World Tree MUSH

    Welcome to the Kaguyahime!

    We're in mid-flight and on the exact same course as the Eschaton Machine used to be. Having pilfered the details from its flight recorder, we know exactly where to go in order to fly directly to the source of the problem.

    We've also got something else to help us: stashed in the hold of the ship there are a small group of little complimentary-themed jetbikes. Easy to ride and armed with powerful laser guns, the jetbikes will allow any pilot the ability to fly and fight. And that's a good thing, because Astra's reported a whole lot of nano entities have started 'evolving' and filling the skies between us and our destination. 

    We're gonna have to take to the skies and knock down everything standing between us and our objective.

    Iron Lotus is on deck, getting ready to mount up on her jetbike and take flight.

    "Alright, everyone ready to do this? Vanileth, are you coming with us too?"

Astra's busy keeping the Kaguyahime in the air so the others are going to have to do the fight. She doing her best to not like Alty distract her too much. She can't help but to wonder to where the little robot girl came from, but there are more important matters to handle at the moment.

Emily is ... well, okay, she's taken the form of Iron Lotus except twice as old, with black hair, with glowing purple eyes, and her clothes have a red and black sort of color scheme. And she has four arms, as is her habit. She's looking at one of the hoverbikes thoughtfully -- indecisively, perhaps.

Finally, she shrugs, and steps away from the hoverbike. "Releasing capacitor seals three and two," she says. She's surrounded by the three auras, gold silver and pearlescent, and the first two shatter as the third fades. Her trademark amused and faintly smug smile returns, and she rises off the ground. "Okay, I'm ready!"

    Vanileth can answer this question mighty easily! "You have flying jet bikes." That is his answer. Of COURSE he is going to grab one and ride it, if only because he HAS to try this thing out! Yes, he has wings and can fly on his own power, but...

    Jet bike.

    By now it's no secret Alty has been stowing away. ... Is it still technically stowing away if her presence is known? The fact of the matter is that the little shinki is still living somewhere in the ship's vents, hijacking a rogue power flow to power her charging cradle, but for the most part she sticks to her hidey holes, doing her best to not be seen or at least to not be too much of a bother and distract someone important. Like say, Astra.
    There's a little clanking around in the vents, but then there's a tiny head poking out from the open vent that Nort had pulled the grill from, last time.
    "... What are you all doing...?"

Iron Lotus trusts Astra to keep the Kaguyahime on a steady course- it's got those big honkin' lasers to defend itself against larger targets if need be but the smaller ones are going to be up to us... ok, and maybe some larger targets too as well.

    "We're going to defend the ship while it flies to wherever the Eschaton Machine was going," Lotus says to Alty. "Something big bound to be there."

    She's kind of weirded out by Emily looking like her again, but has neglected to ask her anything about it due to the fact that current times are serious times. But maybe when they've got through the worst of the troubles.

    Lotus activates her jetbike and takes off, the thing is resplendant in a cheery blue-platinum colour with a sort of big fluffy wing shape or two at the back, hovering above the deck of the Kaguyahime before splitting off into the wild blue yonder.

    There's little mics so everyone can communicate with each other without interference, too.

    "Yeah I guess that was pretty obvious. Alright, good luck and good hunting," she says to Vanileth.

    The first enemies you will encounter as the ship flies the open skies are little square things that are about twice the size of a human head. They seem to be even less combat capable than a standard nano entity would be, having a sort of big glowing spot in the middle, but they're hostile and inclined to try and ram you off of your bike so you're going to have to snipe them out of the skies!

Luke Gray is not really a pilot, or used to be on flying machines, even if he did consider checking on Alola where to get a page rider or a flying pokemon of his own!. He sticks close to Iron and the others, wanting to help even if he wasn't a technically inclined person. He didn't even have a pokemon out, at least for now, even if the Bewear seemed a bit offended he was not allowed to stay out to play momma bear and keep the boy safe. Too much risk to break something. "I think I can try to help but... not sure I am good for riding bikes."

