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Zwei     It's been a while since anyone has had the opportunity to venture into the NGR. There is only so much that can be learned from skirmishes with the Gargoyle Empire on the frontlines, and most of the deep western continent is just endless overgrown forests, occasional, glowing leylines seen for miles, and more and more of the same; feral though nominally intelligent creatures making the ruins of civilization their homes, caring particularly only for trading, maintaining and practicing with weapons.

    Since nothing more can be learned there, the opposite direction is the most likely to have something to see. Further into the heart of the New German Republic, into the former, and ostensibly current capital of Germany, taken back sometime in the past. Compared to the little, deceptively modernized villages and hamlets, Munich is a true metropolis. Though buildings rarely exceed 20 stories in height, it sprawls on for miles and miles, bright and lively, though even more predominantly human only, mixing Baroque, Bavarian and Bahaus influences with numerous public parks and attractions, but as one approaches the center, overwhelmingly dominated by the patently futuristic, accessed by multitudes of sky rails and maglev trains, into what appears to be a single factory complex a third of the size of the whole city, all sporting the logo of a single company: Triax.

    Poking and asking around here could take days. Weeks even, including a keen investigative sense; which is why Zwei has taken the last while to do it instead. The infiltration unit Weiss predictably has little trouble slipping under the radar day to day, and by abusing various abilities, claims to have uncovered something. Getting into the city, especially with many of the previous arrivals having secured papers last time, is a near-trivial affair, though some obvious and powerful magical implements may need to be at least visually hidden through customs. Getting through it is even easier. The public transport is free, and extremely efficient. It's arriving on Triax grounds that is more tightly restricted, but they don't even need to pass the civilian visit areas before they find the meet-up point.

    It looks like . . . well it looks like Zwei dug a hole in the ground. A very big, freakishly neat and tidy one, likely done through matter manipulation, sloping gently downwards and coated over with a layer of something harder than packed dirt, boring through a couple of layers of concrete as well. "I know it's a little silly . . ." begins Weiss, dressed and coloured as a Triax shift supervisor. "But if it works, it's not stupid. A hole in the ground doesn't trigger sensors, and nobody flies around looking for them. It'll be easier than teleporting in or trying to play disguise and infiltrate. Just trust me, what's at the bottom is worth seeing."
Shin Tokuyama     "HI! I'm here! Sorry if I'm late!" Shin's running up towards the hole in the ground. He appears to be wearing a red ball cap, a red polo shirt, some black shoes and some black slacks, "My shift at the MgGrondalds ran long because the other part-timer didn't get there to relieve me, so I had to stay an extra half our until people could call Jason and tell him Josh no-showed. And then Jason got there and I got to go home, so I'm here now!"

    He explains all this pretty easily, shrugging a bit and rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand. Customs was almost trivial for him since all he had was his clothes, some snack foods, the bag in his hand, and a cell phone. He waves to Weiss and then holds out a paper back to her.

    "To apologize for getting held up, I brough everyone a Big Snack burger with extra sauce and no onions. At least I think. As long as only half a dozen people show up."
Alexis Maaka     WOOSH, SPESSSHIP.

    The Specter floats above the dig site just high enough for the captain to make a dramatic entrance. Maaka arrives, leaping out of the landing ramp like she's doing a swan dive before her suit's jets slow her descent. Landing with a dramatic, three-point crouch, the cyborg stands and gives a wave to Weiss and Shin upon arriving. "Hey guys, I'm not late am I?" She asks casually, her EM GASH slung across her back.

    [Showoff.] Kaz says over comms.
    [You're just jealous you're the cyborg.]
    [Not really, I'm content to fly this thing while you get shot at most of the time.]
Nozomi Houken     Getting stares thanks to a robotic tiger is disconcerting to say the least. To some extent, Nozomi is used to it, but it's still 'being stared at'. By the time they reach the meeting place, she's sort of half huddled in on herself. Being able to look at the hole is a convenient enough distraction for that, but she still remains quiet. Thankfully, the robotiger on whose back she sits is willing to pick up the conversational slack as usual. "If it is functional and safe, I imagine that any objections on the grounds of dignity can be safely discarded."

