World Tree MUSH

    On 2B's world, there are quite a lot of ancient places that are extremely dangerous. Machine lifeforms or other hazards make them so. This one is an interesting sight, that of a tall building that has collapsed against another one that was built against a cliff. It's some interesting-looking architecture, slightly unstable, and... not all that active with machine lifeforms. It had in fact been deemed relatively cleared out. Relatively.

    It is certainly not the sort of place where multiple battle androids should go missing, unless there is a hidden danger.

    Yet that is exactly what has been happening. Whether invited by 2B, or simply investigating a strangely quiet area in this post-apocalyptic world, or even having picked up a job from the Gardeners to investigate, anyone arriving at these coordinates will find the ruined city about to be pretty devoid of anything but pests. It's quiet, and the lonely road running right up to that giant fallen tower is devoid of anything except, some hundred meters away, the shattered remnants of one of the Machine Lifeforms. A small one, but one that is not overgrown with rust and vegetation.

    Normally stationed offworld with 9S, the only reason 2B even knows this is going on is because... Well...
    *BEEP BEEP!*
    With a twittering buzz from her Pod, a communications channel direct from YoRHa command opens up in a hologram screen, revealing the veiled face of a younf lady, with her silvery hair done up in two braids. The operator dabs at her eyes and speaks with a wavering voice.
    "O-operatoe 6O to 2B... It's time for your regularly scheduled contact..." She says, barely able to restrain a sob.
    "... 2B here, what's wrong?" The battle android asks, a slight and faintly concerned break in her usual professional tone.
    "Oh..." The Operator unit sighs. "There's this Operator I kind of liked but... Wh-when I asked her out..." 6O starts to explain, voice quivering. Before she just breaks into bawling, burying her face in her hands. "SHE TURNED ME DOWN!" It takes her a second to recover. "H... Honestly 2B..." SNIFF... "I don't know how I'm supposed to go on living!"
    There is a long beat of awkward silence from 2B before she rallies.
    "... I am definitely not the person to discuss this with..."
    "Mmmmf... I don't think I can stand spending one more day in this bunker..."
    "You leaving would be bad for me. It would affect mission efficiency."
    "A-are... Are you saying you need me, 2B?"
    "All model B combat units require the assistance of an operator... So..."
    "Oh 2B~~~." 6O brightens up so fast, as 2B clears her throat awkwardly.
    "... Do you have a mission for me or not?"

    HOURS LATER:

    2B and 9S are back on their home Earth, once again amid the rubble of worn down ancient ruined buildings. They didn't come alone, either.
    "This is where 21B, 37H, and 66D sent their last transmissions from before going missing." 2B says, ornate white katana already in hand.
    9S walks alongside the battle android, hands resting on the back of his head in a carefree manner. "It's kind of creepy. They all transmitted a ton of garbage data before they went missing. It couldn't be used to... Rebuild them at all."

    This is definitely not a nice place, and Athena thought her own world was bad. She's been to 2B's before, but this is the first time she's had the chance to 'admire' the world itself. A world that is falling apart and dying, in her opinion... much like her own, but in a different way. The mix of alien and human tech has her looking around with a lot of interest, but she is ready for battle. Powered combat suit, high-powered laser rifle, slugthrower sidearm, and an extendable lance for melee backup. All mundane gear, but nice mundane gear.

    Alert for the concept of an ambush, Athena is still listening to the conversation anyway. A chance contact with the androids that she'd met before has her wandering this way. "I've heard of this happening on my world with sleeve backups. Actually, it sounds similar to what happens when a Reborn like myself tries to make a backup. It just comes out garbage, even though the stacks work fine."

Ash looked at the desolation around himself. The armor cladding of hi warframe glinted in any ambiant light marking it in yet another way it differs from the local machine-life. Ash shook his headwithin his ship's transferrence pod as he again checked his weapons, more as a habit than anything else. The cloth-like strap danglign from the back of the warfram'es head rustled in the breeze as Ash jogged closer. 