    Scar glowers at Alty, but answers the tiny robot. "Escort. I can't really fit on one of these, so Nort will have to do it. I'll stay here in case we're boarded." Grumble grumble... though mostly about all the robots he has to deal with.

    Nort's armor has jump jets, which they call 'limited flight,' but that would only help if he fell off. He can't zoom around in the sky! A jet bike is... something he seems pretty familiar with, but the power-armored man is unlikely to be totally unfamiliar with tech like this. "It isn't hard, just watch your altitude. I'll keep an eye on you," he murmurs.

    Raylene is able to help this time! The young girl adjusts her dress, tightening some straps so it doesn't flutter. When Luke says that she looks up and offers, "You can ride with me if you like, I know how to drive a normal bike." At her age? "I promise I won't give you cooties." Luke is even younger than her, so she can tease about that a little. "Someone to be my gunner would be good. I have to leave the Horror behind..."

    Not technically true, but not easy for it to be useful on a jetbike.

Emily just shoots Iron Lotus a smile as she notices her look. She does, however, glance at Luke. "Hey, you'll do fine!" she says. "These things don't seem to be a whole 'for certified pilots only' thing, y'know?" Oh, good, Raylene's taking care of him.

She launches herself into the air, and in a swirl of silvery glitter, she conjures up a series of bolts of golden light, firing them in succession at the nano-entities, dodging and weaving around them. Her bolts don't quite seem to pack as much punch as the lasers from the jetbikes, but Emily is slightly more maneuverable under her own power.

Astra would have to try out one of the jet bikes herself later. Maybe she could make a tiny one for Alty to ride too. "Be careful out there, you don't want them to copy you!" That would be rather awkward if they managed to do so. Hopefully they can't duplicate the Kaguyahime either.

    Nope.
    Nope nope nope.
    Between the fact that the flying ship is going back into danger, and a giant mutated wolverine glowering at her, Alty ducks back into her vent. It should be safe there, and out of the way. So long as the ship doesn't go down.
    ... What if the ship goes down?
    ...
    It is that horrorterror thought that makes her poke her head out again, considering for a moment. Before the tiny robot heaves a sigh.
    Keeping a WIDE berth from Scar, she drops from her perch and...
    Well there's no way she'd fit on one those bikes and be able to pilot one, short of a tiny one being made for her. Astra can consider it a pet project.
    "... I'll stay back. If any of those things get aboard I'll um. Help with them."
    Right. a twelve inch tall robot will guard the vistory square. ... With a horrorterror mutated wolverine.

Luke Gray smiles to Raylene and Emily offering suggestions and some help. "That I think i can do that, even if usually my pokemon tend to be the ones attacking." he says. He is happy to join Raylene and hold onto the guns, doing his best to aim towards the flying, glowing things. At least there doesn't seem to be a risk of friendly fire just now!. He inwardly wishes Dynamo somehow was manning the gun, that cat has good aim.

    "NONSENSE!" Vanileth suddenly shouts. He gestures at Alty. "You can fly on your own, but I'd welcome a perch on you my shoulder to enjoy this fascinating vehicle with me!" He laughs, "After all, it's better to enjoy such marvels with someone else to appreciate them! Now, hop on the dashboard and jump up and down on that fire button when I tell you to!"

    This should totally work.

    Vanileth IS a natural though, by his own domain. So zipping out from the ship, he's immediately doing some evasive maneuvars, diving and zipping aside, jinking this way and that to let the nanomachines try to track him!

    With Scar on the ship, Nort is left to... apparently get left in the dust by Vanileth. And here he thought he knew how to fly these things. "Well that's humbling." He did always insist he was a zoologist, but apparently he'd expected to be the best flyer.

    And Nort is pretty good at ducking out of the way. But unlike Vanileth, he resorts pretty quickly to targeting and firing on some of the incoming, using his armor's firing solutions to help.

