World Tree MUSH

    So the little party has decided to retrieve a backup of the android code... but there's a small problem. To get to the backup, it's deep in one of the lower decks. Possible routes to this include a winding trip through the maintenance tunnels, which may or may not be overrun by mold... and if not mold, then security droids. The only problem is that the alternative, and most direct route, is through a part of the ship labelled 'Biolabs' which doesn't really instill confidence, does it?

    The elevator trip provides a rudimentary map to consider options with, possibly even options that are less obvious.

    Belle immediately says, "Better the devil you know, in this place. Given how many weird mutants have popped up in areas that were just simple zoos or something, I'm REALLY not in a rush to see what's cooking in an area that was possibly used for biological weapons."

    She glances at 'Aida' nearby. "Besides, murdering our way through a bunch of confused animals isn't my idea of fun."

    Circe will certainly start prodding at the map, humming to herself as she does so in a kind of unsteady way that could almost be calculated to be annoying. Or she might just naturally be annoying. It's hard to tell, really.

    "...I really am curious what kind of things they make in the biolabs. If it's just, like, poisons or other chemical or biological agents, I should be pretty safe from those. If they're like, chemically engineered dinosaurs or something, that might be a different story, but animals generally like me well enough. It's really androids that would be my main worry."

    'Biolabs' does not instill much confidence no. Samus, however is okay with taking the maintenance tunnels, and her suit is environmentally sealed so there's that too.
    And who knows, maybe they'll run into the psychic mold again.
    "I'd rather not have to make dinosaurs extinct again." Samus says in reply to Circe's possibilities.
    Samus will likely do it, if she has to.
    Not that she wants to.

    "Zeus will just make more, anyway. He gets egotistical about his mounts." Circe says, in a tone of voice that makes it kind of hard to tell if she's joking or if it's true but either way it sounds incredibly bitter.

    Belle glances up. "From what I hear it's so he'll have something to- no, never mind." She shuts up and shrugs, "Yeah, I'm for the tunnels but Aida brings up a good point. Maybe she can get us through the labs okay?"

    Well the elevator needs to go to the same floor either way, and that may make the decision easier. It opens up to a large room, with armored walls and windows. Several doors lead out, but one is larger and bulkier than the others, and clearly labeled as an airlock. Through the windows, choking masses of vegetation can be found, and the entire room has a dull red glow turn on when the door opens.

    A distorted voice announces, "Warning. Biohazard in main lab corridor. Containment breached." The message repeats.

    On the upside, the room is very large and does have a lot of stuff in it. This includes various sizes of hazard suits.

    Circe is mostly sure that her own equipment, her nanotech, and her divine nature would keep her safe from whatever's going on in there, but mostly sure is not as good as being completely certain of her own safety. She's going to scrounge for a hazard suit that'll fit her, and double-check it to make certain that it isn't compromised, either.

    "...It seems fine, really. I'm sure it's just a minor biohazard. The message would be more ominous if it was something that strong people like us really needed to concern ourselves with."

    Huh. Belle heads right for one of the suits. "I think even if we take a maintenance tunnel, I'll want one of these." She starts to tug it on, and calls over Aida for help because she's not sure how these things work anyway. But it has her thinking. "Well, Samus? Which way do you think? I was thinking tunnels, but now I am wondering if we should just cut through. Anything let loose in here would likely try the tunnels too, so anything strong enough to stop it would try to stop us too. And I had a thought..." She eyes the jungle outside.

    "The aliens are using biotech of some kind, like mushrooms. Maybe we can find some kind of mushroom-killer spray in here on the way to the vats?"

    "Well that's promising already." Samus says as the voice announces a biohazard threat.
    "You really want to test that?" She asks 'Aida'. But then Belle raises a very valid point.
    "You're right. Anything in there probably worked its way into the maintenance access." Be it small. ... Or large, that will still make things a hassle.
    "May as well take the direct route."
    She'll wait for Belle and Circe to suit up at least before heading for the airlock.
    "Finding something like that would be a nice bonus, too."

    The airlock opens up into a vine-choked wilderness, but the crumpled shells of various buildings and infrastructure can still be seen. Hopefully this sealed bunker survived. The suits also register the air as very corrosive, in addition to toxic, so immediately swap to internal reserves, putting the small crew on a deadline now.