"Anything yet Ordis?" Ash frowned at the sensorum he was experiancing through the warframe. "I realize this is supposed to be a wastelad of a world but... "

"ther'es no life here," Ordis helpfully provided the rest of the sentement both apparently felt. "Even on Old Earth there were sounds of Things going on after clearing Grineer patroles. Here ther'es.... Nothing."

Ash's warframe stretched as he looked skyward. "Getting any useful signals?" He stopped,frame going still as the lights that might have been eyes, or perhaps simple decoration dotting its face dimmed. He stood there simply looking at the desolation and the decay of what was around him, trying to picture what this place may have been once.

"Two signals, setting waypoint now." Ordis's voice was soft as markers flashed across Ash'svision.

LATER

"Oprator I advise against this..." Ordis's voice cautioned as Ash slowly, his frame shimmering into invisibility as he moved from cover. He spoke no words and intended to not get within immediate range of 2B's sword. He was just curious on how close he could get to the pair before they noticed. Yea this was totally not a stupid idea at all. Totally not reckless and absolutely well thought out...

Then Ordis radio'd both YoRHa units, "Operator Ash is at your current location attepting to be... Playful." Annoyance positively dripped from that last word, "Ordis requests your patiance in the matter."

then Ash saw Athena and his warframe's invisibility ceased, shimmering into view behind the two YoRHA androids, "I'll have to trust your word since this is a touch out of my usual depth beyond 'missing persons that need rescuing.' His warframe straightened, attempting to look like he hadn't, in fact, been trying to sneak up on a sword wielding combat-droid in the middle of a hostile zone. "I'm open to suggestions."

Emily is currently prancing across the rooftops, and occasionally stabbing hostile flying Machine Lifeforms with various ad hoc swords, while listening to party music she downloaded in Dante's world. She's currently in the form of a lavender-skinned demoness with four arms, six glowing purple eyes in vertical rows, long pointy elf-ears, and hair so black it looks like a graphical glitch or a rip in space; she's dressed in a pink crop top with the text "I'll Stop Wearing Pink When They Invent A Darker Color", red booty shorts with text on the backside consisting of an insane AI's diatribe about how much it hates humanity, and white sneakers. She looks entirely out of place here; which is to say, she looks like Emily Nyx.

She peers down and catches sight of a few familiar faces. She dematerializes her weapons and starts floating down towards them, and transmits a message: << *prerecorded radio static SFX* Incoming! >>

She lands, slow-motion, in a five-point crouch. "Hey guys," she says, waving with her other two hands, before she hops to her feet in a way that seems to defy Newton's laws of motion. "What's up?" Seems she isn't in-the-know about what's been going on. But she does seem to get slightly more subdued as she turns to face 2B ...

>> SUMMARY[Emily Nyx] >> https://tmblr.co/ZedDuw2ggEVcC + https://youtu.be/-wa62chy8dk

    Had indeed been picking jobs, trying to get experience for a certain, small pink and brown bear that is at the moment just waddling next Luke, tiny limbs flailing at the bow whenever Luke offers to try to pick it up and give it a ride, one might think it's offended at the idea of being carried!.

    Flanking Luke's other side is a far more impressive figure, it looks like a tiger!... if tigers were... mostly round... and had a lighting bolt mark on their chest, the big cat sniffing and scanning the area near them, small electric sparks jumping from it's fur as the trio advance down the ruined city, they are not being subtle but then again, it's just a kid and 2 'animals'.

    There aren't a lot of hostile machine lifeforms here to hunt... now. It's eerily quiet, and that little detail, losing the steady stream of opponents Emily had been finding, may have helped lead her to this group. A few other damaged machine lifeforms, now inert, litter the streets and sidewalks. Most look like they've been cleaved, much like 2B would do. All but one of them, which is up against a lamppost. That one appears to have suffered a strange piercing attack, and the hole above it shows where it had been pinned to the post.

    And it is distressingly quiet, even now. No sign of hostility or what had killed them... or of the android bodies. Footprints from one of them leading from some spilled oil though. The footprints fade as the oil wore off on the ground, but it shows that an android was here at some point.

