World Tree MUSH

The halcyon remnant, as its name implies, is a world consisting of ancient ruins of a grander age. This area might have once been a city, but it might be more accurate to call it a amid cliffs, with unnaturally rectangular boulders. A few buildings remain upright, but they're less "buildings with overgrowth" and more "overgrowth with buildings." Grass grows in what might have once been a major roadway, with barely even scraps of metal left to show hints of the vehicles that might have traveled here.

Nevertheless, the technology was durable enough that a few of the world's wonders have survived. Well ... "survived" more-or-less. Some things have gone a bit haywire from what they were originally supposed to be.

A general request was made by a survey team, asking for guards and fighters who could defend against the more hazardous wonders here. The survey team has set up camp right next to where the vines have been dropping people, in what appears to be an odd sort of multi-story auto service station; the tents and tables they've set up are incongruous mostly for how new they are, and a burly man with a salt and pepper beard directs the team in setting up more tables and equipment. He's one eye on the outside, though, just in case.

    Somewhere, on a fairly high perch, crouches Uni. She's got her more adventure-focussed outfit on, with a slightly heavier jacket to mitigate the sheer amount of skin she has on show. Red eyes scan across the terrain, looking for signs of disturbance, while she pinches a throatmic to begin transmission. <Hawkeye to Papa Bear. No movement north quadrant. Maintaining vigil. Over. Eyes will be off for two minutes while relocating to east quadrant overlook.> she says, then with one final sweep, drops over the ledge and begins moving to a new vantage point, clutching the long body of a long-barrel, scoped rifle as she moves.

The burly man (whose name is Cid Harley) gets out a walkie-talkie. "Acknowledged, Hawkeye," he says, faint amusement in his voice. "Let us know if you find any ..."

At that moment, a loud tone echoes from the southeast. It begins repeating, once every five seconds. It sounds like a cross between an electronic beep, and hitting the high key on a piano.

"... Well, that's not ominous!" says Cid. "Hey, uh, think you could check that out? Make sure it's not something dangerous that's heading our way, and all that."

    Uni hears the tone, and presses the mic again. <Acknowledged, diverting to investigate... just as a precaution get ready to move back through the Vine. Will advise, Hawkeye out.>

    Her boots crunch against the ground as she skids and readjusts her course, charging along the side of one of those fallen 'buildings', then leaping up over a ridge before dropping to a crouch and bringing her scope up, using that to sweep the direction the sound is coming from.

While Uni is moving into position, a staticky portal opens up by the encampment, and Emily hops out and exchanges a few words with Cid. Then she transmits a sound effect of radio static, and her familiar voice speaks up. <Howdy! Emily Nyx here. Am I late to the party?>

From Uni's new vantage point, the source is slightly clearer -- there's something right beneath the canopy of trees nearby. But not two beeps go by after she gets into position before the source of the sound lets out a longer warble. There's a sound like some sort of electronics revving up, and then a series of golden bolts of light shoot up from the canopy towards her!

    Uni's eyes go wide as she spots those bolts coming at her. <CONTACT! Southeast. I am engaged!> she transmits while dodgerolling away from those incoming shots. She scrambles to find something solid to cover behind, shrapnel having cut along her legs and body, drawing thin lines of blood. Even a Goddess can bleed. <Some kind of energy bolt weapon. It's in the tree line, but I couldn't visually identify it.> she transmits next, poking her head out of cover and trying to see if the source of that attack has moved closer or is just waiting in concealment.

<Yyyyep, I see the light show!> says Emily.

As soon as Uni is out of sight, the bolts stop, and the beeping resumes. It seems to be staying in one place, really.

<I can see you,> says Emily. <Coming in at seven o'clock.> A moment later, Emily flies into view; she's in the form she's usually had recently, of a woman with glowing purple eyes, four arms, and Vantablack hair, dressed in a white version of a YoRHa Type-B uniform.

A couple of bolts fire up at her, and she hurriedly swoops down towards Uni. "... kinda weird to be back home in these circumstances," she murmurs as she lands in a crouch next to Uni. "I sent it an ID-ping, and it responded with the first half of a the header for a nano-alchemy station, followed by complete gibberish." She frowns. "But it was firing the same kind of directed-energy bolts as a Eudaemon like me, which says 'sabotage' to me rather than 'broke down in a hilarious way'."

    Uni watches Emily come swooping down, then drops back behind cover. "So it's an automated defense turret of some kind? It only just started doing that, so, if it's sabotage, the person responsible could still be nearby." she says then frowns. "With it pinning us down here though... if only I could get a track on where it is, I could snipe off something important, like a sensor cluster or something, try and blind it."

Emily considers this. "Or maybe it was in response to radio chatter. Or something else we haven't thought of." Shes looks around. "Lemme try something," she says.

