and she hath ever been friendly to Concord interests."

    Of course the door isn't as simple as it looks. Fancy as it is, obviously it'd be a luxurious veneer over something not actually meant to be poked at by 9-5 engineers like the waiting room branch of Njorun they'd picked before. At first it just kind of jiggles, like it's stuck, but applying prodigious force doesn't seem to do much more except make it groan. Blue sparks arc from the knocking handles, before eventually a holographic pop-up appears, saying: "Locked by some contraption".

    Completely unhelpful. Weird hologram too. It casts a shadow from the chandeliers. Holograms aren't supposed to do that. Multiverse BS probably. It has a button prompt to dismiss.

    Hitting it feels surprisingly solid. It clicks like an actual button, before diseappearing. The minute it does, said chandeliers suddenly drop from the ceiling, giving up all the slack on their chains and sliding down to almost crashing level with a series of incredibly loud, nerve-rattling grinding and clattering sounds, bouncing still just a body short of the floor. There's no ostensible reason for this, as the glittering supports just vanish into holes in the ceilings.

    There's also no ostensible reason for the glowing blue crystals mounted in elaborate circles and rows to suddenly begin shining blindly bright, twinkling like the stars visible through the windows, and then start firing swarms of cold-hued celestial homing flames at the party from behind; little white hot stars that fly from the decorative lighting as if it forgot it wasn't a weapon emplacement.
Crys Gattz Crys Gattz looks to Lezard for a moment tilt her head a bit she seems to be up for the Polish Mine Detection from the looks of it and she pauses tiling her head.

"Thank you for the warning Lezard that's more than you might have given me once."

"Peaceful isn't the word I'd use for it myself."

Staren was here which was good news and it made her a little more bolt. Lezard she knew what he could do and Septette was known by Reputation. Stella was a bit of an unknown to her. It's time to see what might try to kill her as she goes in.

"Or it could be more complicated."

Then the pop-up hits and Crys take a step back.

"Oh you have got to be kidding me."

Crys will rap on the door a few times seeing that yes it seems to have mass, she doesn't get a chance to try and use the can opener on her arm to get it open as something falls, and she's leaps clear without even thinking about it.

"Look out!"

Then comes the blue fire, she'll parry a few shots with her arm-mounted energy shield but a shot does get through and burns her, she makes a noise of pain but nothing more than that. She summons an energy pistol to hand and levels the Ruby Bullet before opening up at one of the sources of fire on her.

"Staren? Lezard? Septette? Stella Any ideas on this?"
Staren     Staren's expecting a security system to emerge from the doorframe or something. Not... a game notification? The hell? And what game says 'locked by some contraction?' Isn't it usually 'you need a key to open this door' or 'this door is locked' or 'this door is opened elsewhere'...? Well, okay, it's pretty close to that last one.

    "Okay, I get that the Citadel is growing detached from reality... but how does it know that should make it be like a /game/? That's /people/ thinking, not /physics/ thinking!" Staren complains... and then the chandeliers fall. It's a truly horrible noise. He turns to see what it's coming from, but he feels sick and claps hands over his ears uselessly for a second or two before muting his external mics, and even then it's a terrible sound through the suit.

    At least the attack is homing projectiles and not instant, so he can put up his forcefield -- and he puts the extra thrusters on his suit to work seeing how good the tracking on the flames is while shooting the... animated chandeliers? with his beam cannons!

    "I'm thinking we destroy it so it stops shooting us! If that proves impractical, we'll come up with something else!
Stella     That's a lot of fancy metal she's never poked at before. Or rather... some of it seems familiar. Probably from the massive multiversal stockpiles her king had been building up in secret for that second golem they made. Still, it's nice this place isn't made of organic matter. It's easier to 'feel', it's solid ground.

    "I see," she answers Staren, having only surface information about the Union and the Confederacy from occasional conversations that pop up. Nothing concrete enough to formulate a response.

    And then the chandelier is a god damn artillery battery. A MAGICAL artillery battery. Shooting tiny stars. Whoever made this place wanted intruders very dead, evidently.