    "Huhhhh." 9S muses, turning his head to glance at Athena. "So where you're from, humans can back themselves up too? Except for you 'Reborn' types?" He asks, genuinely curious.
    It's 2B and 9S Pods that spot Ash before the Androids do, turning on the invisible source of movement and warming up their gatling cannons with a low whirring spin.
    "CAUTION:" Pod 042 speaks in its authoritative masculine voice. "Unidentified signature appraching in stealth configuration."
    he androids are instantly on the defensive until they get the message from Ordis.
    "That's not funny." 2B says chidingly.
    "Oh come on, 2B he was just trying to have a little fun." 9S says defensively, holding out a fistbump for Ash.
    2B frowns.
    Then comes Emily. 2B elects to kill two birds with one stone in explaining the situation to the Warframe pilot and... Whatever Emily is.
    Seriously what IS she?
    "Several YoRHa units have gone missing in this area. This is a search and rescue operation until we can find them or their bodies." She says matter of factly.
    But then they come upon the destroyed machines.
    "An android passed this way alright." 9S says, Pod 145 scanning the downed machines.
    "Alert: Footprints located." The pod says, voice smooth and feminine.
    "We may as well see where the ycould have gone from here." 2B decides.

Ash tilted his head at the pod's identification of him. Within his transferrence pod he mouthed' How in the Void did....' And trailed off, bumping fists with 9S as the situation was lain out.

Then Ordis's cracked glass cube hologram appeared just over the warframe's right shoulder, "If I may... What are the trigger conditions for data backups to be sent? Coud there be a reasonable chance that this is a case of where missing units are being stored is preventing clear data transmission rather than their termination?"

Ash nodded and gestured to Ordis's Hologram, who's light tinged from blue to violate at hte sudden attention. Was.... Ordis 'Blushing'? At any rate the hologram winked out leaving Ash to shrug helplessly.

    Twitch. Athena says nothing about the group joining them, initially. She's still scanning the area. "Looks like they at least cleaned things up for us," she points out. At last she lowers her rifle barrel so she looks less ready to shoot everything. "A little weird tech, a little brute force... looks like we might have an edge against whatever is causing this."

    9S asks an important question. "They can, but bodies are expensive," she points out. "Downloading to a synth can be... damaging to the psyche, so they have to clone new bodies. This can get pretty tough to keep up with if a lot die at once. Not to mention that actual death is a lot more rare. It's causing problems. Not sure why my kind can't back up, but it would probably be irresponsible to anyway."

    She looks at Emily, then Luke and Ash. "I know you're all capable, or at least Luke can use his little monsters. So just stick together, right? I'll have Owl scout ahead." Little Owl, the drone, detaches to take a peek further ahead, while Athena goes to look at the damage on the various machines.

Emily shrugs grandiosely. -- There's a silvery scar under her upper left arm where a Machine Lifeform got in a lucky scratch. "I can handle search and rescue," she says. She waggles a finger. "I do find it suspicious that there's literally nobody else here, android or Machine Lifeform, but ..." She glances around at the others present. "... I do like our odds."

She considers Ash's question. "Before my world was reduced to its halcyon remnant, there were all kinds of backup options, whether you were a Eudaemon or a Master," she remarks. "Exactly zero of them function today, of course." She pauses. "Or whatever passes for 'today' in the World Tree's inconsistent flow of time. But you know what I mean."

Athena simply gets a quadruple thumbs-up, and then she peers down at the impaled Machine Lifeform. "... 2B, 9S, is that the kind of thing that could've been caused by standard YoRHa weaponry?" she says. "I mean as far as YoRHa goes, I've only really interacted with you two, so I dunno how anyone else is outfitted."

    The young trainer had arrived a bit... late, mostly due to lack of proper transportation, eventually resigning on riding on Dynamo's back, while the tiger carried the struggling pink bear in it's maw like a cub, to the displeasure of the small creature, flailing fiercely with stubby limbs. He arrives in time to spot the familiar faces already planning, "What did I miss?" he calls, as he climbs down poor Dynamo, "Thank you." he tells the tiger. 