"If you're really reluctant to use the jetbike you can stay on the ship and help Scar defend the decks," Lotus says to Luke, "But hey, try to get creative maybe. One of your Pokemon could... ride shotgun and punch stuff out of the sky?"

    Anyway, look sharp= there's entities to be shot at. They're dumpy looking things but when they're shot at it seems as if the jetbikes can siphon off some sort of energy or data from them that allows them to refine the power and spread of their singular weapons. If things get critical, remember you can activate their Option units!

    Right now we are flying over: a wind farm! Or the remains of one, anyway.

    Get ready for some scenery gorn, folks, there's going to be no way to avoid it. Fly between the skeletal remains of several windmills as you try to evade the bots who are attempting to home in on you and ram you off of your bikes. Falling out of the sky is going to hurt.

    You can see bleached and despoiled fields all around you- it's not a pleasant sight. Imagine how many people these fields fed that have been lost to the nanoprobes' destruction... but hey don't get bogged down too hard, there's shooting to be done!

    Lotus does a little corkscrew to show off and thumbs the fire button, rapidly firing little energy pellets from the front of her jetbike to knock some holes into the bots. Nort adds to the first wave of fire and knocks a couple squareshapes out of the sky, too. Lay on, MacDuff!

    Raylene leaves the firing to Luke. Despite her confidence, she has never used a FLYING bike. She is pretty good at handling a motorcycle though, and that helps her weave in between some of the windmills and leave one of the pursuing bots exploding on it.

    Also, Raylene is surprisingly daring. She weaves VERY close to some of these, but then again, her and Luke are small, and have a much smaller hitbox.

    "Ssgdsgfsfg!"
    That is the sound of a shinki jolting at Vanileth's shout. And for a moment Alty looks at the god like a doe caught in the lights of an oncoming truck.
    "O-... Okay."
    She doesn't look like she's enjoying things very much as she scampers up the bike and perches on the dash.
    This should totally work.
    Except she's already mashing the fire button the instant that Vanileth takes off.

Emily peers at the ruined windmills. "Just like home in the halcyon remnant!" she quips. "I mean, y'know, except for all the nano-entities!"

Still firing her golden bolts, she lets the nano-entities get as close as she likes, just barely avoiding colliding with them ...

... until one of them hits her. "OW!" The impact leaves a silvery scar across her side. "Heh, nice try, but I don't have anything to knock me off of!"

... She suddenly wishes she had gotten a motorbike, solely so that she could have dramatically revealed that she can fly.

Astra does her best to avoid hitting the windmills as she steers the ship and to help Alty aim at her targets. Hopefully the nano-entites won't turn into a brainwashed queen obessesed with food and try to eat them. They did already devour everything after all.

    Nort is wearing heavy power amor, so when one of them thunks against him, the bot bounces off. He does waver a little... having been injured last time, the armor taking impacts still aggravates the healing injury.

    Streams of energy fire, because even if Nort has his own blasters and such things, it's better to steer with both hands. He dives down then up, trying to shake one persitent bot. "Remember we just need to keep them away from the ship!"

    Okay, Vanlieth can work with this though! A semi-constant stream of fire from the front of his bike? He 'kicks' it around to do a move that it shouldn't be able to do, aiming the guns with the fuselage of the bike, and then shouts encouragingly, "Oh, don't be worried, little one! I'm very good at flying these... 'jet bikes' and such. What is a jet, anyway?"

    It's a good question! Creation doesn't use things quite like this, but it might not be encouraging for Alty, especially when he does a dive down toward a ruined windmill and Alty finds herself first in freefall, and then the bike zipping through a hole in one structure that's barely large enough to fit it.

>> SUMMARY[Vanileth] >> Just making things worse for Alty

    And where you will find a farm, you will find other appropriate buildings, such as grain silos. If you were having a tough time ducking and weaving between the small obstacles this one is going to really hurt, and we're only just revving up! Make sure you can make good turns and dive and fall relatively well before you start ducking and diving between these particular obstacles.