    "I agree with Staren," she says, because destroying it sounds, you know. Smart. Stella will - if needed - take hits for the party, using that sturdy body of hers to halt as many of the roaring blue flames, at the cost of some body mass, assuming these explode and scorch like tiny stars ought to. In response, she returns the same kind of deathly blue fires upon the chandelier, as crystals break off her body and become small, floating turrets that, everytime they reflect the light of one of those blue stars, fire one right back at the source.
Septette Arcubielle      "You flatter me, Priscilla. It might have been a bit messier, but you would have managed without-" Septette's words are cut short as her head whirls around at the first sign of danger, her eyes blazing a sharp purple. From the moment the chandeliers start to fall, the scene plays out for her in slow motion. Who else has known altruistic defensive capabilities in this group and is likely to respond? Stella. She bodyblocked and created regenerating cover in Njorun.

     No worries about defense, then. Instead, she turns one hand palm-up and conjures up a series of purple horizontal lines that swim with luminous dots, like the spindles of an ethereal abacus. The way the chandeliers fell from the ceiling, the fact that they've stayed lit for all this time, the mention of a 'contraption': it all hints at some exterior power source.

     Septette summons a couple of hovering magitech drones to inspect the new holes in the ceiling and turns her arcane-sensory apparatus on the chandeliers, trying to glean any information she can about their functionality and- if they have one- where their 'off' switch is. "You keep that up, Staren. I'll work on developing our 'Plan B'."
Lezard Valeth Lezard has a certain appreciation for necrotic slurries, just not here. You can lift all kinds of interesting substances out of necrosis.

Lezard simply stands back, waiting for things to progress. The fact that the door has some hijinx isn't unexpected.

The falling of the chandeliers also isn't unexpected. He expected that or lasers, really. Of course, there's both. While he simply let Crys trigger the initial trap, leaving him out of getting smashed, the homing flames are a different problem.

The assault causes him to bring up a barrier, using the pages of the Philosopher's Stone to take the initial blast. It probably won't be useful for long.

"My idea is to destroy the crystals." Lezard drawls. "Dark Savior!" The moment he can drop his guard, the magic fires, the dark blades ripping through the air to shred at and through crystals.
Priscilla     "How dost a door knoweth to be anything, Sir Staren?" Priscilla asks in rhetorical vexation. "Some amount of exceptional force shalt be required here, I supposeth, or specialist disassembly. It is fortunate that we knoweth precisely where our-" And then the chandeliers fall out.

    The swarm of projectiles is relatively slow, but extremely persistent, homing in extremely well despite approaching at the speed of a softball pitch. The constellations of decorative crystal don't stop after one shot too; the minute one of their stars disappears, due to hitting a person, wall, barrier, or being shot down, they spawn another one, making the hallway a dense stream of tiny, intensely burning hazards to avoid, easily capable of incinerating an apple-sized chunk out of someone's armour.

    The light fixtures themselves aren't especially durable though. Though they're not quite so boring as to be made of electroplated gold and aluminium like normal, their design is obviously slender, delicate, and highly elaborate, not robust and built to take shots. The combined weapons fire is fairly effective and smashing them to pieces, chunk by chunk, with lots of wince-inducingly expensive sounding crashes and shattering sounds. Oddly, despite just being made of metal, the things appear to have some kind of 'elemental affinity'. The photon bullets from Crys' handgun seem to have their damage attenuated, their light soaked up and turning the crystals red as much as it breaks some. Conversely, Lezard's Dark Saviour causes wide swathes of them to crumble immediately. The reflected stars and a wave of crackling frost that sweeps over the floor from Priscilla and explodes into raw magic appear to be 'type neutral'. The barrage is dense and painful, but not beyond Stella's ability to soak up, at least. She'll want to gobble something up to restore that much lost body mass though.

    Septette's drones fly up through the holes in the ceiling, ostensibly there so the chains and hooks and pulleys aren't visible like some kind of middle class mansion, and find no chains, hooks, or pulleys at all. Instead of a crawlspace, the drones exit into a huge, dark chamber of indeterminate size, inside of which is a miniature, swirling galaxy of blue and red mists, glittering with teeny tiny stars, larger than a baseball diamond and spinning at a steady pace. The chains seem to be fixed to little suns of their own, just dangling from the blazing orbs as if spun out like spider silk. She can also, through them, see some sort of nebula corresponding to the doors; a shimmering wall like an aurora borealis.
Septette Arcubielle      Septette disjoins the abacus apparition with a slight twitch of her fingers and recalls her drones, breaking into a sprint back towards the center of the room. No doubt several of the homing bolts strike her- she makes no particular effort to avoid them; better her than someone more delicate. Instead, she deploys a slightly-curved, improbably-long thin blade from her forearm as soon as she's clear of the rest of the party.