    Amusingly, the one that took offense on 'little monsters' was the pink bear, chirping at Athena and trying to look menacing while dangling like a cub. "What exactly is our goal here, just finding those... things?" he asks, pointing Dynamo to settle down. "Dynamo is good at tracing electric things... I bet there is a term but... he can sense if electric devices or electronics are nearby by.. the fields I think? I know the professor tried to explain me that.". "I'm quite capable of staying safe!", cue Dynamo rolling his eyes, before the trio approach Athena an dthe rest.

    "Data transmission is usually handled manually and whenever an android feels like it." 9S explains. "I manage data for both 2B and myself, so I like to keep the uploads frequent in case anything happens. But sometimes androids just like living on the edge and don't upload frequently, or the bandwith down here is bad in places and you just can't." He answers for Ordis.
    "Spears are as common an armament among YoRHa units as swords. I can use one if I felt like it." 2B answers Emily on the topic of the pierced machine. "But that doesn't look like the work of a spear."
    Then she finally looks over towards Luke and his pokemon. There's a definite frown on her face at how young he appears, but she opts to not comment, rather more focusing on the animals with him with a momentary silent curiosity.
    But her focus returns on the mission as Athena sends Little Owl on ahead, "Pod, follow Little Owl." She orders.
    "Affirmative." Pod 042 acknowledges and floats on after.

    The piercing was not fine. It had furrows, as if flanges or barbs went in. Same with the penetration to the lamppost. But there's no trauma from the barbs being torn out. It's as if the tip melted away... but it is very fine, like an arrowhead...

    Little Owl and Pod detect no lifesigns. No hint of heat signatures either. Nor electrical. Pod will perhaps detect a flicker of magic, before both scout drones will see movement. A shadowy form darting from one rooftop to the next... before stopping and resolving into something vaguely humanoid. A vaguely humanoid shape drawing a bow.

    And a whistling, fantastically high-speed arrow screaming toward Ash, flickering and solidifying into a solid projectile in flight, more like a bullet than an arrow.

"Easy there Stufful," Ash's voice was soft and clearly directed at hte pink puffball thing that was making annoyed squeaky noises, "She didn't mean anything by it." Then his voice grew a touchharder, more business like. "Besides, we're here to work, not bicker. Your job is to keep Luke here in one piece while he helpsus find these missing people." 

Ash would pull a boxy rifle off of his frame's back and held it at n easy ready position, making sure to keep the barrel aimed away from anyone in the group. He hada thought, but he was too new to this world, had too many questions that would take too long to explain if anything startedto pop up. Instead he focused on the basics; 'This is my group,' 'that is a dead thing that got that way by weaponsthat aren't standard issue for local friendlies,' 'there is no clear indication if targets are still alive or not,' and 'That's an arrow headed at my face.'

Excuse me what?

Ash's sword was drawn and already in position to deflect the arrow, assuming it were actually a physical thing that could be deflected. Even as this happened his left hand had already brought the boxy assault rifle up and aimed at the direction the arrow came from. "Ordis give me a trajectory on that!"

"Impossible Operator," Ordis's voice tinged with annoyance, "It... MaTERialIZED oUT Of THin AIR," the cephelon's voice briefly glitching, seething with anger, "too many variables to calculate with certanty."

Ash's eyes narrowed as the trigger squeezed. He had no sighting on who or what mighth ave fired on him, but his pride disallowed letting the attack go unanswered, even if it was for nothing.

That is assuming the arrow was in fact diflected, or even if it didn't, the warframe's shields wouldn't soak the impact.

    2B is still examining the fallen machine lifeform when Pod detects something.
    "WARNING: Magical energy source detected." Pod 042 announces.
    "... Magic?" 2B says curiously.
    And then an arrow goes lancing for Ash. She doesn't need to tell him to move, he's already in motion, but 2B grips her katana at the ready.
    "Pod! Engage!" She orders, while 9S takes cover and 042 sprouts what looks like a miniature mini-gun, which begins to rev up, unleashing a torrent of hard light bullets at the signs of movement- a deluge of fire peppering at the myterious figure on the roof.

    "LOOK OUT!"

