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Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Sector Zero Petrichor System      In the far reaches of Sector Zero, there lies an unremarkable star, catalogued a scant few times, passed over by everyone who ever noticed it. Every star chart which mentions this system clearly shows four planets. Your rendezvous point, the UES Safe Travels, waits in orbit of a fifth planet.      The Safe Travels is, ostensibly, a shipping vessel. An arrowhead-shaped front section is affixed to a number of connected, cylindrical containers, which does seem to support that idea. It wouldn't be unreasonable to expect that a cargo ship, especially one in the service of United Earth Shipping, would have means to defend itself. Indeed, there are a number of ship-to-ship cannons mounted along the rotating cargo containers. But the guns mounted on the front end seem somehow excessive.      Transit here through official means is accomplished via shuttle, a kind of specialized warpgate-traveling vessel known colloquially as a puddle jumper. Of course, it's also entirely possible to have stowed away, either on the shuttle or the Safe Travels. Neither flight manifest is beyond the reach of hackers eager to impress or opportunistic business associates.      Either way, upon docking with the vessel, you have a few minutes before the ship's PA system broadcasts an announcement. A German-accented voice, male, mid-forties, welcomes you. There is warmth and serenity in that voice.      "Welcome aboard the UES Safe Travels. This is the captain speaking. If the members of the task force, as well as any stowaways and unexpected guests, would please join me on the bridge, we'll begin our briefing and embark shortly." 'Stowaways and unexpected guests' is uttered with an almost wishful air, no less welcoming than 'task force.' He doesn't, can't know--but there is a sense that he hopes someone did, just so that he might meet them.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	The ship is, at least on the inside, what you might expect for something ostensibly designed to haul cargo. It isn't lavish or luxurious. The hallways are dull, prefab metal things, lit with gently buzzing lamps. Crew members hurry past you, going about preparations for planetfall. The path to the bridge is essentially one long, straight line.      There's only one person on the bridge. A blue officer's waistcoat frames a broad-shouldered figure. Four articulated tines swivel, affixed to the helmet of a sleek, armored spacesuit. A fist-sized drone hovering over his right epaulet swivels around to face you. He turns shortly after, and while the expressionless faceplate of his suit doesn't convey anything, the tip of the Captain's hat is plenty welcoming. Gradually, the other arrivals filter in. PETRICHOR V TASK FORCE -A grey-skinned man, slender of frame, in a beige and brown spacesuit that seems to emphasize mobility, with a wrist-mounted keypad. His helmet is tucked under his arm, revealing his pointed ears, golden eyes and an elaborate black tatoo on his cheek. He introduces himself (to those not in the Watch) as 'Phreak.' -A hulking figure in purple and green. it is difficult to tell which parts of him are spacesuit, and which are some sort of augmentation. Two heavy-looking jet turbines are affixed to his back, his face concealed by a green bubble helmet. "Just call me 'Engineer.'" -"Huntress," says an athletically built woman in red armor. A high-tech compound bow is collapsed and hung from her back.      "I had hoped we would have stowaways, you know," notes the Captain with that same warmth--at once reflective and appreciative. "Something about the very idea speaks to me--that during the voyage, the stowaway and the passengers have something in common, both adrift in the great, terrifying expanse, both utterly at the mercy of the violence of nature." He chuckles.      "Yourselves more so, I would imagine, for the violence often inflicted upon stowaways, should they be discovered." Pausing, he adds, with a shake of his head, "Not here, however. No, I'm glad that you made it--that we can both be here, together. That you were brave, or resourceful, or connected enough to make it. Those things will be useful to you, here."      The Captain rolls up his left sleeve, one-handed. His left arm terminates in a rectangular prosthesis. When the low light from the field of stars outside catches it, you can see the lip of a barrel. "I'll be joining you on the surface, of course. I have orders of my own, you see. Regrettably, the bioscanner is dark--which is to say that there are likely no survivors of the Contact Light. We did detect some man-made structures on the planet's surface--human in origin, recent. Either constructed shortly before, or shortly after the crash."      He pauses, and for a moment the oppressive silence of a ship in space fills the bridge. "I'm not one for formal briefings--if you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them before our descent."
Raziel	Raziel COULD have potentially infiltrated and stowed away on the ship, but instead, he was asked to come on this ship by a fairly wealthy and influential backer of the Concord.  So today, when the call to come out of hiding and to gather at the bridge Raziel would be one of the ones who acted openly and is here to aid...even if his goals were not necessarily the ones of the others. 'The voice, gentle as it was, called out to those operating in secret or not to come to the bridge.  I had to wonder what game the captain was playing, or if simply he thought he could coax those with less than honorable intentions into the light?  I, personally, doubted that it would be as easy as that, and so would continue to operate with the expectation that there were those who hid, waiting for their moment to strike.' The ship itself was bright, the scifi nature of this place did not sit well with Raziel.  The creature of the Concord was a hair over six feet, his body grotesquely thin, even with clothes to cover the fact that he was a spirit manifesting as his own corpse.  Right now, leather armor, trying its best to cover the worst of what he was does its job.  No cape today, but a cowl that does come up from the armor to wrap around the lower half of his head and mouth, keeping his mouth obscured, though one could imagine the cowl could be pulled down.   'To be honest, the investor's desire for people to come here was usually beneath my notice.  I did not care what trinkets he wanted in his glass cages to sit there and look pretty for his next wine tasting event.  I know full well those items sat wasted, their potential better served in the hands of skilled archeologists who might better learn.  However, I decided to come here because I found the situation uniquely enticing.  So I would do this for them, and in turn, gain a favor I might use in the future.  Also, perhaps, something to gain for me in all of this.' The top of his head is revealed, showing shriveled and blue skin, black hair parted in the center to both keep out of his eyes and cut short to not hinder him in battle.  Not that it could grow anymore.  His eyes, however, are glowing blue orbs, there are no functional parts of the eye that could be seen, just the glowing orb itself.   His arms are covered by the same armor, up to his hands.  His hands are not standard hands, but rather three digits, each tipped with a claw.  If one looks down at his shoes, they'll note the boots are open-toed, allowing the three digits each one with claws out of the front.  Along his back, two long strands of leather stick out and hang down.  When he moves they sort of move with him.  They almost look like wings, but without a skeletal structure to stick to.   'Until this moment, I had chosen to stick to my room.  Not out of any desire to avoid the gazes I would get from those who saw this pathetic form I am forced to inhabit, but rather because the aesthetics of this place hurt my eyes.  Whatever design that future humans here have adapted, it feels like an eyesore to me.  Hopefully, my time here would be short-lived.' Raziel stands in the bridge, watching those who file in but takes little interest in the small talk.  "What do we know of the situation with the crashed ship?  Do we know what they were carrying?  Also, what is the situation on the ground like?"
Redshift Operators	"He quite directly asked. Didn't you hear?" "And I real direct said 'don't', you know." "We're here to learn." "Yeah, not to get killed by a captain." "He was asking so nicely..." "Speaking is the fastest way to learn." "And walking into the bridge is the fastest way to get thrown out the airlock." "Give me just a moment." "..." "No. He speaks quite sincerely, in fact."     The gruff guy doesn't seem quite so hyped about being here, but the ninja woman seems confident. The looming giant beside her keeps staring at the captain through his one good eye, and the astronaut similarly stares -- though after a time, mostly at Phreak. In fact, the glances between the ninja and Huntress are similar. After a time, the Redshift's own hulking fellow is looking at Engineer. Then all three glance between the gruff gunman and the captain. The gunman's optics narrow and he sighs heavily. "Don't say it."     "Not here to defend some shipping corp, but secret planets and breach-and-sap operations with no connection need looking into. You ready to contend with whatever crashed them there? Only makes sense that it could take you down too." As if realizing it herself, the gunman's friend, the cyborg ninja, closes her eyes, peering into possible futures and simulating the imminent descent to look for the risks of crashing. She's not planning on saving UES stuff, obviously, but knowing if she should expect a similar crash-landing will help get her team and the relevant information and resources in place early.
Liza Grier	Liza has heard the word 'stowaway' a few times by now. It is one, she communicates to her actual stowaway, that she really doesn't like. 'Stowaway' implies hiding. It implies fear. It implies hiding between the margins, escaping the grasp of authority; which implies recognizing that authority at all. Liza is quite emphatic: she is here 'subtly' because Phreak really wanted to impress her and she'd feel kind of bad not letting him do his hacker thing and show off after what went down at Movie Night.     Figuring that dressing in her full battle gear is going to be too menacing (which is a bullshit excuse; she knows she'll have trouble maintaining a stable persona while wearing it), Liza Grier has settled for just the black inner layer, being vacuum insulated, bulletproof, and studded with a few device jacks, for hanging around the ship. Given that there is no sun here, she hasn't bothered with a helmet of any kind. She has the means to disguise herself, but she has no patience for skulking around here. Left to simply 'wait, and act normal', aboard a corporate skunkworks cargo front vessel, the woman subtly vibrates with contained violence, compensating with a deadened, sleepless-eyed face to keep herself in character, and the mediocre thickness of her innersuit to conceal twitching muscles.     All she has on her is a bright red computer bracelet, a tungsten carbide knife, and an obsolete twenty first century handgun, and even then, standing there on the bridge with her arms folded, staring as if she could burn holes through that blue overcoat with her eyes alone, Liza exudes the tinted pressure of being ready to try and kill everyone in the room. It faintly smells like blood, without any particular source.     "Just call me G for now." she repeats back to the contractors, specifically only because Phreak is blending in on them. "Any questions? Really? I don't buy it." is immediate to come next. "You going to answer why there's a blacklist planet? What this ship is doing with main armaments? Why this black ink operation is open to glorified contractors? What a shipping company wants from prospecting a dark planet? Maybe what those orders are? Or do you just mean 'any questions that are convenient for you."
Hiromi	It wasn't Hiromi, but someone close to her who explained the situation, and though she made every sign of understanding, there were only parts of it she did. She knows ships, though she's used to the kind made sturdy against high pressure environments, not zero pressure. She knows crashing and sinking. Most of all, she knows about treasures buried deeply or left by the dead. She doesn't know about skunks, but she does know about secrets kept by kings and generals. Assuring the smaller (that is, normal human sized) roseblonde woman that she understands the information gathered, and will treat the situation appropriately, she heads out.     The remaining difficulties of finding passage were handled by Concord agents and DORADO BLACK, the latter being something Hiromi still doesn't understand at all, but it seems to calm down just about everyone without issue.     Hiromi's a fine passenger, overall. She can stay perfectly still for long periods, feels no discomfort, and needs ask for nothing. She could very well be a statue, for all that anything affects her, until she decides to move. Having limited interest in the other passengers, unless they are likewise interested in the prospective buried-things, she moves only when the captain asks. She leaves her position, then, stalking through ship passageways made for smaller beings with a comfortably stooped, purposeful gait that cannot help but menace, in the way a predator pushing into narrow warrens does. She'd be at home in a wholly different genre of space encounter. 'Curiosity' is a dangerous thing to arouse, and hers has her sniffing the recycled air, eyes scanning others like she does feel stirrings of hunger, after all, and focusing finally on the captain's offer of answers. Her questions are brief, but dense, delivered in a series of not-words that are more like tactical shorthand, immediately understandable without needing to think of how.     How many survivors could there have been? How much time has passed since they arrived? How far apart are the structures from the site? How extensive are the structures? Is their purpose for survival against the environment or in case of attack from outside?
