Scene #8514: When We Were Stupid, Beautiful Kids

Owner	Pose
Metamorph One	The OZ is a remote location in the barren mountain ranges, named the Teeth of the Maw, that ring the former cite of a citadel of the old Multiverse of ludicrous size. The mountains ripple onwards for hundreds of miles out. Some of them are ostensibly hundreds of thousands of years old. Some of them are five. All of them are barely-breathably high knifelike monoliths of grey rock, heavy snow, and pale, acerbic ash. Even on a clear day, the sky is overcast with a thin layer of intermingled frost and smog, creating a ghastly haze over what little there is to see. A snowflake, fallen gently on the tongue, tastes like burnt dust. It's worst actually near the destination, where the flakes cling without melting, and feel and smell like battery acid. Static charge builds into the air and releases in blooming fulminations that never touch the ground. It reeks of ozone, disused radiators, and melted sauter. Getting through the mountains is your own problem. The titular Metamorph unit used by Dianna and Elara of Applied Ontology is for those two only, barring exigent circumstance on the level of 'otherwise Rita Ma is blown up by a nuclear reactor'. Approaching from the air is the most logical scenario, wherein one can see the epicenter of the foul environment from afar; the line of mountains with clipped peaks, giving way to an unearthly trench a small state long, and the gigantic hulk finally wedged into a mountainside at its terminus, so vast that its highest edges exceed the peaks surrounding it. The bristling forest of gunmetal grey and snow-covered silver looks like the flayed skeleton of some unimaginably collossal monster, much more than the hulk of some sort of spacecraft, yet the spinning-top shape of its design-- all runways and platforms and docking arms reaching into the sky, spreading out from mountains of overlapping towers and decks, congealing into miles long spindles at each tip-- suggests that is exactly what it once was. Though you could certainly never imagine it being more than a wreck, preserved only for even gravity being limited in how much damage it can actually do, you can see from miles away that it somehow still crawls with activity. Sparking lights, tendrils of smoke, dull, still-burning fires, blinking lights; a mechanical organism caught in a perfect equilibrium of rotting and healing. "It's exactly where you remembered . . ." "Why'd you need to act so surprised?" "I'm not, I guess. It's just . . . I've only ever seen it from afar. Only through view screens, back then. Projected on maps. Sometimes in my dreams, haha! But being so close to it . . ." "Oh. Yeah. I guess it's different for you. You couldn't--" "I wasn't here." "But you are now." Trudging through the snow on the last set of border peaks, the wideband transmission comes through. "<Welcome to the OZ, everyone. This is Ghost Light. I'll be your operational support handler for today!>" "<You're looking at some of the still-smoking remnants of the old Multiverse, so if you feel a sense of overwhelming disgust, that's normal; if it's a sense of awe, retreat from the theatre and get out of my sight.>" "<Come on. The operation is due to start in ten.>" "<We're only calling it that. Aren't we.>" "<It matters what it's called. Same with ideas, and same with people. What we're up to is a retrieval operation. Valuable materiel in the combat zone of a previous operation, from . . .>" "<Before any of you people were around. Yeah. Don't sweat the history.>"
Timespace Riders	Woz knows this area well, having been in the region but a few months past--though at the time, he was observing it from above. To actually traverse the treacherous terrain, and to breathe the air, at ground level, is much worse than the mildly unsettling acidic tang in the air. As such, upon hearing of the rendezvous point, Woz insisted that he and his king avail themselves of the retainer's mysterious space-bending scarf as much as possible. Anyone looking from a high enough vantage point can see the two of them, blipping across the poisoned grey landscape, the equivalent of a few city blocks at a time in terms of distance. When they are finally in range, dirty snowflakes cling to the retainer's uniform and Sougo's thick violet puff jacket in equal measure. With the hood down and the jacket partially unzipped, a few layers are visible, namely a pink sweater and a mint shirt below that. Black pants and a pair of hiking boots complete the ensemble-- Sougo's usual light and breezy clothing just wouldn't do, for this kind of weather. Even Woz has buttoned the normally-open sleeves of his olive greatcoat. "<Hi, Ghost Light! Hi, um... second familiar voice!>" Sougo manages a bright smile despite the general vibe of this colossus of excess. "<It does kind of suck. I think any place where you can taste the air in this way sucks. But--that thing we're here for, it's for a much better reason than the old factions would've had in mind, I'm sure.>" Woz purses his lips. "<We are yours to command, 'Ghost Light.' The sooner we are gone from this morass, the better.>"
Raziel	'These mountains, spiked as they were, gave the appearance of a giant gaping mouth. This would all make sense, given the name that was given to this region, though looking up into the air, the feeling of 'tyrant' rang a little too close to home. This ash and frost appearance reminded me of home. Of what Nosgoth came to be after the Vampires took it over after the great smoke stack was built. Industrial in nature, but what it really became was a way for Vampires to reclaim the land for themselves in earnest. What became an act of rebellion against the tyrannous sun.' Raziel himself was climbing up these cliffs. His claws tearing into the side of the spiky cliffs, before jumping up and clawing into the next set. He was careful, not to impale himself, but was traveling not as the bird may fly. But rather trying to get height over trying to move directly towards where the meet-up site was. That was until he got high enough. Finally over the peek so that he could look down at the valley below him. 'What I saw next was a sight only really visible in the Multiverse. A twisting hulk of what might easily be confused as a beast, but also the tell-tale sign of 'technology' lay on it. After a bit, the only thing one could see was that... the fact that it was some sort of machine. What made it worse was the fact that it seemed to be in equal parts healing and dying. It was locked in an eternal struggle, but yet would be here for eternity itself. I would not call it awe-inspiring, but disgusting. Almost pitiable... it should be given the ability to rest, instead of this. But... such was not likely something I could grant it, nor could anyone at this point.' Raziel leaped from his position, and as he started to fall his wings spread out. Large batlike ones, spread out as they caught the wind and slowed his decent down the cliffs until he could be seen from the meet-up location. Finally, he landed, dropping to a four-point stance, and slowly rose back up. The man himself was a tall, and handsome person. Fair features, and black hair that hung across his face and neck. Well built posture, with two large bat-like wings on his back. He was clearly non-human. A blend of features gives away the non-human nature of his body. Claws, instead of fingers on each hand, his feet were cloven and claw-like as well. When he spoke, pointy teeth were occasionally visible. His eyes were not normal, but rather balls of pale blue light. One-arm blue light seemed to swirl around. Those who could sense life or thoughts would sense hunger and derangement from the blue energy around his right arm. It was clearly its own entity, twinned and bound to him. Ravenous, willful, and deranged. He was wearing black leather pants, but no shoes (how would he even wear shoes, not that he needed them with how his legs were.) No shirt, which seemed to be a cultural thing. One shoulder was a half-cape that bore an insignia. "Forgive my slight delay. I am here to aid in whatever matters you have called us here for," he says, with a slight bow.