     It 'cocks' back into position as if spring-loaded just as she kneels down, as if readying for the starting gun in a foot race. Then she explodes upwards, swinging the blade in an uppercut against the ceiling in tune with a mighty leap to put her full momentum behind the blow. Hopefully, this will open the celestial machinery above up to her colleagues without bringing the whole room down on top of them.
Crys Gattz Staren has the best idea honestly shoot the things that are trying to wreck them and figure out things from there. Bit by bit the group's effort deals with taking them out and finally the attack drops. The amount of firepower let lose do quite some serious damage. She will back off a little bit now. She does notice the odd effects of her Photon bullets though. That was odd and something she would take note of for further actions here.

She'll make note of Septette's drones going off likely seeking another way to get the door open and that's just fine with the Newman really. She's going to search the room seeking another way to deal with the door, that being her Falclaw, with no longer being fires on she's going to try and use the claw to force the door and see what happens.

"Stand back, I'm going to try to force it."
Staren     "That's just it! A door doesn't know about /videogames/!" Staren answers Priscilla. "Why did it become less realistic in this /particular way/?! I'm sure this will one day lead to a better understanding of how the Multiverse really works, when we're not in the middle of fighting it!" Staren says as he flies around the room, acquiring a trail of the glowing fires. Stella blocks a lot of them (but they just respawn -- damn) Now and then one catches up, or he zigs when he should have zagged, and some burn away chunks of his forcefield. Parts of it burn out, and the hollow sphere thins out as it redistributes its remaining volume evenly.

    Hopefully the group's work destroying the chandeliers means fewer lights attacking. But when Septette transmits her findings... "Is that even something we can physically attack?" Despite any doubts, as soon as a way is opened up to attack it, he tests the efficacy of beams and missiles on it before cycling to stranger weapons...
Stella     That is in fact a lot of damage. It's fortunate Stella is made of tank and also regeneration, and that these things aren't inflicting damage able to cripple those aspects. Rolling boulders would be harder to deal with than explosions in that regard. Something about brute force and cracks just doesn't jive with whatever Stella's made of.

    As quickly as she loses chunks of crystal to the endless barrage, for the sake of giving the party more time to aim and do their thing, she regrows them, formations of prismatic crystals just bursting out of her to replace the missing parts, though not so fast that they regain coloring before being struck again, leaving Stella looking kind of odd and patchworked for the moment.

    With the chains so high up, she elects to cover Lezard especially so that he can work his magic, because her own ranged attacks aren't going to inflict quite as much damage.
Lezard Valeth Lezard guesses that the crystals would be attuned somehow, and that either ice or darkness would be the way to go. He guesses correctly the first time. He blasts downa number of the offensive crystals, but there seems to be more to deal with. Sadly, Lezard doesn't seem to be able to attack and defend at the same time, and he takes a couple burning hits thanks to his insistence in not standing with the group. There you go, Lezard, thinking you're more clever than everyone else and still paying for it. Stella moves in and shifts her defense to Lezard himself. He makes a mental note to thank her later.

The smoking holes in his clothing (and body) grating on him, Lezard clenches his teeth and prepares to go offensive again. Just as he is about to continue abusing apparent weaknesses, Septette alerts him to another situation, and he looks up, estimating things. "Staren, we have little time to be concerning ourselves with what the environment believes. It is just as likely a stupid joke left behind by the security architect. Many of them back then fancied themselves... clever... in this manner."

The ceiling shatters, revealing the potential target. A glance at the nature of the beast causes him to grit his teeth, considering for a moment... "ICICLE EDGE!" He announces, raising the Philosopher's Stone as he casts dozens of spikes of crystalline death into the aurora, hoping to snuff out the stars that seem to be holding things together... theoretically literally.
Priscilla     The roof is largely made of heavy, thick stone and steel reinforcing. That means it's not really a match for a five foot vorpal blade with a rocket start. Septette carves straight through a ceiling support and crashes through with brute force, being harder and more dense than the material it's made of, and causing a heavy chunk of marble to fall off and crash to the ground, crushing one of the defunct chandeliers completely with the telltale sound of 'about to pay up thirty grand under other circumstances'.

