World Tree MUSH

    Boy oh boy do we ever have an airship! 

    https://i.imgur.com/rGTi3qQ.png

    Now we've gotten our hands on the Kaguyahime we've sacrificed a little of Bonne Bon's precious remaining time to find out about the particulars of it being armed, more specifically we've either brought what weapons it does already have online or done our best to acquire some more of those nano-disruptors from Emily's world and whatever anti-nanoprobe weapons we can strap on board, and we've got people to man the cannons and Astra to take the helm.

    And a good thing too, because we've got a problem to resolve as well! While we were working on making sure the whole deal was shipshape and Bristol fashion, the nanoprobes were insidiously creeping into the Eschaton Machine (and the Roshtonari operating it, too). Now the huge floating citadel has uprooted itself and is starting to hover towards the heart of storm territory. If nothing else we have to bring the thing back under control to rescue the Roshtonari inside, because that's The Right Thing To Do.

    Ask Lotus: she's very big on these kind of gestures. Once again today she's at the bow of the ship, looking at the Eschaton Machine which is now visible in the distance, as the ship closes in on its quarry.

Emily Nyx has taken the form of an auburn-haired woman with glowing yellow eyes, dressed in blue hooded robes with a yellow gear-pattern at the edges and a white cape, sort of matching the color scheme of the ship. She's sitting at the front of the ship, wearing one of the backpack-like nano reclamation units, which resembles an orange backpack-mounted leaf-blower without any vents and looking more high-tech, with a holographic user interface above the nozzle; she managed to acquire two more among the halcyon remnant of the world she came from.

"Like, I don't want to say these are dangerous to use, in and of themselves," she says, "but ... none of 'em are in good shape. All we can do is hope that they'll work for as long as we need 'em." She shrugs. "Anyway, whoever wants to use one, you just point and click, basically. The one I had before handled the nanoprobes we're dealing with just fine."

>> SUMMARY[Emily Nyx] >> Offering nano-reclamation units for others to use.

Astra's not too happy with the idea of helping the Roshtonari but they're going to need to do so stop the nanoprobes. She's managed to get the Kaguyahime into the air but she's still not quite sure what all of the controls do it. This wasn't the time to test random buttons though.

    Nort and Scar are both familiar with technology of varying levels. This tech base is odd to them, but not beyond the ability of the pair to comprehend. Without any hands aside from the limited time he gets to use his telekinetic arm, Scar isn't really going to be doing much with this tech though. That leaves Nort to make sure things are ship shape and to man any weapons.

    "Thanks," he says curtly to Emily, running a hand along the railing he's next to. The man in power armor's expression is hidden, but he's never been one to express himself needlessly anyway.

    "I'll see what I can do to prepare."

    You know who knows nothing about nanoprobes?
    Not a thing about Roshtonari?
    Nothing about Bonne Bon and its plight?
    That would be the littlest stowaway.
    Hidden in the Kaguyahime's vents, hijacking a rogue power flow and hoping no one will notice it being routed to her charging cradle, a certain Altines shinki has, after travelling as far away from her homeworld as possible, somehow ended up stowing away aboard the airship.
    "Huh wha...?"
    Needless to say, when the airship takes off and starts GOING SOMEWHERE, it wakes her up.
    There's a small scuttle in the vents as she peeks down through a grille to try and figure out just what exactly is going on.
    "Oh shoot..."

    "Nice threads, as always," Lotus says, then covers her mouth in a sort of giggle. "Threads, that's what they call it, right? I love slang."

    "We're going to need to repel boarders pretty soon, but I can send a quick message to Vanileth to give us covering fire with the weapons this thing's currently got. Means he'll be stuck in the helm, but I'll buy him an essence goodie later to make up for it."

    Lotus strains her eyes. She keeps thinking as if she should have a charm for this sort of scenario she's forgotten about. I always remember having better eyesight. As of right now she can see several specks on the horizon which could be nano entities of virtually any size, given the difference in distance. "Remember the last time we fought these things during the storm," she advises.

    "How are you doing so far, Astra? Steady as she goes," she calls out to her communication device assuming Astra's at the helm, splitting her attention between the radio and the horizon. "You're doing great so far, just maybe give it a little more speed. Put your pedal down," she suggests glibly.

    She makes sure Scar's ready to go and has his own nano-leafblower comfortable for him to use. "We've got enough of these that we can really put a dent in those entities when they get to us."