    Said the cat.

    Shin mentions food. Shin mentions delicious-sounding food. He immediately has Nozomi's attention, but she doesn't quite manage to muster up the courage to ask for one.
Lezard Valeth The NGR itself is of little consequence to Lezard Valeth. However, the situation is one of turmoil and upheval, and something of this type can lead to... opportunity.

The Necromancer of Midgard reaches the meetup point, having left most of his typical implements behind to dress in a more... appropriate manner for the area. His most important items, regardless, are hidden away and fully accessible to him at any time regardless.

The Sorceror nods to Weiss' explanation. "Far be it for me to complain about an efficient method of resolving a problem." He states, looking down at his excessively boring clothes. This doesn't keep him from looking like Evil Harry Potter on a vacation from Hogwart's, though. Some things you just can't hide.
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa had chosen to come this time she's caught wind of how imporant it was to Staren world after all and her drive to shut down Vert were ever possible was still going strong and she was here. She di however want to help where she could as she arrived now hopefully she'd not got into too much toruble getting in here. Kotone's arrival is not as crazy as Maaka's she looks at her friend and seems amused.

"Show off."
Staren     Staren is here! He glares at anyone who gives him looks for being a D-Bee... the customs agent is probably surprised that his papers say he's a /halfbreed/... such a thing is unheard of, but why would anyone lie about that? He doesn't have any obvious superpowers, so he can basically be treated like any other D-Bee...

    Whatever, if anything, he had to leave behind may have annoyed Staren a bit, but he can relax somewhat in these high-tech city surroundings. After all, if they took /his/ stuff, it's likely there are fewer threats outside of the NGR military and police themselves. And for those that remain... well, it's not like he didn't smuggle in anything. And at least he gets a burger! He thanks Shin for it and munches.

    At Zwei's trick for getting in, he shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head. "It's their own fault for not having security measures against this. Maybe they'll learn... but I guess for now, it's to our advantage. Still... What exactly is your goal here? I mean... you've /seen/ the gargoyles. Even if Vert /is/ doing this... The NGR needs the help. Just like the hypercorps needed to be taken down. I'm all for investigating this and checking for ulterior motives, but I'm not so sure we should just try to take it all away or anything..."
Valentha Summers As before, Valentha Summers is in her Techno-Wizard disguise, her aura suppressed and a wild grin on her face! "Woo for more adventure!" The dragon-in-disguise exclaims, adjusting her aviator goggles and cap from the rim of the odd hole. She's peering at it with considerable suspicion in fact.

    Pretty rare that anyone comes across holes this NEAT.

    A rather intense look's cast Weiss' way, not quite matching up with the goofy demeanor she normally shows...
Zwei     Weiss isn't even going to question that. As far as things Zwei has seen Shin do, this is probably on the pretty minor side. She immediately hands off her burger to Nozomi however. Aside from the fact she can't eat it, this is either some futuristic sensing of her heart rate and stomach tremors, or this is entirely because she never has the guts to ask for anything for herself. One or the other. "Being fair Staren, when's the last time you had to defend a dig site against a matter manipulator you didn't know existed?" Lezard being here is also entirely not her problem. In fact, he seems like a pretty cool guy, evil Harry Potter or not. Being a Confederate has nothing to do with Zwei, and having ambition is always good!

    "I'm going to take a minute to address that concern though. Let's remember a moment that Vert is a social engineering Armiger. She concerns herself with civilizations at the progressive level, not primarily the elimination of external threats. While I'm certain she'd like the gargoyles gone as much as anyone else, if that's all she wanted, wouldn't it be easier to introduce an autonomous Arma manufacturing facility to aggressively pursue the empire's destruction and claim it's some mysterious third faction? There's a reason these people think they've 'discovered' these weapons. Withhold judgement until you see it."