Next wave of enemies: these ones are the more 'traditional' nanoprobes we've gotten used to, with their vaugely round designs and their jagged buzzsaw rims. These ones provide significantly more of a threat if you're rammed into especially due to your need to keep yourself flying. Astra's right, too- thank goodness they're only ramming right now, if they try and assimilate the jetbikes we will be in trouble.

    Getting up close and personal with the square bots is definitely a bold course of action since they have no weapons but are only inclined to go at RAMMING SPEED, you will need to be both daring and skilled to graze past the squares' diving attacks. 

    Meanwhile Alty decides that strength of firepower might do better than anything else, and even begins putting some holes in the already damaged windmills. Hey, be careful! They might collapse on y- uh oh, too late.

    ADDITIONAL HAZARD!
    Today is a bulli Alty day.

    "If these guys start copying Emily, then we really will be in trouble," Lotus observes, as her jetbike informs her that it can also now fire shots behind her as well as in front? Well, ok, that's... of questionable use! Thanks jetbike! She actually uses it by looking in her rear view mirror and using it to shoot off the bot that's giving Nort a little bit of trouble, and she ends up feeling rather good about herself.

    

"Don't give them ideas!" Astra's doing everything she can to keep the Kaguyahime in the air but a windmill isn't the easiest thing to dodge even with the firepower that everyone is providing. The ship has taken a few hits already, it was her first time flying it after all.

"Righto!" Emily says over the radio in response to Nort. She grins up at Lotus. "They can copy my shape, but centuries of skill and experience are centuries of skill and experience!" she says, corkscrewing through the air. "And even if they do manage to get as good as I am now ..."

She furrows her brow at Vanileth's maneuvers, which are frankly starting to outperform her own. Nope, no time for that, gotta deal with the new and deadlier enemies! She starts firing five bolts at once, each at the same target. "... let's just say I've got one more trick up my sleeve ..."

The confidence in her voice falters. "... that I'm ... not sure I wanna do," she finishes lamely.

Luke Gray is of course, wildly shooting at the darn ships as they rush towards him and Raylene, mentally thinking about getting a proper flying pokemon next time. He is mostly spamming the shoot button, aiming in the thing's general direction, and hoping Raylene won't crash on something.

    You know. Alty doesn't even have a stomach, and a sudden jarring plummet like that still makes her stomach drop.
    "HEUWHAH- AH!" The shinki squeaks as she plummets for a beat, only to re-cling herself to the dash and duck her head down.
    She's stopped firing for a moment but it's too late.
    The windmill is coming down isn't it?
    "Oh come on!" She bleats, slamming the fire button even more to start shooting debris and falling masonry out of the way.

    "That's the spirit!" Vanileth shouts at Alty, ducking and weaving through the fallinng rubble as some of it EXPLODES around him! The god is also getting curious, flying carefree and without paying as much attention as he should. As the windmill tumbles around him, he notes, "Oh, this button is flashing now, I wonder what it does..."

    Then the jetbike vanishes under a storm of rubble.

    Only, a few minutes later, it erupts from the billowing dust, a blue field around it flickering and dying as Vanileth sits up again. "Really? Only a few seconds? That doesn't seem very useful. Oh, enemy!" He resumes turning to aim at one of the flying bots.

    Unlike Vanileth, Raylene isn't skilled enough to use her bike to aim for Luke, but she's plenty able to evade. Shooting down some is by luck, not skill, but she's very good at not being hit! Especially when she thumbs a switch. "Oh yes. What is the term? 'Hold onto your hat?'"

    An eruption of fire flares from the back, and the jetbike ZOOMS forward right past three of the probes, hopefully distracting them with the burst of speed.

    It's OK! Anything around about 80% of the ship's HP remaining or higher is enough for us to get the A-Rank for this mission! Or something like that. Astra takes a couple lickin's but keeps on tickin'.

