Scene #7342: CRYPTARK (4)

Owner	Pose
Starbound Flotilla	"The Void" used to be a term for the space in the planetary interior, but before that time, it had life as a different descriptor. The Void is the barren spaces between stars and other gravity wells, where nothing of interest collects, nothing lives, and nobody goes. There are no stars, nebula, asteroids, or stellar bodies of any kind. You could drift there for millennia without encountering a single piece of microdebris. There's no reason to be there, no reason to go there, and no reason to stay there. The only ones who make their homes there are hermits and illiterate Floran pirates, and the chances that you will ever find them are miniscule. It is emptiness. It is nothing. But there is something there. The silent fleet can be detected on active scanners, and not on passive ones. There seems to be no end to them, and no formation. The massive capital ships are blocky, industrial, clearly prefabricated in a way. This swarm of stellar titans drifts, all in near-unison, with no clear destination and no clear origin. They respond to no hails. There are at least three hundred thousand of them. Since finding these ships, it seems only possible to find more and more of them. The Starbound Flotilla are operating George's salvage ship, the SFS Mendacity II. Passage aboard is offered to those who don't have their own ships -- alongside EVA hardsuits, zero-G maneuvering kits, oxygenating limited-time nanoskins, a selection of military firearms and melee equipment, and other suchlike. Gear is available here: The Goop Guns and Goop Missiles crafted from the technology in the last excursion offer a chance to fire the unusual super-stasis-fluid at foes, and simple cans of the stuff are available as well. Ramblades are available, rocket-powered polearms made from the Spikedog bodies. NEW GEAR is also available: Smartguns with ammo fitted with microthruster projectiles, designed to track and home in on targets, several types of complex man-portable rocket launcher designed for zero-gravity, and a mini-probe launcher designed to scout areas without heading through to them immediately. Also of note, several inactive KEYCARD STATIONS are being worked on, though compromising them to acquire their cards will reduce the overall profit of the operation. A deployment bay has been pressurized, awaiting each individual's exit. From here, viewing ports allow the ship itself to be seen. There are no windows. There are only the greebles of surface hull systems and a few hatches.
Starbound Flotilla	This one is long, featuring the failed remains of construction projects intending to use centrifugal force as artificial gravity, and strange, exotic engine types -- none of which bear any resemblance to a successful FTL engine, only increasingly strange sublight. This time, though, with experience with the alloys, Seft is able to fit out the Mendacity with some complex signals able to pierce the hulls -- the layouts are bare. Now, at last, one can see every minutiae of the hallways, and even the signatures for the drones. The science ship is masive, complex, and full of rather concerningly large security signatures. Here we have a shield generator for the core, a second for the alarm system for the core, and the door control system, all tightly coupled in the north wing -- inaccessible from the outside, unless one sacrifices even more profit for a card. Two drone fitting stations (considered by the Cryptizens to be "medical") are producing titanic units from raw corpse-material in the East, and an armoring system there is calculating personalized shielding for each of them -- the doors inside are unlocked, and a keycard terminal there gives access further on. Repair systems in the west work hard to keep all other modules functional, and two turret control systems nearby mean it'll be quite hard to shut down the turrets globally, and doors to the west wing are locked as well. The south seems to be dense with enemies, containing a failsafe system that will quantum-collapse into the form of the most recently destroyed module -- and the Cortex Core itself, the primary objective, and another keycard terminal. Throughout the whole ship, data terminals dot the map, offering opportunities to process the Auto-Nav AI, and any other information, to access far-reaching archives.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Aboard the Mendacity II, Bercilak avails himself of the Usual: a nanoskin, a GOOP CAN, and a shot of Salt of the Wound. He lifts the glass in a silent toast, helmet cradled under one arm as he downs the optionally-medicinal spirit. The glass is deposited in the receptacle with no showboating, this time around. As with his last excursion, his usual mirth is dimmed somewhat to the kind of friendly pleasantness one might see at a funeral--not so much pleased to be here, but glad to at least be in familiar company. "Al-heil," says the Green Knight with a nod, as familiar faces file into the Mendacity. He touches a green, gauntleted hand to the side of his helmet, studying the tactical overlays being broadcast by Seft. "Yon southward devyse must we rekenen with. Wene I we astrue devyses ende-birdnesse of notabiliti, from grete to liti. Forthy, let us astrue firstli yon repaire devyse, thanne whider-sum-ever, ende-birdnesse as shalt make our labourage most unhard." "Shalt we unloken yon westward dore, other... shalt I 'unloken' hit?" West is most important by his estimation, because the repair module can be destroyed, and once another one is destroyed, the quantum module will assume the shape of something else, depriving the ship of the ability to repair itself. The question is, will they use a card to unlock it, or, to save profits, shall Bercilak just beat it down? He supposes someone else might open it a different way, but he likes beating down doors, even in grim places like this.