    Then it's into the hole. To all credit, after Weiss lights it up with an obnoxiously bright radial, it's pretty ordinary, like walking through a really boring subway tunnel. It's quite a walk though, obviously going directly under the heart of Triax, and very, very far down; far enough down that it would be out of range of any technological scanners or magical remote vision the NGR would know about. The end is capped by a tiny device that is obviously some sort of projector, faking the image of the wall beyond being intact, but allowing people to see out. The room beyond is both enormous, and obviously recently constructed, judging by the quick-fab scaffolding, supports and lights, recently decked floors, portal generators everywhere, mobile computer terminals and still relatively rough hewn walls. It's about the size of an aircraft hangar, and a rather expansive one at that, but everyone knows that aircraft are practically useless these days.

    What dominates, though hardly fills, the center of the floor is obvious alien technology. Roughly the size of the outpost people had found on Eclipse Earth, the organically slope, carbon black 'machinery' is little more than a giant hemisphere with dozens of concave stations cut into its perimeter on two storeys, where a catwalk has been built around. Dim pulses of light intermittently course through faint tessellating patterns across its surface as people access each station in long, orderly queues reminiscent of depression era bread lines. Everyone /in/ line, 100% appears to be some kind of D-Bee; local parahumans, usually from extra dimensions having come to Earth.

    The masses of humans all around are all Triax personnel or NGR military, and not rank and file jarheads either. The majority of them are using the mid-sized combat robots or larger, Jaeger models and the like, on either sides of the ramp in, and arranged all around the circular center platform, as if somehow these refugees are a threat that warrants a small company of top soldiers. The rest are researchers, scientists and officers, many of them checking out the alien station, but many of whom are also supervising or monitoring the second class citizens being filed in by elevator. It's something absurd to see, because after only a couple of minutes at each station, each D-Bee is coming away with a decent pile of that strange powered armour and weaponry people had seen before, and the military is herding them away. They're straight up getting free gun handouts under the watchful eye of heavy firepower.
Staren     At Zwei's question about fairness, Staren thinks for a moment. "Well, I'm gonna putting in defenses on anything I build /now/..." He nods at Zwei's warning. "I am. Withholding judgement, I mean. I'm just saying I'm not /assuming/ we /don't/ want this either, 'till I have more facts." He looks around a bit nervously, as if he expects Triax security to wander by at any moment. To be fair a SPACESHIP did just fly over the city, so that's probably gonna bear some investigation.

    Staren doesn't comment on the boringness of the tunnel. It is what it is.

    When he gets to the end, he stares out in curiousity. The heart of a top-secret Triax facility... there is something noone outside of Triax and the Armigers have probably seen.

    He's shocked, again, to see d-bees allowed to touch the alien technology. Ah, "perhaps humans are worried it's dangerous and are risking D-Bees instead..." he mutters. "But by now they've /seen/ how this stuff performs. Surely it seems safe by now? Hmm... maybe they instituted a trial period and they are sticking to procedure regardless of how safe it seems so far. Yeah, that makes sense." Staren nods a little to himself.

    The ring of Jaegers is not a surprise. Who knows when this alien technology could become dangerous? He'd have a ton of guns pointed at it too.

    Well, he's basically figured out the situation, hasn't he? So... now what...?
Alexis Maaka     Maaka takes the burger when Shin offers one up to her, grinning and munching it as her helmet unfolds to expose her face. She doesn't seem to really care about the bureaucracy, thus her sudden and dramatic entrance. "You know you love it, kid." She grins to Kotone, before finishing her snack once it's dungeon crawling time.

    Her helmet refolds, and the cyborg draws her coilgun as she and others enter the hole. Night-vision is automatically activated when she determines the darkness is too great otherwise, looking around while she takes point to run security for the team. "Guess we know what they're been working on, huh?" She asks upon seeing the alien tech inside the massive room.