Petra Soroka	The air approach would be the most logical route, wouldn't it? It's been months, at this point, and Petra should stop being annoyed at her lack of easily accessible, long distance flight. But how can she, really, when she's spending a few hours trudging through snow, knowing that the Kana is somewhere with Remee, because she stole it, when Petra would've been happy to let it rot in that warehouse forever? No matter how much Petra tries to convince herself that it'd be a pragmatic decision to want it back, she's unable to emotionally commit to it-- but she can still be mad that someone else has it, when she doesn't. The trip isn't really that bad, in terms of "on foot hiking through miles of mountains". Petra can skip along the top of the snow, sending out occasional pulses from her jets to keep herself lightweight and unstuck. Vertical movement isn't challenging for her, the duration of travel isn't too long with her speed, she doesn't get tired or out of breath, and even though all of those things are still unpleasant to think about, the thought of the mission-- or more accurately, the people-- ahead keeps her thoughts occupied. She also has company! Petra wears her bomber jacket rather than her EGO suit from L-Corp, as an intentional decision for a particular anxiety that she's had for a while. But in addition to her consistent ratty military surplus aesthetic, she's joined by the large metal Eggpack strapped to her back, its screen occupied by Angela, and Yuri, princess carried in her arms. Carrying Yuri was a pragmatic decision to navigate the mountains more quickly, of course, but Petra can't help but be awkward about it, visibly careful to not touch any more skin together than she has to. It's effortless for Petra to hold her at arms' length, and Yuri can feel the extent of Petra's strength in the ease of how she moves around, even with twenty pounds of metal on her back and redacted pounds of person in her hands. Even though Yuri's current position is distracting, Petra's mind is occupied by the people they're coming here to meet instead, and she anxiously babbles during the entire trip. "So, uh, I met those new agents from Training a couple days ago, Yuri. They're-- they're nice, probably. It's sort of cool to see employees that are newer compared to me? It's nice to have a little seniority." Petra falls quiet for a moment, thinking about how close she was to murdering them. "And we'll be getting some newbies in Info too, right? Maybe I'll-- bump into them on a mission, or during work, or whatever." Petra jumps between parallel snowy cliffs, ascending twenty feet up the wall with each repulsor-enhanced leap, without even taking a breath from chattering. "Hey, Yuri, you've known Cinder for ages, right?" She clambers up to the top, automatically lifting Yuri up over her head with one hand to keep her out of the stinging grey snow. "What was she like when she was younger? Ahaha." That's a nervous laugh, not a happy one. Petra seems so anxious that she might vibrate herself to pieces, despite there being no visible reason why. When Metamorph's voices crackle through the radio, Petra startles so hard that she falls over, sending both of them toppling into the snow (Angela is spared, by Petra's fall being face-first). She scrambles to pull out her radio to respond, before even getting up from the ground. "<Wh-what kind of materiel are we looking for, Ghost Light? And S-Severance. Let me know what to do, and I'll do it.>" With that, Petra apologizes and picks Yuri back up, hurriedly crossing the rest of the distance to meet up with the squadron.
Dysnomia	She came from above, high above. A slow descent from near-orbit, in ever-tightening circles above the mountain range, closer and closer, and she didn't like what she was seeing, or feeling. Mia's unique physiology helped to reduce the stress. The static sliding easily through her suit and body, as permeable as the air around them, and the thinness of the air no obstacle at all. But that wasn't to say she ENJOYED it. It felt like sand sliding between her fingernails, rustling near her bones. Teeth grating, she pulled held as much of herself as she could manage within her flesh as she slide through the atmosphere on wings like dust, circling the great metal corpse. 1She's reluctant to get too close before she really has to, lest she risk more of this filthy atmosphere mixing with her wings. When the Metamorphs climb into the OZ, 'really has to' becomes 'now or never.' She descends into a dive, landing atop one of the peaks. Her wings dissolved into the haze around her as she stood, black suit's helmet was pulled in place, rendered expressionless by its dark, reflective surface. The helmet turned to regard the Metamorphs, the one thing in this hellscape that seemed to be displaying any kind of real life. "<Copy, Ghost Light.>" Dysnomia acknowledged. "<Just some old salvage. I've done this sort of work before. Though. None this...Cursed.>"
Hiromi	The footprints left in Hiromi's wake are backwards, not in the forward-back orientation, but along the in-out axis. The force of the great wolf's leaps up the mountain should be leaving craters, at her speed and intuitively understood mass, but convex impressions are left instead of concave. She doesn't push the mountain back to drive forward, but is launched forward by the stone beneath her at every step. The overall impression is an uncanny weightlessness, as if she were some massive shadow, not even glinting teeth visible to break up her silhouette while she silently runs on four legs. '...if you feel a sense of overwhelming disgust, that's normal; if it's a sense of awe, retreat from the theatre...' It's true that Hiromi wasn't 'multiversal' at the time this place fell. That said, as far as ancient ruins go, this is a far younger than she's used to visiting, not that anyone would be easily able to tell, and not that that changes her opinion of it too much. It comes off, in her eyes, as the same symbol of decaying power and foolhardy extravagance, whether five years old or five hundred. Still silent, it's only the impression of laughter she exudes, rather than the sound. This changes only when she stands up on two legs, smoothly replacing her form like a candle's flicker, lost in a blink. "'Operation.' Action. Doing. Little meaning. For what are you operating, little ones? 'Doctors' operate, too. Cutting from humans who won't heal. What does this corpse hold?" It's an open question, but she's not waiting for an answer before getting closer. She can find things with her own nose, at the same time as waiting for her ears to pick up an explanation of goals.
Angela	There has, not too long ago, been a Meltdown and so there aren't a lot of Agents available to send out today even on behalf of Concord allies. Cinder is among those who cannot come along--she took a hit in the Welfare Department from the Helper Bot who tried to help her by stabbing her repeatedly (more recently than the Meltdown!). It's not serious, but she's still in recovery. Cinder has jokingly called it a vacation. But Yuri has, strangely for once, actually volunteered to go on this particular operation. Unlike other Agents, Yuri is one of the agents that DOESN'T rush to pick outside missions all that often. She also has been a lot quieter than Cinder but she has volunteered THIS time. Yuri has long dark pink hair and is carrying a spear with a dark blue shaft and an icicle like blade at the tip. Her EGO Gear, on the other hand, is a white-descending-to-blue jacket and a dark velvet blue suit. She hasn't heard Dianna and Elara's voices before. Agents in the main office CAN access the radio but there's paperwork involved--but they seem accustomed to taking orders from people they don't actually know and haven't met before. "<Yuri from the Control Tea present.> Yuri says. <Wait did I say Control Tea? Control Team. Haha. Wow.> Also, notably, she is being carted along by Petra in a Princess carry. Her own arms are wrapped around Petra's shoulders for stability. It's for pragmatic reasons only, of course, Yuri is just holding on this way to make sure she isn't readily dropped and to help Petra in her own task. She looks into Petra's eyes the whole way over, clearly out of a lack of anything else to look at besides mountains. Yuri doesn't know that Petra almost murdered Mikey--to be fair, Mikey also doesn't know that--but she says, "Yeah, probably." Yuri says. "Guess you don't really know for sure until you really get to know them. I know Mikey used to be a prolific artist and never heard of Baba before. No clue where they're from." Without a Cinder around to handle the talking, Yuri finds herselfl babbling a bit more herself--especially since Angela, in Eggpack form, is being quiet for the time being. ''What was she like when she was younger?'' Yuri thinks back. A LONG TIME AGO Yuri and Cinder are children, lingering in the Nest they both come from, just walking along the street minding their own business when an older gentleman bumps into them in a hurry and gets mad like in every anime ever. "Hey!" He sneers. "Watch it, crotch spawn!" And he draws out the cigarette he's been smoking and flicks it into Yuri's forehead as she turns around. This sets something off in Cinder and she tackles into the man's body, using a leg and the lack of balance to bowl the man over into his face and just rails against his face until he cries and apologizes and then rails against his face after until her arms get tired. Standing up she picks up the fallen cigarette and catches up to Yuri, smoking it for herself. "Hi, I'm Yuri." Yuri says. NOW "Passionate." Yuri says. "She kind of trained herself out of it for a while but she's been getting back into the habit thanks to your influence. It's nice to see."