Ezra Mochizuki	Ezra's equipped with his normal suit and mobility gear, a monoblade, and a goop-gun. For once, he's also taken a real firearm - a smartgun pistol, which he hopes will autocorrect for his lousy shot and the inability to fire ranged weapons faster than the gun actually works. Choosing a direction, Ezra goes to move SOUTH, since perhaps they'll be able to find a way to shutdown the failsafe there, and if not, well...it's a better entrance than wasting time east, as Lilian pointed out.
Lilian Rook	<Q-Conversation> Lilian Rook says, "I do wonder if it will somehow find a way to make all of these even more unsettling and convoluted." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "We have to go south regardless, and a quantum collapse replacement won't matter until global repair functions are shut down. Only after that function is gone will we be able to make any headway." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "It's locked, so we'll want to go through an existing terminal. That's east or south." <J-IC-Scene> Lilian Rook says, "Choosing our main route as smashing our way through the east will be pointless; the repair system will restore the medical terminals by the time we've reached and disabled it. We want to establish a presence in the south in either respect." Such is Lilian's current tactical assessment of the situation. With the last few ships, she'd stuck to accomplishing as much 'xenoarcheological' work as she could, relatively in the shadows compared to the massive blitz from the other parties. This vessel, more than profit she barely cares for, has answers to the burning questions still plaguing her in droves, locked away in databanks she needs in one piece, and the rest of the ship disabled. Thus, she puts her morbid wonder aside for a mission, begins disassembling the defenses in her head, and straps up with the newly produced microgravity specialist weaponry. She also takes some considerable amount of time with bones retrieved from heaps of long-dead 'cryptizens' as the group has taken to calling them, carving esoteric sigils into the most resonant material she can think of being associated with the place, and dremeling in mystery compounds, before slotting them into a bandolier in place of shotgun shells. Once the mission begins in earnest, she is out the airlock and quite emphatically space-southward. She's already had plenty of time to assess the location of the terminal, and that's exactly where she heads first, skipping the bulk of guns pointed at the door while the others enter. Knowing full well the sheer volume of enemies here, she settles herself down into a covered position and draws up a similar array of shadow as before to hide her presence for long enough to finish lifting codes, operating the terminal, and opening the doors towards the western side. What's different than before is the number of places all throughout the southern section, both close to her path and branching to the west, that feature little cryptizen-bone-cairns, etched like a page from the Kells, and seemingly rooted into the oxidized sediment of the hull like soil. When approached closely enough for a metaphorical interaction prompt, they draw up the silty corroded metal and bone detritus all around to create stationary bulkheads and blinds. They vary from heavy covered positions of fused metal inscribed with runes of steadiness meant to resist enemy fire, to thin walls inscribed with runes of cold solely there to block turret and sensor sweeps and provide a safe spot to stand, and even to terrain features made of conveniently arranged skeletal matter inscribed with runes of stealth, to register as big, blobby, stationary 'sentry drones'. Not only should it make running to the west wing much easier, but it should provide a number of permanent positions to move about the south and remain entrenched against enemy mobilization, as well as later shelters against the core itself.