    Personnel from Triax and NGR soldiers are present, which is reason enough for Maaka to take cover behind the nearest thing that can hide her while her cloak activates. "Uhhh, Staren? Weiss? What exactly /is/ this about?" She asks quietly, since all she knows is that poking her head out right now is a bad idea.
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa listens to Zweis words about Vert and the /Armigers as well. It does make sense it does make a lot of senes about this. Into the hole they go an she drops dow with little trouble now.

"Maybe I do, Makka, maybe I do."

They get dipper and deeper as she watches how everything plays out and then a thought hits her about social engineering as she looks over to STaren for a moment and whispers.

"It might not work for humans, she wants to change them right? This new gear might only work for Deebes rather than the native humans."

She gets quiet again and she's watching now more intently.
Nozomi Houken     Nozomi suddenly has a burger.

    Her eyes are wide.

    Weiss gets a silent look full of plainly-visible gratitude, followed by a rather respectful bow of the head. And then she starts eating. Despite how small she is for her age, she is still a teenager. And one who goes into danger on a regular basis, at that. Calories are important.

    Taiga is the one who does most of the listening, though Nozomi does pay attention (and eat) as they head into the tunnel. When they get to the other end, peering through a hologram at the room beyond, she's the one who speaks up first. "It's... it reminds me, of the one from before..." she murmurs in a quiet voice.
Lezard Valeth Lezard has little to say about the initial exchange, quickly making his way into the tunnel with the others.

It's not until they see the secrets at the heart of Triax that Lezard would rub his chin, assessing the situation based on context provided from the others.

There's a spark of amusement in his eyes, and the way his lips curl mean he has already begun to decipher possible reasons for why this is happening the way it is.
Shin Tokuyama     "Ah geez, this is feeling pretty science-y," Shin remarks to weiss, tilting her head at Weiss and then picking a burger out of the bag for himself. He'll carry that bag around with him for as long as its realistically relevant, until the burgers are gone, or until someone takes the bag away from him. Any of the three of these can resolve the 'bag in hand' situation, but for now he just follows along.

    He walks along eating a burger and looking around. He's uncharacteristically quiet tonight, but that's largely due to him just hanging back and letting the more tech minded people take point on this. There's a couple munching noises as he takes a bite of the burger and waits for something helpful to say.

    "Hm." He murmurs, chewing and swallowing, "All this so fast. Pretty soon, or at this rate, they'll all be totally dependant on this 'Vert' for every aspect of society. That probably won't be good." He muses.
Valentha Summers Dooooown into the hole! Valentha just sort of slides on down, unafraid of skidding or losing her balance. And into... one hell of an installation, that's for sure.

    "Well. THIS is elaborate! Quite a find... how the hell does anyone hide something like THIS, even underground?"
Zwei     "Honestly, I'm leaving it up to you. You know why I can't intefere in this, but I think you should at least know." That's addressed much more broadly than to just Staren. There are more than a few people who have been tagging around to Zwei's weird sleuthing vendetta. Some of them with vendettas of their own. "You want to give it a try then?" /That/ is to Staren though. A couple of seconds later, folded piles of clothes are plopping out of thin air into anyone's arms who care to catch them; technician's outfits that can easily fit over whatever they have, rather than having to exchange existing clothes for pressed suits. "Most of you are robots or cyborgs or have a robot with you, and Lezard looks smart anyways. Shin can just, I don't know, pretend to be my nephew or something." Her own clothes change to reflect it, going from shift supervisor to officer, straight up copied from a woman on an overlook catwalk staring over the backs of two computer jockeys like the captain of a ship.