Metamorph One	"<Haha, no need to be so official, Woz.>" "<Didn't you just say this was an operation?" "<I said in ten! Well, eight now. And also, I like him. Don't you?>" "<I don't like anyone.>" "<Really now?>" "<Not from outside.>" If the snow were whiter than pale grey ash, and if the mountains were sloped enough to be natural, the machine coming down the near side would almost blend in, given its snowy white exterior, though the dramatic orange lines on its hull and the glaring light of the optics assembly would spoil that either way. It's not exactly small, either; even in quadrupedal configuration, it takes a good jump just to cling to the side of the hull, never mind climb in. Yet still, as it begins to trudge past the broken earth of the foothills and into the permafrost and burning fuel fields, it moves with an eerie sort of living fluidity and slight imperfection. "<Severance.>" "<Wait, who already knows?>" "<That's the girl we met at the Soft Expanse operation, remember?" "<Huh. I guess? There were a few.>" "<Trust me. She only sounds different because she's more . . . Yes." The expanse of blasted ground towards the fringes of the fallen colossus is not an insignificant distance, despite its barrenly liminal nature. A mixture of hard-packed frost, bare glassy rock, smouldering fuel lakes, and metallic dust and debris, coats the ground for literal miles. Up close, the shadow of it makes it feel like early nighttime, but so much is sparking or on fire that there's a constant, dull candle glow somewhere or another. "<Not just some salvage.>" "<This gigantic piece of shit is, but not what we're really here for.>" "<Obviously, you can feel free to take anything you want, though I don't know if you'll find much of value.>" "<This spot, years ago, before it fell from space, was called-->" "<'The Factory'. Can you believe that? It didn't belong in space anyways. Nothing named by those people did. Especially not anything wanted by Earth Two.>" "<Ahaha . . . Well, once upon a time, as you can probably guess, this used to be way out in the void! But when . . . certain things happened, to change the way the Superplanet was put together, it stopped occupying a place of gravitational symmetry, and crashed.>" "<And everyone wanted to pick it clean.>" "<Even before that they did. People died over this pile every week. Back and forth, back and forth. For 'the Factory'. Five years of it and they never figured it out.>" "<They called it a 'Target Zone', back then. A hotspot for inevitable conflict. Lots of Elites got their start in places like these, back when the war was at its peak. And . . . a lot met their end. And we don't even talk about them anymore, haha.>" "<Because the fighting was the point. They could have figured it all out, solved all its 'mysteries', got what little there was to get, and dumped it, if they just sent anyone who did anything other than kill. But they wouldn't ever do that. If they left it alone, someone else would have it. Even though it's useless.>"
Metamorph One	Drawing close, the taste of sauter, solvent, fuel, catalyst, and ozone, mingles together into an overwhelming sweet-sickening-oily incense. Microscopic metal shards that are certainly ruinous for unprotected lungs. But more than that, you can see where the exterior of the 'Factory', never designed to exist wit 'down' in mind, has been scraped away like bloodied skin after a motorcycle fall, peeled thin and breached into an unimaginable honeycomb of cramped corridors without floors or ceilings, filled with irregular handholds and hatches in all directions. Not meant for humans, either. "<Nobody knows who built it, or what its real purpose was. It just . . . appeared. And stayed there, building things, all the time. Different things; almost random. Nothing big, but-->" "<What if it did. What if it could. What if we miss out. What if they get it, when it finally puts out something we want?>" "<Mmh . . . Ah, so, please expect to run into Endemics-- That is, the autonomous drones and things that it always had running.>" "<They used to ignore us, you know. I guess even robots eventually figure out that you can't trust humans.>" Getting closer still, confirming this is easy. Most of the sparking and smoking is due to the presence of countless worker robots. Zipping around in the air with little flares of thruster flame, applying plasma cutters and arc welders, extracting weather-worn metal to be recycled and replacing new panels; sewing wires back together like arteries, setting superstructural beams like bones, pumping power into conveyor belt lines like a transfusion of fresh blood. The inert husks of many more litter the ground like dead flies, out of power, ready to be salvaged by the rest. There's so little reactor power working that it can't actually maintain enough of them to fix itself faster than time and gravity erode it; the floor plan was never built to be stable under its own weight anyways, but it doesn't know anything else. It can't be anything else. "<Just like most of the Multiverse.>" says Dianna, as if she could read minds. "<We're . . . Removing an arrowhead? Hiromi. Something we have to extract, to let someone, some people, heal.>" "<The combat log core of a certain machine. It'll look a little like ours.>"
Hiromi	Some familiar scents. Some less familiar. Hiromi is moving ahead, not waiting to gather and meet. She won't separate out scents like the other responding elites unless they go to meet her. That isn't really difficult if they try, given that she has 'something' that lets her answer on the radio bands with a traceable signal, but they'd have to keep up, first. "'Like ours,'" Hiromi repeats, like but unlike Dianna's tone. "What is like you?" That's not exactly the same as 'like yours.' "Your pack. Were they here? Did they know?" Know what? The machine they're looking for, maybe. The exceptions 'catching up' are Elara and Dianna, because Hiromi goes to meet them, as soon as Dianna says what they're after. She's again on four legs, a black shadow against the ash, finally leaping up to meet them and land -- heavily, yet not oppressively uncomfortably, for a machine like this -- on the back of what Hiromi had previously called 'their shell.' She takes more than a little sniff, needing several moments before pronouncing, without words, I will remember. Flying robots with plasma cutters. There are a few ways around this, and for once, Hiromi chooses the method of 'less violence.' Leaping down and away, she darts into the great factory-corpse's dead veins, choosing the paths of less activity, ready to dig her way through its walls in search of similar scents, and leave the robots to their own activities. Avoiding them entirely would be more difficult, and take greater time than she's willing to allot, but for this, she makes several defenses in sequence, delivered reflexively. First, to move where attention is not. Second, to dig between the walls, and proceed where life, even machine-life, is not. Third, to instruct those that bother her that I am authorized to be here, an instruction that requires only an understanding of authority to realize, rather than anything as specific as 'a brain.' The noxious, cutting, poisonous atmosphere has strangely little effect on her, for all that she's showing a reaction to it. She can't be just holding her breath, given she's tracking by scent.
Raziel	"Makes sense..." Raziel says in response to the two explaining the history of this scar. "There are always two sides, each one wanting something the other doesn't have. Gaining an advantage so they don't feel threatened... or simply want something they can use to hurt the other side so they think they can live finally in peace, never mind the suffering they cause to start another cycle..." He looks at the machine, unable to heal due to its own weight, and the fighting of constant battles. A third group, caught in the middle and now hostile because it learned to be afraid too. Too much, he realizes, like has happened on Nosgoth. Raziel takes an unneeded breath and releases it. He steps forward, though pauses when Hiromi seems to be tracing its scent. "Very well, I will walk with the Archwolf on this," he says and looks towards the machine the two Metamorphs are in. "And with you as well. The goal to heal others is a worthwhile one, and one I offer my blade not just willingly to, but /empathetically/ to." The awful conditions of the air quality or the land around them do little to stop Raziel, who seems to not /need/ to breathe. "For areas far too dangerous for life, allow me to go ahead... after all, I am hardly alive."