    The entities, as before, resemble their previous spherical form surrounded by jagged saw teeth, but there are some small differences in form such as some of them having independantly hovering 'rings' or some of them being dodecahedron shaped, but they're all pretty similar to the ones you've faced before.

    https://i.imgur.com/oHM8Y98.jpg

    As the silhouette of the Eschaton Machine fills up the skyline, you get a better look at it. It's speckled with silver like a mouldy loaf of bread, and surrounded by entities. 

    "OK, let's break through the first line and try to board it!" Lotus shouts, as the first wave of soccerball-sized nano entities swoop onto the deck. "Heads up!"

Emily nods to Nort. Then she suddenly looks up at the vent, smiles and winks, then turns back to face forward.

As the nano-entities attack, she floats off the deck, cape flapping in the wind, and starts blasting the nano-entities with the reclamation unit. "So, just to reiterate!" she calls out. "Nano-entities can just repair themselves by moving their component parts around! You need to overwhelm 'em by taking out too many of them for them to function!"

Astra does her best to keep the ship level as she increase the speed. She's too busy to notice Alty above them. "I've never flown anything like this before, I wonder how I know how to do so?" She responses to Lotus. Hopefully the others can take care of the nano entities before they manage to eat there way inside.

    Scar grumbles a little, but the cyborg wolverine is definitely not a fan of these entities. "Working with a bunch of robots and cyborgs to kill nastier robots... this is my life now." He's no stranger to weapons mounted on his body though, and hops up on forelegs to aim and fire, blasting with the nano-disassembler and, immediately after, following it up with a searing blast from the eye-lasers.

    Nort glances up as well, readying his rifle but pausing. Unlike Emily, he doesn't know WHAT sort of robot is in the vent, so he mutters, "That can't be good." Turning about suddenly, the power-armored man reaches up to the vent and just yanks the cover off, without any subtlety to Alty.

    Athena has been handling her own world's stuff, but she hasn't forgotten about the nanocrisis here. Bearing a rifle of her own, she's moving to take up a position with Scar, making a passing comment to him, "Different worlds. You'll have to tell me why you two hate those things so much sometime." The goddess isn't facing Nort, nor is she thinking much about the numerous stuff her spatial awareness is picking up right now. All that is tuned in on the opposing forces headed her way.

    "If we need to break through, it'd be best to concentrate fire so we can open a path for the ship," she states. "Don't worry about the ones coming in from the sides yet. Normally the flanking would worry me, but we just need to run through, right?" Keeping to her own advice, her shots are focused toward the middle, especially trying to thin the herd by finishing off damaged probes.

    Still half-groggy, at least she managed to get most of a charge before waking up. But the littlest stowaway rubs at her scarred eye as she tries to figure out where the airship could just be going.
    "... E-eh?" Did she just get spotted? The wink from Emily makes Alty freeze up and go perfectly still. Maybe if she pretends she's not there, she'll become invisible and Emily will just think she saw things?
    No. No that's not the case as, before she can do anything to get away, Nort reaches up and-- rips away the vent grill while she's still on it.
    "Heeeeeah?!"
    It is the tiniest squeal as the one-foot-tall little android comes tumbling out of the vent and lands with a clattering plop on her backside.
    "Uwahh..." It's a second before she looks up, and she's just staring at Nort for a good beat before the dawning realization hits her. She's been caught and spotted.
    "WAH!"
    Right about then a tiny hologram screen appears above her head. It displays a single character while she looks on the verge of panic:

    !

    "Dssfddfgdds! I surrender, don't dismantle me!"

    "It's either beginner's luck or it was meant to be," Lotus surmises to Astra, before selecting a weapon to use in the incoming clash. She decides to go with a traditional longsword, the kind she can use her other arm to support if needs be but not unwieldy enough for the arm it's fused to to handle it solo. Her forearm disassembles in a whirl of panels and gears before the blade extends and unfurls like a concertina.

    "Emily's got it!" she shouts as the first entity decides to get up in her face. These small ones can be bisected by her sword if she hits them hard enough, and that's exactly what she plans to do, cutting through the reclaimed matter shell to spill the silver dust out to the wind.

    She's slightly aware of some sort of altercation happening behind her but she can't really react to that now she's in combat, so she concentrates on the entities.

    "You could always imagine that we're pirates of the high-high-really high seas?" she suggests to Scar though, proving she's not entirely focused.

