World Tree MUSH

This is a world which humanity left behind. Some structures are still recognizable; this region seems to have been a city at one time. But there's no sign of habitation remaining; it's all overgrown, covered in vines, and the windows don't even have any glass remaining. A few rusted remains of vehicles dot the scenery; there's also gigantic trees growing, which might actually provide a surface with which to climb the buildings.

Which isn't to say that the city is abandoned, however; there are Machine Lifeforms dotted around, rust-brown robots with hemispherical heads and faintly-glowing yellow eyes, wandering this way and that without any apparent aim, and sometimes just standing there and staring at nothing.

Oh -- and if you look closely at the top of one of the buildings, you might see a humanoid figure sitting at the edge. Or maybe it's just a trick of some ruins or other?

There's a young woman who's in a tiny bit of a fix. Clearly, she doesn't belong here. Black jacket, black jeans, combat boots, neat hair. Apparently human, or at least humanoid - there are, after all, species with which it is distinctly hard to tell. And she's crouched as if she just landed from a small fall, eyeing the robot that's approaching her. With one hand she reaches into her backpack. Is the robot a threat?

The robot is about twelve feet tall and somewhat bulky -- it has arms and legs which make it look muscular compared to the shorter stubby variants.

By all appearances, it looks like it's going to just keep on wandering aimlessly until the young woman comes within its field of vision, at which point it suddenly charges forward and swings its fist right at her!

This seems to have caught the attention of a few others of its kind, which also start running over. Uh-oh.

The young woman leaps back, "Now," she says in a strong, working class British accent, "That was rude!" She's tugged something out of the backpack...something that looks like a small cylinder. A moment of hesitation, then she throws it at the robot's feet and dives behind the nearest solid object!

The detonation sends the robot sprawling! It's clearly badly damaged, exposing ... well, rather strange-looking parts underneath. It struggles to get back upright, but then simply collapses and detonates with much less force. However, its companions jump back, staying out of the blast, before they resume their approach!

At that moment, the figure standing on top of the building just ... jumps. Three distinct auras appear around the figure: one gold, one silver, and one pearlescent. The silver one shatters, and the other two fade, followed by an indistinct swirl of glittery silver light, and then the figure continues falling and lands on one of the other Machines, piercing its head with a longsword. It's a tall woman with auburn hair and glowing purple eyes, dressed in a midnight blue business suit, and with an amused and faintly smug smile.

"Hi there!" she says, leaping over to the young woman's cover as that robot explodes as well. "My name is Emily Nyx. What's yours?" The surviving Machines promptly resume advancing!

"Ace!" the young woman pulls out another cylindrical grenade from her backpack, but she can't have too many in there. "Don't suppose you have anything that could be used to make an EMP?" She'll worry about exactly how she ended up here later. It's Fenric's fault. He's dead, but it's still his fault. Obviously.

Emily shakes her head and says, "I've never been able to generate that kind of power, and a pulse by itself might knock me of my feet, too!" Wait, what? "Fortunately, your IED's and my swords should work just fine."

She rises off the ground and sails over the group of robots, landing behind the furthest one away from Ace. It whirls and tries to punch her, but she glides sideways, and slashes its torso, then kicks away as it falls to pieces.

Three robots left. Emily's ostentatiousness seems to be enough for two of the remaining ones to focus all their attention on Emily, although the third seems to be more reluctant, and stares at Ace's cover as if trying to decide whether to go after her or not.

Ace narrows her eyes. Two of them are focused on Emily. She tosses the IED, as Emily insists on calling it at the third one, then tries to move to different cover while no robot is looking at her.

The robot, however, has learned from the mistakes of the others. It jumps backward as she throws the explosive, and then jumps backward again as it explodes. Total amount of damage taken: some minor dents and scratches. It then resumes chasing after Ace!

Emily frowns. "Hmm." She leaps over the nearest one to her, slicing through its head in the process, and then leaps after Ace to backstab the one coming after her!

At which point, the final solitary robot manages to sucker-punch Emily from behind, sending her sprawling! "AUGH!"

Okay. Explosives, too risky. But, very conveniently, there's a nice piece of rebar in Ace's current cover location. She grabs it, lifts it, and charges the remaining robot, bent on bashing out its...electronics...with the rebar. She's fast, too. Clearly, she's done this before.