    On the upside, not a lot of large animals can be seen, nor signs of them. The ground squelches disturbingly underfoot though, and it's several minutes before a trail of some kind is found, showing fresh tracks. Literally. Some kind of treads on a robot have recently crushed some of the vegetation, and it leads off in a slight detour away.

    "Do you want to try to follow the robots or just take the direct path?" Circe will ask, glancing at the treads to try and get an idea of the size and weight of the robot. She's started lagging just a touch behind Samus and maybe Belle as well, allowing them to take the lead; this isn't the sort of place where what combat ability she has would really shine.

    "Probably best not to dawdle, either way, so you pick and I'll just blame you later if it turns out to not be the correct choice. What do I pay you for, after all?"

    "Normally I'd try to sniff something out, but..." Belle doesn't think that's a good idea, for some reason! "We have limited time... maybe we should just go straight to the bunker. But if we want to find something useful we'll have to go afield. Then again, if these robots had something to kill plants, would the place look like this?"

    "You don't pay me." Samus notes in a mild tone.
    "Let's go straight." The Hunter suggests, taking the lead of the group. Belle and Circe's suit air supply needn't be put in jeopardy for getting nosy and taking a detour.

    The tread marks are left behind, and with it, danger. Well, some danger. It's still plenty bad with the swampy and vegetation-choked path forward! And not to mention the time limit the group is on. A time limit that may be shortened by exertion of any kind! Of course, sludging through the soupy morass is hard enough as the ground turns marshy, but the map seems to indicate this is the right place...

    The jungle finally thins, but what is found is not what's expected. A large, battered and scratched door to the bunker is ahead, after some time walking, and the choking trees have even been cleared from it! The problem: six robots are 'guarding' the entrance. Sort of.

    Actually they seem to be milling about. Six robots with treads, about the right size for the other one... probably five or six feet wide and twelve feet tall, moving in stuttering motions. One of them is widening a large pit that has something bubbling and putrid in it, while another appears to be repairing what looks to be a ramshackle greenhouse, with several rows of strange, writhing vines along the ground inside.

    Unfortunately, Belle has activated the Um Actually part of Circe's brain, something that both her nanobiological scientist mortal half and her alchemical magic goddess half are in complete and total alignment on. "Well, mushroom are actually completely different than plants. They're kind of their own thing, actually more closely related to animals than they are to plants. So something meant to kill plants wouldn't necessarily work on fungi and vice versa. There's a pretty good chance that there's some kind of anti-fungal development going on; you'd think the psychic mold would at least warrant some attention."

    She's then going to drop out of this layperson speak and start going into the molecular difference between fungus and plants at length regardless of how much the others don't want to hear it unless they stop her, at least up until they get to the point of the bunker.

    "You can take six of them pretty easy, right?" She'll say, staring over towards the bunker and carefully NOT breathing any more air than she has to. Nothing about going without a hazard suit seems like fun.

    Belle looks dubious even through the suit. "I can't fight at my best wearing this thing. I can't fully transform, and using my bow is... complicated. We should probably try to find a way around them, but we still need to open the bunker. I'm fresh out of ideas... unless we want to distract them, I could probably do that if you want."

    She points. "Threatening that greenhouse would do it I bet. They seem keen on tending to it. Which is weird..."

    Circe explains the difference between fungi and plants.
    Samus kind of doesn't care.
    Not that it isn't interesting, or good to know. It's just that Circe is doing the explaining.
    Particles of light begin to gather at the barrel of the Hunter's arm cannon as she charges up a shot of superheated plasma.
    "Go on ahead and try to get the bunker open. I'll be the distraction." She says.
    And then fires the plasma at the greenhouse to try and set the wriggly vines inside it on fire.
    That should make for a good distraction. Right? That is unless Belle stops her.
    She'll listen to Belle.

    It's weird how the robots don't seem to have detected the group yet, but when the heat of the plasma starts to build up, all six show some alarm and turn almost as one. A robotic arm swipes up to try to block the beam, but it just gets lanced in half for its trouble. One of the vines is blasted and burnt, and the robot turns toward Samus, the missing robotic arm dripping... green... ooze?