    "Athena's got the right of it, I'll tell Vanileth to let 'em have it!"

    The Kaguyahime bristles as it brings its multiple long-range cannons forward, focusing nano-reclamation beams right onto the larger entities out in the distance to punch forward at all costs. Several entities shatter under the impact, but others disgorge a second wave of units. These ones seem more... well, their bodies are beginning to resemble humanoids rather than just simple shapes or balls, but they still have a saturn's ring of saw blades nevertheless. When they land, they begin to use the blade surrounding them like an oversized chakram, proving their capability in melee. One of them even aims for Nort while he has his back turned.

    "Heads up back there, you two!" Lotus shouts as her blade catches against an entity's chakram.

Emily spares a glance at Nort and the newly-revealed Alty, but she's busy at the moment. She nods to Athena. "Oh, yeah, good idea!" she says. "Sounds like we -- whoa!" Suddenly, they have fighters in front of them.

Her grin widens. "Hey, dudes!" she says, rising a bit further off the ground and blasting more intently at them. "Dunno if you can understand me ... or if you're even worse at military planning than me ... but don't you know you shouldn't bring a ... sawblade ... ring ... thing to a nano-reclamation-unit fight?"

>> SUMMARY[Emily Nyx] >> Focusing on the humanoids, doesn't know weapon-names.

Astra turns around a moment as she hears the thud and notices the tiny android on the floor, "Wow! You're so adorable and high-tech! Who built you? I bet you could fit in one of my planes!" This might not be the best time for a distraction but then she remembers she's supposed to be flying the ship and eeps a bit turning back around as she sees the humanoid nanoprobes.

    Ranged weapons aren't going to last much longer when the swarm is dropping troops like this. Athena snaps off another shot or two, before she drops her rifle and whips out a... staff? It's much like a lance though, and she's very good with a lance. The goddess steps back and parries the incoming chakram, but in her focus on keeping her head on her shoulders, she isn't in any position to push the offense. "They're adapting. That's not good."

    Nort is pretty distracted by tiny scarred robot. On one hand, that's adorable. On the other hand, robot sneaking around. He levels an arm at her, wrist blaster popping out of the housing of his armor. "What are you doing here?" Normally a shoot first sort of person when it comes to robots, the cyborg is pretty sure this one isn't with the others. Unfortunately this is distracting him, and if nobody steps in to stop it, the blade will shear through his side and arm, tearing open the armor enough to actually draw blood despite the heavy protection. Blindsiding him like that works well.

    Fortunately, whatever link Nort shares with Scar, pain transferrence isn't one of them. Seeing Athena in trouble, Scar leaps, the massive wolverine just thundering forward and slamming into the nanomachine humanoid. Snarling, one might think he's about to just bite it... but instead, the massive beast is simply surrounded by a globe of powerful crackling electricity, lightning roaring across his frame and lingering like a defensive barrier.

    Annnnd then there's a blaster pointing down at her. Alty looks about ready to spill her jelly, arms lifting up over her head in a pretty pitiable defense.
    But even panicking and looking ready to bolt like a rabbit, she's not blind.
    "--Behind you." She blurts a warning. Hopefully it's in time for Nort to actually do something about it. But it's not on her if he can't, because she's up in an instant and...
    Right about now is when she realizes the ship she chose to stow away on is flying right into a mass of things, and some of them are already on board.
    "... Oh..."

    The nanoprobes are listening! They're aware of how easily they've been shut down by those weapons and may definitely start to begin planning something like the idea of 'resisting that particular weapon', especially if they could get one to assimilate... to wit, the entities now start doing their best to grab one of your weapons! Lotus cuts an arm off one of them, but that doesn't seem to bother them in the normal way...

    She turns her attention to Alty after kicking the nano entity off. "Uh.... don't know who you are but we could use all the help we can get, just watch out because these suckers eat anything, got it?"

    Electrical weapons are certainly very effective if you can punch through the shell of the nano entities, and so long as one of them is 'wounded' a short sharp shock can do just as well at scrambling their minds as the guns do.

    The Kaguyahime is focusing its fire on the Eschaton Machine now, specifically doing its best to try and strip one of those patches off so that we can get inside. Lotus rigs up some grappling hooks on the end of ropes and pitons and some special energy-whip skyhooks as well, letting them fire at will so that they get a good hook on the Machine's hull. 

    "Prepare to be boarded!" Lotus calls out as she goes for a skyhook and launches herself across the big void towards the Eschaton Machine opening!