    "Well, you do you," Lotus says to Emily, sort of at a loss for words herself, as she gets used to her new tail gun. It's actually not as bad as she first thought about, so long as she can do a little bit of parallel processing to make sure she's paying the same amount of attention to what's in front of her as what's behind her.

    The next challenge is going to take the form of much larger, somewhat oblong versions of the buzzsaw nanoprobes- these ones are more like chainsaws, and will take some concentrated fire from jetbikes working together in order to break them apart. Also, as we begin to enter the open fields that lie beyond the farm buildings, be careful of updrafts and strong winds that may cause you to become unsettled in your flight.

    Thankfully Alty manages to break her way through- obviously the answer to causing a problem with too much firepower is even more firepower to get rid of the problem you just created- but the stress of the situation might cause her to pick her shots a little more carefully. Thankfully they've managed to bring enough of the jetbike's systems online to activate a forcefield option, but true enough it's only good for point defence rather than permenantly shielding them. 

    Speaking of spamming your shots Luke actually contributes a majority of the firepower towards destroying the buzzsaw nanoprobes, shooting many of them down before they get to the team. Raylene's speed helps confuse the probes briefly and knock another set of them on the head. That'll give him some scope to gather data on the composition of the enemies, refine his weapons, and unlock more of the jetbike's special features as well! Go Luke go!

    Nort never thought he'd be taking pity on an artificial lifeform, but Emily seems more alive than most. He slows enough to join her, depoying some remora blasters from the sides of his bike to keep shooting while he maneuvers. "Don't do anything you'll regret later," he says to her. Not that he needs to be close to do it, but he can support her. "The others are being awfully reckless, enough for all of us."

    Did you know that shinki are built to be expressive enough to go completely pale with terror? Because they are.
    Alty is pale as a sheet by the time the bike emerges from the debris of the crumbling building. She's forgotten about the shooty button for a moment, too traumatized for a good beat to keep the spam up.
    "Buh."
    A big, deep, gulp of breath and she pulls something from thin air with a small flash of white light.
    It is a tiny canteen, and she takes a deep pull of the flavored jelly inside, before she banishes it back from whence it came, and that seems to have calmed her enough to resume jamming that shoot shoot trigger.

The wind isn't making the ship any easier to steer and Astra's a bit beat up herself. She's a normal human after all and doesn't have any extra special abilities. "Ugh...I hope we don't get shot down before we even get there!"

Emily raises her upper right arm to salute to Nort. "Not so much 'regret' as ugh, but yeah, you got it!" she says. She floats closer to him, or at least her wild spiraling starts happening probabilistically closer to Nort, so that the two of them can concentrate fire on one of the new buzzsaw enemies. "I guess where I stand on recklessness is, I'm not a military model, my fighting style is sorta cobbled together."

And then a sudden thought strikes her. "-- Oh right." There's a swirl of glitter, and the silver scar disappears as she moves the damaged nanomachines under her surface.

    "Oh... hmm. That is a problem," Vanileth says as the jetbike shudders a little. "A lot of turbulence here. I'd better take care of that. Alty, my dear, why don't you take the helm for a few moments?" He lets go of the bike's handles and turns around in the seat, rubbing his chin before concentrating on calming some of the winds instead. This is far more useful than shooting down some pestering probes! Surely Alty has seen enough of how to fly this to handle it on her own?

Luke Gray is... not in his element, even if he does seem to enjoy Raylene zooming around, still blasting towards the darn flying probes, likely hitting more because blind luck than actually aim, especially with the sudden bursts of speed on his ride. "You are very good at flying this thing!" he calls outloud, trying not to get dizzy.

>> SUMMARY[Vanileth] >> Let's try to calm those winds

    Raylene blinks, startled at that. She was kind of messing with Luke, yes, so a compliment is something the sheltered girl isn't sure how to handle(how does she know how to ride a bike again?). "Oh er... thank you." She says awkwardly... then ducks, lossing a few strands of hair and getting a shallow cut as one of the buzzsaw drones zips just over her head. "R-right."