    Making sure nobody is looking, she steps out through the holographic wall, dropping down silently onto the adjacent platform a foot below, due to precise tunneling. "Better question, how did they move it?" she asks Valentha, rhetorically. "There's no way they don't know what's under their own feet, and this is pretty recently built. There's no external power source, probably a kugelblitz in there, so they could and really should have relocated it from whatever random frontier they dug it up on. Here they can pull in and process D-Bees en-mass, and protect and hide it under their seat of power." She shakes her head slightly towards Shin. "That's always a risk, but I wouldn't bet on it. The idea is to get them to resolve their issues with what they think is their own idea, and if they fall apart after, they obviously weren't fit to be a civilization at all. The problem comes down to what you perceive as a solution. I think we can all agree the issue needs taking care of, but . . ."

    No sense debating on it without knowing. She strides out in full view of the complex, though people only barely look at her, recognizing the suit and nobody really familiar with the upper echelons of Triax on a face to face basis. It's dark and cavernous down here. She could have come from anywhere, or just come down now, and nobody would have noticed. She picks a monitor station at random, standing behind the man at work with her hands behind her back. "You. Progress report." The man snaps to attention, though it doesn't exactly look like he was dozing, trusting the navy blue and gold pins. "Ma'am! We have three hundred for processing today! One hundred and fifty have been processed, which puts us 15% behind after one of them caused an incident a few hours ago. Otherwise all quiet. Out of the volunteer batch of fifteen hundred, nine hundred have been approved, and six hundred are on standby for the next two weeks. Out of the draftees, well we're still sorting through ma'am. A lot of them look like they'll change their tune once they see what we have for them, but some of them look like too much trouble to be worth it. Probably unmutuals. You'd have to ask General Rasheen about deployment and organization. He's the only one who gets the full intel."

    All within handy earshot, with an open license to poke about.
Alexis Maaka     Maaka meanwhile goes for a more subtle approach, slinging her rifle in favor of going for a stealthy ascend to the upper catwalks. Shooting her grapple line up to climb, she rapidly makes her way to the rails while keeping overwatch, using her magnetic adhering pads to remain clinging to the catwalk underside.

    As she slowly crawls along the underside like a certain web-head vigilante, Maaka begins to hack into local communications covertly, trying to get the skinny on tactical frequencies so she can know ahead of time any patrol patterns or notifications about important cargo.
Shin Tokuyama     Shin shrugs at Weiss and takes another bite of his burger. If Weiss is going to have him act like a nephew, he'll stick near her and generally just eat his food, "I'm sure we can have a debate about that philosophy, but it'd just end with someone shrieking shouting Nihilism at me while I point out the Nietzsche viewpoint that the death of God and his replacement with a manufactured deity results in the amoral downfall of society. I'd prefer to avoid that entire debate, really."

    He walks along silently for a few moments, adding to the robot, "I study philosophy. It's like Martial Arts for the mind," He explains, pointing out why he actually had such a weirdly specific and insightful viewpoint as if it was important that people know WHY he has that viewpoint.

    "All told, however, it's an inherently corruptive act this person is taking," He waves the burger a bit, "The entire scope of their actions puts them at a deistic level of interference. It's Prometheus and fire, but without any consequence on the bestower. Merely on the one bestowed upon."
Nozomi Houken     Needless to say, Nozomi is not taking a test subject uniform. That would place her in entirely too much danger. Taiga will immediately veto any such thing.

    Probably with claws.

    So there's Nozomi, decked out in a technician's uniform, sort of quietly stepping out into the open area with a robotic tiger at her side. Looking utterly lost. Fortunately there's a robotic tiger at her side. Bump.