Starbound Flotilla	Here in the south, the shielded brain awaits, seething, violent. One can see it through one of the gaps in one of the walls, gleaming, shining dangerously. But the halls stretch further. Ezra and Lilian are menaced by Leviathan-class foes, titans of steel and bone that have been crafted from who knows what sort of skeleton, bearing canons as big around as a man, at least fifteen feet long and tall. But, present, and often bristling with dangerous child-sized corpse-lets, are various techno-sarcophagi. Corpses within are interred clutching what one must assume are their young, whose cybernetics squirm their bodies out from the corpse's arms to swarm violently in the environment when possible. Sneaking is tough as hell. Yet, not impossible. Stealthy options made by Lilian are capable of resisting the Leviathan eyes that sweep over the hull while the bodies rumble with false lungs and synthetic rage. This means she can get to the west, and that Ezra can get to the FAILSAFE. The FAILSAFE is a shield generator. The FAILSAFE is an alarm system. The FAILSAFE is a door security manager. The FAILSAFE is a drone fitting station. Every time Ezra blinks or glances away, it's something different. Irony abounds as the most effective way to solve this turns out to be a slow and deliberate type. How will he approach it -- and which? Seft marks the glyphs on the tactical map when she can pick them up. "Focused. I think this might be a good way to get to the west. But, it might draw danger away from Ms. Rook if you head in through the outside, Sir Bercilak. You miight be able to circle into the turret systems and use your way of handling things there!" She makes sure to help keep options available. Over here in the west, in these dark musty halls, the repair systems await. The turret was a known quantity. The repair systems are a bit more new. Twisting bulges of cords wrap around central processing, and link to weird ports. Inside the tubes, and frequently emerging from the ports, one can see something that looks like... the security drones, with much smaller bodies and proportionally larger heads. Like the difference between an adult and an 8-year-old. The still-active remains of child laborers used for repairs.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	After some discussion, there is a conclusion reached. Bercilak will not be smashing through the west door, but the thought of not smashing does not disappoint him as much as it otherwise would. He's piecing together a story much grander and stranger than any one fight. The excitement that he'd normally find in the brawl that surely awaits him in the SOUTH is also absent. It is with an unusually quiet patience that Bercilak follows Ezra. From the sight of the first gun pointed their way, Bercilak is moving. Lifting his axe, he draws attention to himself, banging it loudly against the rust-coated walls of the south corridor. CLANG CLANG CLANG After three loud impacts, Bercilak deftly swings the weapon around. He's aiming it not at his enemies, but the ground, straking with the very edge of the weapon's heel to fling angry red sparks into the optics of any drones approaching to engage him in close combat. Every manner of projectile levied against him is borne without complaint or irritation, save one: explosives. These, for the danger they present to others, the Green Knight will handle the way only he can: by throwing himself into the blast radius to absorb as much of it as he can, in the event that there's no other way. His priority, otherwise, is keeping every hostile eye in the room on him. To that end, he makes himself as big a target as possible, by causing all manner of superficial damage to the ship as he wades through the thick of battle. His path is vaguely 'West,' but he takes every side hallway he can, making his passage as obvious as possible. His axe carves marks into walls like the tusks of a boar on trees, allowing drones to track him even if he's around a corner. Taking this long and winding path, being blasted and stabbed and set ablaze likely the whole time, he's trying to lead the ship's defenders away from Lilian and Ezra, and into tightly packed corridors where they (he assumes, right or wrong)risk blasting themselves as much as him.
Lilian Rook	It's Lilian's first time seeing the ship-brain of a crypt vessel in person. She decides almost instantly that it's much worse than merely reviewing it from after-action footage. The map generated by Seft had given her some idea of the constancy of enemies within, and their general routes of patrol, but no real reference for either their overwhelming size or their sheer grotesquerie. A far cry from the 'dog'-type enemies or the simple plasma blasters, she is glad to have committed to dealing with these as little as possible. She is, in fact, even experiencing nebulously thankful feelings towards the green giant getting them all to focus on him. Lilian moves as quickly and silently through the opened catacomb-corridors as she can without spending the abstract resource tax necessary to increase both of those categories to a lamniscate value. A guns blazing stand in a ship of this comparative size -- and informational value -- is unthinkably outside of her plans. When she arrives at the repair bay, Lilian cannot quite help but spare a moment to express her disgust. Her finger hovers around the video prompt to switch off the recording, for the psychologically unsafe view her camera is taking in, but ultimately errs on the side of leaving it in for the debriefing, if nothing else. She sets up the rocket launchers taken from George's smithy tables, muttering with the utmost bilious sarcasm "Can't judge a culture." and then fires the entire complement of her charges into the ports connecting the cord network to the central processing hub, plunging rockets into every gap she can expose. One doing so has instantly put her on the map of every auto-defense in the area, she spends the necessary time to reach one of the two turret control modules, this time opting for tearing it to pieces, rather than her careful divination-based hacking approaches from before. "Repair systems are offline. I'll see if I can disable at least half of the stationary weaponry on board." she updates through the radio. "Failing that, the failsafe should replace this module instead of the repair station, and won't undo my handiwork. Someone get to the north and disable the shield generator already."