    All you have to do to follow her is push past the second wave of probes!

"Yes, be careful! They might try to copy you?" Astra doesn't want to have destroy a bunch of cute tiny robots after all. She doesn't follow Lotus right away, someone has to leep the ship in the air after all.

Emily frowns, nodding to Athena. "That is not good," she says. As she realizes what the machines are up to, her cape dematerializes in a swirl of what appears to be silvery glitter, and forms a white metal shell around the reclamation unit on her back.

"Yeah, no kidding!" she calls out in response to Iron Lotus's warning, grimacing as one of them cuts through and hits her left arm, leaving a silvery scar. She glances between the nano-entities, spares one last look at Alty with a murmured, "Definitely cute!", and then launches herself forward off the deck, following Iron Lotus into the breach!

    "Thanks," Athena says to Scar, regaining her footing and using the opening to jab the poke in against the nearest nanoprobe, jarring it away and trying to sweep it off the ship. Even if it can fly, the speed the ship is going might make it hard to resume an attack.

    Emily has an easy way to protect, but Athena doesn't aside from keeping the machines at bay. Scar seems to have built in protection at least. "I can't risk engaging them in melee, the rest of you handle that while I support from the rear." She doesn't like relying on others to do that, but it's the most tactically sound thing she can think of. She can blast with the disassembler.

The interior of the Eschaton Machine is a dark place lit mostly by flourescent strip lights and green bulbs. The entire area is sort of overcast with a pall of green, and many of its twisty passages seem quite difficult or contortuous for regular humans to make their way through. Presumably the Roshtonari do not exactly need to plan for human comfort in the depths of their doomsday clock.

    The place ticks constantly as wall-to-floor gears and cogs tick away in their housings, small and large pneumatic pumps push and pull and all in all the place seems to hum like a gigantic Difference Engine.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy1scistRy0
    Stairway to Revelation- Flashygoodness and The Battlerager
    Tower of Heaven - 2009

    Now that Lotus is in here she makes her first encounter with another foe- this time, it's the Roshtonari, their mechanical suits partially corrupted by big galloping globules of nanoprobes. Their bodies and parts of their limbs have been covered and even partially replaced with silvery nano-patches, making their contorted, wavy movements even more erratic and their propensity to attack even greater than before.

    Sweep up the deck and you'll have a clear path into the Machine, Emily. 

    Once Athena lands, Lotus- who has surrounded her other arm in a folding shield now- sizes her and the new Shinki friend up. "Alright, you've still got your gun? Be careful, when you blast these guys some gas is gonna come out so try not to inhale it, got that?"

    Quick and simple instructions from someone who's met these things before, well, speaking objectively she has anyway. It's disturbing to see the previously meek Roshtonari who were mostly scientists and explorers flex their stretchy limbs so violently and try to attack and stab the intruders.

    The warning from Alty is suspicious but seems honest. It's enough for Nort to twist aside, and the blade's damage is lower than it could have been. He's still bleeding, but it's a slow seepage instead of a splatter, and most of the attack just tore through armor plating. "Right, we can resolve the rest later." His wrist blasters aim to cover for Lotus while he follows.

    Scar rumbles, "Got it." The large beast leaps off the ruined probe and swats at the next, using his impressive strength and speed to help with the attack. His goal is to block any from getting to Athena. That puts him in the vanguard of penetrating the machine, the agile but huge wolvering rumbling as he stalks through, using eye lasers and disassembler as he chooses. He's having a better time avoiding damage than Nort did.

Astra lets the others take the lead before heading inside herself. She's not here to fight after all, but she doesn't mind seeing the Roshtonari get what's coming to them either.

    "I don't even know where I am right now." Alty points out to Iron Lotus. But that doesn't really matter much in the heat of the moment as a small flare of white light opens a tiny portal in front of the little stowaway, and reaching inside she pulls out the littlest broadsword for defense. It looks more fitting for an action figure, with its red transparent blade.
    "Copy?" That doesn't sound good in the least either. Now here come's Alty's issue as people start boarding the large structure looming over the ship.
    Does she stay behind? Or does she subscribe to notion of safety in numbers?
    In a fit of sudden decision making-- Nort might find he has a rider. That is to say a tiny robot clinging to his big armored ankle.

Emily zaps away at the enemies on the deck in front of her, and then slips through a staticky portal that comes out right behind Iron Lotus. "I don't breathe, but thanks for the warning!" she says dryly.