    Rebar isn't the only thing that Machine Lifeform has to contend with.
    In an instant there's a sudden shredding sound of metal on metal, and that's when the blade of a white katana suddenly juts out of the machine like it had just been stabbed from the other side.
    This is likely due to the fact that it has, in fact, been stabbed. With a twist and a wrenching yank the blade is pulled free and another slash illuminates part of the robot's body with a bright, white-hot, line of contact, before 2B lowers her blade.
    The dour-looking woman in black doesn't seem to be hindered in the least by the black blindfold worn over her eyes, and she slowly brings her sword over her shoulder, where she releases it to let it hover behind her.
    "Emily." She says to the downed Eudaemon by way of greeting. Before her head turns to Ace.
    "... What's another human doing here?"
    This is about when 9S comes running onto the scene, pausing to rest his hands on his knees and pant. The young boy in black is also wearing a similar blindfold. "2-2B, I said there were explosions coming from this direction, but that doesn't mean to run off without me."
    "Oops." The woman says utterly tonelessly.

As Ace makes her charge, Emily rolls over and leaps to her feet, apparently breaking at least one of Newton's laws of physics in the process. "Hang on!" she says, as the Machine gets ready to swing its fist at Ace ...

... and then gets dispatched by 2B for its troubles.

Emily smiles at 2B. It's a bit more relaxed than her usual amused-and-faintly-smug affair. "Don't look at me," she says. "As far as I know, Ace here showed up on her own. Took out a Medium Biped with an improvised explosive before I joined in on the fun."

She turns to Ace, and gestures to the two YoRHa androids in turn. "Ace, this is 2B and 9S. They're androids native to this Blossom, built to fight Machine Lifeforms like the ones we just collectively tore through."

Ace catches her breath. Checks her backpack. "Which planet is this?" she asks. She'll worry about the "Blossom" part later. Instead, she's looking around her. Sniffing the air as if that will help her work out where and when she is.

    "Ace?" 2B repeats, incredulously. But then 9S seems to have caught his breath. "Whatever she's doing here, it doesn't matter. She's here now, and you have to follow the proper human greeting protocol, 2B!" He says, approaching Ace making fingerguns before holding out his hand for a fistbump.
    "I'm pretty sure that's not standard, 9S." The dour female android grumps. "This is Earth. The year is 11945 AD."

Emily snickers at 9S's greeting. She's starting to bounce back to her usual attitude! "Some standards are best codified after the fact," she says quietly. But she doesn't want to antagonize 2B. Not after they were both part of the encounter with Simone.

But there's another pressing matter at hand. "Are you new to the World Tree?" she says to Ace. Asking what planet she was on seemed to point to that possibility. "I'm not sure what kind of cosmological setup you're used to, but out here, there's an entire multiverse, with myriad worlds connected via a massive 'World Tree' which I'm only eighty-five percent sure is entirely metaphorical."

Ace frowns. "Oh, you're *kidding* me." She glances upwards. "When I find him..." Whoever he is. "So, that wasn't a time storm, it was a dimension storm." No, she's less than amused...well, except by the fist bump, which she reciprocates, the frown turning into a grin as she does so.

    OH MAN. Once Ace goes in for the fistbump, 9S leads into an elbow dap, followed up by a chestbump-- where he learned that one from is a mystery- back into a fistbump, and ends off with a fireworks fadeout.
    2B watches the whole process with a blank expression.
    "That is so not standard." She counters Emily, before heaving a sigh.
    "Time storm? Dimension storm?" Not terms the android is familiar with.
    "You probably got shoved through a Vine." 9S asides helpfully. "There's one not too far from here that keeps popping up by the old abandoned factory. It's how 2B and I come and go when Command orders us to scout other worlds."

Emily considers this. "Reapplying capacitor seal three," she says. The gold and pearlescent auras reappear, and the silver one seems to rebuild itself; her sword then dematerializes in a swirl of what appears to be silvery glitter. "I would imagine that a time storm is a distortion in the fabric of the space-time continuum which produces a temporal differential," she says, "and that dimensional storms are an equivalent concept which are more like Vines -- our term for the much more calm and simplified way of traveling between the different worlds of the World Tree," she adds for Ace's benefit.

She regards 2B for a moment. "Can I give you a piece of advice?" she says. "At least when you're not in the middle of a mission that, uh, requires a certain level of decorum or whatever?"