Kukuru	Kukuru's not a stranger to being a stowaway. It's one of the easiest ways to travel and visit all sorts of cool places without having to do much/any actual navigation of her own, after all! That's why, when the voice comes over the speakers, she actually wakes up from her slumber, nearly rolling off the shipping container she had been taking a nap on. "Stowaways...? Huh. That was faster than usual. Wonder if someone else got found..." She murmurs aloud with a lazy drawl in her tone, raising a hand to her face and barely covering an open-mouthed yawn. She's not even trying to stay unseen as she just lurches along to follow the directions given to her and other uninvited guests. It's not like she has any reasons not to trust that gentle voice for the time being. It still takes a while for her to actually show up at the bridge, though, dressed in her usual fine-ish frilly blouse with the high-waisted skirt that starts green and ends in a layer of brown ribbons and even more frills. "Kukuru. Ku-ku-ru. Nice to meet you all~" She greets the task force with a sing-songy, yet still sleepy lilt in her tone. She listens intently as the Captain starts explaining things, and she giggles lightly at the concerns raised not only by him, but by the gruff guy. "We should be okay, but... Yeah, it'll be good to know if everyone's ready for that kinda danger. I can fix you all up, but you'll still get hurt if it's really messy." The questions from Raziel and Liza, meanwhile, have Kukuru tapping her chin after a moment. "Hey, yeah... You should let us know what you need down there. I know everyone here can be pretty careful-" She lies as easily as she breathes and smiles. "-but I don't wanna end up accidentally breaking something important, you know?" She squeezes her hands in the air a few times, somehow looking vaguely menacing without a single shred of it evident in her voice.
Rita Ma	"Stowaway" is the job Rita was born to do. For the last leg of the Safe Travels' journey, she's been holed up in a comfy vacant room with Liza, intermittently venturing out wearing someone else's face to get food, wash clothes, and the like. Liza's tension about the word isn't shared by her at all: "People hide for all kinds of reasons, Ms. Grier. It doesn't mean you're scared. Sometimes you're just looking for the better angle."      So when "stowaway" is casually dropped on the PA, she jolts upright from her bed like the captain's called her by name. She glances sideways at Liza, eyes still wide, with an implicit question: 'Should we go?'      But of course the answer is "yes". At this point they share a common cause.      For the first time she walks the Safe Travels' hallways as herself, or at least, the version of herself that she likes to present. The white lie fills in for the black one. They wouldn't like to see tentacles anyway.      The short blonde girl in the matched jacket-and-skirt doesn't quite fit in with the armed-and-armored task force, or even with the white-haired woman she's fairly obviously sticking near. Aside from the obvious, she's less confident.      And yet, despite that lack of confidence, something senses Hiromi's gaze on her, and wrenches her eyes over to firmly meet it. It can't be a sudden surge of bravery; her fingers anxiously grab a handful of her skirt even as she does it. But she holds the eye contact for as long as she needs to.      "It's nice to meet you. I'm-" She stops herself when Liza sticks to the one letter, and consternates herself trying to follow suit. "M??" Immediately she feels like an idiot. "Ah, no, that sounds really dumb. Just call me Rita, okay?"      For the Captain, her question is simple. "The Contact Light had something on board, didn't it? Some project, some research. Something that might have made people want to sabotage it. It'd help us a lot if you could tell us what it was."
Liza Grier	Liza notices something amiss the moment Rita reacts that way. Or when she reacts at all. Like the girl's flinches and fixations are her proximity sensor. Her eyes swivel towards Hiromi, her fingers subtly dig into her biceps, and then she says--     "Wh- No don't call yourself M. Please just don't. I'll explain later." at an exasperated cough.     Her stare tracks back. "And don't get it wrong. Nature isn't the violence anyone is at the mercy of at the moment."
Hiromi	Hiromi's attention shifts over others in turn. The ninja woman, and to a possibly lesser extent, her fellows, has Hiromi saying, "Familiar metals." It's not that they've met. It's probably 'that world' she recently visited, that she's thinking about.     Raziel's voice causes one ear to reorient, as she recognizes it. Now knowing who he is, she doesn't remark on the fact.     Liza's presence gets the beginning of a smile from Hiromi as she approaches with, for her own part, a lack of either concern or apparent violent intent. There is the sense that Hiromi could rapidly accelerate in any direction, including 'towards violence,' and one could assume she trusts her own speed enough to need not ready herself and further than she is. "Blood," she pronounces, but asks no questions about it. Instead, she remarks on Liza's question, "Why not 'main armaments?'"     Rita, having spoken to her, gets a response. "I am Hiromi," and in that name, receives a complete, instantaneous understanding of a long-version introduction of the Archwolf. Hiromi sniffs. With equally nil explanation, "Sea-spirits? Fishy."
Rita Ma	Having broken off that inexplicable gaze a moment or two earlier, Rita's eyes return to the Archwolf when she introduces herself, ineffably a little less 'glassy'. They widen, of course- as does her mouth- as that word-containing-too-much-meaning hits home. She looks like she's about to hassle Hiromi with far too many innocently fascinated questions, but then the wolf sniffs and speaks again.      Rita abruptly looks away and crosses her arms, looking something adjacent to embarrassed. "I just had hwareo-hoe earlier," she says. (She totally didn't.)
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Raziel's question draws an elaborate response from the Captain. "Your eyes... they are like lanterns. How very interesting--but, you wished to know what was on board the Contact Light. A king's ransom of UES security chests, for one," he explains. "Hundreds of thousands, carrying anything you might imagine and more." Which makes it all the more curious--why would a cargo ship as laden down as the Contact Light venture this far out of the way? "Pieces of history, trophies from savage and forgotten battles. Lingering reminders of painful memories, keepsakes to bring comfort in times of trouble. A collage, you might say, of human existence, of human emotion, scattered in dappled blue across the surface of the planet..." He gestures with a sweep of one palm towards the viewport--towards Petrichor V--and pauses. "The security chests are quite durable, you see," he notes with what sounds like a smile.      The situation on the ground is expected to be dire in some way. The captain explains that the bioscanner is only tuned towards human life, and is currently detecting zero signs on the surface. The Contact Light would've had an escape shuttle, but no launches have been detected from the surface, either. "Standard operating procedure dictates that a rally point be established, and an uplink constructed for the purpose of emergency broadcast," he further explains. "There is such a place on the planet, but the escape pods can't find a landing solution. We will instead land as close as we're able, attempt to meet any survivors..." He trails off. "I would expect a very hostile welcome."      White Dwarf's prediction of possible futures shows that the Captain was correct. There isn't necessarily a risk of crashing, but the 'rally point' has extreme snowstorms on the regular that could blow the pods off course on descent, forcing everyone to deal with both extreme cold and what appear to be three-eyed, three-tailed bison, attacking with suicidal, vicious aggression--hate. The 'safe' options are a temperate forest, a grassy highland, or a snowy alpine forest. These still have aggressive creatures of their own, but won't carry the same risk as landing at the rally point.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	"Yes, indeed, I am," says the Captain with a laugh to G--then a cordial nod to 'M. "My loyalty is to this crew first. It extends to the company only so long as my employment continues to furnish me with stories to excite the soul, chill the bones--do you understand?" He tilts his head slightly, light catching on the expressionless visor. "If you have come here looking for a 'company man,' you shall not find him on this bridge."      "Now then... I did mention the chests, but, of course, a ship so heavily laden would have no reason to give an off-route planet a second glance. The cargo manifest, as given to me, makes no mention of anything else. But it does seem strange, no? Perhaps it isn't so much something they had, as something they took--or, perhaps, it was not something, but someone. I must admit to some personal interest in the matter, myself."      He continues, hands once again behind his back, "My best guess, based on my orders--'to obtain the black box of the Contact Light'--is that there is some resource the company seeks to exploit in secret. This is their way--to steadily, slowly grow fat, from whatever crumbs they may find across the stars. I have heard that there is interest in developing a teleportation network apart from the Warpgates, but I do not know if that's what their interest here is."      "Ah, but G mentioned the armaments... the Safe Travels *is* usually a cargo vessel. The retrofit was expedited, ordered specially for this very mission. You will find no cargo in the pods along the length of the vessel, but instead, 'care packages,' which may be deployed in limited number to the surface to aid us. If that paints a dire picture of conditions on the ground, perhaps it should," he says, his voice taking now a shade of the somber. "As for 'glorified contractors...' usually, when the company resorts to those, it has exhausted its other options, and is willing to resort to throwing bodies at the issue. Considering most of you did not sign any non-disclosure agreements, I shall be most interested to see what happens, if you survive." With a 'sunny' nod towards Kukuru, "I am at least pleased to say I know of nothing which might break the company's black boxes."      Hiromi is provided with a manifest of the crew on board the Contact Light. It was a large ship, like this one, with a well-staffed crew. On the tablet, the Captain has made notes of his own. He postulates that 90 percent of the ship's one thousand man crew would have died during the crash, due to the number of unfired escape pods shown on grainy images of the crash site. The structures of the rallypoint are miles from the crash site, and this point was likely made both to protect against the weather and against attack, based on the structures--impromptu shelters made from shipping crates, prefab chainlink and guard towers half-buried in snow. It looks half-finished. Or perhaps half-destroyed--it's hard to tell what was weather, what just wasn't done, and what may have been the work of something alive.
Raziel	Raziel isn't moved by the comment on his eyes, if anything he looks uncomfortable by the comparison, and simply waits for the moment to pass.  To that end, he looks rather uncomfortable when anyone stares too long at him, or at obvious 'undead' parts of him.  It's a reminder of that crime against him and despite the time since then a reminder of what he's lost.   'The bridge was full of people, some of which I assumed were here for the intended operation.  The scent of blood filled my senses, something familiar, even though the old hunger left me.  I quickly came to remember the voice of Grier.  Vicious, unfriendly, and seemingly filled with nothing but contempt.  She would have done good things in Kain's court.  Though she was with someone who would be her opposite in disposition.' Raziel continues to listen to the import from the captain about the situation, and the lack of company loyalty.  This explains the lack of violent reaction to stowaways, but to his strange attitude to running this ship.   'The voice of the woman who came and introduced herself as Hiromi was also familiar.  Though in-person her voice carried more meaning to her words than radio ever could.  I could not tell what, or how such words carried more meaning than they should.  Was it body language?  Was it some gift with language?  With her though, was Kukuru, who while well-meaning was...well, perhaps I should stop there.' "Mm.  Perhaps we should start where they should have gathered first, perhaps we can learn something there...if there is such a thing as a starting point in this mess."