    Athena's spacial awareness lets her know the arrow is coming. Maybe not soon enough to dodge or help Ash dodge, but her warrior's instincts compel her to shout a warning anyway. Little Owl will fire off a quick but weak laser shot, while Athena dives for cover behind a crumbling wall, trying to get a bead on the location of the shooter.

    Her rifle comes up as soon as she does, letting Owl feed her some coordinates. It's a distance and while her rifle has the range, the quick shots she fires are more hoping for luck than a precision kill. Any real warrior would be moving the moment their position was compromised.

    "Looks like we found at least whomever got that machine. Is this one one of yours, 9S, 2B?"

    Ash's words seem to appease the grumbling puffball, who nods, seems to take a deep breath and waddles back to Luke's side, round ears twitching as it starts to check around the boy. Dynamo seemed curious on the drone and mechanical owl taking flight, moving to the edge of the small group.

    Luke certainly jumps back, suitably startled, "Where did that come from?!." he says, losing his cool for a second, while the pink bear moves even closer, trying to nudge the kid towards whatever might be closest to 'cover'. 
    Dynamo was taking a few steps following the two drones, so he was in a good spot to feel the projectile fly right next to him, the electric type growling loudly, suddenly bursting with electricity, the energy arcing around it for a few moments as it snarls, glancing around, ready to blast in any direction that seemed even remotely suspicious, glancing back at Luke for more orders.

Emily smiles grimly at 2B, crosses her upper arms, and puts her lower arms on her hips. "Uh-huh."

And then she whirls around at the sudden arrow, and everyone around her goes on varying levels of offensive and defensive. And Dynamo just gets impotently furious.

"... Hmm." She peers at the distant figure, eyes focused for a moment. "Should be close enough ..." A silver falchion materializes in a swirl of silvery glitter, grasped in her upper two hands; this is followed by three golden bolts of energy appearing over her head, hovering in place ...

... before a staticky portal opens up in front of her, leading to a point next to the shadowy figure -- hopefully far enough away that she's safe from friendly fire. And so Emily leaps through, firing the bolts forward. "THINK FAST!"

    The arrow is fast, and the katana can't deflect it... but does strip the fletching, sending it careening off the shield, instead of a direct hit. It embeds HARD into the pavement below, before vanishing in a hiss and several whisps of cold, bone-chilling smoke. Another arrow is after the first, but this one is off-target, whistling well past 2B's head and shattering the concrete behind her instead.

    The bullets streaming toward the shadowy figure, and the laser blasts, are already getting him to move just like Athena guessed. Emily gets a better look though. He looks... human, just faded and washed out. All shades of gray with little color, but fearlessly leaping from atop a building and twisting around. Three arrows flick out at once from the bow of the strange man, two of them intercepting Emily's bolts, while the third is streaking toward her.

    All this suppression fire has an effect though. Dodging 2B and Athena together put him in a spot where he couldn't dodge Emily's, and the bolt blasts... through him? His outline turns fuzzy for a moment and there's a pained look, so it seemed to have done something. Then he crashes atop a ruined car below and rolls off, drawing his bow up again to fire a shot toward Athena this time, though with her behind cover she just has to keep her head down. The fall has put him within sight of Luke's pokemon, though, if he wants to get on the offense.

    He's /eerily/ silent though.

Ash grunted as he sheathed his katana. Within the transferrence pod Ash grunted at the soft blue-white crackle of shield energy as the emitters around the damage flared to compensate and reenforce the new weak point. 

His warframe looked around, rifle at the ready as his attention flicked between allies and then where the shadow man was, if it were him he'd have gone in with backup if at all possible. 

So he threw down a pellet of energy, causing smoke to billow around him. It was a matter of will and extra patter for him to expand the invisibility effect past his warframe to the rest of the group around him. Sadly he couldn't cover Emily, and it would only last a handfull of seconds, but he had no better ideas on disrupting followups attack.

>> GAME >> Ash spends an Edge for: Making the rest of the party invisible.