Ace is laughing, "I like this one." She points to 9S. "Dimension storm, Vine, whatever. I'm sure it'll...and then she gives Emily a thumbs up. "I'll just leave it there." Because, well, that was a good explanation!

    "Sounds like a vine." 2B agrees offhandedly on the topic of dimensional storms.
    9S pauses briefly, rubbing at the back of his head with a chuckle. "Eheh heh... 2B, the human totally likes me. That's pretty cool, huh?"
    But then the silver-haired android purses her lips into a thin line. "Advice? I'm listening."
    It takes him a second, but 9S rallies, "Anyway, this is a pretty dangerous place- I mean the whole planet is kind of a warzone. We should probably get you someplace safe...er... Safer." Safety is relative when it comes to Earth, after all.

Ace looks around. "Yeah, I'm almost out of Nitro-9." Okay. Well. This is Earth in another *timeline*. She can get behind that concept easy enough.

Emily nods. "I mean, I could take you over to the vine, I know a few places to get a bite to eat the next few worlds over," she says. "There's a great ice cream spot on a Branch where you can actually see this world's Blossom."

It takes her a moment to respond to 2B. But when she does, she actually sounds serious for once. "I'm probably just ... talking out my ass, since I was built as a general-purpose civilian model and you were made for war," she says, "but ... I think you'd find life easier to deal with if you learned to relax a little bit."

There's a swirl of silvery glitter, and then ... she's in the shape of a lavender-skinned demon with four arms and hair so black it looks like a rip in space or a graphical glitch, dressed in a neon-pink T-shirt with the text 'I'll Stop Wearing Pink When They Invent A Darker Color' and white shorts. "Rigidly forcing yourself into the same shape your whole life ... probably isn't healthy for those of us with human and humanlike intelligence, y'know?"

    "I'm going to assume Nitro-9 is some kind of old world explosive." 9S says. "Judging by the explosions we heard earlier.
    But 2B... 2B is silent, regarding Emily for a long moment with a thin-lipped stare.
    "I relax." She says curtly. It might be a surprising, albeit non-convincing answer from an android built for nothing but combat. "Pod has a fishing function."
    Pod, being the floating apparatus hovering behind her, speaks up.
    "Note: Fishing subroutines were designed to locate important mission relevant items or equipment submerged in water, not actual fish."
    "It still catches actual fish." 9S points out.
    "We'll stay behind to clear this area of Machine Lifeforms while you escort her to the vine." 2B adds on.

Ace shakes her head at the androids. "Make that, I like both of them. It's always nice to meet AIs that aren't insane, evil, or excessively subservient." She then turns to Emily, who is now a demon. "Ooookay."

Emily nods. "It's just ..."

She sends the two androids a radio message: 'I'm still sorting myself out after Simone. I don't wanna see you guys snapping.'

She shrugs. "Take care out there, will ya?" she says.

She recovers her smile as she turns back to Ace. Yep, she's looking all amused again. "I'm technically an AI myself," she says. "I'm a Nyx-model Eudaemon, a shapeshifting techno-magical being created to serve my world's Masters." She pauses. "... who went extinct immediately before I was activated, so it's kind of eh." She shrugs. "So, does ice cream sound good?"

"Ice cream always sounds good, as long as it's not linberry flavor." Whatever that means. "I'm human," Ace adds, without any actual hesitation. If it doesn't come up it won't come up, right?

Emily smiles and nods, and turns around and starts trudging through the city. "The place has all kinds of ice cream flavors," she says cheerfully. "And great floats, too, I was trying pretty much all of 'em a couple days ago." No need to mention that she was indulging her sweet tooth in a desperate attempt to blot out the memory of a particularly horrific Machine Lifeform ...

Ace follows after the eudemon. "Are you addicted to ice cream?" she quips. I mean, there are worse things. "And that's fine. I just don't like linberry because it reminds me of *working* at an ice cream place." Does she need to explain more?

Emily shrugs. When you have four arms, there's a lot more to shrug. "I just developed a sweet tooth since I started wandering the World Tree a couple three months ago," she says. She shoots Ace a grin. "The halcyon remnant where I'm from is as big a dump as this place."

She pauses, then looks around, then skyward. "Hang on a tick," she says. With a wave of two of her hands, she opens a staticky portal which seems to lead to a nearby rooftop, and steps through. "Okay, there's the Factory," she says, pointing to a darker brown building at the edge of the coast. "I think we can get to the Vine in a few short hops of my dimensional fields."