Redshift Operators	"The planet is cursed with misfortune. If you have wisdom, bring your pods a greater distance from that, otherwise there is a great chance that you will be overwhelmed. Darker paths lie ahead, but more temperate or alpine forest zones, or highlands, grant you the advantage. At minimum, mark such locales for us; they are where we will descend." The cyborg crosses her arms, nodding, pensively, ominously, too-dramatically.
Hiromi	Hiromi's attention returns to the captain, without specifying anything about Rita's excuses. "Soul-excitement, bone-chilling. I understand." Then, "'Memories,' 'keepsakes,' 'history.' Not 'secrets'? Then, why secrecy? 'Blacklist planet.'" But the captain doesn't know, if his own secrecy is anything to go by.     There's a slight reaction in her ears to 'care packages,' though no discernible sign of how she takes the more specific information provided to her. She studies over it, noting, in the same tactical language of growling subvocalizations, Unfinished or too-weak structures, belief of threats from outside, long enough ago for snow to partly bury. Unclear cause of destruction. Enough danger for one hundred human deaths. Not wholly lacking in resources. They gathered from escape boats, enough together to begin building.     Hiromi nods along to the cyborg operator's words, acknowledging the tactical wisdom in them, only to say, "Fly over the site. I'll leap."
Redshift Operators	Not a company man, huh? The gruff team-lead nods, albeit a little uneasily. This man... he reminds him of someone he met not too long ago. It puts him off. "Won't have problems, then. If we're taking the pods down, get me an extra-large, my team drops together. We'll hit the rally point. No humans, but if there's anything there that has records to find you the black-box, I'll get Newt there to pull it. Anything else?"     The Redshifts are pretty much ready to go, from the look of them. As soon as they're given the all-clear, they'll be piling into a pod and dropping as per the request.
Kukuru	With the context behind the strange movements of this ship explained, Kukuru actually goes quiet for a while as she tries to think up the significance of it all. "That really does sound like they're hiding stuff from you even though you're working for them... Huh. That's kinda of crummy, isn't it?" She actually sounds displeased, complete with brow furrowing as she tries to come up with some way to spin it towards benefiting herself and the Concord subtly. "Well, at least /your/ heart's in the right place. We can work out the box situation after we've found your people, mhm. If we're lucky, they might still be all in one piece~" She goes right back to that pleasantly upbeat, yet persistently tired tone again. "And after we find what we're looking for, maybe we can work out some other stuff like..." She trails off, not quite successful at thinking up how to work it towards the Concord angle. Instead, she just leaves the rest of that sentence unsaid outright as if that solves the problem. "If we're gonna be there a while, going right to the rally point should be fine. We'll be able to figure out how dangerous it really is if we go there first, and then we can relax a bit once we clear out enough space. Setting up a base to take a break, cooking up some food so nobody's running hungry...." Her mind's already wandering again. "It'll be just camping."
Rita Ma	The mention of keepsakes and memories is, transparently, what entices Rita the most. She looks up at Liza with eyes full of glimmering anticipation, almost like she's going to ask her to buy something. "We do still have a lot of empty space on the ship, Ms. Grier. Don't we? I know we shouldn't be in a hurry to fill it all up, but..."      The comment of 'a dire picture', and White Dwarf's prognostications, bring back a little of that anxiousness. She runs her tongue along her teeth behind her lips. That could plausibly be an expression of the nervousness too.      "It'll probably be smart to set down in a quieter place. I'd prefer it if it weren't in the snow, though." Clothing-emulated tentacles aren't much for keeping out the cold. To the Captain: "I'm ready to go down whenever everybody else is. There's no special kind of preparation I have to do."      A little pause. Then, an innocent afterthought: "How will we be getting down there? Does the ship just land on the ground, or...?"      Oh no. Poor Rita.
Liza Grier	"Yeah. Blood." Liza replies to Hiromi. Without taking time to think about it, it really isn't clear if she's being sassy, dismissive, understanding, threatening, knowing, or conciliatory. She doesn't elaborate on that further. "Because this ship is for trading. Its weapons are for war. You can't have both at the same time. So it's suspicious."     The captain goes and explains it anyways, but vastly contrary to Liza's expectations, he also explains everything else she asked. Her eyebrows slowly lift off up into her slightly messy bangs. A few seconds later, she has already clearly decided to trust him at a rather cheap word. "Well, either you're telling the truth, or you're just insane. A company man wouldn't be dumb enough to tell me any of that." she admits, settling down a little from her aura of vibrating potential violence. She glances Red-Dwarf-ward. "Insane is still an upgrade. You can't trust a madman, but you can always trust a corporate captain to do the worst thing."     A short, exasperated noise leaves her when the nothing-roundabout starts about drop zones. "Drop in the highland. Don't be idiots. There's no fucking point aiming straight for the rally point with kilometers of wind to fall through and blow you somewhere random that still isn't. With elevation, clear skies, and a clean horizon, we can track the rally point easily and move in over land." She just kind of doesn't have the time for the babyhands on this. "Or try falling into the center of the planet. See if that helps." She has not said anything about her own plans.     Instead, Liza is waving off, saying "Nothing to do standing around here." and looking to Rita to take her out of the bridge with her. Hitting a macro recall in her wrist PDA, a single telecrystal is cracked and ejected like a spent cartridge, and her full blood red and black hardsuit splashes right onto her in a wave of ruby light. Liza pulls the helmet over her head, the neck seal vacuuming up loose hair and engaging with a hiss-click. Optics flare on. The damage vocalizer adds back that grainy, slightly unhinged quality to her voice. "If we survive? Don't you know captain? I'm unkillable."
Raziel	"While high ground would provide sight, there is no guarantee of clear skies or a clear horizon. At the very least, at the rally point, we could find more clues as to what happened with the ship and a better place to land the ship," Raziel counters to Liza's harsh words.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Kukuru's point gets a nod from the Captain. "Of course. But I knew that it would be this way, when I accepted the mission," says the Captain to Kukuru. "And even when I first decided, a lifetime ago, that the terror and isolation of travel, the rush of huddling together, in spite of so much, to challenge the elements--that this would be my calling. It would be the same, had I decided to be a painter, or a writer." He turns to contemplate the silent expanse of the planet. From up here it almost looks peaceful, in its greens and blues, clouds gently swirling across its surface. "There are always those who make it their business to own your time, to sublimate your joy into something repulsive in its banality. To have the company's trust would require an unacceptable degree of compromise on my part--would damage the relationship I have with my crew. It is enough to have the company's confidence, to be trusted at least with the helm, if not the complete truth."
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	"I agree," says the Captain to Raziel. "We won't be able to start precisely there, but we can land relatively close and fight our way there. My own suggestion, of our limited range of nearby landing zones, is the highlands, if only for the benefit of less obstructed view."      "Prep the Enforcer pod for the Syndicate crew, and use one of the newer pods for G and M. We have a first-timer," says the Captain to no one in particular. The twitching of the articulated spines at the back of his helmet are the only clue that something has been done. "Ha ha. Very good. That's what they say about me, too." He nods to his right--towards the fist-sized drone--as Liza and Rita disappear. "Plot a course for the highlands."
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	PETRICHOR V TITANIC PLAINS      Drop Pods fire. The Redshifts have one that was clearly designed for UES' in-house 'security' (read: death squad), the Enforcers, with racks meant to hold the distinctive riot-shield and shotgun combo. Rita and Liza share one that's evidently a newer model, with less worn microthruster housings for a smoother ride. That doesn't make the rushing advance of the planet any slower.      The impact is hard, but safe--akin to hearing a transformer blow outside, the force of a sudden brake. Jarring, but not overwhelmingly so. Hiromi, intending to jump, can exit her pod prematurely, if she wishes--the door release is easy enough to find. The most jarring part of the experience is the way the doors blow off--explosive bolts force them free with a pull of a red lever, housed on a caution-striped panel. You step out (or land, in Hiromi's case) onto green grass.      "Atmosphere's breathable," says the Engineer. "I'll be keeping my helmet on." Even with the light of day, there is no seeing into that green bubble helmet of his.      Blue skies. An expanse of rolling green hills. The hills upon which you stand are nestled atop a massive grey cliff, and it all overlooks a misty, rocky lowland. Blue chests dot the landscape. "You see?" says the Captain with amusement. "I told you they were resilient. You may help yourselves to the contents, provided you're able to open them."      "On it," says Phreak, who immediately begins tapping his keypad. AR displays begin popping up in front of each person present. Nesting welcome and 'login' messages for fake UES accounts. "UES works cash on delivery--you set up an account, you get a card, and you swipe it on the chest. I set up some bogus accounts and a fake 'wildlife bounty' program based on one they're running a few other places. Sorry in advance if the fake names are stupid."      "...Morgana Pringles?" asks the Huntress.      Phreak huffs. "I figured we were strapped on time."      For the time being the surface is peaceful, but there is a kind of tension here. Stone rings and arcs bracket the edge of the hilly cliff. They are definitely not naturally occurring. The shattered remains of human comms equipment lie flattened beneath one such ring. On a flat stone plaza undoubtedly shorn from some much larger structure, half covered in moss and lichen, there is a fleshy blue pod with a faint, unearthly glow. Finally, in a distant valley, there is a faint smattering of red motes, like fireflies.
Raziel	Raziel rides one of the pods to the surface the moment Q&A was over.  There was little more it seemed they could get from them, and more that they could get on the surface.   The ride was jarring, far more than the ride up on a different planet with the structure in place, but a planet where the ride had to be taken roughly and almost invading..?  That was a different feeling Raziel was not used to and unfamiliar with.  He was not from a world where space travel was ever used.   On the ground, Raziel's eyes gazed over the scene before them. 'The scene that awaited us was almost as expected from a logical point of view, but at the same time oddly cold.  Equipment was destroyed as if abandoned in the middle of use.  Perhaps whatever knocked down this ring was the reason for its abandonment...in which case then we should be wary.  After all, it could very well come back.' Raziel himself decided on a different tactic.  He abandoned his physical form, stepping into the spirit world.  From here he looked for the spirits of any dead, to see if any lingered here, and to see if they would have anything they could impart to him.
Liza Grier	Liza had told Rita she'd take care of the drop. And she had certainly meant that. Originally she was expecting to have to arrange her own teleport, but after inspecting the pod they get, she decides it's good enough to merely take the excuse to hold Rita very close to her and tell her everything is fine (while still being prepared to teleport the two of them).     Upon the secondary thump of final lithobrake though, she can't help the reflex to twist the release panel, boot the door off of its hinges, and lunge out low to the ground with a C20r pressed tight to her shoulder, advancing while swiveling her upper body around a hundred and twenty degrees one way and then the other, before finally kneeling down on the grass, checking her rear arc, and motioning Rita out. One would have an easier time telling a cat not to scratch. A tiny blinking disc is chucked underhand behind her and back into the pod, where it slides under the seat and anchors itself with a little click.     "Clear for now. Visibility is perfect. Atmosphere is fine." She glances to the engineer, helmeted herself, and then nods subtly. "Sensor spiking the area, but it looks like we won't be needing EVS. Phreak, double guarantee us permanent comm uplink to the Safer Travels. Upload me direct laser designation privileges to the care package tube. Rita, close by me. Check for wildlife as much as you can; I don't like seeing nothing here. Redshifts, fan out. Wide net. Don't split any more than teams of two if you can help it."     About five full seconds later, Liza remembers to breathe out --exiting her vocalizer as a crackle of static-- and stand up again, half-lowering her weapon. Scanning around the borderline trash dump of blue crates, and quickly doing the math for how far they must have fallen and at what speed, yet still be this dense on the ground, she utters, "They're everywhere. How bad did it rupture?"     She quickly checks her HUD. "Elisa Manhattan? Yeah. That's fine. I'm sure I can get these bad boys open without access codes, but it'll be a real pain in the ass, and there's so many I could spend days doing it. Appreciate the heads up. Rita. Redshifts. I'm uploading you codes for a joint account. Let's pool assets."