    "Bows are not standard YoRHa equipment." 2B points out, sliding behind a crumbling pillar to make herself less of a target. "And even if they were, opening fire on another YoRHa unit usually means either infection by a Logic Virus, or a deserter trying to escape."
    Apparently there are androids that would choose desertion over the constant war. But 2B's expression hardens.
    "The penalty for desertion is death, so no. Probably not one of ours." 9S answers Athena from where he remains hidden and does not come out.
    It's a good thing 2B took cover, because when she peeks out and that arrow goes flying by her head, she darts back behind the pillar for a breath. Before she throws herself around her pillar, hurling herself in a full on sprint as soon as Ash renders her vanished from sight, brandishing Virtuous Contract. Her intent is pretty simple.
    Can this mystery figure continue to run if he doesn't have legs?
    2B aims to find out.

    The arrow serves its purpose in keeping Athena behind the wall. If she's drawing fire, her allies can focus on the opponent. She instructs Little Owl to dive behind something and hide, the drone too fragile for direct combat, and then takes a deep breath to sense things with her spatial awareness, feeding the movements into her thoughts.

    Ash's invisible curtain gives her a few precious moments to do more. "Break and try to surround him. Even the best archer can't handle a group spread around him." She waits until the very last moment before darting away from Ash, so she can use the invisibile camo for cover as long as possible before finding a ruined car to duck behind and brace her aim against. Let's see who they're fighting.

    Between his Stufful's insistent nudges, and the warnings from the others, the boy ends up trying to take cover, glancing over one edge to try to catch up what is going on!. He barely pays attention to Ash's rather smart maneouver, noticing the mistery figure landed just next to Dynamo, the boy pointing at the curious figure and calling a single word. "Shock wave!". 

    Dynamo's form glows bright with power again, releasing yellow lightning bolts from its body into the air. The lightning bolts form into a light blue ball of energy that grows quickly for a moment, before it fires a light blue beam of electric power at the mystery figure.

Emily dodges to the side, but she's just a hair too slow, and it clips one of her upper arms, sending up a burst of silvery glitter and leaving another scar. "AUGH!" She holds a lower hand up and the glitter returns to her body, before the wound vanishes in another swirl of glitter as she moves the damaged nanomachines under the surface of her skin. Which is basically sweeping it under the rug, but she's got an aesthetic to maintain.

Still, she does get a good look at what happens when her bolt hits him. "Hmm."

She glides backward into the portal, and then ... furrows her brow as, for a split second, it looks like she is now the only one there. "Uh." But she can hear them, and Athena provides an objective now. "Oh! On it!"

She rises into the air and surges forward, intending on providing cover from another direction, and hopefully helping to cut off at least one escape route.

    Surrounding is a good tactic. The archer draws the bow, but hesitates for a split second. That's enough. Dynamo manages to slip in a blast that throws the archer back against the crumpled car, making him shudder silently while the car creaks. The image firms up... and he nods, sighing silently before the figure blurs and vanishes into a mist of smoke, blown away into the wind.

    Either he was 'killed' in some way, or gave up.

    This wasn't all for naught though. Behind the car is one of the corpses of a Yorha, a Hunter model. Pierced through the chest by an arrow, it looks like... but with strange scores on the body too, as if pieces had been torn off by a few large insects.

Ash saw the figure disintegrate then immediately dismissed the threat it had posed. Instead he pivoted, turning the opposite direction, gun heald ready. 

The invisibility around the group would fade, as if smoke blewaway revealing them again to the wider world. Within Ash's transferrence pod he frowned, "Ordis give me a target." He hated the idea of somethign sending out moe complex variations of his smoke clones to attack them. Someone able to pump that much power into essentially disposable constructs could wear them down without risking itself.

Everyone save for Luke, and this being more due to his lack of radio gear, would recieve a notification from Ordis that they were now visible.

Ah would then focus on the YoRHa body, "9S, what here would make those marks? I want to know if the body was scavanged or if we can expect whatever created that to send more... exotic forms after us."

Emily's gaze shifts to the android as Ash calls attention to it. "Guess we ... uh ..." She unconsciously takes a step back. "We ... uh ..." Her head jerks back as an expression of fear and disgust crosses her face, and then she turns away altogether. "... gah, what is with me all of a sudden ..."