Ezra Mochizuki	As Ezra reaches the failsafe, he's faced with a problem. Everytime he blinks or looks away, it changes. His plan is simple, as he glances at the failsafe. Everytime it changes, he makes a mental note of what it changed to. He's trying to find if there's a pattern to the changes, or if it's random, as he radios the others - especially the Flotilla. <"Guys, the failsafe keeps changing on its own. You got any fancy advice for this? I'm checking if there's a pattern.">
Starbound Flotilla	The leviathan units bear down on Bercilak mercilessly. Titans of bone and metal blast massive bombs in his direction. Large fossilized claws try to physically rip the man apart. Pulling attention away is helpful, though; these brutal bastards being peeled off open the southern area like a blossoming flower, with the few soft glows that remain in here no longer obfuscated or shadowed by the constant movement of ancient bodies. But the number is growing more dense by the second. They might pile on Bercilak with enough density to keep him immobilized, or worse, have enough numbers to make his distraction irrelevant sometime soon! The repair station is annihilated explosively, though a dozen or so stray child-corpses stream from the wreck, emitting an inhuman wail that drifts lazily in and out of the human hearing range and induces a horrid bone-rending feeling of resonance in the skull. Old auto-crying meant to call the attention of a caretaker, now equally as dead as it responds. One of those sacophagi drift in pursuit. Flick. The FAILSAFE is now a REPAIR SYSTEM. Flickering little horrid cyber-skeleton children swarm out from inhumanely tiny living spaces, swarming at Ezra -- and many streak towards the lost repair system with huge replacement parts in hand! The turret control module targets Lilian near-instantly, locking on and swiveling its huge, armored mouth to open wide. The core is exposed only briefly, and it menaces her with a horrifying column of shining purple plasma, intended to burn her beyond ash -- but she heads for it with more violent intent. Enough sword work will surely solve the matter, if she can get it deep enough in that cannon's mouth. Flick. The FAILSAFE is now a TURRET CONTROL SYSTEM -- itself, a massive turret that swivels to bear down on him, and urgently open fire with columns of plasma that disregard the safety of the flickering children-corpses. But the other repair-drone workers are starting to quantum-fade, going a bit limp when they encounter damage such as Bercilak's heavy marks. It looks like the REPAIR SYSTEM has stopped, and means that any progress that can get made is at least permanent! REMAINING: NORTH: SHIELD (SHIELDING CORE), SHIELD (SHIELDING ALARMS), ALARMS (DEFENDING CORTEX CORE), DOOR CONTROL EAST: DRONE FITTING x2, ARMORING, KEYCARD WEST: TURRET CONTROL SOUTH: FAILSAFE, CORTEX CORE, KEYCARD Exploration has determined that WEST-NORTH, WEST-EAST, and SOUTH-NORTH passage require a keycard.
Ezra Mochizuki	Ezra's scanning the failsafe. And then it turns into a repair system, and drones swarm at him. He leaps upwards, firing the micro-gun at them, until there's the explosion and it becomes a turret control system. "Shit." The cannon blasts at Ezra with a column of plasma, as he suddenly diverts out of the way, narrowly avoiding deep-fry. He moves to home in on the back of the turret, and find anything sensitive that he can shut it down with. Whether that's a control system to jam a knife and fire some bullets into, or wiring to slice, or even just kicking the crap out of it until it malfunctions. <"NEVERMIND!">
Lilian Rook	Lilian would clap her hands over her ears at the horrendous squealing emitted from the already unholy abomination that is an cyborg child corpse, but she's wearing a sealed helmet. She can't 'just turn the sound off', and the interior of the ship is a pressurized atmosphere, and so she just has to deal with it. She does so by unholstering the George-designed microgravity assault rifle and temporarily pouring all of her attention into obliterating all of the crying horrors with all of the urgency and relief of a marathon runner chugging down water behind the finish line. None of the awful things are spared -- not out of a reaction proximal to anger, but out of sheer abhorrence for their very existence. Lilian only briefly lingers to kick the cybernetic pieces into far corners to distract the floating nursery-tomb into wandering far away from her for the time being. Lilian is also not nearly in a position to challenge the full firepower of the main turret core head on. When the main battery is turned on her, she scatters, disappearing behind the thankfully plentiful cover the decayed scientific-industrial behemoth affords. She spends a significant length of time moving from cover to cover ahead of the advancing wave of incineration, holding her action and waiting for the exact moment the main beam stops to recharge, and then takes a move, move, move, standard, and full action in sequence to get in and hack the glowing core to pieces in-person before it can close again (then retreat to a safe distance once the atmospheric heat starts becoming unbearable through her suit). She doesn't especially like her chances going for the second one while the Failsafe is still in play, so she continues further NORTH, deciding that moving all the way over to the east to scour for a second keycard is a tactically unfeasible risk of resources, and sacrificing one of the terminals to force her way in instead, searching for the core-shielding system. The alarms seem like a lost cause at this point.