Hiromi	In a pod on a set course, there's not much reason for Hiromi to jump out, in terms of getting where she's going faster. She could set out immediately for that distant point, but there's no point in doing that if she's already 'where things are buried.'     She still does jump out, wrenching the door broken in the process, because she trusts her own ability to land much more than this device. Temperature and oxygen are complete non-issues, not even affecting the constant, healthy glow of her complexion, even with the added chill of the wind up this high. Curling up into a tight ball, dropping her wind resistance, she's still buoyed for having already approached terminal velocity, but her mass, dense for the hard nature of her physique, ensures it's higher than a human's would be. There's that advantage to ballast.     She doesn't crater the ground so much as disappear into it, flipping into a standing posture at the last moment that leaves a hole barely bigger than she is, with a cloud of dust and dirt not nearly big enough for how much wolf there was hitting the ground that fast. The odd nature of the event is made more so, or perhaps, more clear what was going on, when the broken ground rebounds, filling itself in to raise her to the surface, rather than require she climb out.     Even alien landscapes must bow to that Authority. Though there was a god who resisted her, at least the once. <J-IC-Scene> Hiromi says, "Digging."     Seeing the partly buried structures, and the equipment under some of it, Hiromi heads in that direction, claws extending from her fingers in idle motions, walking while leaning forward and raised on her toes like she's about to either drop to all fours or leap forward, though she doesn't do either. She kicks the ground, to little direct effect where she's struck, to command the earth to move, and reveal the stones it buried. 'Worked' stone, as ever, lies outside her domain, but not what hides it.
Kukuru	As easy-ish as it can be to freefall, falling while encased in metal and electronics has Kukuru bugging out. Thankfully, the coast is clear to bail out of the pod once it hits the ground, and she doesn't even wait to pull the lever or watch a door get blown off before she's already teleported herself out of the thing. Luckily, the atmosphere is as breathable as the Engineer says it is, and she takes a moment to just lie down while watching Phreak get to work on setting up accounts to get those blue chests open. "I think it's a nice name." She states with a reassuring tone and broad smile. At least somebody('s pretending to) like it. "Now when you say wildlife bounty, does that mean we gotta bring everything back, or only some of it?" After relaxing a little bit longer, Kukuru finally hops back onto her feet. "Because if there's a hundred people or so, then they must be really hungry. We're gonna need a lot to feed 'em all." She squints a bit to focus her sight on those RED MOTES in the distance (and only partially to see if there's anyone or any animals lurking nearby). She raises her hand to signal towards them for anyone that's looking, then jumps forward as a dark cloud swallows her up and spits her right back out on the closest thing resembling a hill overlooking those motes. She probably could have stopped a further distance away, but Kukuru really wants to get a better look at those things. If they don't start moving away, meanwhile, she'll even approach to see if she can touch one with her bare hands.
Liza Grier	For the time being, Liza leaves Neutron to exactly what Red Dwarf said he'd do with the comms equipment, and allows the Concord to run off into the mysterious alien valley of (hopefully) death, to instead do exactly what she said she'd do.     She finds a high place to stand, calls up a much more intricate sensor display on her PDA, and begins manually adjusting her optical package with greater fidelity, routing power just to the sensors for a little while. Focusing her vision into a sixty degree slice for enhanced range and penetration, Liza turns around a few times to get a full sweep of the area, swapping through alternate vision modes to pick up electrical power, radio signals, heat signatures, and radiation trails.     Then, when she thinks nobody is looking, Liza removes her helmet for a few seconds, closes her eyes, and breathes in deep through her nose, scrunching up her brow while she smells the air for blood. Like a shark, but better. She puts her helmet right back on after.
Rita Ma	Rita clings tightly to Liza's arm throughout the entire descent, like she's watching the climax of a horror movie. 'Falling' is not a feeling one often gets to experience living on the ocean. Even in the 'good' pod, her eyes can barely decide whether to bug out in adrenaline-fueled terror or scrunch shut to block out the world. They narrowly settle on the latter. She can't muster much more of a response than a nod to Liza's reassurances.      She seemingly forgot to breathe the whole way down. Impact is almost an anticlimax after the gut-dropping descent itself. Rita lets out a heavy sigh, tension leaving her body to be replaced with exhaustion- and then yelps again when the door explodes outwards, jerking back up ramrod-straight. It takes her a good few seconds- and Liza's prompting gesture- to convince her it's safe to exit. "We really made it. I wasn't ready for it to be that scary..." she whines softly.      When she finally emerge, she proves very susceptible to the landscape's natural beauty. It takes her a few moments longer than that to stop looking around in transparent, sparkly-eyed awe. "It's all so... uneven, isn't it? Like your covers when you wake up. Or blocks that never got put away. Or a chain of islands in the middle of the land."      "Thanks, Mr. Phreak!" she calls out to the hackerboy, and then makes a transparently baffled face when regarding her account. Liza's is soon sharing with someone named SUE BACKFLIP.      Whether due to elemental affinity with the color, or the simple fact that it softly glows, Rita is soon distracted by the fleshy pod. "I'm gonna go check out that thing. Okay, Ms. Grier?" she calls out brightly, and then scampers over to it and hops up the flat stone plaza with a couple of elegant leaps. Is there any obvious way it opens? Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral? How's it smell?      She'd almost be hard to keep track of, if she weren't so cheerfully loud.
Redshift Operators	The Redshift Operators blast the exit open. The giant stomps out first, then the gunman and the ninja, with heavy automatic rifle and blade in hand. The astronaut peers over their shoulders with their marksman rifle scope.     But nothing yet. At least nothing immensely hostile in the traditional sense. They keep their weapons ready, but not aimed now. "Sighted some comms equipment. May be some information we can extract there." Moving at a swift jog, the group heads towards the communications equipment that the spaceman spotted. The Concordians are off to work on their own business in the valley of death, and so they set out. All these scattered containers... "Newt, can you get these hacked open with the sequencer?" "Yeah." "...So, gonna do it?" "That won't help our objective." "Weird! Why's that?" "Networked. If too many get forced open, it could risk the rest." "Ah, a collective curse they have, I see." "Alright. The rest of you, pull whatever bounties you can get." "Augh, hurting the animals?"     If they can make it to the comms gear, the techie of the group will kneel down and start fussing with their own handheld electronics, to strip any residual data they can get out of it. Any clues about what happened, or more importantly, data that will get them a good route to the rally point? The gunman, the ninja, and (reluctantly) the giant all ready to attack wildlife with gun, blade, and fist, to claim those bounties and breach those crates to get some samples of what they're looking at here.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	"Setting up a subspace tether!" Phreak eagerly replies to Liza Manhattan.      "Marvelous," says the Captain, with a tip of his hat to Phreak. "But there's no need to grant G privileges. Here," he says, tossing her a calldown remote. "Option one is a persistent regeneration field, two is a... crowd dispersal mechanism. Three is an experimental logistical support package meant to resupply an alarming breadth of weapons, and four is a sort of 'platinum card'--it will open any credit-locked device on the planet. Only two may be used in short succession before the delivery mechanism must be recalibrated, so choose wisely." He adds, as a sly aside, "The care packages themselves do often pack quite a punch, delivered in the way that they are--if you are skilled, clever and patient, you can make their delivery an attack unto itself."      "So... am I giving -you- privileges?"      "No," says the Captain magnanimously, hands swept open. "This," he illustrates, holding up his prosthetic arm, "And this," he says, nodding to the microbot hovering at his right, "Shall be enough. Though I do ask that, as a matter of combat efficiency, I be allowed first look at any drones we may find."      Liza smells blood, and a lot of it was spilled here. Though there's no outward signs of it, whatever processes removed it couldn't completely hide the smell. Mixed in with human blood is something earthier--almost like crude oil.      Rita, checking out the pod, finds that it smells utterly unlike anything of earthly origin. It's almost as if it is invading this space, or perhaps has grown into it, in the way that warts and boils do. It does have a seam perfectly aligned with the ridges of a small blue token dropped nearby. Pressed to the pod, it opens: There is a smell of water, still and stagnant. The light catches the gleam of jagged, shaped glass. It is beautiful and strange, wrapped over with leather. Upon touching it, memories not her own, knowledge never sought, are both had, delivered in human-but-not thought processes. She knows that it comes from the heart of the [Moon]. She knows that [Time] was folded into it, twice. She knows that <he> was willing to give up <his> time, for its construction, that it was once wielded in one of <his> many great hands. [Time] unfolds in the grasp of the wielder--muscles compress, neurons fire, wounds open, twice. But [Time] is fair. The body tires twice as fast, one's own [Time] halved. <he> has? had? plenty of time. If she keeps this, she could reap the same benefit--of her every attack striking twice, but so also would she tire twice as quickly.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Neutron finds that the relay was smashed so quickly that even one broadcast wasn't able to be made. So quickly that the technician setting it up scarcely had time to get away from the falling stone ring that smashed it. A company issued PDA does have some recorded back-and-forth. Rally Point Beta is a bust. We can't even set anything up here without it getting smashed--and the place is getting faster about doing it, and the whole time we're getting more and more tired. More and more of us are getting hurt. Pretty soon the MED-Es are gonna have to do triage. When Ramirez came back from guard duty, he said he saw a ring making something--and not just a replacement for something we moved. We should find another rally point before it gets here.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	"You get partial credit for kills," says the Huntress to Kukuru--and not a moment too soon. A swarm of about a dozen dog-sized beetles with thick beige plates and razor-sharp forelegs burrow up from the ground. She fires on them, and as her arrows pierce armor plates and slay the creatures, funds slowly begin to drift into everyone's accounts. "I wouldn't open yourself up to company questions by trying to take them alive, but you do you."      The beetles, much like the bisons in White Dwarf's premonition, seem to hate, fanatically, everyone here but Raziel and Hiromi. There is a shrill quality to their screeching...      Bipedal purple lizards, wearing necklaces, bracelets and other signs of intelligence, soon burrow up to join the beetles. They are just as fanatical, just as rabid in their apparent hatred--only turning to Raziel or Hiromi when or if one of them intervenes. Though they hurl fireballs, the captain's microbot intercepts them with spot-fabricated pockets of vacuum. His rectangular arm prosthetic turns out to be a variable-spread shotgun with an underbarrel stun laser, and his presence in this skirmish could be described as 'experienced calm.'      The Huntress ends up following Kukuru to the red motes, through free-running acrobatics that have her scarf flying freely behind her. The motes surround a large, circular stone platform, with a pedestal in the middle. The motes themselves appear to be coming from the platform, and are strongest when she stands near the pedestal. It looks as though the pedestal can be depressed, if she applies a little bit of force.      "Place of worship, maybe?" opines the Huntress.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Raziel doesn't get attacked unless he makes an effort to do so himself. He can therefore look unbothered into the spirit world if he so chooses.      He finds something almost immediately. Namely--that although they breathe, bleed and die, the beetles and lizard-people are already dead, and have died, in some cases, countless times over and over. Something is keeping them here, and whatever it is doesn't have the same effect on the human ship crew. Their spirits wander, and warn him, in panicked recollection of their final moments, that every living thing on this planet attacks with almost fanatical hatred and relentless determination. One tells him that the only hope is escape--and the only escape is through 'the teleporter.' She points him in the direction of the red motes, and advises him to head for it the very moment his business here is concluded. Activating it, however, draws the planet's ire even more intensely than passive intrusion. That, the shade reveals, is how she died--fighting off a gigantic stone protector that rose from the earth, attempting to buy time for the teleporter to activate.      Hiromi, burrowing beneath the earth and commanding it to move, runs into that protector before long, being the largest of the intact man (?) made structures beneath the earth. It lies dormant as she approaches, but she can feel within it the power of this place's earth. It thrums, subtly, coursing through a moss-covered body of boulders and standing stones, like blood pumped by a living heart. Curled up as it is, hands on giant 'knees,' She can make out a single divot in its cylindrical head. An eye, perhaps? One other interesting thing--      It smells at once how stone should smell, and, simultaneously, too 'new.' This IS stone, but it is not stone that formed naturally; rather, it was grown, for some specific purpose, right down to the moss that mantles its 'shoulders.' Designed.