    It's enough to fly a catboy through. Parking his butt in there and firing off curtains of beams and missiles, he finds that the particle beams and plasma explosives aren't terribly effective against what might as well be called 'star element', exploding inside the nebula and then being suppressed and absorbed. The scale doesn't seem to matter too much, save that the really big blasts throw some of the scintillating mist out of its maximum bounds of gravitational pull, effectively causing it to shed some of its mass through brute force. Logically icicles shouldn't do all that much to it either, but where the giant ice spikes land, they snuff out large portions of the aurora, causing little frozen stars to tinkle over the ground like glass marbles. After a constant barrage from both, the nebula dims and disintegrates.

    Yanking on the door with the Falclaws, attempting to crowbar it open, gets nowhere at first, prompting the "locked by some contraption" notice over and over again as the photon weapon sparks blue from the brass. When the aurora up above dies out however, Crys can feel a solid *clunk* from her end, and the blue sparks fizzle out. The door starts to very slowly grind open, requiring her to really put her back into it. Once it gets open a crack, Priscilla hooks her scythe into the gap, and starts really reeling it open with her strength added to the effort. When the way forward is more than accessible for people-sized people, she calls the others back down. Nothing pops out to murder anyone in the meantime, meaning Stella can regenerate further instead of having to sacrificially bodyblock some more.

    The double doors open into what is unmistakably the data core alright. Rather than being a computer (or rather, a horrible wooden brain parasite thing disguised as a computer), the core appears to be an elaborate arrangement of blue crystals on thin brass rails encircling one fridge-sized specimen, capable of sliding around it in circular orbits so that one can adjust the alignment and click them together like an abacus, or separate them, as modular terminals.

    It's definitely functioning. Not just evident by the slow rotating of the rails, the glowing blue of the crystals rippling on the spherical, silver walls, or the general thrum of power through the etched floor, but because the room is a bubbling cauldron of glitching holograms and pop-ups, spawning hundreds of windows as quickly as they're deleted or crash all throughout the available space. Most of them are too short-lived to make sense of, though those with enhanced cognition speed will notice they're largely data request errors, or footage shortly preceding the Citadel's collapse.
Staren     Yeah, Staren expected as much. As he's deciding what to pull from his bag and try next, though, others finish it, allowing the door to finally be opened. Staren takes a good look around -- maybe there's something up here that will mean more in context they only have later -- then jumps back down through the hole, jetpack arresting his fall a bit unsteadily. He's still not as used to the full force it provides as he is to his usual loadout.

    Onwards to the data core! Staren takes it in. "...Is each one of those a computer as well as storage? Hmm..." He circles the data core, looking around the room. "I don't suppose it's voice controlled..." He gets several seconds into thinking about elaborate plans to try and convince the computer that he's a Confederate elite that stole Staren's body, before he remembers Lezard is RIGHT THERE, and looks at the wizard expectantly.
Septette Arcubielle      After a brief moment of checking herself over- her cloak is ruined, but no real damage- Septette proceeds through the pried-open doors, and swiftly re-manifests her ethereal abacus-display. Similar translucent purple spindles intersect the crystals around the room, 'feeling out' the shape of them through the transfixion. Their subtle interference with the flow of energy through the system in turn affects the motes dancing along the display in her palm in intricate yet predictable ways, causing them to oscillate at higher and higher speeds until the display is essentially unreadable to anyone but her.

     "You can tell a lot about a system by the way it's built. Design encodes intent. Intent hints at interface. So with a pinch of luck..." Septette twitches her fingers in a microscopic motion, causing the display to shift and reorganize itself from parallel lines into some sort of polygonal shape. "... This ought to tell us how to get it to cough up what it has."

     Judging by the way her eyes linger on Stella's patchwork-iridescent healing injuries, that isn't the only thing she'd like to wring some information from. But that's for another time.
Lezard Valeth Brute force and teamwork, things which work together well. The Concord triumph over the latest in Stupid Ancient Confederate Defense Systems, and Lezard sighs, relaxing a bit. Not a lot, but a bit.