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	The slow march of the Green Knight through ancient sentinels leaves a trail of melted armor and spilt blood along the floor. Between that and the superficial gashes cut with his axe, it looks like someone left an exceptionally violent trail of breadcrumbs. For every blow he manages to strike, he takes two or three more. The bulky breastplate he wears over the rest of his armor bears vicious gashes from the claws of the leviathan units. Beneath that, tendrils of smoke begin to rise. It's one of the bombs which ultimately tips the balance against him. The force of it lifts him off of his feet, impaling him on the sharp edge of a girder revealed by an earlier explosive. Hanging in the air with the bloodstained implement sticking gruesomely through his abdomen, his march is halted. His pursuers catch up to him in a narrow choke point. Pressing the pommel against the wall behind him, Bercilak forces himself off of the girder. The gaping hole in his chest rapidly closes, leaving only a hole in the armor, where his green skin is visible. There's no place for him to run, now, as the other end of the corridor bears the sounds of approaching hostiles. Now fighting enemies approaching from two ends, the Green Knight is impressive in his skill and ferocity, but utterly unable to extricate himself, with so many big bodies coming his way. As he busies himself with one leviathan, the claws of another dig into his back, cracking the breastplate from him with the harsh sound of groaning metal. Sparks fly from it as all manner of internal systems are destroyed. His aim is knocked astray, the blade of the axe moving for the hand of his foe instead of the head. This is no way to keep their attention on him--they'll just swarm him, he'll have to regenerate and then round them all up again... no. Even as he's pummeled and stabbed, as explosives are hurled his way, Bercilak digs in his heels, hefts his axe, and cleaves it into the floor. The force of his blow is enough to cause a minor tremor to travel across the floor--but that isn't why he did it. The last time he tried this, it seemed like the ship was almost built to sustain plant life. Thickets of razor sharp thorns erupt from the spot of his strike, rapidly spreading and thickening. Each vine grows to be as big around as a human arm, thorns sharp enough not only to scrape against the walls of the corridor without breaking, but to sarve tiny grooves in it. As Bercilak pries his axe from the floor, the thorny vines cut and strangle his enemies. Have to keep moving. Have to be as big a target as possible, until the others have done their work. With that objective in mind, he attempts to charge through the ensnared Cryptizens, shoulder-checking, pommel-bashing, tripping, headbutting, slashing his way through one end of the mob. He's hoping he can just brute force his way through and keep leading the rest of them on his merry chase... But there's a lot of them in that hallway with him, they're absolutely hitting back, and they're gradually chipping away at his armor in the process. Soon, he'll have nothing but his natural toughness and his healing ability, and this place has proven that it can be dangerous even for him.
Starbound Flotilla	The back of the turret is actually horribly over-armored. Ezra will find this a tremendously difficult task to grapple with because of its constant spinning (often exposing him to more turrets and maybe even foes!) and because the plating is just so damn thick. But when a super-speedster kicks and just keeps kicking, eventually something gives -- in this case, a back panel that lets Ezra eventually reach that core! This is definitely the hardest possible solution, but when done in rapid-time, it's at least effective. The FAILSAFE splits apart down the middle explosively, and some of the turrets shut down... but not others. They still lob volleys of vicious, skin-boiling blasma! Fragments are all that remain of inhumane industrial work. And the turret that Lilian focuses on is gone. Twice now, due to quantum physics! However, the doors from here to the north are strongly secured. How will she bypass them? Once she does, though, she'll find what she's looking for: The complex, rotating mechanism full of dozens of shields to reflect projectile attacks! Leviathans are starting to creep into this wing too, even despite so many being focused on Bercilak... that drone-fitting station means that there's sort of a time-limit before this place is too swarming to survive in! And they'll all doubtlessly swarm the moment the brain is injured. Yet, can't deactivate that alarm without deactivating another shield, and thus risking more time spent, more security in circulation... When Bercilak grows his new growths, he'll note something in particular. Wherever it is that he is right now, the strange substances that coat the walls and floors and ceiling not only enhance the growth... something else struggles to grow alongside it. A strange fungus? Something native tries to find life after who knows how long, growing in tandem. It limits their ability to swarm him! But not their ability to build up... By now, starting from the south, Bercilak has been forced in a way to pied-piper the mob to the east. Here, the drones are actively fitted. Machines, one visible in a side-room, gather up bones out of the walls, bolt heavy cybernetics into them, and set them free -- some to wander, some through strange wormholes. It's a complex, esoteric process. If he knew cryptizen language, he'd recognize signage indicating scheduled rental cyberware refitting. But he doesn't, so he probably won't! During his tense, close combat, he'll find several of these leviathan things are pre-damaged from an unknown source. Ancient battle-scars mark their heavy armor, even as he tears through it in the modern era sometimes..