She grins positively nastily at the afflicted Roshtonari before her. "Oh I have been waiting to do this!" she says; seems she's of the same mind as Astra. She raises her free hand, and summons five golden bolts of light, firing all of them in quick succession into the nearest target!

    Support from the rear isn't her usual style, but Athena CAN do it. The goddess follows behind, muttering, "Thanks, Scar." The two cyborgs were still weird for her, but they were competent and professional, which she had to respect. And with Emily now also going into the machine, she calls behind her, "Let us know if there's a problem, Astra!"

    She's figuring this out now. The nano-disassemblers work well when the enemy is weakened, right? So she'll just fire it at anything that Emily or Scar or Lotus happens to wound, trying to reduce numbers as fast as possible and clear a path.

"Well, you were on a flying boat," Lotus says, dodging a stretching claw-strike. "On a planet being eaten by nanoprobes. But now you're on an alien ship designed to count down until the end of the world, which is hijacked by nanoprobes, so now we have to land it again before it destroys itself."

    In order to say all of that she's had to concentrate on dodging and blocking everything the Roshtonari throws at her, so she's yet to counterattack it. That nonor goes to Scar, who is able to first blind the Roshtonari by eye lasering it in the ... eye, before using the anti-nano weapon on it. Emily and Athena follow suit and do their best to take on another pair of them- more specifically Emily is able to really bowl one over with her energy bolts, and Athena gets to find out exactly how unsuited for combat the Roshtonari really are as their suits are tough, but otherwise low on damage output. If she can get a good stab into something made of rubber, it'll spring a leak.

    What happens next is quite unusual. A cloud of glowing golden gas begins to spurt from the holes in the encounter suit, but then it begins to form into a distinct cloud and furthermore starts to develop a face.

    "Ugh... uuugh. I've been inside that thing for days," it says!

    "Roshtonari are a gas-based species," Lotus explains quickly. "That's why they like to stay in their suits in stormy weather."

    "Yes, please help us stop the Machine from going further into the storm!" it says. "Otherwise we'll all be blown to smithereens!"

    Lotus nods to it, just catching Astra's eye as she does so. See, much as some people might not like it even the Roshtonari are victims here.

    "Alright," Lotus says once the initial danger passes. "We need to make our way into the middle of the ship, so we can kill the engines. I don't think the nanoprobes are smart enough to go through a whole engine reboot sequence, so if we can stop this thing moving and clear out the infections on the Roshtonari or at least get them out of their suits, then we can rely on them to park it back in a safer place."

    "And then we can resume our calculation to plot the amount of time until the end of the world!" it says happily.

    "Yeah whatever."

    Nort glances at Alty. Maybe he is scowling, maybe not. He's going to be doing support, that's all, while Scar does the heavy lifting. This does mean he's close enough to hear what they're saying, and the explanation. "A gas-based species? But... without some kind of boundary how does the biology maintain homeostasis? This... isn't really scientifically possible," the zoologist complains while channeling a psyhic blast against an encroaching probe to see how it handles that.

    Now that Scar knows the things in the suits are not hostile, just controlled, he's a little more careful about using his eye beams and instead focuses on a combo of physical attack and his electrical aura, just trying to disrupt the things to free any Roshtanari.

Astra's a bit surprised, she didn't know that that the Roshtonari was gas based. If she had know that sooner, that would have made things easier. "As much as I hate to admit it, we do need their help." She knows she can't park the ship and doesn't want her friends to get killed after all.

Emily actually looks affronted as the gas forms a face! "Jesus, what does it take to kill you guys!?" she says bluntly. She hesitates when Astra speaks up. "Ugh okay, fine! Avert the apocalypse now, lethal comeuppance later." She gives Nort a Look as he complains, then shrugs and turns back to follow Lotus, her smile returning. ... Sort of.

    Athena gives Nort an odd look, but she is less worried about killing the Roshtanari. With how others seem to want to keep them alive, though, Athena swaps to doing some more careful shots, so she doesn't ignite the clouds inside if she can help it. "Right, the engine room. I think this would be my area then. Nort, you're with me, and that little robot. We'll try to figure out how to stop the engines." She figures with her tech sense and Nort's high tech skills, that should be enough. Alty is probably just there in case they need a tiny person to pull a plug or something.