They haven't escaped yet with the objective, after all. Compared to his loud entrance and loud resolution of the combat situation, the Sorceror steps into the room and looking over the assembly. "This is not my specialty." Lezard remarks. "But I can believe that perhaps adjusting the alignment of the array might assist in reconstituting the data. Perhaps the Collapse knocked it out of alignment, or it too is afflicted by the 'broken' nature of everything that seems to reside here."
Stella     Eventually the onslaught ends, and Stella can stop being target practice for the defenses. That is to say, she can finally get her bearings, fully regrow her body, and even regain near-human coloration, ever a slight nudge off due to that weird sheen. You can make a diamond skin-colored, but it'll still look off and sparkle under light.

    Not expecting thanks, as she was just doing Her Duty, she moves on ahead when Priscilla opens the door, revealing a massive array of crystals on metallic supports. That, she thinks she can help with, even if technology is... not her forte. But this isn't technology! This is weird technomagic crystals at best!

    Crystals. That's the important word.

    She approaches the core, as safely as she can. Tries to feel out the composition of those crystals, whether she might be able to literally just touch them and interact with them or not. Do they have a will, like her? A name?

    It's not the careful, scientific approach of Septette and Staren, it's the much more thrilling approach of put your hand on the stove to see if it's hot. Or in this case, if the stove is your friend.
Crys Gattz Crys Gattz seems to get nowhere at first with her getting the canned response that it's locked by some contraption. She'll see the sparks though and then the aurora above it dies? She gets some progress the dorr finally start opening and she'll push everything she has into it crying out as she does, thankfully Priscilla is there the moment she does get it open just enough for Priscilla to get the door open. Once it's opened and it sticks? She'll take a moment to recover a bit and she looks to Priscilla.

"Thank you for the help."

She'll take a breather and pop a monomate while she waits as nothing is coming out to try and murder them in the meantime.

"...well this is certainly a mess I got no idea what to do with this there's not even the any key to hit."

The last part was a joke hopefully, though its clear she's letting the rest of the party go to work on the strange computer system.

"So Lezard any idea who made this thing? You used to be pretty high up in the Confederates."
Priscilla     According to Septette's calculations, the actual physical composition of the core appears to be intact, as a nice change of pace. The crystals are very much data storage, using magically encoded information rather than digitally stored. The largest piece is purely a databank/server type deal, which the smaller ones hook up to and look inwards. They access different parts of the database, depending on where they are oriented to it, sort of like some kind of magnifying glass reading itty bitty print off the surface. More connected together have a wider search, and bigger temporary storage.

    It's clearly for less computer-savvy people more used to magical arcana, better suited to someone like Lezard, compared to the stuff they'd found at Njorun being more Staren's speed. It's not unfamiliar to him, so he'd know they respond automatically to tiny magical charges, for ease of use of Confederate wizard-types, though they look like they can be pushed around manually if one doesn't have that.

    Despite its clear (albeit glitchy) appearance though, this room is even *more* dangerous than the last. Stella walking through the snowstorm of holographic displays finds that when several of the flickering windows appear and disappear in her personal space, they splice right into her, displacing her matter and basically telefragging thin, window-shaped sections out of her body where they intersect. She's immediately cut in dozens of places that would be fatal to a human. Staren is mostly flying around at an observational distance, but even he gets clipped with a few, which of course appear partially right inside his forcefield and chunk deep, paper thin fissures out of his suit like nothing. A couple draw blood (or whatever else, if he's fully robotic).
Stella     It's probably for the best Stella is the one who tripped that discovery. Getting cut and shredded seems rather terrible at first - the golem crumbles into a mess of broken crystals, and it takes a few moments for it to rumble and start picking itself back up, rather literally, and out of the path of those "screens" which are apparently not just screens!

    "This is problematic. I could likely reach the core," she says, her jaw reforming with clinks and cracks of crystal, "But it might take a long time if I must constantly stop to reassemble myself. I do not believe it is beyond my capabilities, but it would be inefficient."

    On the other hand, walking through red circles on the ground is something she's very well built to handle, so as a plan B it might not be too bad.
Staren     The wizard and magic robot figuring it out isn't a surprise to Staren, although the mode of operation IS. "...Did they make a holographic /microfilm reader/?" He rubs his chin. "Well, I guess it IS kind of intuitive... Probably hell to organize though..."