A staticky portal opens up, which shows a different cluster of fallen buildings and boulders. Including what looks suspiciously like the very building they're on. Emily pokes her head through and looks around for a few seconds, and then hurriedly pulls away and closes the portal as the machine fires bolts away from their cover.

Emily sits back down. "Okay," she says. "I saw some nice concealment at ground level. Or ... cover, whatever it's called. I'm not a military model." She shrugs. "Anyway ... it should get us a better vantage point, so we can at least get a better look at it. That sound good?"

    "We should split up too. Give it two vectors to think about. It shoudl lower the firepower it can bring to bear on just one of us." responds Uni, watching the bolts firing from the forest. "Draw it's fire, and I'll get moving... I'll try and use the bolt tracks to localize it and start laying down suppressive fire so you can get closer." she adds, looking at the nanocolony. "Your callsign will be Strix. I'm Hawkeye."

Emily grins. "Strix," she says. "I like it." She waves her hand, and a staticky portal opens up. The other end is at ground level, next to a twelve-foot-high block of some sort of concrete-adjacent. "You head down to the surface, I'll be a distaction up here." She stretches. "Releasing capacitor seals three and two. Just in case!" Her three auras appear, and the gold and silver ones shatter as the third one fades.

After traveling through the portal, Uni would find herself much closer to the source of the beeping. The device is visible, right around the corner of the block: it looks like a raised platform about ten feet wide, with a raised sticking out of one side, moving this way and that as if peering around, but it doesn't seem to have any sort of camera setup.

<Strix to Hakweye,> says Emily over the radio. <Lemme know when you're ready for showtime.>

The mechanical arm immediately whips around to look back up towards the previous vantage point.

    Uni passes through the portal, then peeks around the concrete block. <Copy Strix... I can't see a sensor cluster, but I might be able to disable the weapon itself.> she says through her throat mic. <I'm going to try using a Brave Cannon to disable the turret rotator.> She waits until the weapon finishes a firing cycle, then pokes out from behind the barrier and fires off a brilliant blue-white beam of energy. "BRAVE CANNON!"

A few golden bolts fly wildly into the treeline from Emily's position. The machine fires back at Emily. As soon as Uni calls out, it starts turning towards her, but it doesn't have time to fire anything off before the beam smashes into the arm. It falls limply, and nearly breaks clean off.

A man's voice deeper in the woods says, "W-what the hell?"

And then there's another beep, and a large clawed crab-like robot materializes on the platform.

<Wait, what's it doing?> says Emily, right before the robot starts lumbering over towards Uni with arms outstretched!

    <Boss pattern changed!> calls Uni, turning to flee. <There was a voice from inside the woods though... check it out while I give this thing the run-a-round.> she calls, dismissing her rifle and summoning a pair of SMGs instead. She fires back without aiming truly, spraying energy bullets at the crab-robot and trying to draw it off from the forest so Emily can find the owner of the voice.

<What pattern changed!?> says Emily, amusement in her voice. She peers over the edge of the building. <... Okay. Huh. Lemme see ...>

A few of the bullets from Uni's SMG leave dents, and the crab-robot jumps back slightly. But then it rears back, lets out a loud grumbly growl, and leaps forward onto the fallen block Uni had been hiding behind, and lunges towards her, claws swinging and snapping! Looks like this thing is fast.

A staticky portal opens up right on top of one of the trees, and Emily slips out, before dropping below the treeline.

    <I come from a world of video games, okay?> Uni says, then blinks as the robot proves very agile. <Crap...> She dives aside as the robot comes leaping at her, rolling up onto her feet and dashing the opposite way again. <This thing's fast, hurry up!> she radios, firing back and then ducking into a more confined space, trying to lead it into an area where her small frame will give her an edge over the larger construct.

A short distance away, there's a building which is still upright; it has no remaining glass in the windows, which are just barely big enough that the robot might fit through. Certainly easier for Uni to get into it. The crap lets out another growl, and charges after Uni! It quickly becomes clear, however, that it has a certain level of inertia for ground-based movement; it's better at leaping than at running.

<On it, coach!> says Emily. And then she begins transmitting the Jaws theme. For some reason.

Maybe she's figured something out about whoever it is in the trees ...

    Uni finds herself getting some breathing room. This is good. SMGs go away, and out comes a bullpup rifle. She mantles through a window frame and moves deeper inside the building, pausing behind a wall and unloading a full magazine into the approaching crab-bot. She's aiming for joints, trying to slow it down or disable the claw-arms, firing bursts until the power pack runs dry, then starts moving as she reloads.

The robot is tough, but not that tough, and its joins are clearly a weak spot. It begins to stagger and stumble; one of its arms hanging limply, and looks as if it might fall off soon. However, it does make one final lunge with its other claw.