    That was unexpected. She turns about, trying to draw off more of the things and lead them to Nort and Emily to shoot down. She can't match Emily's or Vanileth's aerobatics, sadly.

    "You're doing fine, Astra!" Lotus calls back to her over her radio. "Trust in the ship. That thing's big enough to survive more than this, and you're doing a great job of piloting it. Don't be afraid to use the lasers if you can get all of us air jockeys to mind out of the way."

    "Yeah, seems like everyone's doing more than a little bit of crazy stunts," Lotus calls to Nort, and tries to paint the upcoming giant targets with some little virtual tags so that the group can concentrate their fire a little bit better. She can't make good use of her tailgun here so she'll have to just open fire alongside Alty and hope for the best.

    Hopefully the tagging helps but Emily and Nort manage to work together to nail down one of the chainsaw probes, that just leaves another two as more of the smaller enemies continue to give us problems, not to mention the winds- at least until Vanileth starts to pull in with a countersquall, doing his best to push down the updrafts and stop them from being so much of a problem.

    Luke continues to open fire wildly and it's clear that a pattern is starting to emerge among the group as to what they're doing, funneling enemies into the path of certain pilots so that they can shoot them down and direct their movements to get the best firing angles.

    We're moving up into the mountain ranges beyond now- we're pretty far from Bonne Bon now, and it shows. Look out for more of those giant stone-backed crabs that are just going to get in the way and toss rocks at you from down below! Those guys don't like anything!

    Take out the last two of the chainsaw probes and that'll do it for this wave of enemies, but be careful as it looks like a dust storm is starting to brew up ahead and that's going to bring poor visibility and lightning, never a good combination...

    Alty just. Stares.
    She stares at Vanileth like he sprouted a second head, and then a third right in front of her eyes. Tiny jaw falls slack, and little lips flap, but no words come out as she tries to say SOMETHING and is just at a complete loss for words as Vanileth leaves piloting to her while he turns about in his seat.
    "what" She says in the tiniest voice of all time, before she regains her wits enough to actually give it a go.
    "Nngh!" Bracing her back against the dash, her legs prop against the handlebars and give a push-- making the bike SWERVE WILDLY IN ONE DIRECTION.
    She tries again with the other handlebar MAKING THE BIKE SWERVE THAT WAY NEXT.
    This means she is focusing all of her efforts on flying though, and not on shooting, as she does everything she can to not crash into anyone else or those nanomathingies.
    Tiny helper robots gonna help. Even if it is utterly horrifying.

>> SUMMARY[Alty] >> I am never accepting a ride from Vanileth ever again.

Astra fires the lasers doing her best not to hit anyone else and fires at the crabs. She might as well get some practice in before they reach the main threat but the dust certainly isn't it going to make it easy to see.

Emily's smile has turned thin-lipped and determined as she focuses her attention on one of the two remaining ...

... A rock whizzes by her head, and she peers down at the crab. "Okay, y'know what? Stop that," she says, although there's a bit of dry amusement in her voice, firing her golden bolts down at the crabs alongside Astra.

Her gaze flits over to where Alty and Vanileth are. "... Huh. Okay!"

    Nort is better at the shooting down part, definitely. He might know how to fly one of these things, but a civilian pilot's license isn't equal to Vanileth or Emily. He turns his guns about to shoot down the remaining probes, then looks at the oncoming storm. "The rest of you take care of those crabs while I handle these two. Then we should head back to the ship! I think Vanileth and Emily are the only ones who could fly through that!"

    He isn't going to suggest they do it, either. He's just naming the two best fliers while he turns his guns on the buzzsaw drones, slowing his bike and engaging all 'option' modules to send a stream of energy projectiles out while preparing to dock with the Kaguyahime again.

    "Take care of the what?" Raylene asks... just before one of the crabs WHONKS her bike, making it shudder and flame sputter from the side. "Oh. That can't be good. I am not very mechanically inclined I'm afraid. I don't suppose your cat can help us out?" Raylene brings the bike down lower, close to the ground.