    At Taiga's urging, she starts towards a console; no particular logic behind her choice, just trying to look like she's doing something important. She's not very good at it, but bless her heart she's trying.
Staren     Staren looks at Weiss a moment, and shrugs at her question, then nods slightly. He removes his armor, revealing some kind of bodysuit underneath, and puts on a D-Bee test subject uniform before stepping out with the others. He follows Weiss, since she seems to be a good person to have nearby. He listens to the talk curiously, as it's proved that her disguise works, then tries to look properly abashed before turning and saluting Zwei. "Ma'am! Thank you for bringing me here and I promise I won't get lost again! May I go to be processed now, Ma'am? I'm eager to serve my country Ma'am!" His eyes dart from her to the technician. Hopefully once she gives the okay the technician will direct him without checking ID or something. If they do check ID... oh well?!?! He wonders if Zwei can zero-hack the computers fast enough...
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa is going to keep scaning it as best she can, Staren's comments about Vert get a very dour look on her face as well. Kotone is cloaked by this point she's not looking to get caught here. She listen to Weiss? She'll sneak about she's a full concyborg and a human she doubts this would work for her right? So she;' going to try to get what information she cna from the local networks maybe if she and Makka team up they can get something major done for information gathering but she's going to be wary given if she botches this it will be bad.
Lezard Valeth Lezard quickly changes uniforms to the technician one provided by Weiss, slipping it on over his other clothes. Unlike most of the others, he doesn't feel exceptionally threatened by the situation, but it would be suboptimal to cause problems here for the rest of tine investigation team.

This is why he simply melts into the other technicians milling about the group, picking up a toolkit as he passes by and looking lik he's fiddling with it, moving like he knows exactly what he's doing and where.

He does, of course. It's just not what everyone else thinks he's doing. To them, he's checking readings and doing minor maintenance.

To him, he's quietly etching runes into plates in approximate locations, keeping them out of sight on locations on the catwalks as he slowly works his way around the perimiter.

Such a useful and loyal technican, isn't he?
Zwei     "I'm not debating, I'm giving you the playbook from her point of view, best as I can manage." Weiss says to Shin, once she walks past and out of eatshot of the tech. "You don't come out of a millenium of ennui where everything has already been done feeling compassionate and full of integrity. That's how god complexes happen, though it wasn't like there wasn't at least a Prometheus one there to begin with. This is her third time pulling it off. Once it becomes a repeatable, practical way of life . . ."

    Nozomi is once again getting looks for having Taiga clacking around next to her. This time however, they aren't 'wow that's weird', but instead 'wow she must be a genius to have built something like that'. The NGR, or rather, Triax, is the robotics capital of the entire Earth, bar none, and it has certainly made some extremely impressive pieces before, so it's not a huge stretch of the imagination to believe that Taiga is a Triax project as well, considering there is no way to detect the stranger, more innovative parts of his inner workings. One of the only empty consoles is, predictably, not exactly classified information; otherwise it would have been locked or someone would have been court martialed.

    It's old logs; stuff that even the D-Bees in the room likely know to a vague extent, though still classified information. There are plans drawn up for multiple, D-Bee only companies, to be added to the main army; dozens of them, in fact. It's not an enormous number compared to the full size of the NGR's military, but hardly insignificant either. Hundreds of free soldiers, each as powerful as a medium robot, and with negligible manufacturing and maintenance overhead. One would have to an idiot to not at least look into it. Apparently they're taking anyone who will fight, with psychological screening, background checks, and physical fitness exams first at least, and offering significantly more than a D-Bee factory worker, normally the highest job they can aspire to, will get. Unsurprisingly, there are an enormous number of volunteers, most accepted, though they have been drafting from ghettos on the outskirts of the republic to fill in the gaps.