Starbound Flotilla	REMAINING: NORTH: SHIELD (SHIELDING CORE), SHIELD (SHIELDING ALARMS), ALARMS (DEFENDING CORTEX CORE), DOOR CONTROL EAST: DRONE FITTING x2, ARMORING, KEYCARD WEST: TURRET CONTROL SOUTH: CORTEX CORE, KEYCARD
Ezra Mochizuki	Kicking and kicking and kicking, Ezra exerts himself even as he gets cooked up with plasma. He manages to shut down the turret control in a fiery blaze, but is shot backwards by a plasma burst, rolling and smoking. "SHIT!" He relays the failsafe down, takes a breath, and moves to start scoping out the Cortex Core. If the others are going for the shielding core, which he expects, he wants to do some xenoarchaeology for once. What's near the core? Is the core like the other two, behind that shield, or does it give off a different vibe? He attempts to sneak while he's doing so once out of turret sight, so that he doesn't get fried.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	"Rustinge in mo weies than one," grunts Bercilak as the fungus grows alongside his thorns. Fighting and clawing his way through the mob, his armor is torn from him faster than his nanites can repair it. When he finally pushes through to the EAST, his breastplate is gone, and the armor beneath it is only there in bits and pieces. The polyfiber fabric beneath those plates is bloodied and burnt, with rough tears hewn in its surface by ancient, deadly claws. Can't stop now. Sweat clings to him, his breathing heavy from exertion, his helmet lost in the fray. With the failsafe down, he can go after those drone-fitting stations without it consequently swarming his allies with newly made drones. The Green Knight's stride picks up, and he breaks into a sprint. Putting his considerable weight behind his axe, choking up on the weapon, he uses the haft as a battering ram, plowing through whatever new drones lie between him and the FITTING STATIONS. He doesn't waste any time once he's there, circling around his mark, switching his grip as necessary. The blade of the weapon is utilized not for precision, but to cause as much damage as possible. After wedging the blade in, a little leverage allows him to widen the weapon's cut even further, by catching the axe's beard against the FITTING STATION's innards and yanking it out as forcefully as he can. His methods are direct, but they are also highly antagonistic--how long does he have before he's swarmed by a sudden surge in production?
Lilian Rook	Lilian reaches the northern door locks without the appropriate keycard from the east, with Bercilak on the significantly more important-at-the-moment leviathan termination duty, without any rockets, after she's dumped them all into the repair system, and without the real-time required to perform proper divinations to learn the correct codes. Surveying her options, she has to settle for going well out of the way of the secured bulkheads themselves, find a junction that crosses as close to the north quadrant as she can find on Seft's map, and wander her way intangibly through the messes of less-dense electronics, pipeworks, heat sinks, and airgaps within the interior ship walls, then make up time spent by closing in on the shielding system by burning the metaphorical hourglass sand, trying to balance that resource bar with her her ammo reserves, magic reserves, and stamina reserves and keep them all in play at once. It means arriving at the shields without a whole lot of extra gauge to spend neutralizing them without reprisal. The fact that the shields will reflect her remaining rounds, and less-expensive magic, is a problem, but also a solution in of itself. Juicing the bottom half of her glass with a light touch, Lilian goes about fitting herself through brief gaps in the otherwise suicidally dangerously spinning shield array, and squeeze into the necessary space between them and the functional machinery. She places herself there to start hacking and smashing her way into the mechanical guts while the rotating shields defend her from the increasing number of leviathans outside. Should this strategy prove successful, she burns all but the last dregs of her metaphorical time-bar to repeat the stunt with the alarm shielding, then attempt to find an escape route from the north.