Petra Soroka	"Mikey's an artist? I guess that explains the gear choice." Petra proceeds to make the first unprompted political statement of her entire career as an Elite. "I think artists should be paid enough that they don't need to go work for death corporations." Watch out, multiverse. Petra Soroka has realized that economics exists. "<Not from outside.>" Petra winces. That's okay. That's normal. "<Wait, who already knows?>" Elara remembers meeting her! Which is both good and bad. Dianna does not remember meeting her! Which is both bad and good. These things average out to bad and bad, and Petra starts feeling like she jumped into this too hastily-- it's been over a year and she hasn't come up with a story or a personality or even really done anything soldiery and oh god she's fucked up so many times too-- but it's too late to back out now. In her jittering anxious meltdown, Petra figures she needs to invent a reason why she remembers them so well from their One meeting. "<Oh. Um. I'm Petra, yeah, we met back then. I-I-I remembered you, and your-- your mech, because I had a mech back then, too. I don't anymore. But I still-- remembered. Because I did have one then. Sorry.>" After finishing rambling, Petra sways in place, and Yuri can tell that if Petra wasn't specifically keeping in mind that she was there being carried, she would probably fall face-first into the snow like a corpse. Shifting Yuri to being held in one hand again, Petra presses her other hand into her face and pinches the bridge of her nose, accompanied by a brief sparkle of her itching aura washing over Yuri. "Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Let's go." Filled with nervous energy, Petra looks down at the distance between herself and the fallen Factory, and decides she can't possibly sustain too much more walking. "Hey, Yuri. Hang on." Petra backs up a few steps, then takes a running jump off the side of the mountain, hundreds and hundreds of feet in the air. She tucks Yuri into her chest as cold air streaks past them, and rolls mid-air, accompanied by thruster boosts, to spin and double jump the rest of the multiple miles to the entrance that Dianna and Elara are at in under a minute. She tries to slow her descent before hitting the ground, but still crashes into it with enough force that the glass rock and snow cracks beneath her, recoil numbing her legs. She sways again, and then awkwardly laughs, her voice exactly as strained but steady as before. "Ta-da." Looking up at the enormous machine, surrounded by its gore, Petra for a brief moment feels awestruck-- before remembering what Dianna said and deciding to entirely eliminate that feeling and never speak of it again. "<Um. Endemics. How much-- what kind of threats are they? Anything other than drones with guns and plasma cutters on them?>" Petra is paying attention. She's paying active attention and asking relevant questions. "<It'll look a little like ours.>"
Petra Soroka	The realization that they're here to look for an Eidolon unit strikes Petra hard enough that she stops in her tracks, right as she's getting close to the Metamorph unit. Unconsciously, her aura flares up again, hot and painful and itchy, and Petra feels the urge to ask about it bubble up in her too strongly to ignore. "<An older model? From when this was being fought over?>" Avoiding lingering too long around the Metamorph unit itself, Petra finally realizes she should drop Yuri and places her on the ground, then looks up at the Factory's entrances. Drones aren't really a problem-- Petra has her gunblade for once, rather than anything else in her arsenal, and splits it up into a pair of bladed revolvers. She jumps up to the side of the machine, firing a shot at the ground to propel herself further, and holds the other revolver ready for any drones that might swarm her. Inside, whether or not she had to carve a bloody path through the Endemic drones, Petra stalls for a little bit in the hallway, clinging to a railing on the wall as if it's second nature. This thing is colossal, where could the Eidolon possibly be? Petra does know how big they are-- she's seen them before, of course-- so that narrows it down some. Besides that... where's a likely place for one of the Eidolons to be defeated? They're fast and nimble, so maybe a passageway big enough for them to fit, but too small for them to maneuver. That narrows it down some.
Angela	''I guess even robots eventually figure out that you can't trust humans.'' "Some faster than others." Angela quips dryly despite many of her best friends being approximately human shaped. ''I think artists should be paid enough that they don't need to go work for death corporations.'' "We live in a society," Angela adds, gravely. Yuri at this point wonders if she should say it's okay to let her go now but she's kind of enjoying being carried and--oh nevermind they're jumping hundreds of feet into the air. Yep. Yuri can't do that. Her gear specializes against White (sorry Petra) damage more than the other damage types but she still writhes her arms a bit to get at an itch that's not quite there while being careful to not poke Petra with Frost Splinter. She visibly winces at the second flare up at which point she's finally set on the ground. She smiles and says, "Thanks Petra!" as she readies Frost Splinter, spinning around the spear in her hand and-- --well she'll happily wreck drones, even if they are robots! Angela doesn't seem to treat the drones as 'robots like her', at least, and doesn't even make a 'joke' about it. She is fine with destroying drones and doesn't seem to think twice about the gore--she only thinks once. "Combat log, is it? Keep your eyes open, Yuri." "Aye aye ma'am." Yuri says, shaking out her wrists before glancing over to PEtra, "You know what this is? Anything I should be careful of that isn't obvious?"
Dysnomia	"<'The Factory?' What a name.>" Dysnomia's tone was tongue-and-cheek, even as her fists tightened in unease. "<...That kind of salvage is best left to rust.>" Mia decided, aloud. Her wings sprouted again, and off she went, scanning the factory. The site of endless battles, lives torn asunder. History like broken glass under a palm. There were worse things to do with ones time, than tug shards from a wound."<So, you're looking for a black box. Fine. We'll get you your closure.>" Plasma ignitied in her hand as she drew closer. She watched the little drones warily. When people said 'humans,' all too often what they really meant was 'people,' and Dysnomia had an inkling that this might just be what 'Severence' had meant. Computer. She asserted to her suit. Compare wreckage to Metamorph One. Find commonalities. Dysnomia decreed, looking over the devastation, her eyes keen, parsing every wavelength of light at once.
Metamorph One	"<Hahaha. That's a great question. Not many people ask it.>" "<Mmm. For this purpose, I guess just look for a machine that kind of seems the same. Similar colours and shape. And its feel. That more than anything. It'll stand out.>" There's an uneasy pause, for a while. "<Yeah. We were here. In a lot of other places like this too. Back then, that was the one thing everybody wanted.>" "<If you did anything useful, anything worth caring about, anything that helped anyone, you'd get undercut, overshadowed, swallowed up by the flow of wealth out of every world and into the gaping fucking maws of those two giants, trapped in their intolerable system, and struggle to make ends meet.>" "<Even if you lived in the middle of nowhere, farming the dirt, they'd find you eventually. Expanding forever, rolling up everything.>" "<If you dared to do anything like dream, you'd better be prepared to support it with the only thing anyone valued; the only labour you could really sell for even half its worth.>" "<War.>" "<Fighting people you don't know alongside people you'd never see again, over things you'd never touch with your own hands and you'd never see a reward from. It was non-stop. There were no winners. You just had to hope yours came home, at the end of the day.>" "<You didn't really have a choice but to fight, if you couldn't find some niche, some crack, to mold yourself to fit into, and make yourself something to use up, for them, 'voluntarily'.>" "<Killing people you didn't have a reason to hate, because other people couldn't stand that they existed, and if you didn't, they wouldn't tolerate you either. Yeah. A world is the smallest unit they'd think in.>" "<A whole lot of them didn't deserve to come back anyways. They loved it. Made it their whole lives. The fighting for nothing and the fake feeling of power and the pretend-dominance, until it finally got to them too. I hope they're in Hell.>" "<Haha . . . We didn't really want to come back here. Sorry. This is just another one of those things we have to do, to . . . compromise with reality. We're not kids anymore; it's not like when we thought everything would be full of promise and possibility forever.>" "<Yeah. We're a lot stronger now.>" "<People these days are better for not having been there.>" "<. . .>" The time comes for operationally relevant questions. They're too close to not be asking them by now. Elara audibly shifts her tone, taking on her professional tone; soft, smooth, but stiff, and a little hard to grip onto. Like hard plastic. "<Endemic threat is estimated to be minimal Elite grade. A small unit like this won't draw much attention, and greatly outmatches their surgical force projection. We'd like you to focus on spreading a wide net through the area. Follow signs of combat. The last few operations that took place here weren't small-scale. Recovery efforts were minimal. The materiel available on-site after final impact was determined unworthy of continued military asset committment during the collapse of the major powers fielding them, needing them elsewhere.>" Dianna leaves hanging air where Petra blathers something about her mech. "<It's junk now. But we're bringing it back anyways.>" "<I shouldn't complain. I'm grateful for the chance.>"