    Kotone and Alexis manage to crack some of the local network, though it's deliberately isolate from Triax's mainframe for obvious reasons, with no wired or wireless connection out. Apparently they've discovered this 'xenotech', guessing it as coming from an alternate dimension', buried on the frontier some months ago, and have had crack scientists poking at it ever since. It exhibits adaptive programming, but not high level sentience, and so part of that has been teaching the machine German until its interface reconfigured to be comprehensible, as well as providing basic instructions. Extensive safety inquiries have been made, and eventually the vote was pushed by not just Rasheen, D-Bee grand General of the army and hero to all their kind, but the president of the company as well. As it seems, initial attempts to retrieve equipment on requisition met only with the mysterious message: "Maximum number of human operators achieved. All allotted equipment in circulation. Return equipment and de-register human operator before resuming requisition."

    which of course referred to no humans they know of. The working theory is that the machine was a resupply station for an extra-dimensional battalion, and was chucked through a RIFT. Predictably, D-Bees do not meet the same problem. Only non-humans can access, retrieve and use its equipment, and there are so many kinds of them that no limit seems to be likely to be reached in the near future. Staren is posing as one of such, which Weiss immediately shouts into line. "Number two fifty one! You were scheduled twenty minutes ago!" She points to a station at the black monolith where a (familiar?) squid-faced being is wavering. "There, right now, and get that loafer out of here if he's not finished in the next five minutes!" The technician wouldn't dare second guess her as long as she's wearing those badges and stars.
Zwei     As much as the NGR frowns upon magic, it is a low key kind of distrust and disliking, not the full blown paranoia and hatred of the Coalition States. With no real domestic magic threats, they have next to nothing in the way of tools or personnel to specifically root out and destroy magic, and so Lezard's work goes essentially unimpeded, as long as he can look like he belongs there.
Shin Tokuyama     "I didn't say you were debating. I said other people are prone to debating when philosophy comes up. It's a common thing. And I don't mind discussing it, but there are a lot of rationalist zealots. People who wave the banner of wanting to be objective, while actually being no different than any radical in their belief system," He remarks to Zwei rather blandly, eating the sandwich in his hands as he continues to go with her, "Those are the people I elect not to debate with."

    "And it's like I said. It's the Nietzsche principal of God. She aims to kill God and then replace them, and if she can create a replicatable system by which it can be done, she will be capable of subsuming other societies and conforming them. One could argue that it's a positive outcome, but I would disagree," He seems to ponder on the point, "While surely society should strive for its ultimate betterment, the case could be made that by placing external influence on the development of that society, you do not actually improve them. No self-actualization occurs, but rather they are skipped ahead to a future point physically, while never developing as people to allow them to compensate."

    "Or, I suppose I'm saying," He looks sideways towards Zwei, "I believe her execution is flawed because people will regress until they learn to naturally overcome their impulses rather than artificially. You cannot physically develop a society which is not emotionally capable of evolution."

    Shin pauses a long time, "But I'm just a guy who punches things for fun, so don't take me as some authority."
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone Yamakawa is able to get into the network, it's good she does find her theroy about it seemes to hold some water, the info is copies and saved for later. She does have to wonder for a moment. She makes sure to go over the data as she attempts to keep herself from checking out what else is there. She gets now whats going on and if Vert did do this? It was a clever way to get them to accept Deebees as it would mean they could fight the Gargyoles better. Still while it might improve lives here what is Vert's end game? Attempt to control and garden every world she touches? She doesn't know but with this data prize she's going to pull back now she doesn't want to mess up what Weiss and Staren are going to do.
Staren     Staren jumps slightly as he's shouted at. "Ma'am yes ma'am!" He scrambles off in that direction, and once he's in line gives the squid a friendly smile. "Can't wait to take the fight to the gargoyles, huh?" He waits obediantly in line, fidgeting a bit as he's on edge... both from the excitement of getting this tech to examine first-hand (hopefully!) and the risk of getting caught -- He had to leave his bag of tricks in the hole, but hopefully he and his allies can find a way out if this all goes south...
Valentha Summers The computers are the most interesting parts of this, and so Valentha's keen on Kotone and Alexis's findings. This involves sneaking up on both (well, feigning such sneaking) and putting a hand on Kotone's shoulder. "So, so! Share with the world your findings. Well, our world."
Zwei     "You're a pretty philosophical karata hobo, aren't you?" Weiss remarks, though not quite as surprised as most would be. "As dated as that philosophy is, I wouldn't say you're wrong. Dependence and self actualization are ingrained behaviours in pretty much every species, are difficult to argue around, rarely changing much no matter how common thought develops. You're also right that it would not at all be hard to subsume societies like this. Pull a 'we come in peace', make things better for everyone and then force everyone to cooperate once they can no longer do anything without you."