Starbound Flotilla	Here in the core, the brain roils, pulses, and twists. Here in the core, Ezra finds... A skeleton. But no, not familiar, strangely, not a Cryptizen! These look like humanoid skeletons, and they have complex EVA gear, pierced and crushed. All their suit propulsion tanks have been drained so intensely that the years and pressure have crunched them like aluminum cans. Another generation of explorers. Where did they come from? When? That's impossible to tell here, at least right now. Maybe later. Bercilak gets a good look at the complexities of this thing as it starts responding to his presence. Shifting armor plates try to cover the core components, while fixed guns flood the chamber with plasma in every direction. But catching the blade inside and then ripping the insides out is a lot more effective than simply piercing! That's when, abruptly, a wormhole opens in one of the sparking components, a complex teleporter. One of the wormholes that this machine usually uses to disperse its drones throughout the ship! It starts sucking in the wreckage, and tries to pull Bercilak in as well, and to violently crunch his body while it does. If successful, it would dump him out at the NORTH, somewhere near Lilian! Shit! Otherwise, it'll disperse on its own. But with that, a critical source of half that flood of robots is finally resolved. Nice! Lilian circling south can use her own sigils, but she'll wind up circling slightly around east -- leaving her perilously close to some of those awful goddamn monsters -- some of which peel off and have to focus on her! Too bad she winds up finding her own solution. The shield is up for as long as her objective needs doing, and only when she's done does it explosively go down. She can swing through the alarm-shielding too! Now it's just a matter of finding an escape... accessways between the north and other areas are mostly locked, but there's a KEYCARD TERMINAL around the east, which she had already passed through, which she can yank open with a firm and intense motion on those weird oversized levers and get at the keycard in there. Should let her out into space, or through any of those airlocks. Can she afford to swing by that during this drone disaster? Ezra finds the Core's shield goes down while he watches. Lasers haven't quite yet though. REMAINING: NORTH: ALARMS (DEFENDING CORTEX CORE), DOOR CONTROL EAST: DRONE FITTING x1, ARMORING, KEYCARD WEST: TURRET CONTROL SOUTH: CORTEX CORE, KEYCARD
Ezra Mochizuki	As the security goes down, Ezra notices the alarms haven't gone down...and Lilian's already out of juice. They might not be able to shut down the alarms. As that is alerted, Ezra thinks it through. He asks the group their opinion, and the second he doesn't get dissent but basically a 'your choice', he moves with a remark. Sliding through, hitting the lasers if unavoidable, he draws the goop gun and begins spraying the brain, before sheathing it and drawing knife and pistol. He's going to use the pistol on any sentries, while blurring to super-speed to cut brain parts. He's not incredibly tanky, but he is dodgy. He's hoping that, if sentries bleed in, he can kill the brain before they kill him. An insane game of rocket tag, basically. It's faster than waiting for the alarm from Bercilak, or so he thinks!
Lilian Rook	Lilian knows precisely when she's gotten this far and this smoothly because she's expended all of her resources quickly and efficiently, and not because anything has in any way been easy going. No rockets, low ammo, middling magic, very low time, and only reasonably high energy. If it were just one or three leviathans, she would consider standing to fight through them, but at this point, there's simply no point risking her neck. Not with those personalized shields and giant cannons. Especially not with that floating sarcophagus thing probably coming back around soon. To gain some distance, she sets her electronics dark and sends herself off at a non-propelled pace towards the east, keeping as much cover and shadow between herself and the enemy as she can. Once the leviathans find her however, she conducts a fast-paced fighting retreat towards the eastern sector, focusing on dodging and deflecting their overwhelming blasts as much as she can, and aiming for chunks of scenery with her return blasts of magic to impede their vision and forward progress, rather than taking them on directly. Upon reaching the console, she pries out its keycard immediately, and uses the last of her safely accessible spare time to space herself out of an airlock again. There, upon briefly consulting with Ezra, she counts down to a mark, and then finally activates the last of the bone cairn-talismans she left in the south wing. In addition to the existing ones providing him hard cover and strong concealment to zip around and between, glowing purple runes reveal themselves in the mix, where more mystical shielding should dampen the effects of its psychic hate waves, and others which contain intense charges of white-hot magical flame, sufficient to obliterate smaller enemies that come near them, and at least cause the heavier, shielded types to catch fire. No, she's not sticking her head in there herself. Lilian specifically took on this whole strategy to expose herself to as little personal harm as possible. The battering and burning from chip damage along the way is more than enough for her while wearing a space suit.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Bercilak is taken by surprise, as those who solve problems with brute force often are. The force of the wormhole pulls him off of his feet. His legs disappear into it, then his lower half, before he's able to stop himself by burying his axe in the floor. Struggling to pull himself free, he ponders for a moment--because he's got no concept of urgency even when his legs are being crushed by a wormhole. In the past, when he fought the brain, it attacked him with despair and hatred made manifest. After seeing Pavo's star chart, he'd thought he knew the reason for that despair. But after Seft's discovery... it's clear that this fleet had their choice of any number of worlds to settle. Why despair, then? The force of the wormhole can match his strength--which is a problem, for getting out of it. He can tip the scales with the infinite power of nanoaugmentation--namely, a program they can run to create highly localized gravitational distortions. With his nanites countering the pull of the wormhole, he manages to free himself, albeit with a roar of savage exertion. He doesn't free himself without cost--his strength, versus the debris in the wormhole crushing his legs on the other end, ends up tearing him in two. His lower half vanishes into the wormhole, and he falls to the ground as billions of nanites hurriedly weave, mend and spin new flesh, bone and muscle. By the time his back hits the ground, the bones of his feet are just being woven, cybernetic implants constructed atop and in place of them from memory. He gets to his bloody, skinless feet, cracking his neck. Lilian will see two armored, bloodied, mangled green legs, absent any owner, thump on the floor. By this point, there's nothing left protecting him but the toughness of his body and his skill with the axe, his armor reduced to effectively scraps. But he doesn't let up. Setting his jaw, the bearded, mohawked green man shoulders the axe. With a determined scowl, he breaks into a dead run and throws all of his weight into a low arcing, two-handed swing. The grip is held in the low-middle range, driving the weapon as if he were trying to fell a tree. It collides with the other FITTING STATION, his nanites now running countergravity fields around his person to slow the pull of any wormholes. He grits his teeth, attempting to destroy the machine, not as before, by wedging and tearing from the inside, but now by hewing at the base of it and knocking it over with blunt force.