Metamorph One	As promised, the 'Endemics' are numerous enough to feel threatening, especially in the labyrinthine, claustrophobic space of the wrecked corridors, but they're more atmospheric scare than deadly concern. You can hear them absolutely everywhere; buzzing, crawling, tinkering, cutting, zipping through the air, sawing and welding. Sometimes the sounds echo down the dark hallways or around isolated chunks of fallen structure so much that they sound like they're right around the next corner, or even right by your head. Sometimes they are. The way this place was meant to be navigated in three-dimensions makes you constantly aware of the fact that they could suddenly come out of a hatch from any side, above you, or even from beneath. Most of them are content to simply do their work as long as you give them a wide berth. Other times, they pick up a scanning ping as a sensor threat, and swarm from different directions, firing nail guns and swinging saws and plasma beams, or they break off their priority task to swing rotary saws and sonic resonance blades at wayward girls. They're not tough, built to be readily replaced, but their chassis' are meant to at least take micrometeoroids. Not just that, but the place itself is a hazard. Even where the robots ignore explorers, sometimes, stepping down the wrong corridor causes a floor to cave in, or debris to fall from a simple doorframe collapsing from the fallen decks weighing on top of it. Exposed cables, seemingly inert, fire off flesh-carbonizing flashes of stray power at erratic, widely spaced intervals. Small explosions cook off where the decay of fuel storage conditions is tipped over by stray fire. 'Metamorph One' pays it little mind. The machine climbs up a sixty degree slope as easily as level ground, swiveling joints in many directions and hooking around ledges, firing grapnel wires and bright blue thrusters where it can't. The smoothly recessed ball turrets in the upper hull are adequate for taking down most of the endemics with swivel-aimed streams of oddly pitched gunfire; blue-white streaks and dramatic electronic flash, like someone's high production value idea of a sci-fi machine gun. However Dianna is handling them all shooting in separate directions while navigating the terrain is something easy to forget must be unusual. Seeing it crouch and organically crawl under collapsed superstructure, and at one point, blast straight through multiple sealed bulkheads with the main cannon, is more attention-grabbing. It looks as if it could navigate this upside down. Like some extremophile climbing critter. It's just the way that its tetrapod limbs move that seems off. It's difficult to place, until, glimpsing someone down a corridor, Dianna manipulates a foreleg to reverse, and spreads the digits apart into a perfectly human wave. It takes a while to get a lock on a decent signature. Reactor residuals, mostly, of a type Dysnomia isn't familiar with. Petra's intuition is correct, since it seems to leave into the bowels of one of the conveyor assemblies; one of the main arteries out to the exterior of the station. Gradually, deck plate is almost wholly replaced with rubberized belts, powerful robotic arms, magnetic loops, arc nodes, and pneumatic presses, both moving, stationary, and randomly stuttering. Bits and bobs are littered everywhere, fallen off the belts, on the way to their original destination, and left to gather dust and soot, but some still chug along the tiny handful of fully working assemblies, becoming more complete as they travel towards the exit; where the signature is, and where much of the structure has wholly collapsed.
Metamorph One	The junk is mingled with other refuse. It's clear to see where the drones have already removed bullets from their holes to recycle into raw materials. Brass and batteries from the floor. The leftover wooden hafts and scabbards of bladed weapons. It's hard not to eventually trip over the skeletonized remains of power-armoured marines, now only left with frayed fatigues and bits of ceramic frame and plastic control sheaths, or the atmospherically mummified remains of a figure in robes clutching a staff, nailed to a wall by an enormous piece of rebar, faded tome dropped at its side. More than one body is largely incomplete, showing just how much of the skeleton must have been held together by cybernetic implants. Here, a wave of completely different remains, many horned or multi-armed or with tail vertebrae, crushed under a sudden impact. There, a bread crumb trail of leather-clad bodies with holed-skulls, from above or behind, platemail long since rendered down into raw steel somewhere else. Soot coats the floors in long, conical burns. The wooden hafts of arrows are littered around exposed moving parts in the conveyors, once jammed by sharpshooting, now apathetically moving again. Impact craters and gigantic slashes run through the walls. The power required to do even half of this is all over the map. Some of the damage would even take one of you. But the dead are unceremoniously jumbled together and forgotten anyways. Faceless grunts are indistinguishable from storied heroes that most people never heard who, who met a sudden, random, senselessly abrupt end locked in combat with someone else's chosen one, only to fall prey to another. Countless corpses of those who thought they were different. And more from those who didn't. The exit is totally collapsed. The sheer destruction in advance of it; annihilated cover and strewn bone fragments both; looks as if it were once a final picket line, blockading an escape route perhaps. More than one Elite was involved, certainly, dug in with the cannon fodder. Same as the other side, sprayed over the floor and turned into so many rust stains. Now you can't actually see the rest of the way, save for where the conveyors have been cleared only enough to allow small, handheld-sized near-finished components to slip under.
Dysnomia	Watching Dysnomia move is a little like watching a ghost. On her oddly spectral wings, the way she darted and wove through the halls of the Factory were proof enough that she was dextrous enough to dodge most of what the place threw at her. But mostly, she didn't bother, her body sliding through and around obstacles in her way, reforming on the other end, ducking into walls in response fired nails and laser blasts, only to reemerge from the ceiling above to reach in and RIP at her attackers' wiring. "<Picking up something. Some kind of radiation. I'm not familiar with it...>" The Endemics barely make her pause. But THEM... "<Stars. This...>" The corpses take her breath away. Bodies piled on bodies on bodies. It felt like she was stepping into someplace both profane and sacred, like a tomb. 'What right do you have to be here?' The holes in the skull of a marine asked her. 'What gives you the right to be alive?' Said the tattered remnant of a knight's armor. "<...I...Didn't know.>" Dysnomia said. To the Metamorphs? To the dead? To the world itself? Not even Mia could say.
Raziel	Raziel listens to the two talk about the war here, but regardless of how /different/ it was here... no it really remained the same song and dance for Raziel. Two sides hated each other, two sides did so much to kill the other, wiping one or the other to the brink of destruction. It brings his mind back to something Kain had said to him in the Chamber with the Time Streaming Device. 'Can you grasp the absurd beauty of the paradox? We're the same; Sarafan and vampire. With our holy wars, with our obsession with Nosgoth's domination, who better to serve me than those whose passion transcended all notions of good and evil?' 'I denounced him then, wanting to justify my own views... in reality, I wanted to take some revenge... on the countless injuries that Kain had inflicted on me. Was that not just another reason that led to a battlefield just like this? More than that... was Kain correct? Was I not the same person I was as a vampire? Or was my 'nobility' no more than a facade I clung to?' Raziel moved with the rest, his thoughts troubled by these ideas. These possibilities. Perhaps he was wiser to trust in Woz's hesitation and Sougo's belief in him than he realized at the time. Raziel moved, however, staying ahead and offering his blade in defense of his comrades. Jumping out in the way of harm when necessary, deflecting blades, or attempting to redirect shots. He did not have the extra senses available to help in the search, but he was surprisingly nimble and good with his blade. The Wraith blade, the Reaver manifesting from the hungry arm of his when he willed it into existence. The bodies did not bother him... he was dead after all. Though even he would say a soft and quick prayer for those whom he saw. Not that he believed in it, but it was simply the respectful nature of the dead in Nosgoth to do so. At the collapsed tunnel, he looked around. "It appears there are some ways through... I will go ahead through this and see if I can make sure the other side is safe," he says, before vanishing. Soon he aims to cross through the spectral world, the world of ghosts, to move through the obstructions and appear on the other side of them. From there he will search around, aiming to try and see what dangers are on this side and wave people through if safe.