Kukuru	"Oh, neat. Then we should take out as many as come after us." Kukuru concludes as she moves along with the Huntress at a languid pace, bringing out her torso-sized claws to start smashing up the oncoming beetles or flinging them away whenever they draw too close for comfort (or just within arm's reach so she doesn't have to chase them). "Taking one back alive could be interesting, but I was just thinking about... Um. Cooking them." <J-IC-Scene> Hiromi says to Kukuru, "Hundred people were." "... Even if there might not be as many people as I thought, it'll be good to have something tasty to eat while we're here." There's a tinge of sadness in her tone, but only for that moment as she goes right back to that upbeat smiling all while bashing screeching bugs head on. <J-IC-Scene> Raziel says, "They can not be killed, Archwolf.  Everything here does not die, but rather...they come back.  I am speaking with the ghosts of the dead crew." That gets Kukuru's attention, as that might put a damper in her plan to prep something nutritious(ly dubious) for everyone later! Instead of tossing or smashing all the beetles and leaving them, she tries to keep one only mostly crushed within her grip to see if it stays there or if it just does some weird ghost thing and disappears after dying. Once they reach the motes and the strange platform, meanwhile, Kukuru takes some time with the Huntress to inspect the thing. As she passes near the Huntress, she shares some of her healing nanites in case the Huntress took any stray hits from the bugs. "Is it? I thought places of worship were supposed to be bigger and shinier. Like a... Big building." Kukuru points towards the highest point she can see nearby. "Something that tall, going aaaall the way down to here." And then she pushes down on that pedestal. Rather than a little bit of force, though, Kukuru's not paying a lot of attention as she's gesturing at the ground, and she winds up pushing down on it really hard with her stupid gorilla strength.
Rita Ma	Coin-operated machines aren't a completely foreign phenomenon to Rita. The seam suggests a lock and a key, too. Those suggest an obvious course of action. Cautiously, like it might burn her, she puts the coin in and opens the pod.      At first the jagged piece of glass only entrances her for its strange, raw beauty. As soon as she lays her hand on the leather-wrapped handle, though, her eyes jolt open and her body freezes for a few tense heartbeats.      A maker. A shaper. Of what? Something big. Maybe those stone rings. Maybe everything. ... Double the effort, half the time. That's a good trade. I don't know how much time I'd have anyway.      The shaped glass goes in her satchel, but half of it- part of the lunar glass shaft, and the end wrapped with leather- still protrude, and gleam with their unearthly beauty. Lacking anything better to do, she hustles back towards Liza with an enthusiastic wave. "Ms. Grier! Ms. Grier! I found..."      Monsters. Of course there are monsters.      In the ordinary course of things, they'd never get to hit her so casually. But the fireballs are deceptively quiet, and her eyes are locked on Liza in the distance, and her mind is still buzzing with thoughts both her own and not, and she was hardly expecting this kind of danger at all.      A fireball strikes her from the side, inflicting just a little scorchmark on her toughened flesh. No- one can see an eyeblink's worth of what 'should' happen, and then "time" doubles over on itself, and the burn is suddenly twice as awful as it should be; soot and angry red and flickery little flames are left on her shoulder, and she yelps and staggers to the side.      But the same happens to the lizards when invisible sharp tentacles scythe through the ambushing crowd in retaliation. There is an eyeblink, a sense of 'deja vu', about how they ought to be elegantly vivisected. What actually happens to them is twice as bad, and can be spared the describing.      Rita's disguise-tentacles reverse, concealing their burned sides in against her true skin and showing the undamaged ones outwardly to hide the fact that she was hurt. She rubs the area sorely anyway before moving to rejoin Liza fully.      She lets out a little defeated sigh once she's close enough. "Sorry, Ms. Grier. I should've been on my toes more. But you see what I found, right?" She lays her hand on the leather-wrapped hilt of the crude un-glass instrument. "I think... it's hard to explain. But I think this place was 'made'. All of it. And I think this was one of the things it was made with."
Raziel	Raziel listens to the dead woman, nodding with her so that she understands he is still listening.  For her, she had been dead a very short time, but he had been dead a long time.  It takes him an effort to do things like have discernable body language.  The fact he does not breathe is often off-putting to those who interact with him, and he takes time to make the motions of life when he can.   Over the radio he speaks, "The ghost here tells me there is only escape, and that they were trying to escape through 'The teleporter', and that is how the ghost died, waiting for it to activate.  The planet seems to specifically hate anything on it, but when the teleporter is activated it goes ferocious with defending itself." Once he passes the information on he speaks, "I can release you from this now.  I will not do so without your permission, but I can send you on to your next life or where ever you go after death.  If you can gather the other spirits to you I can do that." If they accept his offer and gather up, he pulls the cowl down.  Ghosts would be drawn in...like a vacum.  While it would restore his own health and stamina, it would do as he promised.  Send them to their next life.
Hiromi	Hiromi looks out at the battle taking place, more to watch the opponents, as well as the others who came here alongside here, than with any intent of helping. She hasn't been asked, and though there are plenty of opponents, they're small. The guardian she's uncovered is much more immediately interesting. More so is what she senses of its connection to the world beneath her.     Her claws are good for climbing, though she needs few hand or foot holds, given how she leaps. Bare moments later, Hiromi's standing astride the creature's(?) head. She doesn't really need to be this close. 'Close enough to hear her' is always enough, but being directly within her grip, and under her feet, makes other things easier. 'Mere stone' moves because she wills it, but what she's about to attempt is different.     Awaken. Heed Hiromi. My Domain is Authority. My Authority is the Earth and what lies Below. Remember, you were always Mine. Speak your name before the World, and march where I Command.
Redshift Operators	Fireballs. That's something new. The fireballs are being intercepted, thank goodness, but that doesn't mean the Redshifts shouldn't be earning their keep. All three of the combat-capable ones get into action -- the gunman opens fire with his rifle and the ninja closes the distance with her blade, while the giant acts as the switch-hitter, regretfully tossing debris or terrain in return for the fireballs.     The techie is the one who strips the data out. With the comms units being smashed, and the messages being sent around, the spaceman relays the data... but more than that, they try for a little extra. Any way to time the data available on the PDA with the last activity on the smashed, never-transmitted equipment? Maybe they can get some sort of gauge of the acceleration of the threat here, something to give them an idea of when to pull out.     That's the best they can do, anyway. Someone's been mentioning a teleporter. And it's not *here*. Any tracks from here that are visible to the untrained eye? Bullet-casings that lead somewhere? Or do they just stand and fight here, until something's more clear?
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Timing the data is easily done--and comparing it with what's on the PDA shows that the crew was scarcely here for two days before things started happening. Any scenery moved out of place was almost spitefully recreated, any additions smashed, the occurrences growing faster and faster until the survivors were forced to leave by frequent attacks from wildlife. There is one unread message on the PDA advising everyone to get to the 'teleporter,' and reminding, in hurried, typo text format, to look for the 'red motes' as a guidepost.      Raziel gets the affirmative from the ghost. "I... I don't want to be stranded here waiting until the next person comes along," says the ghost to Raziel. "Do what you do--just.. mm. I know there's a lot of crates here, but one was something personal to me. If you find a small bear... keep it safe, would you? It might just return the favor. ...okay. I'm ready now." The others are, too--if this is 'Rally Point Beta,' there must have been an Alpha. Judging by the number of spirits here, the trip from one point to the next appears to have been wildly dangerous for those few crew members who survived the crash.      Kukuru actually does notice something high up, when she mentions places of worship. This planet's got a moon, just faintly visible from this point on the surface. She then uses gorilla strength to push down the pedestal. This actually makes it easier, not harder--it was either designed with that kind of strength in mind, or it was meant only to be used by those most certain of their need for travel. Either way, there is a pop that is felt all the way through the chest, all the way down to the feet, as if the very air itself had suddenly awakened. BGM: https://youtu.be/KEqMGuTOB5Q
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Swarms of beetles and upright-walking lizards in far greater numbers than before now claw their way up from the ground--but there's more. Those stone rings all around rip themselves out of the earth and begin fabricating squads of seven-foot rock golems, tough and strong, that begin oppressively blasting the battlefield with red lasers that core out rock and earth alike, after alarmingly quick spool-ups.      All of the creatures and constructs, disparate in shape and size though they might be, are not unified in their purpose, charging towards the teleporter even when it means getting hit in the back by those they were previously fighting. "GSF, comin' up!" cries Phreak over the din of fighting, as the Engineer's deployable spider turrets are set up.      An AR boot-up message flashes across the vision of everyone nearby, and the edges of vision become fuzzy for all those affected. Anyone who clicks (thinks, really) 'accept' on the prompt is made vastly lighter on their feet and capable of running faster than ought to be possible, given things like mass and inertia.      As the Captain, Phreak, and the Engineer hurry to help at the teleporter, carving a path through the sea of hostile creatures, the ground rumbles. It doesn't 'speak' in the way that things of flesh and blood do. Rather, there is, through the fluctuation of energies which animate it, a kind of 'shape' of language, intuited by someone who commands the earth as Hiromi does. WEAPONS HAVE NO NEED OF NAMES, SO SAYS HE WHO DESIGNED ME, SO SAYS HE WHO PROTECTS OUR GARDEN FROM DESPOILERS      The other commands, however, the Stone Titan obeys, marching (and striking) where she commands. Its laser is more powerful by far than those of its smaller counterparts, its fists able not only to crush, but to command the earth much as Hiromi does, causing spiked earthen shrapnel to explode outward from points of impact.      The Redshifts have some support from their counterparts--the Huntress slows swarms of enemies down for White Dwarf to cut down, while Phreak runs cracked autodoc software on Red Giant to keep him in fighting shape, and the Captain stunlocks stone golems with his tazer before they can fire upon Neutron. Meanwhile, the Engineer is providing covering fire for Red Dwarf, via rocket-guided harpoons and spherical, bouncing grenade clusters.