    On the upside this makes it easier for Luke to fight the crabs. On the downside, the crabs have an easier time trying to hit the pair.

    Handling the wind was enough of a distraction. Vanileth stays put easily, then turns around and takes the handlebars. "Very good evasion technique, you're a natural!"

    Okay, at this point he MIGHT just be messing with her.

    The god on a bike brings it downward, buzzing the crabs to keep their attention off Raylene long enough for everyone to regroup, with Emily's 'cover fire' helping that.

    Alty now has one of the chainsaw probes on her tail! Everyone better make the best of this!

    Astra fires off the lasers! This is a risky maneuver, but since everyone has started to fall into a combat rhythm by now they should be able to work together as a team and coordinate the attack. It ends up taking about fifty percent off of the second chainsaw probe, leaving it wounded and ready for a second attack to take it down.

    Emily takes up the task of dealing with the crabs. They're just another problem at this point and really need a bit of scaring off in order to put them aside as a threat, and she's certainly willing to do just that to get them out of the picture. Well done.

    Nort focuses his fire to bring down the wounded chainsaw probe, and its accompanying buzzsaw probes, taking out the smaller ones before they can merge with the bigger one to repair it. Doing some more work to crack the shell and it finishes it off...

    Which leaves Lotus and Raylene/Luke to deal with the third. Lotus tries to use her tail gun to shake it off of Alty, but when the crabs hit Raylene and it seems clear that she's not going to have as much support as she needs, Lotus faces no choice. She just has to park herself in front of that chainsaw probe, hitting the brakes now and again to duck and dive against its charges, and just pour firepower into the thing until it goes down.

    As we push on ahead into the storm, there's a chance to regroup a little and move back to the Kaguyahime.

    But just as soon as it looks like the lightning might be our only threat from here on out, the storms begin to pick up.

    We kept telling you there was danger in the dust! Now lots of it is beginning to filter out of the dust storms and clump together, merging with square bots and buzzsaw probes to form something big. The dust clouds clear as they coagulate together... 

    Forming something which looks simultaneously like a solid, vaugely humanoid square-shaped figure with three golden energy balls hovering behind it, just like Emily. It even looks like she... usually does, when she's not impersonating someone.

    "Oh boy," Lotus says, trying to figure out if she can activate any more power ups. "Looks like this is the guardian!"

Emily is about to remark to Nort that she doesn't want to fly through that on her own, when she suddenly finds herself looking at ... herself. The spectre looks like a woman with auburn hair and robotic eyes, dressed in a midnight-blue business suit.

"Well, shoot," Emily says mildly. "Is, uh, is this how other people feel when I copy them? Heh ..."

She sends it a radio ping to try to see if it works like a eudaemon as well. "Okay, if this is exactly like me ..." She hesitates just a moment. "... there should be a CPU core, controlling the rest of it! Unnnnnless it's just like the other nano-entities and it's just biting on my shtick, in which case, uh, just try to blast it!" And blast it she does, firing as many golden bolts at once as she can! ... which is five of them.

She swallows. Her expression has become reluctant, if not actually nervous ...

    Whew. "Now, Alty, we seem to have a problem. I'm going to man the weapons this time, but I have an idea on how you can further aid me. It needs a little explanation," Vanileth says, turning the bike around and kicking it into gear again. It starts to accelerate toward the giant boss. "Hear that? We need to shoot the core, but I have a better idea!"

    He starts to ramble, "You see, back in the first age I knew this Solar and Lunar pair. Quite a nice couple, but really not affiliated with me much. They were crewmembers on an airship, you see, and the Lunar's War Form was this great huge giant bear. Just massive. His Solar partner was an agile little devil, deadly with knives. Very deadly. Get within arm's reach of him, and they'd just slice anything up within a few heartbeats. A dervish of knives."

    The bike speeds forward.