"We were created by the ancient gods!" the Roshtonari says, suddenly sounding very enthusiastic. "Would you care to know about our creation myth? Our faith spans generations and is welcome to all..." oh no, you've set him off.

    Lotus nods to Astra. "Sorry Astra, I know this must be kinda hard on you but sometimes there's just nobody you can really blame for a situation..."

    She trades out her longsword and buckler shield for a pair of shorter stabbing swords now, almost rapier-like in consistency so that she can aim for gaps in the Roshtonaris' armour. Fortunately they may be somewhat hard to ignite, or at least not volatile, so Athena doesn't have to worry about stray shots accidentally burning one of them up. Fire away!

    Once that's done Lotus takes point again, but also talks a little to Alty.

    "So how did you end up here? I've never seen you before. Are you a gynoid? Would you like to be friends? I've got a lot of friends here who I rely on, I'd love to get to know you better."

    Since the Roshtonari are made of gas, perhaps the series of tubes that make up the deeper parts of the Machine may make more sense. It's all vacuum tubes and pneumatic tubes and no really well-defined passages for humans to walk through, so you'll have to resort to climbing the spaces between pipes. This may make fighting more difficult as the bendy, stretchy Roshtonari you may encounter may have the advantage in such an ill-defined space, but you'll have to continue to climb onward and upward nevertheless.

    Lotus gives the run down of what exactly is going on.
    Alty decides to never sleep on random airships again. Sorry though, Nort, you have a passenger. A tiny passenger who isn't letting go.
    Then she hears 'end of the world'.
    There's a tiny little sigh as she considers the merits of maybe returning to her homeworld.
    No, no, the police want her there, that's bad.
    Though from her perch on Nort's boot she grunts, heaving and hurling that little broadsword. If they're made of gas it shouldn't hurt them to just rupture the suit somewhere and give them a space to seep out of.
    "Eh?"
    Then comes Athena's plan and points a finger at herself as though to wordlessly ask 'Uh. Me? Really?' Not like she has much of an option though while riding Nort.
    But then. Then she is accosted by Iron Lotus and a world of questions.
    "Uh. Snuck on board." She admits sheepishly. "I'm a shinki?" Uh. Oh the poor thing, it's like she barely knows how to be properly social. "I've never had a friend before."

Emily handles the tight confined spaces the same way she handles most other situations: shapeshifting shenanigans. She keeps transforming into serpentine forms, long and narrow robotic and occasionally organic-looking shapes, and occasionally just slipping through as a swirl of the silvery glitter. And, of course, she zaps back at the infected Roshtonari with her golden bolts.

"You're actually in pretty good company, kiddo," she says to Alty. "I'm not exactly accustomed to cameraderie myself. Or ... camera-dree? Camaraderie ... Uh ... I don't even know how to pronounce it, that's how unaccustomed to it I am." She laughs. "Anyway. I'm Emily Nyx. What's your name? Or ... designation, or whatever."

Of course the climbing is difficult as it as for Astra. She smiles as she hears Lotus talk to Alty. "Wow, really...I kind of know what that's like." She can sympthize with the shinki. She can't help but to wonder what she had been through but her main focus is on getting to the top.

    "Camaraderie," Athena confirms, while holding her fire and looking up at the pipes. Sigh. Climbing it is! She's capable of this, but it means she has to swap to her sidearm, which is weaker. "Friendship, huh? I guess I have a few of those." Maybe. She isn't going to say more...

    "Little Owl," she calls out. "Scout ahead so we aren't ambushed, but don't take on anything alone." The drone detaches from her shoulder and hovers upward, light illuminating the way.

    "I will stay and guard then," Scar offers, taking up the rear now and being a means of preventing anyone from coming up from behind. The wolverine settles himself there, lancing out anyone who approaches with the eye beams and in general being a huge fuzzy obstacle.

    Nort nods. Wounded or not, he can do this. "Cover us," he says to Scar, while starting to climb. Any enemies that aren't Roshtanari get a face full of gamma rays, or blasters from the wrist if they are Roshtanari, to disable any suits. "I'm not an engineer. Name is Nort, the big guy is Scar. I'll ask why you were hanging around later."

"Then I will be your friend!" Lotus says cheerfully while stabbing a Roshtonari in the squishy bits. Isn't that just a perfect image?

    She doesn't know what a Shinki is either but she seems to be good at making friend with people who are cyborgs or robots so she's willing to roll with it. Fortunately as well for her those 'rapiers' are actually very stiff and not inclined to bend, so she can easily climb the pipes by using them crossways.