Raziel	"I will do ask you ask, thank you for what aid you could provide me," Raziel says.  What honor he clings to, demands he honor this last request, as he does what he said he would do for them. 'I drew the souls of the dead into me, fed upon them.  I knew not what afterlife awaited them, but I knew I was the way for them to escape this purgitory.  Forced to watch as others fought, perhaps even died on this planet that would be their eternal prison.  I knew what that was like, to be stuck between life and death.  Though it was the only mercy I could offer, I offered it to them gladly.  I would send them where I could not go, a place to reap the benefits of the life they had once lived or to be born again.  If nothing else, in the Multiverse this was some good I knew that only I could do.' His eyes are burning just a bit brighter, and around his arm energy courses.  Eventually, it forms into a blade, the Soul Reaver's spiritual form, as he steps from the spirit world into the real world again.  As the swarms of beetles and lizards come at the group.   The blade swings, aiming to cleave through those that approach or get near him.  The sword cuts as any real weapon would...if not better.  Should it kill, the soul or animating energy would be drawn into the blade for the spirit in it to devour, much like Raziel himself does.   Raziel cuts his way through what he can, staying quick on his feet.  He also looks for a 'bear' that she asked him to take care of.  He would, at the very least, do this for her as he could do very little else but made sure she passed on as peacefully as he could.  To him, it was a poor consolation prize.   'These creatures buzzed, their animated corpses flung themselves at the living with every effort they could.  I knew not what the source of this was...but I was motivated to get to the bottom of this mystery and see that it stopped.  If nothing more so that the dead could rest easier.'
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Rita, fighting in the way that she does, is privy to certain knowledge. The first is that these species, the lizard people and the beetles, came from completely different ecosystems, based on taste, composition, structure. The beetles have some animal hierarchy and social structure, recognizing Rita as their queen and abandoning, in time, their hatred for subservience.      The lizards have, past all of that fanatical hatred, enough of a will and consciousness to form things like culture. For these, Rita is not their Queen--she is their [Hero]. That she carries on her person that shaped glass seems to drive their willingness to help from the usual into worshipful devotion--it is evidently a symbol of the [Hero]'s station.      Commanding the beetles and lizards dramatically turns the tide of the fight, with 2/3 of the hostile force suddenly switching sides.
Liza Grier	Liza lets her hand off the controls and dismisses them with a wave, returning her spectography to normal visuals. "EVS is clean. But this is a recent battlefield. And they cleaned up and hauled out." is all she says over the local band. That and "By cleaned up, I mean all of it. Bones, brass, bloodstains. I doubt it's the survivors."     Of course, there's no need for her to actually call out "Contacts!" to anyone with eyes, but habits are what they are. The instant she has thermal identification, Liza opens fire on anything that moves, without hesitation; if it doesn't have an IFF tag belonging to either the Watch, Concord, or the ship, her body aligns behind her weapon and squeezes the trigger before she's fully processed what she's even looking at. That's how four or five beetles and lizard people drop dead with dense clusters of holes perforating their heads and chests. Her brain only catches up as she's no-hands pressing the magazine release, flicking the dry mag out with her wrist, and tapping a new one in under a second. "What the hell? Natives? I thought you said--"     Raziel has something considerably more fucked up to say. The sound of Liza breathing through her teeth comes out as a synth snarl. She's already moving back down from her little plataeu towards where Rita went, launching over the gap with a split-second flare of jump thrusters and somehow side-strafing at a dead sprint as she lands, the barrel of her weapon fixed forward and twitching back and forth between each torso and thorax that pops out of the ground, blaring obnoxiously startling fire and noise. A trail of spent brass spews out alongside her in a semi-straight line as she weaves around the terrain and falling fire. The muzzle of her C20 is glowing red hot and smoking by the time she forms up on Rita again.     "Rita, are you alright?" Liza crackles through her helmet speakers. "You're not making any sense. Are you hit?" She already has her thumb on the remote from the captain, willing to call down a healing drop the moment Rita says yes. She only really glimpses the artifact a second later. "You were gone for one minute, how did you already . . . ?" She somehow sounds unsurprised.     Calls go out about the 'teleporter'. "What the fuck?! I thought you were the one feeling smug about your own teleportation before! You have any idea where it leads?! What about the rally point you were all so eager to get to before?!" She double checks the signal strength on her own uplink. Clear enough that she figures she can bounce it from the ship they arrived at if she needs to. She keeps the next part to just Rita and the Redshifts alone: "We'll take the jump to get the heat off of us. From there, if we don't triangulate the rally point, I can recall us all to the beacon I installed already. Don't worry about the others; just yourselves."
Liza Grier	The sudden surge in enemies has Liza accepting Phreak's prompt immediately. The C20r is mag-holstered. An entire bipod-mounted SAW, sans the bipod, is teledroppd into her hands, and wedged in the crook of her arm, magnetically jacked to her wrist to stabilize it. Her off-hand flares up a bright blue-white shield of energy. A makeshift harries stance allows her to brace the barrel of the too-large machine gun over the notch of the shield while covering most of her body. The ammo feed is plugged right into a full backpack, teleported in alongside, itself supported with cross-belts hanging with grenades of different stripes.     From there, Liza does exactly what she always does best. Even without hallways to funnel enemies down, bulkheads to seal or break, cameras to bust and AI to scramble, she has the massive movement speed buff from Phreak, her own jump jets, thruster systems, gravity boots, and blink device, to round the seemingly suicidal enemy mob up into dense clusters by constantly strafing and backpedaling around them. A roaring torrent of heavy armour-piercing fire pours from her weapon, only paused to allow the barrel to cool in the moments she has, so that it doesn't simply melt down from how much sustained fire she's putting on the horde. Golems are met with fastball throws (they are throws, right?) of canister exchange grenades, blowing up into horrible little fireballs of plasma.     She does this all while constantly aware of the horde, maneuvering herself so that the heavily stressed energy shield is covering her from shots she can't dodge without overloading. The occasional stray hit that lands on her from behind dissipates on her suit's personal barrier, slowly recharging on its own, separate of the shield. And she does it after motioning Rita to "Hop up." That is, she intends to carry Rita piggyback (which she can do effortlessly), where there's incidentally a spot to sit on top of the ammo pack.     There's no particular advantage to doing so, save that Liza's instincts for 'how to manage being attacked by a hundred to one odds at once' are excruciatingly well polished, her movement and defensive choices are incredibly clean; meaning, more or less, that Rita is probably safer behind behind all of Liza's armour, shields, and tactical positioning, and can dedicate all of her energy to focusing on the monsters, whether that be commanding them or tentacle blending whatever comes close.
Liza Grier	<J-IC-Scene> Liza Grier says, "If only fifteen got left here, then shifting OTs took the heat off of them. Is something monitoring us?" <J-IC-Scene> Liza Grier says, "There was a lag period between landing and everything going to hell." <J-IC-Scene> Raziel says, "As the spirits say, look at the very ground we walk on." <J-IC-Scene> Raziel says, "It isn't just harsh, it actively hates intruders, as Hiromi confirmed." <J-IC-Scene> Liza Grier says, "I think the ground would have noticed the moment I stepped on it." <J-IC-Scene> Liza Grier says, "Most people do." <J-IC-Scene> Raziel says, "And we did little but be here, before bugs and lizards attacked." <J-IC-Scene> Liza Grier says, "One of you touched something, right? You set something off." <J-IC-Scene> Raziel sighs. <J-IC-Scene> The Huntress says, "Kukuru touched the teleporter." <J-IC-Scene> Liza Grier says, "It couldn't have predicted our drop coordinates at least; there wasn't a garrison waiting for us." <J-IC-Scene> Raziel says, "That would, according to the spirits, enrage them." <J-IC-Scene> Liza Grier swears again. "Well well, pays to have a third party around." <J-IC-Scene> Raziel says, "It does fit into the narritive provided." <J-IC-Scene> Raziel says, "Though, had she actually touched it yet, or just got near it?" <J-IC-Scene> Raziel is asking The Hundress. <J-IC-Scene> Liza Grier says, "I warned you about stone structures." <J-IC-Scene> Liza Grier says, "I fucking told you about weird mysterious abandoned anything made out of stone." <J-IC-Scene> Liza Grier says, "The least trustworthy building material in the universe." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "That sotne giant..." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma *stone <J-IC-Scene> The Huntress says, "The big spike happened after she touched the pedestal. But these guys were getting harassed even without having touched it. Maybe it's a sliding scale. Slow at first, but gets gradually worse. And the teleporter... that alerts a bunch of them at once." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "Is it on our side?? It's not attacking the people..." <J-IC-Scene> Liza Grier says, "Going theory is the structures themselves are monitoring us then." <J-IC-Scene> Hiromi says, "Crash-survivors used 'teleporter.' One, or, several. 'Escape path' is also alerting-place." <J-IC-Scene> Raziel says, "That is likely the case, and grow in hostility." <J-IC-Scene> Hiromi pauses long enough to search for a term. "Defensive funneling." <J-IC-Scene> Raziel says, "So that's curious...if it just wanted people out, why get mad if they were trying to /leave/?" <J-IC-Scene> Liza Grier says, "It has to be advanced enough to do full bioscans. They're only attacking humans." <J-IC-Scene> Hiromi says to Rita, no clearer an explanation than the first time, "Stone heeds authority." <J-IC-Scene> Raziel says, "Are you sure that's the condition?" <J-IC-Scene> Kukuru says, "The teleporter...? Oh, that thingy. Um. Well, it's on now. Should I turn it off?" <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma ...! <J-IC-Scene> Liza Grier says, "Me, Rita, Redshift team, the Captain, Engineer, Huntress-- I guess Kukuru counts huh." <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma says, "Ms. Grier, I... that can't be right." <J-IC-Scene> Phreak says, "And me. Homo sapiens opifex." <J-IC-Scene> Liza Grier says, "Yeah, but something's always attacking you."