    And then damage indicators appear in his HUD. The windows were so thin he didn't even feel them. He starts to move his arm to examine it, possibly cutting it more, then his eyes widen as he realizes what's happening, and then he pulls away, and flies back out of the room maybe a LITTLE faster than he can control well, landing to a skidding halt in the previous room. "Get out of there! The holograms will cut you to ribbons!" he announces, now that he's had time to do more than react, his attention briefly absorbed in checking his own medical readouts and directing his medichines -- fortunately, wounds like this are probably among the fastest and cleanest to heal with nanites, although it will still take time.

    Eventually he stands up and turns to face the others, one hand clasped around the cut one. "Assuming it's not actively malicious, perhaps there's a way to shut off the holograms? Computer, disable all displays!" he finally tries giving an order, because at this point things are ALREADY going to hell.
Lezard Valeth Lezard assumed that the system would be more technological based on the presentation, but it seems that is not so much the case. "This looks like it was commissioned and given to the Confederate engineering team to operate. Many of us contracted them out to manufacture things that one of us would feel was beneath us. Unfortunately, the specifications for this device appear to be problematic."

He glances over as Stella gets shredded by the solid holograms. "Even moreso, it seems. In its current state the device is practically its own security system."

Staren tries the first obvious choice. Lezard reaches out and tries the other obvious choice, simply reaching out to attempt to use arcane power to find an interface point and try to gain control of the system. No muss, no fuss... if it works and will respond to it instead of insisting that he arrange the crystals. That said, arranging them is always an option, simply moving them to work to array them in such a way that it reduces the holographic storm instead of increasing it. He hopes.
Septette Arcubielle      "It'll cut you to ribbons," Staren says. Somewhere deep in Septette's psyche, an ancestral stubbornness stirs- of course it was intended as a general 'you', but some small part of her acquires the brilliant idea to do precisely that exact thing he's telling people not to do.

     She justifies this to herself by saying that it's a tidy and direct solution, that it decreases the risk that other people will be exposed to, and that the longer they spend in a place like the Tyrant's Maw the more risk they're exposed to of weirder thigngs happening. But deep down, that isn't why she does it.

     Septette leans forward for an instant before breaking into a dead sprint through the holographic snowstorm, using her dilated perception to analyze the patterns in the chaotic cloud and place her body where the windows are least likely to materialize and hazarding that her durability will stand up to being telefragged for the remainder.

     Assuming nothing truly catastrophic happens to stop her, she'll simply wrench the orbiting 'reader' crystals into the correct position with her brute strength, then pull back to hopefully let Lezard access the properly-organized system.
Crys Gattz With the computer things going on here Crys is hanging back doubly so it's a magical computer to her. She does take note of how dangerous this place could be and she'll keep from getting cut up in them she'll watch and doubly listen to Staren's words on this matter. She damn well keeps back not wanting to get cut to ribbons and she looks to Staren for a moment.

"Ah I see Lezard."

She has a better idea about it and wonders for a moment.

"Think your old access codes might work Lezard?"

She watches with Septette going trhough and doesn't reush in after her wating to see just what happens to her and if Septette can pull it off.
Priscilla     Unfortunately, the crystal computer does not listen to Staren. He's a bad Union boy. He escapes without further incident. His forcefield is a big enough target to eat more cuts, but considering they have so little mass, they don't make much of a difference to it, as much as it doesn't make much of a difference to them. As he guessed with having Lezard here, the 'computer' immediately accepts his magic input, charging several crystals with a core of white that shines through their blueglass exterior. He then immediately gains the ability to manipulate them remotely, able to guide and pull them along the rails with hand gestures.

    Septette charging right through it is probably one of the least wise decisions someone could theoretically make in this scenario, but at least she's more or less built for it. She has the reaction times and predictive ability to hard pivot and zigzag between the majority of them, and she isn't very big, especially given her skeletal frame giving the frag windows plenty to miss. The few that are just random glitches which clip her anyways fizzle and 'splash' on the surfaces of her inner frame which are covered in microsigils, but cut into the supplementary components that aren't, as if the 'being covered in data' repels them instead of sturdiness or protective enchantment. She's the only one to actually *not* get diced completely so far.