    Lotus also nods at 'the plan' such as it is. 

    Emily once again manages to do a fine job of shapeshifting in the best way possible to take advantage of the terrain, slipping through the pipes with just as much ease as the Roshtonari and giving them strong percussive blows with her lambent bolts which stuns them, knocks them silly or just blows their arm off. But all in all it's just a case of steeling yourself against the initial fear and the danger of the situation, once you have a bit of confidence that the Roshtonari can't hurt you too badly then it's easy to fight back against them.

    Athena's Little Owl heads ahead and reports that there seems to be a large, locked door up ahead with a rather significantly large keyhole rather than any sort of electronic lock, which makes sense considering how much the whole Machine seems to rely on non-electronic sources aside from the striplights.

    With Nort and Scar guarding the back line and a little confidence in one's self, they make it to the centre of the Machine, and that huge locked door which has the main core room on the other side.

    The key itself has the inner workings of a large but simple mechanical tumbler, which has pressure pads and springs that can be pushed out of place in order to get through. Once they're on the other side, the core room has a large assortment of typewriter-looking computers which amazingly enough do have electronics within them, which is mostly used to control the motion controls and engines of the ship. The majority of it, however, is taken up by the enormous assortment of rolling number tumblers which are currently frenziedly going back and forth in their gear-ensconsed housing, calculating with cold efficiency how much time Van Pat has left to live.

    Name. Name; that's a good question.
    "I'm an Altines." She vaguely introduces herself. "Master just kind of called me that. ... Or something worse. But my sister called me 'Alty'." The little robot murmurs as she detaches from Nort's ankle and starts clambering up his leg and back. She spends just a beat, paused, staring at the bloody gash where he had been injured before, but shakes her head and climbs the rest of the way up to a power-armored shoulder, before she hops off, transferring herself onto... Little Owl for a free ride up.
    
    "That is um..." That sure is a visual to go with someone offering friendship as Iron Lotus makes her declaration.
    "... Okay." Alty replies, voice small and deciding to just not fight it.
    But once Little Owl gets her all the way up and to that lock, she pauses for a moment.
    She could wait for the others to reach the top and figure it out or...
    Well. Helper robots gonna help.
    Even for a large lock, she worms herself in, wriggling into place before she starts finding and feeling out the tumbler springs. This is going to take a moment... It's delicate, intricate work and it's going to take all of her skill, finesse, and--
    Alty summons a tiny sword and uses it to wrench things apart, out of place, twist, and pop springs and plates until the lock is too broken to function.
    "I think I got it."

>> SUMMARY[Alty] >> Skyrim prompt: Lockpicking skill increased to 2

Emily nods to Athena and Alty in turn, shapeshifting up a rope to give Astra some assistance. "'Alty' it is, then," she says. She doesn't bother to ask how sisterhood works, because it isn't exactly relevant at the moment. "I'm a Nyx-model Eudaemon, serial prefix MLE0, which is where my name comes from. Hmm ..."

Door opened, she looks at the calculation equipment, then turns to Iron Lotus. "... So what happens if we just smash the end-of-the-world calculators?"

    A few shots help to clear things out and keep the Roshtanari away, and with Little Owl beeping indignantly carrying the robot, Athena follows after soon after Alty takes care of the lock.. It's an interesting sight.

    Athena slaps another magazine into her sidearm, but lets it cool for now. "All right, let's figure out how to stop this thing." The engines, that is. She moves over to what looks like a terminal and touches it, trying to usee her Technology Sense to get a feeling for how this all works, enough to advise Nort and Emily on how to shut it down. "Athena, by the way," is her own introduction.

Astra gasps as she sees how much time that the computer has calculated before making her way into the core room. Still they need to get Roshnatori under control before first before they can it down. "I don't think that'll change anything. It's just a predication after all. She has to wonder if the Roshnatori's technology had been hijacked somehow which caused all of this.

    "Not really my field," Nort states, looking at the machinery doing the prediction. "But I do know a bit about figuring out alien technology. Let's see what we can do. Any advice, Lotus?" For the first time in a long while, Nort removes his helmet, letting people see his expression... which at the moment is a furrowed brow trying to figure out what to do, and listening for Lotus or Athena to give him any advice.

"Ah!"