Liza Grier	<J-IC-Scene> Raziel says, "I do not think it's 'human'. I am dead, so they are likely ignoring me because I am a spirit not a person. I imagine the Archwolf can broadcast her authority, and did as to why she's not being attacked." <J-IC-Scene> Liza Grier says, "I'd assume it was just 'life signs' if it were only the ghoul ignored, but they don't give a shit about the wolf unless she gets in the way either. There has to be a mechanism distinguishing her as 'wildlife', right?" <J-IC-Scene> Rita Ma makes a soft, breathless noise that bears intense mixed feelings. Happy anxiety; painful hope. <J-IC-Scene> Kukuru says, clearly not getting it, "Maybe it's just going after people?" <J-IC-Scene> Redshift Operators | White Dwarf says, "It must be detecting an essential humanity. No longer rooted in a chemical signature, a genetic sequence, or a shape." <J-IC-Scene> The Engineer says, "Makes sense." <J-IC-Scene> Raziel says, "We can potentially test this later, if we want to be absolutely sure." <J-IC-Scene> Raziel says, "However, we'll go with your hypothsis for now."
Hiromi	Hiromi does have an AR-capable device, being attached to the Concord-issued item she uses for mundane radio needs. Intuiting the meaning, she accepts the speed boost. For her, there are a few ways to move quickly, but the one that best speeds her new stone subordinate along is to let the earth carry their steps along like an ocean wave.     Still, there's not that much need to hurry, beyond her desire to find whatever it is they hunt here. No one's asked for help -- or if they have, they didn't scream loudly enough for her to notice -- so they're probably all fine. <J-IC-Scene> Hiromi then says, "Captain. Snowed buildings, how far, from here?" <J-IC-Scene> The Captain says, "Roughly four thousand kilometers. It would seem as though the survivors used the teleporters--the ship wouldn't have had vehicles aboard to cross such distances."     That would take all day. Best to try the suspicious teleporter, after all, if it worked for the few survivors. On the other hand... <J-IC-Scene> Hiromi pauses long enough to search for a term. "Defensive funneling."     If it's a trap, that makes sense.     And what's the quickest way of dealing with a trap?     Hiromi heads for the teleporter, not commanding her stone-friend to attack anything, but calling out to each other mobile-earth creature she passes to likewise heed her Authority over this domain, and to follow her. The rest, as they ignore her, she likewise ignores, only shifting them out of the way by moving the ground beneath their feet should it be expedient.     She doesn't know how this teleportation will work, but if it's possible to take the giants with her, that's exactly what she plans to do. Maybe it won't work on her at all, and she will have to take the long overland route, after all.
Kukuru	There's a thing! Kukuru's even more distracted by the familiar-ish sight of this planet's moon, and part of her is tempted to just try and go all the way over there. Logic actually wins out for once, though, as distance is kind of a thing she needs to worry about getting right when she can barely even see it. Her atention is brought back to her immediate surroundings, though, with that strange popping sensation and the appearance of creatures out of goddamn everywhere. "Oh, that's... Okay. Hey. Lemme know if you need a hand, okay?" Kukuru addresses the Huntress about as casually as she has this entire time, but her movements become considerably less easygoing compared to her tone. Needless to say, she doesn't need a lot of motivation to get right back into her fighting state of mind as the creatures start. "I'm gonna start clearing a path for the others." And thus, she starts heading in the direction that she last saw and heard her allies in. It's not an exact science, but it's the best Kukuru can work with on such short notice. Hearing other guns firing in the distance helps guide her, though, as do the blasts of Hiromi's new titan. Once again, she gets to carving and bashing, flinging and slashing, punching her way through beetles and lizards that get in her way while weathering their bites and claws with healing powers. Not supernatural toughness, not ludicrous speed, but just by regenerating flesh through the wounds. Thankfully, she's able to ease up a bit once she starts seeing those creatures working for Rita rather than trying to kill everyone. Once Kukuru's finally able to regroup with everyone, she gets that healing juice going so Phreak's not the only one on heaing duty! "The teleporter's back where I came from. If we move fast, it's probably still gonna be clear, right?"
Rita Ma	"Are you hit?" "No," Rita immediately fibs, sensing Liza's intent to call down a healing drop just for her. Then, guiltily: "A little, but I'll get better. And that's not why I'm saying those things! I'll try to explain better later." There is, for Liza's sake, no outward sign that she got double-fireballed a moment earlier. Even if it still stings.      Of course she won't turn down the chance for a piggyback ride. Her arms and legs wrap tightly around Liza; her fingers find spots on the suit that are convenient to grip. She flashes the helmet's optics a little sidelong smile that tries to be as sunny as possible, given the circumstances. With Liza's rapid motion, her long blonde hair flutters out behind her like a streamer. "Thanks, Ms. Grier. I know we'll be okay."      As they converge on the teleporter, Rita does something visually unclear. Gaping holes appear in some of the lizards and beetles, each one straight through the center of mass, as if shot with a silent gun of enormous caliber. Glowy blue energy flows in currents through the air, from their wounds and into Rita's upper back.      The creatures struck, naturally, die. It's the ones that weren't struck that are changed. Like flipping a switch, the beetles and lizards change sides, firing on or swarming over the golems in eerie coordination and leaping to intercept attacks meant for the party. With Liza protecting her, Rita's free to coordinate them with sharp precision.      Rita is a good girl, but she's a shockingly cruel Queen. Her subjects are compelled to utter loyalty which she does not reciprocate. She spends their lives coolly, almost vindictively. Everything under her command will die, sooner more likely than later, but more will bend the knee to replace them. This place has a seemingly endless supply, after all.      With more and more of the stone golems coming under Hiromi's control, alternately, there soon might not be much to actually fight.
Hiromi	Along the way, Hiromi questions her unburied giant in the language of earth and stone.     Who are the despoilers? [Four thousand kilometers] from here, buildings stand in snow. Were they made by despoilers? Why do they still stand, not yet destroyed? Is that not part of the garden?
Redshift Operators	The Redshifts surge their way to the teleporter with that boost of mobility as soon as it begins activating. Joining with the Captain's task force, they synchronize nearly perfectly. The giant faces down the brunt of the attacks, the sniper blasts down the ones at range, the ninja cuts them down close, and the gunman works the middle, acting as DPS and tanking to supplement the utility-oriented approach of the others. "I've got swarms at two, ten, six, eight, every direction! Get me and Grier our space, we need range!" "They fall under my blade, primed for the psychopomp! Neutron, the lizards!" "Down. Down. Down. Rita has the rest. Golem cluster at ten, taking fire." "I've got you! I won't let them! Augh, RD, can you do the grenades thing?" "Don't need it! Hold on, the wolf's got it covered!" "Get to that other beast-woman for the healing soon -- once she's done!"     They've amassed at the teleporter, all seemingly back to back and all laying out a rush of violence that's as unbelievably intense as it is unbelievably coordinated, which is to say, very much so.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	More constructs--different ones--join the battle, when the tide turns, as if the structures here were spitefully making a last-gasp attack. They might be described as masks, though it's hard to say what they're made of. Some manner of energy animates them, burning like fire and wreathing them in its warmth. They float in the air, outside the reach of close-up fighters, and blast with weaker versions of the lasers used by the stone golems. Hiromi's giant answers her thusly, in the language of the earth: DESPOILERS CALLED 'HUMAN' in DESPOILER TONGUE. DESPOILERS RESPONSIBLE FOR DETERIORATION OF GARDEN, DEPARTURE OF HE WHO CANNOT BE NAMED, DEATH OF N'KUHANA. SNOWY PLACE IS HOLDING PLACE FOR USURPERS. CAME FROM OUTSIDE, SOUGHT TO STEAL OUR GARDEN, HIS THRONE. IMPRISONED THERE AS PUNISHMENT. DESPOILER STRUCTURES MAY REMAIN, DOUBTFUL THAT DESPOILERS DO. USURPERS ARE VIOLENT. This condemnation of violence, coming from a construct that would otherwise be trying to smash everyone else may strike Hiromi as rich, but it is useful information.      Raziel is able to tell, through his connection to Soul Reaver, that these creatures have been here for longer than most worlds have a recorded history of humanity, in some cases. The wisps, when he's able to catch them, appear to have been animated with artificially made souls--almost like grafts of something much larger. If he concentrates, he can see the outline of it--something large and old and warm and kind. But has that large presence retained its kindness, after all this time? Or has it, too, succumbed to the fanatical hatred of everything human?      Liza seems to be birds of a feather with, of all people, the Engineer, who focuses likewise on managing clusters of energies via funneling them into chokes of his own making with mines and those rocket-guided harpoons. His spider turrets are constantly repositioning themselves, white beams of concentrated energy spewing from emitters to split the remaining monsters apart.      Altered, or mutated--it isn't clear, but soon strangely colored beetles, lizards, wisps and golems appear in the midst of the enemies, with fiery variations on their normal attacks, or leaving trails of utmost, freezing cold in their tracks. These, too, however fall under the sway of either Rita or Hiromi, save for the wisps, who, thanks to the coordinated efforts of the Redshifts and Liza's own brand of ultraviolence, are quickly eliminated.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	There is another pressing 'pop'. The last few monsters still hostile to the group are slain. Phreak has a quick exchange with the Engineer. "So Engie here says that you gotta give that pedestal a crank once it finishes charging, which it... has, apparently. But the interference plays hell on the credit cards." "I don't hear any more monsters coming," says the Huntress cautiously. "I suspect the teleporter draws power from the same place as whatever means of surveillance the structures here use. It's renewable, clearly, but activating and fully charging the teleporter does seem to grant a measure of peace." "Okay. So, 'prime teleporter, elminiate hostiles, arm up, then activate.' Rinse and repeat, yeah?" asks Phreak. "That does seem the best way to do it. Gets the wildlife off our backs for a minute, then gets us time to arm up for the next theatre," agrees the Huntress. "Cool. GSF should still be running. Let's load up."      Your FUNDS are enough for one of the following selections: -ONE Large Chest -TWO Small Chests -ONE Active Equipment Chest     Your allies have received the following: CAPTAIN obtained syringe, gunner drone PHREAK obtained strange feather ENGINEER obtained personal shield generator HUNTRESS obtained syringe x2 Special Drops: Raziel obtained pig-snouted teddy bear
Kukuru	With the immediate threats cleared out and a whole lot of new friends on their side, Kukuru gets to focus for a while on just making sure everyone's not bleeding or burning for more than they need to be. "Good work, everyone~ Hmn.. It does sound pretty quiet for now, right?" She comments in agreement with the Huntress, pausing to listen to Phreak's assessment of the situation. "I guess thatmeans we won't have that much time to take a break, then." She sounds utterly disappointed at that, but not so disappointed that she can't keep that healing flowing around. Kukuru's taken a fair bit of damage herself just wading through some of those creatures earlier, but she doesn't look like she's slowed down much at all from it. "How far do you think the others got? Even that first set of things trying to eat us were pretty tiring to get through." She yawns for emphasis before picking out a LARGE CHEST for herself and laying right on the ground to give herself a breather. She even gestures at people to come over with one arm lazily, but she's not going to chase anyone down to join her.