Back in the woods, Emily starts transmitting an audio feed of her surroundings to Uni. The Jaws theme reaches a crescendo, right as Emily leaps through a staticky portal and tackles the unseen source of the voice to the ground. "CAUGHT YA!"

"Gah!" exclaims the Eudaemon she found. "Wait, you're a Greater!? Oh wait, you're MLE0, shit!"

"Sounds like my reputation precedes me!" she says. "Mind switching off Mr. Crabby?"

"Go to hell!" He fires a golden bolt that hits her in the face at point blank range.

"Gah ..." She staggers back. <Backup please, Hawkeye, if you can get here ASAP!> ... Sounds like she didn't actually say that last part aloud, she just sent it on the radio.

    Uni grunts as she gets nailed by flying debris from that lunge. Knocked over, she rolls away from the robot, and then opens fire at it again from point blank range. <Kinda busy here! Stop fooling around!> she transmits back from her throat mic.

    The Goddess Candidate stumbles back to her feet, reloading her rifle again as she tries to get away from the crab-bot and reinforce Emily. <So it was sabotage and you found the guy responsible... what now?>

Yeah, the robot can't handle point-blank firepower. It collapses, and goes still; smoke begins emitting from the holes left by Uni's shots. Not gonna be any pursuit from this robot!

The Eudaemon Emily is fighting is in the form of a gray-skinned man with glowing white eyes and platinum blonde hair, dressed in a forest-green tuxedo. He's summoned a long metal quarterstaff, and Emily is quadruple-wielding swords as they tussle, hovering several feet off the ground.

His head jerks around as Uni approaches, and he breaks off from the melee. "Whaddaya mean, 'what now!?'" he exclaims. "What the hell are you, anyway!?"

... Ah. Looks like he was listening in on the radio chatter.

    "Me? I'm your worst nightmare. Drop the weapon and come down here before I blast a few dozen holes in you." says Uni with an authorative tone, leveling her weapon on the Eudaemon. "EX. Multiblaster. Mode Empress. Charge to Stage One blast. Standby." intones the girl, the barrel assembly of her weapon unfolding, and beginning to gather a golden yellow charge within... the barrel turning into a miniature version of her Goddess-mode Railcannon.

The Eudaemon steps back and raises his hands. "Okay okay okay! Jesus!" he says, taking a step back. "I was thinking of moving my turf to around here, and I heard some radio chatter, so I wanted to keep whoever it was off, okay!?"

Emily sighs, grinning as she steps over towards Uni. "Why do Helios-models always go for the convoluted solutions?" she says. "Anyway, CAL3, you're obviously outgunned, so ... you know how this goes."

Helios-model CAL3 grumbles, rubbing the back of his head. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll buzz off." He rises off the ground, and turns towards the now-inert platform.

Emily nods to Uni. "Basically, when Eudaemons like him 'n' me get into fights with each other in the halcyon remnant," she says, "it's just a show of force. Only the worst of us actually try to kill each other."

CAL3 stops, and turns around. "... what ... is she?" he says, gesturing uncertainly to Uni.

    Uni shifts the energy flow. "Cancel Mode Empress." she states, the gun collapsing again into its more traditional form, before being dismissed into her inventory. "My name is Uni. I'm the CPU Candidate of Lastation in the world of Gamindustri."

CAL3 stares. "... 'World'?"

Emily nods. "Yeah, basically it turns out that the halcyon remnant is just one of a multitude of alternate realities, connected to each other by a really big tree.'

CAL3 stares for another moment, then just throws his hands into the air. "Yeah I'm not even gonna touch that," he says. He turns and floats away, and holds his hand out to the platform. It seems to sort of disassemble itself, and transforms into a suitcase; he picks it up, and disappears back into the woods.

Emily watches his retreating back. "Helios-models are also known for being lacking in curiosity," she says dryly. "Well, he probably didn't choose this area for being crawling with enemies, so ... we're probably good to go for now."

    Uni nods. "Right. I'll call it in then..." she touches her throat mic again, <Papa Bear, Hawkeye. Threat contained. A Eudaemon wanted to set up shop here with some kind of defensive station. We disable the station and drove the Eudaemon off. Area clear. Over.>

    Uni looks back to Emily at that. "Thanks... without you here, that would have taken a lot longer... and I'd have probably had to dip into my Share Energy reserve to transform."

Cid's response is almost immediate. <Wow, okay, thanks! Glad to have you two out here watching our backs!>

Emily smiles. "No charge! It's just life in the halcyon remnant." She looks around. "But yeah, I'm beginning to notice that working together tends to make everything work a lot more smoothly," she says dryly. She shrugs. "Of course, if we had more people, it probably would've ended up being a whole boss fight, knowing Murphy's Law. That was just sort of a mid-boss, as-is."