Hiromi	Hiromi hears a name, but doesn't say whether she recognizes it. She sees Raziel follow in her wake, but has no need to comment. Following after her is easier than going alone, though most dangers remain. The implicit command to leave her undisturbed doesn't necessarily help those merely somewhat close to her position. Not much here it strong enough to resist her, and what does show signs is swiftly crushed, her strength flattening reworked steel at the first suggestion of defiance, the resulting explosions of burst motors and batteries and fuel momentary loud but not a danger to her, herself. Saws and arc welders are only given a moment to attempt to score her, the barest timing of a breath intake, before that noisy silencing. Massive arcs of electricity are more troublesome, though she moves through the danger, rather than stop to deal with it. Charring on her body gradually fades again by the time she's reached the next junction. When floors give way below her claws, she scrabbles over what has suddenly become falling debris, places it under her legs, and kicks with cannon-like force to launch herself back up onto yet-undestroyed platforms, where she sinks teeth into deck plating before throwing her body up and over it with a twist of her back. 'War.' "Humans," she says, aloud. She needs to bring herself back into walking on two legs to say it. The radio can't handle it when she speaks without words, while their innate understandability only stretches as far as those who can sense her on their own, without the aid of communication devices. "They do this." Her tone suggests, unambiguously, that she's not counted among that number, and that she considers it fully beneath her. 'The fighting for nothing and the fake feeling of power and the pretend-dominance, until it finally got to them too.' "Wrong-grown. False strengths, without wisdom. I know. I've seen. " 'People these days are better for not having been there.' "Wrong-led. Could they be saved? Maybe. More need me." That one might be more clearly articulated if she didn't need to use words to say it. 'It's junk now. But we're bringing it back anyways.' "'History.' Is that it? Or 'stories'? Does that draw you, now?" The corpses would be something to Hiromi, if they were fresher. If they were more complete. If they still held the important tools of their trade, even. If there was anything of strength and power remaining to them. None of these being the case, she passes by them without concern, considering her comments on 'war' to be complete. It's not easy to make a feeling like 'you shouldn't be here' stick to her. Signs of where to go converge on that collapsed tunnel. Digging through it would be simple enough, if potentially tedious with the dangers of everything she digs through collapsing again on her. That's not really a problem for her, but her immunity to cave-ins doesn't apply to artificial factory structures, and it could make her lose her bearings, along with the trail. Raziel offers to check ahead, and Hiromi stops at the blockage to let him report back whether it seems their search should continue in that direction. In the meantime, she stands to survey this final line, and then to admire the larger signs of damage, fantasizing about dealing with whoever put that giant slash through the wall instead of having only endless hordes of worker drones.
Petra Soroka	Dianna and Elara are maybe the only two people in the multiverse that Petra would never begrudge a long-winded and misanthropic duologue of their war trauma. Instead of getting mad and insecure, Petra gets thoughtful and insecure, quietly nodding along even though they can't possibly notice her doing that. Was it really that different back then? All it's been for a year is people playing heroes and villains, every single one with their own sad fucking backstory. No one's being put in a meat grinder like that. Petra is jarred out of her yearning for the good old days, where nineteen year old girls are sent off to war (not because it is a good thing, but because it is a bad thing), by an Endemic with a whirring saw dropping down from a hatch above her head. Petra flinches and tries to pull out of the way, but the saw catches on her jacket on the way down, tearing through it and then shattering into metal scrap when it hits the metal skin beneath. Petra covers her face from the shards, then shrieks in indignation when she opens her eyes. "My jacket! That's so annoying." Popping out from a cramped corridor into the conveyor belt artery, Petra is somewhat upset when other people find their way there too. She wanted to be the one to find it, so that she would be the one credited with the skills. Well, her and Yuri, and Angela, because Petra doesn't go anywhere alone anymore. That thought soothes her jealous spike, though only a little bit, and she's noticeably tense while going down the conveyor belt. "I don't know anything about this place except what they've said." Petra says to Yuri, while tearing out a huge mechanical arm that had been trying to block their way. That's technically true, and not really what Yuri was asking. "But we'll know when we see it. That mech won't look anything like this kind of garbage." Petra lets out a held breath at the devastation, stopping in the hall before she steps over any corpses. The look on her face isn't horror, or solemn respect, as she scans around the sea of corpses and scars of brutal violence. It's practically blank-- her eyes can't focus on any one thing, her expression stays steadily neutral no matter what's in her eyeline. It's emotional underflow, a scale of despair so much larger than what she's capable of processing that it blurs into mush in her mind, effectively irrelevant. One death is a story. A thousand is a statistic. The only reason Petra doesn't shrug and move on is the knowledge that this is all connected to Metamorph, and so it's important to them, and because they matter, it has to matter to Petra. At least a little bit. "Huh." That's the best she can muster, before she starts picking her way through the bodies delicately. "I'd heard the stories. Of the war back then. But it's sort of different in person." Only sort of, though. Petra, not wanting to be left behind, wants to ignore Raziel's plan to scout ahead, but when she gets to the pile of rubble and stares up at the scale of it, that doesn't seem like it'll happen. Even if she could very slowly dig out a hole by hand, there's no justification for her to. Not with Hiromi here. So she just crosses her arms and waits.
Angela	Angela listens to the story. She thinks, really, that this is why they are there more than anything. To listen. Her eyes are more focused on Metamorph more than anything. She hasn't really talked too many vets of the Smoke War herself--or rather, she hasn't talked to anybody who actually talks about participating in the Smoke War, but she imagines they'd probably talk about it like this. "Two giants?" Angela asks. "What do you mean?" She probably doesn't know the ancient history of the multiverse when she barely knows the current events of the multiverse. "Are the giants dead?" She might not even know that the giants are metaphorical. Okay, no, she probably knows they are metaphorical but she isn't sure she should use the term empires here either. "I have never been in war," Angela says. "But it sounds unpleasant." ''Wrong-grown. False strengths, without wisdom. I know. I've seen.'' "I am inclined to agree." Angela says. "They never seem happy with what they spend bodies to obtain." Even Angela is never really happy about the murders she constantly has to oversee. She usually doesn't feel anything. She doesn't feel anything. At death, anymore. She doesn't. But seeing this battlefield, well, even someone who is blaise about death has to take a moment--just to take in the breadth of it. Yuri nods to Petra, "This is...ah... This is a lot, haha." The haha is that kind of nervous laughter one has when seeing something so horrifying you can't really cry about it, you just have to laugh to lessen the breadth of it so it feels a little less real. She can't quite make it a statistic in her head. Shouldn't I feel something, Angela thinks to herself. Am I just... Broken? But she pushes the thought out of her head. Petra seems to be handling it alright, more or less. Yuri stays near Petra, glancing over to Dysnomia for a moment as she observes a marine's skull. If Yuri asked them of their story, would she even want to hear it? It's History. History is important but... You can get too wrapped up in history, can't you? "How long ago was this war? It must have been some time." Time enough that... "Better to never see them again." Angela says as if she has experience otherwise.