Raziel	Raziel, through his attacks, can see something strange in the wisps of souls of the people he is fighting and devouring.  They are old, perhaps older than even he is.  They seem to be artificial, like grafted on from something else.  Something old, but kind...full of love?  It was a strange feeling to get from something attacking with such ferocity. Was the creature that spawned these still the same, or had whatever happened here corrupted it too?  He was not sure, and it was concerning.  But with the activation of the teleporter, the waves died down.  He was quiet, slowly finding what he sought and picking up the snouted bear.  With a sigh, he stores it for safekeeping. For the first chest, he decides to spend his credit on an Active Equipment Chest.
Hiromi	Though she did very little, herself, outside of turning as many of the stone men as would hear her to come under her authority, Hiromi looks sufficiently pleased with the results of the battle. Rather, something about it's put her in a good mood.     To the Redshifts, "Your pack fights well, together. No sudden alliance. Long history?"     To the Engineer and Liza, "Controlling armies. Is that 'specialty'? Moving always, setting traps, untiring."     To Rita, "I don't smell that on you. But, they follow you, yes? Little ones. Like ants did. But, what will they do, now?"     To Kukuru, "Thousands-kilometers. Can you travel, even through blizzards? Can you return here, or must see where, before going? 'Teleporter' 'one way,' wasn't said."     To Raziel, "Undying spirits, raised here. You will take them, where?" And also, "Toy pig?"     To the Captain, Hiromi indicates her preference for "Two chests." She hasn't particularly paid attention to them, but it seems necessary to pick, now, and she's at least curious what's in them.
Liza Grier	Liza fires until even the ammo pack runs dry. The C20r comes back and entire magazines of 10mm ammo are emptied into elite enemy variations as they come. An old autoloader comes off her hip and takes snap shots at the wisps in the air, often accompanied by airbursts of hot-requisitioned 'grenades' that are just her own mixed up fire suppression compounds in the same canisters.     The e-shield flickers angrily on the verge of overheating and collapsing while she dual wields, until Liza uses it specifically to soak up ice attacks, dynamically managing its thermic load. Her suit's personal shields go down once, but hunkering down behind the Engineer's turrets and kill corridors, under Rita active tentacle defense, buys her enough time to recharge them without testing her armour.     "Bold of you to assume." she replies to Red Dwarf as her handgun clicks dry. The hilt of an e-sword pops into her hand and ignites a ruby red blade, immediately used alongside the shield to concuss, pin, and hack apart monsters into smouldering pieces when they filter through the minefield. However, soon enough, the party simply has control over everything left on the field, and Liza finally allows herself to take a breather. And ditch the empty ammo pack, rolling her shoulders, now that she need not necessarily carry Rita.     "Captain. What's the cooldown on those care packages? If we have a minute to breathe, is that enough for the tubes to cycle? Or are we keeping those in reserve. I'm doing fine on ammo, but I'd rather not burn through my whole stockpile on a company dime. And we have injured." Yes she is still fussing over Rita.     "Who knows." she says to Kukuru, strutting off to find one LARGE CHEST. "Even odds are nobody made it. What chance do a hundred amateur survivors have against some kind of planet-wide defense grid? How long have they already been out here before the company finally decided to give a shit?"     She makes a vague noise in Hiromi's direction. "It's everyone's duty to revolt, even if they believe themselves alone in the world who feels so. Or something like that. I outgrew my team, so I had to learn to do all the work myself, that's all. It doesn't matter how big, how strong, how numerous your enemy is, if you only let them fight you with a fraction of it. If you'd win every time if they were one percent as powerful, fight them a hundred times."
Rita Ma	The fight slowly winds to a close. Rita isn't in control of the wisps (isn't yet? can't be?), but her lizards help the rest of the party barrage them down with focused fire that gives them little chance to dodge.      When it's all over, the monsters under her sway- that is, all the non-golem monsters still in sight- stand eerily still, as if at attention but in no particular formation.      She disentangles herself from Liza and hops down with a little sigh of relief. "Mmm! Good work from you too, Ms. Kukuru!" she says, though she still sounds a little emotionally dazed. To Liza, reflexively and grumpily: "I'm not 'injured', Ms. Grier." It's a small lie, but aside from the way she gingerly rubs her shoulder, nobody (but Kukuru) can prove her a liar.      Hiromi, again, catches her attention. Her reaction to being asked about her abilities isn't what it should be. Not even embarrassment, but something like guilt. Her eyes slide off to the side and down. "It's... probably not what you're imagining, Ms. Hiromi," she says uncomfortably. When her eyes flick up to regard her 'subjects', there's certainly no love in her gaze. "If they can come with us, I'll bring them, and they can help in the next place. Or if not, I'll have them kill each other when we go. What are you going to do with your stone giants?"      Her discomfort abates at least enough for her curiosity to momentarily win out against it. She looks up at Hiromi, a little baffled. "What did you expect to smell, anyway?"      Eventually Rita wanders off at a cute little jog to find two small chests to blow her money on. It gives her a nice little excuse to mull over her thoughts alone, for just a moment.      There's no way this place really believes I'm human. ... It hurts just to think about it. It's so far gone that I feel like they must be making fun of me. It can't be real. It hurts just to hope it might be.      ... This place really is awful.
Redshift Operators	"Time to go shopping. Never liked e-currencies." The gunman grumbles as he slings his weapon over his shoulder again. "'Can't take it with you.' White Dwarf, move quick. Get us something good."     The cyborg ninja is the quickest of the group. When the gunman tosses the group's collective account card to her, she snatches it stylishly and takes off at a high speed. Using what iterations of her trial-and-error futuresight she can muster in post-battle focus, and her immense speed, she can hopefully find one ACTIVE EQUIPMENT chest containing something that will work well as a support measure for Red Giant's hand-to-hand activities, considering that punching the swarms isn't an efficient use of one's hands. Hopefully.
Hiromi	Hiromi listens to Rita's response, and answers her first question with, "They'll come. Called selves 'weapons.' 'Nameless.' If they wish for fighting, they'll fight."     She then answers the second question with a single not-word that means command, authority, leadership, and rightful rule as a quality gained, trained, or intrinsic, rather than decided on by others.     Once spoken, it's easy to imagine it as the word to describe that part of Hiromi's own presence, when she's standing like this, a figure in too-sharp definition, seeming too large to measure by the physical space she occupies. Accepting her rule, without her even asking for it, would be terribly easy, and entirely natural.     'Love' doesn't factor into that feeling.     Walking away is easy enough to do, too. She watches, but doesn't ask anything more.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	-Kukuru obtained strange bauble     A tear-shaped, palm-sized bauble, with pearlescent liquid trapped inside. It is easily stored away. Where the red motes in the air drift close to it, their descent is slowed down, their glow so also. Kukuru herself doesn't seem to be affected. The order form inside the chest calls it a 'chronobauble,' and it was originally meant to arrive to a place on Mercury, ten years from now. The guy who hired UES to deliver it was apparently sending it to himself. -Hiromi obtained warbanner and macabre pauldron     The Captain had said that each of these items had their own stories. It might've been easy to dismiss that as the romanticism of a sailor (or in Liza's appraisal, the delusions of a madman). But holding these two things, there are two distinct stories told--one of utmost, infectious confidence in victory (the warbanner) and one of fighting against vastly greater numbers (the skull-capped pauldron). Both will lend their strength to her. -Liza obtained ice-blue band      This band came with a syzygy on its order form, evidently meant for the original recipient. 'Should memories be lost, should oceans be clouded, will you bring me fervor? Will you die with me?' The band is cold to the touch, even a little bit through her suit. But it fits comfortably around the finger. It's exuding big artifact energy--the kind of thing that xenoarch on many a station would be gushing over. -Rita obtained well-loved teddy bear and chilled blood infusion      The teddy bear is hard not to hold close--its stuffing is showing in places, it's even burnt in one. But it still manages to look at the world with innocent little button eyes, is still just as huggable. There is something inspiring about its innner strength. The blood infusion, judging by the order form inside, was specially put together by a lab at the request of a rich lunatic who believed he could get stronger by doping himself with animal blood. Luckily, *someone* here actually can do that. -White Dwarf obtained animated slime     Named 'Goobo Jr.' by the order form, this intelligent purple slime is not a customer's order. It is instead evidence for a UES court martial, that was to be delivered to the corporate arbitration offices on Mars. Evidently, the original caretaker encouraged the slime to impersonate a crew member for a prank that wasn't received well. Goobo Jr. will happily learn the art of the substitution jutsu from White Dwarf, and greets her warmly with a squelch. -Raziel obtained mysterious egg      An egg the color of the night sky, and large enough that one hand won't completely hold it. White dapples cover its surface like stars. Holding it conveys visions of fire, feelings of warmth, safety and destruction all in one. The order form lists it as a Europan Great Dragon egg, and includes a cautionary note about an unusual self defense mechanism. In a pinch, Raziel can call upon this mechanism...      "By all means," says the Captain to Liza with a magnanimous sweep of his arm. "Burn them. It is, as you say, the company's dime. Besides, if we proceed at our current pace, we should have the next salvo ready by the time we reach the next teleporter."
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	The calldowns from the Safe Travels arrive within a few seconds. One restocks ammunition, while the other mends any wounds suffered during the fight. Phreak stocks up on ammo while the Huntress makes some fine-tuning adjustments to her electrobow. The Engineer quietly tinkers with one of his spider turrets, as the Captain records a voice log. The teleporter spools up, and a bolt of white from the [Moon] on high envelops you, as AR credit displays are bugged and flicker down to zero. Captain's Log      "This place has been referred to by its inhabitants, I am told, as a 'garden.' But if it is a garden, it is a walled garden, a place where things are kept moreso than grown. And what is kept here is violent, base. On Earth, or Venus, insects may chitter. Here, they screech in anger. Even the grass seems to point upwards, accusingly, at anyone who would tread upon it. A garden... implies a certain cultivated harmony," the Captain continues, his accent and reflective tone lending a somber energy to the recorded log. "There is a harmony here--but it is a harmony of overwhelming and collective hatred for humanity, of hostility towards any who would help them on their way. A harmony of violence and murder." Area Cleared: Titanic Plains
Kukuru	Hiromi's questions have Kukuru scratching her chin lightly as she struggles a bit to keep up. "Yeah, as long as I know where I'm going. Sort of. I know where this place is now, so I'd be able to bring stuff back from home to here if we need anything." She explains, although she doesn't go as far as demonstrating just yet. She's still busy lying down, after all! "I mean, unless this place moves. Then... Maybe yes? I haven't tried it before." Liza's observations, meanwhile, have Kukuru pursing her lips a bit in distaste. "That would be pretty rough, yeah... It'd be great if they were still alive, but we can probably figure out something if we can find them either way if it hasn't been too long yet. If the company's that bad, though..." She sits up briefly, smiling at Rita and waving lightly while refraining from blowing her cover. Afterwards, she turns to the Engineer and Huntress with a hopeful look on her face. "You could always join us. The Concord's real good about taking care of people, even if you're weird or an accident like me." She doesn't elaborate on that last part. Instead, she gets that weird tear shaped thing! She waves it around idly, looking disappointed at first until she sees it reacting to the red motes. That seems to be enough to get her entranced by the strange movements and shift in their glow, although she still doesn't quite seem to understand what it does even after reading the order form.