    There's no need to manually move the crystals around with Lezard being able to remote them around. Septette can basically read at lightspeed, so she can search extremely fast. To try and split the difference, Priscilla disappears, which is ostensibly useless since the frag windows don't give a damn about invisibility, but mysteriously appears on the inside of the rings a moment later, motioning Lezard to bring her some as well while she's in a semi-safe spot; a soft deadzone where the fewest solid images appear. If Stella wants to help as well, she can wade into a third cluster.

    The data is thankfully intact, since the mandatory thing that is broken in this room is . . . the obvious, meaning it's not too hard to navigate to the after action reports and personnel files and start collecting info on the bazillion Servant summonings and ostensible signs of Grail Wars. It's all recorded in essentially read-only format though. Staren, Septette, or someone will have to record it for use later. Probably. Stella finds that the crystals are perfectly crystalline; exactly what her powers interact with.
Stella     The question at that point is whether or not the core can recognize Stella as a data crystal, because if it can it might be handy to just dump all the data "inside her" and sort it out in a safer environment. It's not like she'd mind shedding chunks of her body for people to stuff in computers for a while.

    Of course it's also equally viable for her to just... absorb the crystals and keep them inside her body until they're out. Her ability to just contain things, living or otherwise, comes in handy in situations like this. Of course at that point they have to hope stealing the crystals doesn't set off some even more awful defenses, but that's life!

    Those options are on the table, if nobody's got anything more reliable. Stella doesn't care either way which people prefer out of her, and vocalizes as much during her slog through awful, telefragging floating error messages to join up with Priscilla.
Staren     Once it's safe...ish, Staren sends drones to record whatever needs recording. He suggests recording, if it's safe, even if Stella can pocket the entire data core for later, just in case something goes weird.

    And here he's presented with what seems like an amazing opportunity: To raid the Confederate databanks for basically anything.

    But... is there anything still of use? Seeing what they had on him, for instance, is egotistical and pointless. He could check if there ever WERE plans to steal the Second Gauntlet from him and experiment on unwilling people with it, but how does that matter now either way? He could search the files to make sure that Xiang doesn't have secret plagues hidden somewhere in the Multiverse waiting to burst out and infect people, but Xiang's in the Concord now so there's no need.

    Does anything still matter?

    If Stella DOES take the whole core or something, maybe they can get a collection of whatever Confederate R&D had info on, to further the Concord's own research into... everything.
Septette Arcubielle      Fortunately, all of Septette's body is- in some fashion- a data storage device, containing magical information to reinforce her bones with programmed enchantments. Those enchantments just might serve their intended purpose here, albeit through very unintended means.

     She flicks through the data in the crystals she can get close to as quickly as they can process her queued barrage of requests, reflecting an epilepsy-inducing density of data in her glassy eyes. All of it's memorized and archived in that inscrutable mind... probably. If her memory isn't really as spotty as she sometimes plays at.
Lezard Valeth Lezard, being a former Confederate member in good standing and also a mage, happens to be able to manipulate the crystals. That's a relief. It cleans things up and minimizes murder potential, which is a thing when both Septette and Priscilla push through. He almost shrugs visibly at the effort, but thinks better of it. He splits them evenly between Septette, Priscilla, and Stella, standing back and waiting as they sift through things.

Meanwhile, Lezard turns his attention to something else: Analyzing the local space. If it's sufficiently stable, he'll take his time to create a set of teleportation circles to allow the group to get in and out of the safe(r) zone without getting shredded so much... and to quick-move back to the zone entrance if he can reach that far.
Priscilla     Turns out Stella can just absorb the crystals. The little ones anyways; the main core is far too big and heavily charged. That takes all the data they've currently accessed with them. When Lezard begins shifting them around, it also shifts the spray of deadly data windows with them, opening up some clearer spots as the bulk of the random cloud of possible appearance locations moves with them, as if coming from a projector.

    From there, it isn't tremendously difficult (albeit still a little time sensitive) to scour for what they can before Lezard is done with the teleportation circles, recording it in Staren's many drones and Septette's memory. They certainly don't work *inside* the data core room, but once he steps out into the relative completely hallway, they last for a few minutes; enough to double check and bail out.