Metamorph One	"<Iorite reaction confirmed. Proceed, Dysnomia. It isn't harmful.>" "<It can't be. It's just sulfur and salt and planetary contaminant, cleaned up and crunched down and filled with the warmth we all felt when breathing life into that moon back then. It can't hurt you.>" "<It's better. That you didn't. That even the very hurt people these days get to call themselves 'adventurers' and not 'soldiers', or say 'Elite' like it's something exciting, is . . .>" "<I don't know. It's not enough, but it's good. It's a good thing, really. It just also doesn't make it any better.>" "<If you're like this, and not like them, because of something we did, or any of the others like us, then you deserve to be. That's it. The whole point was to make that world obsolete.>" Raziel has no issues phasing through so much rubble steel and ceramic and aluminium, no matter how many thousands of tons it weighs in the material plane. Though the spiritual side of this place has long been left in muddy stasis, the people who died here so abruptly and pointlessly having no real reason to stay for unfinished business here, the feeling he gets is sickening anyways. The inch thick stains of ire and fear, disbelief and impotent outrage, are like breathing in liquid tar. The other side is practically a relief, steeped only in the echoes of gutting melancholy. Humans. They do this.' "<They shouldn't. They don't deserve to. They need to be replaced by humans that don't.>" ''History.' Is that it? Or 'stories'? Does that draw you, now?' "<We need . . . The data. For . . . Miss Angkasa and all. It'd be a big thing, for the Metamorph project . . . Applied Ontology does a lot of things nowadays; there's not that much interest in . . . mechs. New bodies. Ways of being in the world. She kind of keeps it up as a favour to us; not just Dianna and I, but, you know. But . . .>" "<I want to bring him home.>" "<Yeah. Me . . . m-me too.>" The other side of the blockage is simple. Most of it has thoroughly crushed whatever line there was to see. There are barely remnants of barricades, both carved from the Factory and deployed as earthen walls or force barriers, and the fractured and bisected pieces of defenders who were already crushed in shoulder to shoulder before it fell. 'Two giants?' "<I'd call them 'factions', but they don't deserve the name. We have factions now. Those were just . . . Everyone in the universe lined up, saying this is good and this is evil, and neither of them even getting it right as a shade of grey.>" "<Yes. They're gone. Thankfully. They're not worth being remembered. They didn't have, identities, or purposes, or goals, or anything like that. They were just . . . sides. You had to fall in with one, or you'd be crushed between them. And all that held them together was how much they hated the other side.>" Again, Elara says something strangely, presciently appropriate. "<It's fine. Don't worry about it. Nobody left here wants you to try and relive what they went through, even in your head. You're not supposed to be able to understand it because it's not supposed to happen. Not ever.>" Dianna answers the literal. "<Six years now.>" That number means a lot of different things.
Metamorph One	The spot they're looking for is obvious, even to Raziel. The signature comes from one of a small handful of small 'bubbles' of clear space. Some of them appear accidental, this one appears to have been created purposefully, by some force holding it back for just long enough for it to settle. That's the machine. It has to be. The urban camo is all scraped off and revealed for painted-on, exposing the white beneath. The stocky, smooth lines of it look more like the contours of something meant to be fondly held; far more gameboy than war machine. The joints are much too exposed, only dust-shielded, like a rover, and the armour plates put over them have been riveted into the surrounding chassis. The same goes for the only armour over where the cockpit must be. The hull is clearly made of thick plastic, soft and nostalgic to the touch. The twin forward guns are old light automatics, fixed on brackets and manually wired. The cannon is some surplus military light artillery, and the magazine runs straight into the back, cut open to allow it. Nothing about it was made for fighting. It was made to be so. And not with very much money. The only identifiable marking is where a logo has been carefully, even lovingly, painted over with a decal, drawn by some talented amateur artist; a stitched up stuffed bear with a comically unbalanced army hat, sitting on a miniature, stylized moon. The number 21 is stenciled inside. One of the legs is torn off, and the barrels of all three guns are deformed by overheating. The soot marks to either side indicate an explosion parted around it. There are footprints behind it; retreating allies shielded, deliberately, by it. The fact that the cockpit is intact makes it worse. The transceiver, exposed, but carefully protected, blinks slowly on standby power. Knowing where it is renders it relatively trivial to dig out. The network to connect to it is open. It was, it seems, deliberately unencrypted before it was left here.
Raziel	Raziel forces himself through the thick of it all, like a miasma of death, a torrent of mixed emotions, of regret... All he can do is close his eyes and force himself through it until he gets to the other side. Forcing his body to manifest on this side, he looks around letting his radio features work for him. He sends a signal, indicating this was the place, and that it was clear. He takes his time searching until he finds what they are looking for. Gently, he takes video so that the Metamorphs can confirm. His own hand touching the side of the suit. 'Despite being a large machine, it felt... more like a memorial. The last testament to people who tried to make a difference in a torrent of misery and selfish and stupid gain of everything around them. I noted the lovingly crafted marks, the battle damage... and the intact cockpit. The footprints of allies retreating behind it.' With that, he steps back and waits for the others to catch up to him. He does not have the expertise with machines to do this carefully. That... and he felt the Metamorph team should be here first. That seems... right.
Hiromi	'They need to be replaced by humans that don't.' "'Replacment.' Growing replaces youth. Learning replaces ignorance. You wish for right-growing. I do, too." Hiromi has plans and feelings about this. When Raziel signals a location, Hiromi is broken from her reverie on old strengths lost to little purpose, on warriors who fought for war's sake, on their thoughtless masters, and on her wishes to change all worlds. "There. Remain. I am coming." She walks up to the packed wreckage, pulls back her right arm, fingers spread, and plunges it into steel and concrete in one motion. Her form disappears in the explosion of construction material turned to dust, and even through it, her arm disappears up to the elbow. Her left arm follows, to similar effect. Hiromi sets her stance, and pushes the two apart, walking slowly into an opening formed by taking thousands of tons of material and compacting all of it just far enough to either side for someone of her bulk to walk through. Nothing is thrown behind her, and nothing is likely to collapse, given that everything is more solidly set by virtue of being forced into a smaller space by her unstoppable strength.
Petra Soroka	"<It isn't harmful.>" The feeling of alienation that Petra gets from that one line makes her stomach drop. It's not directed at her, but it's directed at everyone in a way that includes her. Being given a brief summary of Iorite, expected to not know anything about it, and needing to keep up the facade and pretend to be an outsider because-- because-- Because I'm not really one of them, and this is the way it has to be. Petra shakily exhales, unclenching fists she hadn't realized she'd made. It shouldn't get to her this badly, it hasn't before. It has to be because of all the conversations she's been having with Lilian, on the topic of humanity and specialness and space, and home, that she got caught up in things. Automatically, as a calming fidget, Petra reaches up to run her fingers along her green-orange heart hairpin, then drops her hand before touching it. "<Nobody left here wants you to try and relive what they went through, even in your head.>" Petra argues against this, but only in her head. But you still exist, right? All the people that went through that. Are you just supposed to be alone and isolated forever, while everyone else younger than you is literally incapable of empathizing with you? I don't want that. Petra squeezes her arms around herself, staring at the pile of rubble. I can't ever say that out loud though. That defeats the point. Once Hiromi digs through the blockage, Petra climbs through, slowing down as she's gradually struck with the atmosphere of solemn loss. It's only now, approaching the Eidolon, that Petra gets the feeling of being in a cemetary, and the weight of all the death around her coalesces around that one machine to choke the air out of her lungs and smother her thoughts. Her pace slows as she walks towards it, intentionally trying to keep it out of direct sight at first, but it's inevitable that she eventually comes close enough to stare at the fallen machine in its entirety. "Oh." Quicksilver tears leave elecroplated streaks down her cheeks. As if they're dragged down by heavy weights, Petra raises her hands to press them over her mouth with agonizing slowness, choking back quiet sobs. "O-oh." 'Memorial' is a word with so much more density than 'war'. 'Grief' is something unapproachable, incomprehensible, so much more than 'sadness'. 'Hurt' spreads cracks on an unmarred surface, 'loss' punches a hole through entirely. "... Oh." Petra ducks her head to put the mech out of her vision, even if it's just for a moment, rubbing her fists into her eyes. Glittering tears keep streaming out, dripping to the ground as tiny, perfect droplets of shining metal in the rusted industrial hell.
Angela	''Everyone in the universe lined up, saying this is good and this is evil, and neither of them even getting it right as a shade of grey.'' ''They need to be replaced by humans that don't'' They're starting to remind her of her parents, Angela thinks, though she shouldn't be harsh. She doesn't actually know what it was like back then. And well--it's not the end cause, she supposes, that bothers her so much so much as what they're willing to do ''to her'' to get there. Yuri follows after Petra, taking the rear. She has a coughing fit as dust and smoke hit her. She shudders once and then-- --she places a hand on Petra's shoulder, not too solidly, just a light touch. Yuri is a quieter agent of support than Cinder is. She doesn't like to get too chatty. A touch here and there communicates more than anything she could whisper. ''I want to bring him home'' "Understood." Angela says. She can understand that much. Then to Petra, "You holding up okay?" a little more softly. But then there's the machine. She looks at it for a long moment, quiet as one might be at a memorial indeed. "...Footprints. Still there." She says. If there is a network to connect to--well, she can try to connect to it, at least.