    Lotus claps her hands together as Alty immediately cuts the gordian knot and prevents them from going on a long quest elsewhere in the dungeon where they would have to beat a miniboss and solve a puzzle using an obscure Roshtonari equipment. "Nice one, Alty!"

    And then they pile on inside the core room... it's frightening to look at the countdown but the fact that the numbers are spinning non-stop gives Lotus hope, as 'nothing is set in stone so far'.

    "Yeah, it's not like it's really got anything to do with anything or not," she says to Astra and Emily. "It only makes us worry if it stops moving so fast and goes to a regular countdown, after all."

    Now it's time for her and Athena to try and figure out how to do this whole shebang.

    "I'm not a hacker," she says quickly, "But if Athena has some sort of techno empathy then we might be able to feel our way through this, maybe? I think we should probably try everything to figure out how to get into the system. There's probably no passwords because I don't think the Roshtonari would bother to encrypt the system, they're kind of arrogant enough to think nobody would want to disrupt them so that's a point in our favour. Let's uh... try and use our best skills and see what we can contribute, and then figure out how it goes."

    Thankfully there is some sort of multiversal trick at work that lets you understand the computers, rather than them all being entirely in escoteric Roshtonari language, so the system may seem straightforward enough and it's just a case of figuring out how to safely land the ship rather than giving it a sudden drop or cutting off only one thruster at once...

    "I'm not a hacker either," Athena points out. "But I use computers every day and I AM the reborn goddess of wisdom and technology. I think I've got a grip on this." She taps a few times, then offers to the others, "We want to do a staged shutdown, but not just shutdown. Power down by quarters, then shut down the inner thrusters first, before doing the next thrust reduction. It should be a sloped display..." She continues reading off as best she can what she's picking up.

This is a bit above Astra's level of knowledge, she's not familar with this kind of technology so she's going to have to rely on the others. While she can understand what the computers are saying just not how to do it.

Emily snaps her fingers in response to Astra and Iron Lotus's rejoinders. "Damn," she says flatly. She grins. "I was mostly just thinking about pissing them off, though."

She strides up to the computers. "... I'm only particularly good at hacking into machines that are originally from the halcyon remnant, which is really limits its usefulness, I tell you what," she murmurs. "Hmm ..." She starts poking around at the interface, with an expression of intense concentration, listening to Athena's comments. "Okay ... thruster control, thruster control, thruster control ... I don't understand those assholes well enough to deduce what kind of organization they'd've made ..."

    "Astra, Emily, you shut them off when I say so," Nort says, finding the power reduction. He slowly starts to turn the engines down. It should be a triangular button? If it matches what I'm seeing." He starts to power down the thrusters and then calls out.

    "And... now...." Looks like he's trusting Athena at least.

    It was pretty messy work on that lock, but the job is done. Miniboss averted. The little shinki's lips purse as she rubs at her scarred eye, and nods. It was a simple job, and she handled it. Simple as that. The praise actually seems to even make her uncomfortable.
    So she changes the subject?
    "... This can tell when the world is going to end?" It's a curious question. But as Athena starts to explain the process, Alty holds up another hologram display screen, helpfully showing a downward slope and motioning at it to emphasize Athena's point.
    Helper robots, man.

The key seems to be the thrusters if Athena is correct (and she is). Once we can figure out where exactly they are we can shut them down in stages, so everyone can chip in and help search for what controls the thrusters even if they're not confident in their computer talents, so Lotus ropes in Astra as well as Emily to hunt for that specific part of the controls. And if push comes to shove, someone might just be able to tail back and find one of the Roshtonari that has pulled itself out of its suit, if they're confident in their pipe-climbing abilities.

    Eventually Nort manages to find the right section and starts to guide them through what they need to do, with Alty helping with some visual representation in order to help figure out how exactly they're going to do this.

    First the movement of the ship is stopped, and then gradually the engines are shut down in order to bring it down to the ground.

    Once that's done the group can mostly just wait for the Roshtonari to find their own way here and help bring them back towards civilization. It's going to be a bit difficult cleaning the remaining nanoprobes off of the Machine but it should be easy enough if just tiresome.

    It's possible nobody might even notice, but as they leave the core room, more and more of those numbered tumblers seem to be reaching a stop, almost as if the calculation is nearing completion...

    The world of Van Pâtissière isn't out of the woods just yet.

Emily pauses on her way out the door; she's alert enough to hear the change in behavior, and she looks over at the calculation equipment. "... ohhh shit," she says, sounding almost more tired than anything else.