    "Simply put, the Collective decided that kind of thing was garbage a long time ago. It produces nothing of worth, and wastes an entire species' potential. That's why Armigers like Vert and I play different roles on opposite sides of the coin. Rather than trying to beat failing civilizations into shape, ones that are dangerous to everyone else are wiped out by the Aussterben. Meanwhile ones that have their issues but could really become something great, the Erhalten deal with. Out of the entire multiverse, she hand picks ones like these. Ones that have an existing social fabric and workable ideals, that might potentially have a future."

    "Moves like these are pretty overt, which means she might be bored of the subtle, but both require active participation from the client society and are left hands off to see how they manage it once they think its their idea. Honestly, alien technology washes up on this planet all the time. There are corporations that smuggle it, sell it, or even loan it out. It looks pretty blatant, but it's not exactly an impossible event, even if improbably beneficial. I think right now she's looking for a passing grade. Either fighting for their country will gain D-Bees some respect, or they'll be turned into suicide troops and annihilated en-masse until there are no dissidents left. Either way, racial frictions fade." Who'd imagine so much goddamn sociopolitical banter between a robo space ghost and a martial artist who works at a fast food place. Pointedly, she's left her local radio on the entire time.

    The squidman in front of Staren startles, and then rushes to complete his work. It looks very much to be a simple manual registry, followed by a biometric scan to key the equipment to that particular soldier, and to register his species and add it to the tally, if it even exists, and isn't just a particularly whimsical twist on the ruse. When it's his turn in line, he can plainly see how the little concave alcove works; a little more visibly obvious than how opaque and without cue the technology usually is. The walls are there to scan from either side, a wall port is there to produce equipment, though it's probable the NGR is feeding it raw materials up top, and there is a rather expansive but simple holographic touch display. He will immediately recognize most of the 'alien language' and complicated moving displays as nonsense, added to make it look more mysterious and complicated. As soon as he gets within sight of the ID screen, ticking up one additional number from the last, the controls lock up, and the central text form dims, a single, tiny line scrolling over it:

    */Do you think I'm an idiot?/*
Nozomi Houken     Nozomi has done some sleuthing. Picked up some info. Relayed it across their private radio band. And now... now Staren is saying there's a problem. Immediately, Nozomi goes into 'nervous mouse mode', looking around briefly before turning to make a 'walking swiftly while trying not to look like she's walking swiftly' trip over towards Weiss and Shin, with Taiga in tow. The astute will probably notice that the robotiger's ears are twitching this way and that, sweeping for any possible supernatural threats.

    Granted, aside from 'whatever shenanigans Lezard pulled', there probably isn't any, but he's willing to scan that, too.
Staren     Staren's blood runs cold when the machine addresses him. Well, crap. If it doesn't work for him, that'll draw attention. If that's /all/ Vert does, he can play it off as weird random chance that his species isn't recognized, or it being confused by his half-human-ness.

    Still, he can't help engaging the machine with a hushed whisper, since it did ask a question.

    'No,' he hisses, 'I like what you're doing so far. But I need more data, and I thought maybe you left this on automatic. Guess not. What happens now, Vert?'
Kotone Yamakawa kotone Yamakawa is very interested to hare the info she's got with Valentha but she wants to get out of here. "The short answer is it can't give out gear to anymore humans and that's why they are enlisting Debees to get access to the gear it seems to have a species limit on gear hand outs. I'll explain more later." She keeps quite as she's starting to back out at this point. She doesn't want to get into trouble after all.