    The other five are already trundling forward, pincers snapping and weapons powering up with a loud hum, one of them even making a tree snap in half behind as a laser beam slices it in half, poorly-aimed due to the jostling of the frame but showing Samus is about to have some trouble.

    ... good luck, Samus! As per the PLAN Belle is going to dash the OTHER way and try to move behind the robots, heading for the bunker door. At least she CAN use her bow in her suit, and she's going to have it out just in case she can protect Circe on the sprint over to the bunker. Not sure how Samus is going to get out of this to rejoin them but... Belle's never been much of a planner, really.

    It's fine. Any moment now, Circe will undoubtedly help Samus out and make certain that she doesn't get brutally roboted to death or anything like that...

    Okay, so she's not actually doing that and is instead trying to use the distraction to sneak quickly along towards the bunker without getting noticed by the robots. She's going to be focused on trying to get there and get it open; battling the robots is the job of the people who don't wear their primary weapons as jewelry and thus didn't seal them inside of the hazard suit with themselves. Hopefully Belle's more rapid movement is what's noticed if anything is, or Circe might have a bad time.

    Well that's interesting. Oh not that the machines are alarmed, more that one in particular really tried to protect the greenhouse and is now dropping something sludgey from the wound.
    Well, as the others approach and begin powering on their weapons, the Hunter rolls her shoulders.
    She'll put on a show while Belle and Circe go for the bunker.
    Immediately breaking into a sprint, Samus rushes the machines, her own weapon systems humming as she charges up another shot- blasting one with a ray of superheated plasma, before the barrel of her arm cannon splits apart and the green warhead of a super missile clicks into place.
    She fires that into a second machine before taking pre-emptive evasive maneuvers, rolling into a small ball to get away.
    But not without leaving a cluster of bombs at the treads of a third robot.
    That should buy the others a bit of time.

>> GAME >> Samus Aran spends an Edge for: LOOK AT ME I AM A DISTRACTION.

    Explosions rock the jungle that used to be a biolab, and many of them flare up more as they hit flammable patches of the toxic gasses that flow throughout the area. A tree catches on fire, though smoldering and dying quickly, and the first one hit is cored right through, humming to a stop as power dies, while the missiled one is blown apart. The one that hits the mines is toppled over, treads wrecked, and twitching as it too starts to leak some ooze.

    As for the door, it's actually not hard for Circe to get in with her clearance. It only takes a few moments to fix all the problems with the bad wiring, and inputting the codes. Moments that Samus if fighting a deadly battle thanks to wrecking the greenhouse and destroying one sprout.

    The toppled robot shudders, splitting open with a hiss. More green ooze escapes, and then a writhing, vinelike tendril slips out, and the bulk of a biological creature begins to worm its way free of the shell that's flickering with small fires and fading power conduits as the power receiver from the broadcast power system fails.

    Circe will certainly not be paying super close attention to Samus' fight while she works on the door, so she's going to miss the whole deal with the robots unless explained later. She'll instead go through the door as soon as it opens, twitching ever so slightly as explosions happen behind her.

    She'll be polite, and not shut the door behind her, either, though she lets Samus either notice they're able to advance or not on her own unless Belle tells her. She wouldn't want to be mean and interrupt, after all... Hopefully the code isn't too buried within this place.

    As soon as the door is open, Belle makes a quick waving motion and then darts in, so she can let Samus know it's save to get the hell out of there. Then she'll be darting in as well, letting out a loud huff in her suit.

    You know. Seeing the creature slide out of the machine.
    That explains some things.
    But once the door opens and Belle gives her tie signal, Samus disengages and sprints for the bunker.

    The robots - or plants? - seem to be in disarray after that, and a few shots lance out toward Samus but they don't pursue. The door thunders closed after Samus darts in, presuming she actually pushes the button, but the bunker does have lighting. And air, thankfully, so the crew can, after the vents take care of the gas that slipped in, finally take off their helmets and relax a little.

    It's not a huge bunker, mostly full of backup plans and the like. Circe may be able to get some useful data from this aside from the plans, but it looks like it is moslty backups of things like mission specs and schematics for habitats to be built during colonization, and so on.

    Circe is going to be focused not just on the plans but on if there might be ways to tweak those plans, in particular to either remove the designed obsolecence or to provide herself with an ability to force command overrides or other forms of control, because she is a complex person who will do good and evil at the same time.