Dysnomia	She wasn't sure, at first, why she didn't follow Raziel. Dysnomia could, she knew that, so why was she waiting? To not mix the atmosphere any more with her flesh, she decided, retroactively, even as each step after Hiromi felt so...heavy. Dysnomia chokes on her words, as they find 21, and nothing comes out at all. The intricate, loving, sweet decal painted across its surface made it impossible to see as some other grizzled soldier of war. "...Humans are so disgusting." She said, but did not broadcast, her wings shimmering briefly violet. Something in her chest throbbed, and she told herself it was anger. Look at what they did. Look at what they were. Look. "They need to be replaced by humans that don't." "<You want to change humanity.>" She observed, staring at his remnant, the proof that he'd existed. The proof that he'd LIVED.> "<...If anyone has that right. You do.>"
Metamorph One	'You wish for right-growing. I do, too.' "<I don't even know if that's true. If everyone alive back then, right now, who's like this, grows up and gets better, does that really make it better? I think I meant replaced. I want them to vanish too. I want the people who should have been around to be around instead. I-->" "<D-Dianna. Please. This is hard enough.>" "<I'm . . . sorry.>" Raziel marks the place. Hiromi starts digging. The Metamorph unit, the machine with the orange slash through the blue starburst and its inner green halo, marked 01 stencil, approaches with strangely soft steps for such a large machine. As if that much steel and plastic could express reverent reluctance so easily. Lowering down, the opaque canopy hisses, raises by inches, then slides back across the hull below the turret. Dianna rises from the pilot seat as the holographics on the inside go out and leave only the exterior light filtering in, and then she drops to the deck in one motion. The rumpled, baggy shirt looks like she slept in it last night. Her hair isn't even combed. Elara rises to her feet, but remains in the operator's seat. She's wearing an outrageously heavy coat for the environment, and an old, faded blue hat. A streak of mascara is just barely visible between blonde bangs and coat collar. Dianna walks to the downed machine; smaller, bulkier, friendlier, shaped like a friend of scientific progress and hopes of exploring space; ravaged and battle damaged and compromised through and through with the hard and uncompromising tools of war. When she's precisely between the two mechs, the gradient clicks. The way their own robot still has a veneer of friendly high-impact plastic, the smooth lines and bright colours instead of angles and sensible camouflage, and the way that those legs have been developed more than anything, to serve as anything; gesture and beckon, walk and grasp and wave. She puts her hand on the cockpit release, and takes a deep, heavy breath. Then she just . . . freezes. The handle is so worn out; it audibly rattles in the minute shaking of her grip. "You don't . . . P-please. Don't. Don't Dianna. I don't . . . I-I don't want to see him. Like that. Please." "Yeah. Yeah I-- Yeah, okay. You deserve that. That's . . . You always saw it in your own way. Maybe worse than any of us. You don't have to see it the way I saw it too. I promise. We'll take it all back." "Not to . . . You mean home, right?" "Where he belongs. We're not kids anymore. We bought that plot, on Io. We can do what we want with it. We'll bury him where we all grew up. Where we all thought we'd get to stay. So he can be with all the other stupid, beautiful kids who believed like we did." "Okay. Th-that's. I won't s-see it. That sounds . . . Good. H-He'd want that." The connection goes through. Angela is given full, free access to all of Eidolon 21's systems. Test Pilot: Jay Bailey Battery Power: 2%, Standby (2m12d11h31m) Controller: JN Instrumentality (Manual Override) Exploration Safety: MISSION CRITICAL FAILURE. BROADCASTING EMERGENCY PICKUP. Health Status: OXYGEN CRITICAL. ZERO HEART RATE. PARAMEDIC DISPATCH. AMM: 23/400 - 28/400 - 0/40 PRPL: 0.022 JN: SHLD (CRT) TEAM: 1 2 3 4 9 10 11 12 20 21 22 24 29 30 31 32 Upon connecting, the mainframe reboots automatically, jostled from sleep mode. With it, an audio message begins to play. Even from the mech's crushed broadcast unit, rendering the sound tinny and toy-like, the voice speaking through it-- through the gulf of years-- cannot possibly be an adult man. Too soft. Too young. Too numbly confused, and raspy-choked with too-recent tears.
Metamorph One	"Hey. I. Don't know how to start this. It's kind of crazy I'm still alive. Even. Even if it's . . . N-not going to be for . . . Yeah. I don't know what to do with myself if I don't, though. Praying . . . never helped. And it's not like. Well, I've got nobody to think about but . . . y-you guys . . . oh god. Oh god I'm never going to-- oh g--" "Well. If you. No, when you find this. Because I know you will. I know there'll be someone left. We're going to pull through this, a-and, everyone will be together, and-- a-and this stupid war is nearly over and all the money is going to keeping our home-- us-- together, so . . . I know you guys won't forget about me. So when you find this . . ." "It . . . I-It's nearly over. Okay. So. Be strong. E-even if . . . god, I know it's. Right near the end, too. H-haha. My luck, right? But if I. If I had any luck on Earth, I'd never have come here. So." "And. If it is over. If it's over, and we won, and home is still home. Tell the . . . Tell the kids that I'm fine now, okay? Tell them. That I helped. And that I did good. And that it. Was quick. Even though . . . Haha. It's . . . Not gonna be. And just. Make sure they don't have to think about this, okay? I want them to . . . I-I don't want them to forget us. Even though everyone probably will. Even though our old families already did. But they don't have to understand, okay? We. We all agreed. Together. We agreed with Di, that nobody else . . . Those kids who didn't. Couldn't. Don't be mad at them. I don't think you would, but. Don't blame them. Like, that they weren't here to. See this. Nobody should have to. Blame the adults. Be mad. Stay mad, if you have to. But just . . . I'm leaving this so I can tell you guys, in the future that . . . th-that . . ." "It was really fun. Even when all this happened. I'm mad that . . . th-that . . . This happened to the kids who already went through too much. And the adults, that tried to help. Sure. It sucks that. Just when things were good. When they felt . . . Right. That it had to get taken all away. But. Even more than that, I'm glad I got to be here." "I chose to do this and I don't regret it. If I hadn't. I'd. I wouldn't have ever got to be. Anything. I'd have died a whole lot sooner. This was all. Extra time anyways, I guess. That we deserved, but nobody was gonna give us but Mom. I'm happy, looking back on it. That. That I got to have those years being with you guys. With Mai and Stel and El and Di and Liz and-- god, Mike, I-- Obvious that idiot knows I love him. So. Don't be mad. I'm so glad I got to be there with you. And all I want is . . . For home to stay home. I want other kids to get what we got. Without all of this. Even if they weren't here, they deserve it too. Okay?" "I don't . . . Take care of my guy, okay? And. Yeah. You'll make sure they bury me with the right name. Don't let them take that." "Bye. I love you." The message cuts out into long static, then terminates with a click. The dead air that follows is deafening. Soul-sucking. Elara collapses back into her seat. Frozen stiff, she pulls her knees slowly up to her face, one shaking inch at a time, and buries her face in her coat. Dianna's grip squeezes the release until it sounds as if it's going to break, and then, care overriding grief, she forces herself to let go of it, bit by bit. She looks at Petra, right beside her, and her mouth hangs open, unable to make a sound. She just looks heartbroken. And a little ashamed. Not knowing what else to do, a hand presses to the back of Petra's chest, and another to her waist, and Dianna pulls her close against her, chin atop her head. That way, nobody can see her face, or Petra's.