Starbound Flotilla	The brain alerts. A scream reverberates through the ship. Immediately, the brain begins pulsing huge, complex patterns of shining purple light, howling with vicious, flesh-searing DESIRE WANT NEED LONGING willing to not simply destroy flesh, but harvest it despite feelings of DISGUST saturating the air. It CRAVES NEEDS THIRSTS YEARNS COVETS blindly and desperately for complex carbon structures. This may be the worst exchange it could unbearably make, but it's willing to make it. It finds the barriers limit it... and surges desperately. It's psychically crying. It begins to eject chunks of its own metal and flesh, offering them up to Ezra in a vague, blind impulse, only letting go of them fully if he suffers the loss of his own flesh. The Leviathans elsewhere in the ship start peeling away. Their eyes flash red and what few ones remain urgently surge as fast as they can! And the gundrones and spikedogs... start to detonate. The blasts from those glyphs take them apart! The angry, violent wave is weakened, and unable to directly teleport foes in because of the loss of both fitting stations. That's because Bercilak, even bisected, manages to make his way to the second fitting station. He's clearer now that the alarms have gone off elsewhere, though the fitting station guns still fill the air with plasma. Only for so long; he knows the timing now, and he knows how to get distance from their wormholes. Ezra can tear this apart. But the desperate psychological saturation in the air around him, demanding GIVE TRADE PROVIDE MAKE THE EXCHANGE is an effort only effectively defused through motivation. It's not just a matter of how much he can push his generator, but how much he can push his heart. Only a staunch motive is the most effective way to resist the effort to rip his complex biochemistry from his body; even his peak speed is secondary, and might leave him subject to the dozen burning, howling leviathan drones starting to claw their way into the core chamber. Everything will shut down if he can overcome that, though, and annihilate that brain-matter.
Ezra Mochizuki	Ezra's lagging. It's not attacking him with the traditional slowdown he can beat - it's tearing into his mind. But...he can work with that. Even if his mind is strong, even if his body is fast, his motive is what matters. And more than anything in the world, Ezra wants to prove himself. He wants to succeed in this mission. And he does not want to become metal. Seeing those lasers that demand his flesh, the flesh he's already been losing, the flesh that's so precious to him... "THIS IS MINE! GET YOUR OWN!" He shouts, resolute in, at the very least, refusing to die this way. Ezra's knife moves to carve into the brain and try and shut it down.
Starbound Flotilla	No deal. The brain's psychic wails are loud enough to echo through all the space in and around the ship. Ezra rips the neural matter to shreds and denies the feral security brain's EXCHANGE PLEASE PLEASE WE NEED IT WE NEED THE FUEL WE CAN STILL MAKE IT, tearing it apart in a bloody mess. The titan brain is more resilient than the last ones, but no match if you're fast enough. Ezra will have to suffer a half-dozen explosions lobbed at him, but if he can... Soon, there's simply not enough matter left in one piece to think. And soon, the systems all through the ship start to shut down. The alarm wails, and wails, and wails, to drones that won't respond. And then, eventually the alarm starts to shut down too. it surges only for one moment as the brain roils. please there has to be a way what if we c o u l d ... The alarm shuts down. The scraps of brain matter go dark.
Starbound Flotilla	The following ALIEN ARTIFACTS (15/27) were recovered in this venture: STAR MAP FRAGMENT ????? ALIEN ARTWORK COLLECTION OF ALIEN SKULLS ENGINE COMPONENTS FOSSILIZED SKELETAL REMAINS ????? ????? AUTO-NAV LOG EXPLORATORY PROBE ????? SCARRED ARMOR PLATE RELIGIOUS ICON STASIS FLUID SAMPLE ????? OUTSIDER REMAINS ????? ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CHIP RESIDUAL FUNGUS CORE CEREBRAL TISSUE ????? ????? K-FOX THE OUTRIDER ????? ????? ????? ?????(CRITICAL CONTRACT OBJECTIVE)