Mounting alarm is visible on her features. "What the ..." She looks around as if expecting some attack, then back at the android corpse, and then recoils. "... nrgghhh ... why am I thinking of ... of Simone ..."

    Athena breathes out as she sees the construct disperse... but only after getting a good look at it. It makes her spine tingle. When she rises from cover, it's with some wariness. "Philoctetes..."

    Realizing people may not know whothat is, she clarifies. "A hero from the Trojan war. Archer, obviously. Survived the war and had a bit of trouble going home. I didn't help him like I helped Odysseus though... but I don't think this was a grudge."

    She looks around. "Everyone okay? Emily, are you all right?" Athena frowns... not sure if she should be concerned, just because this was weird for what she knew of Emily.

Luke Gray blinks a bit as the 'enemy' fades into smoke, he was quite sure Dynamo was not... hitting it THAT hard. Still, he comes out of cover, trying to make sense o fthe situation, "What was that?, some kind of substitute... a double?" he says softly, moving closer to Athena and Ash, just in case, while Dynamo slowly moves to the spot the 'creature' was laying on, sniffing around as if trying to track it. When Athena asks that, Luke is quick to reply, "I'm fine!", while Dynamo gives an affirmative noise of it's own.

    When they find the... damaged machine he looks back at Ash, "That's one of the androids we are looking for... isn't it?".

    And just like that he's gone... 2B skids to a halt with a dispassionate grunt as the figure vanishes.
    But then there's a grim find behind the car, as 9S comes out from where he had been in cover.
    "37H." 2B says grimly, identifying the Hunter unit, expression hard and undreadable.
    "Eugh..." 9S says as he surveys the body.
    "Assessment:" Pod 153 offers. "The body appears partially consumed."
    That hangs in the air for a moment as the Androids both look to Emily.
    "Emily?" 2B says first, with what might be a surprising level of concern for the normally ice cold android.
    "Are you... okay?" 9S asks, before looking to Athena.
    "Whoah, like. A human hero? From way way way back? Huh."

    Consumed. Athena makes a face, kneeling down next to the body. Then her grimace turns to worry. "I think this is my tech. These are consistent with what VN drones use when drawing raw material for self-replication. Really advanced and expensive tech, even for my world... and a Greek hero..."

    Sigh. "This was probably Persephone or Hades. We fought a shade."

Ash frowned inside his transferrence pod as his warframe knelt by the partially eaten android, "Even the grineer wouldn't do... This." Ash's voice was soft. Infested would, but they're mostly animalistic anyway and consume to live/live t oconsume/yadayada.

Then a look to Emily, making mental note to ask after that name sometime that wasn't here and now.

Inside the transferrence pod Ash frowned as his warframe looked to Athena, "Happen to have Kore's number? I would like to have... WORDS... with her if at all possible." There was a careful neutrality to his voice when he spoke. He had little idea what asking Athena to do meant as his own relationship was family was... well... best left undescribed. "...still angry about her dog by the way..." Stupid mutt jumped the gun and broke formation turning a quick in and out into a mess.

    "Oh man." 9S says, running a hand through his hair, exasperated. Greek gods. Shades. Devoured androids.
    "I'm sorry, someone is going to have to explain to us why someone from offworld would want to kill YoRHa androiods." 2B demands point blank.
    "Because this is going to be a nightmare to explain to command." 9S says, finishing her sentiment.

Emily shakes her head in response to 2B and Athena. "Ughhhhh, shhhh ..." She glances at Luke. "...oot. Ahahahaaaa ...." She moves around so that the body isn't within her field of vision, then takes a deep breath. "I think that's gonna be a 'no'," she says, transforming in a swirl of silvery glitter into her "default" form of a woman with auburn hair and robotic eyes. Her outfit remains unchanged, though.

She looks between Athena, Ash, 2B, and 9S. "... Welp. I have ... half a theory. But ... right now my thoughts are the opposite of 'in order', so I can't really ... put anything into words ..." This last seems to be directed mostly at 2B and 9S. They know what's up ...