She grins back at Ace. "Unless you wanna try flying."

"Oh, this isn't a dump. A dump is some place where nothing every happens and everyone is half asleep." A pause. "I can't fly under my own power." Not disappointed there. Not many sentients *can*, after all.

Emily's grin widens. "Oh, I figured, not many humans can fly," she says playfully. "But I can change into something more conducive to giving you a lift." She probably doesn't mean 'change into' as in changing her clothes.

"Up to you." Emily doesn't seem like the type to drop her. And this is an interesting adventure. Hopefully she'll get put back in her own world, at some point, but... Ace grins at the robot.

Emily stretches with all four of her arms, even though they're made of nanomachines and this doesn't actually do anything, and then in a swirl of silvery glitter, she transforms into a sort of hoverbike-looking vehicle with stirrups and a seatbelt. "Hop on!" she says, the headlight flickering in time with her words. She still has the same voice, too.

Ace knows bikes. Even weird ones. She hops on, clinging on properly. "Woot!" Oh yeah, this is definitely fun.

The seatbelt and stirrups buckle themselves up, and then Emily simply takes flight, charging through the air towards the factory!

... A small group of Machine Lifeforms rises up above the rooftops off to one side, their stocky bodies riding atop cylindrical hovercraft setups with a gun-turret setup.

"... Well, that was inevitable," Emily says dryly. "Wanna try outrunning 'em, or should I drop a capacitor seal and shoot back?"

"Running seems good. I have *one* more stick of Nitro-9 left." She's clinging on, still grinning.

Emily snickers. "Then here we go!" She lets out a yell of exertion as she speeds up a bit faster!

The machine lifeforms fire large but slow-moving pink and purple projectiles. None of them can quite match Emily's speed as she swoops back down towards a ruined bridge. She buzzes a small group of short and stocky machines with legs like wind-up toys which don't really react, and then comes in for a landing just past the end of the bridge, right next to the factory.

The stirrups and seatbelt unbuckle themselves. "All right, here we are!"

Ace hops off. "Sometimes running *is* the best course of action. I assume those things are building more of themselves?"

Emily transforms back into the human form she had before, except still with the Black 3.0 hair and four arms. "Yep," she says. "They were apparently created by aliens who invaded, but no one has any idea where they are. I'm told the surviving couple hundred thousand humans are hiding out on the moon."

Once again, she stretches. With a wave of her hands, a staticky portal opens up, but this one is impossible to see through. "Anyway," she says. "Next stop: ice cream!"

"Hrm...eh." Ace looks at the portal, shrugs, and walks right on through it. Apparently, this girl is either crazy or very used to weirdness.

Ace's vision becomes pure static; almost immediately, she would find herself on a sidewalk in a bustling city.

"And here we are!" says Emily from behind her, closing the dimensional field. "Y'know, Ace, I'm getting the feeling you're gonna like it in the World Tree."

"Maybe. But somebody's going to come looking for me, sooner or later." Ace sounds like she believes that said person is likely to be able to find her, too.

Emily raises her eyebrows, but doesn't comment at first as she starts walking down the street. Then she says, "So, this place is what's known as a Branch, a world which is sufficiently integrated into the World Tree that you can see the Vines leading elsewhere."

She gestures to the sky; a few other worlds are visible. They aren't quite portals; it's more that sections of other worlds seem to be sort of extruding into the space. One of them seems to show the ruined city they just left; it's like a small chunk of city is hovering there, but the edges clearly weren't visible on the inside.

"The world we just left is a Blossom," she says. "Not quite as well-integrated, but it's still easy to get in and out via Vines." She pauses. "And at the opposite end of the scale from Branches, we have Buds. Next to impossible to get into 'em, and only occasionally do individuals accidentally stumble out via vanishingly-rare ephemeral Vines."

She turns back to Ace. "So who do you think is gonna come looking for you?" she asks conversationally.

Uh-oh.

"If there's anybody in the multi-verse who can find one of those vines and follow it, it's him," Ace says, simply. "Or...well...but the other person I'm thinking of was dealt with. I hope." She frowns. She's still worried.

Emily grins and nods as they reach the ice cream shop. "Could be, could be," she says. "Anyway. You ready for ice cream?"