    "But of course there's a problem. They were both quite capable fighters up close, but neither of them could use a bow or firewand for the life of them. It was comical, really! Because that made people underestimate them. They came up with their own counter to the strategy everyone used. Whenever an enemy would hang back and shoot at them, that is. Dervish, you see, was a particularly petite Solar, while his Lunar was, as I said, a whopping bear. So what Dervish would do was curl up and then he'd be picked up and- oh!"

    Out of time, approaching fast, Vanileth hurriedly wraps it up. "Anyway, they called it a Fastball Special!" And he swerves suddenly, flinging Alty off the bike and hurtling her toward the fake-Emily!

>> SUMMARY[Vanileth] >> There is a point to this story I swear.

"Well, I was right." Astra doesn't want to fire the laser again with everyone else so close, so she does her best to avoid the fake Emily's fire. Hopefully they could deal with her. Plus she has to avoid getting struck by lightning which certainly didn't make any easier.

    Nort is not going to try to fight that up close. Instead, he brings his bike in toward the ship, and unlimbers his energy rifle. Taking aim, he lays down some cover fire for the others. "Up close and personal is more Scar's deal, plus I don't want to get too far from the ship." For his own reasons, of course.

    The armored man, though not a military pilot, is an excellent shot with that rifle though, and tries his best to keep those in the air clear of problems.

    Kicking the side of the bike a few times, the fire goes out for Raylene, and after a few blasts to send the crabs on their way, the bike climbs again. It's... noticeably less quick to turn though. "Hmm." 

    Instead of going back, Raylene burns toward the emerging boss! "I'll just have to swoop in close and we can hit it with what we have," she says. VERY close, apparently.

    She ducks abruptly, first to avoid one of Emily's blasts(though it wouldn't have hit anyway) and then... to avoid Alty flung over her head. "..."

    Oh thank god, Vanileth is taking control again. A mortified Alty slumps back on the dash when he turns about to get a grip on the handlebars again. Alty pants and works on catching her breath. Not that she needs to breathe, but it's calming after that sheer insanity as she sits up.
    Emily says there should be a core... But then Vanileth begins to regale her with a tale.
    Rubbing at her scarred eye, the shinki listens, head bobbing in the occasional nod at the story of the ancient Lunar and Solar pair, she doesn't even seem to realize the bike is picking up in speed.
    She listens to the tale of two mighty warriors of a time long gone by, she listens to how they had no means of fighting from afar, in spite of their great prowess.
    She listens to how Vanileth calls the next maneuver the Fastball Special.
    "Wait wha-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
    There's a shrill little squeal as the shinki is flung, launched from the bike at breakneck speed, sailing end over end through the air towards the nanocopy of Emily.
    There's a flash of white just as she impacts, slamming hard into the construct with enough force to crack its shell like an egg as she vanishes inside it.
    Then there's another flash- a blur of red, a streak of scarlet. Several glimpses of a glowing red blade slashing outwards from within, before she finds what she's looking for--
    And stabs the core.

>> GAME >> Alty spends an Edge for: Shinki the core for massive damage!

Luke Gray is panicking a fair bit now, even after the fire on their ship is gone, of course he tries not to look it but... he is really wondering if this is how his pokemon feel all the time they charge ahead for him. He snaps out of it when the pilot mentions swooping close, "If you think that's the best idea!". He tries to aim towards teh 'boss', but is a bit uncertain about shooting, what with a Shinki landing right into it.

    While it is much like the majority of the nano entities encountered thus far- lots and lots of sandy micromachines clumped up into a solid object while surrounded by a shell of recycled material- due to the need to slightly mimic Emily and the fact that it's made of lots of probes merged together, this thing DOES have in essence a Core.

    Lotus presses buttons on her jetbike until she gets the triple shot! Hooray! Now she can shoot in FOUR directions at once, which is almost as useless unless you're really good at geometry! Nevertheless she tries her best, trying to disrupt one of the energy balls and puncture/rupture it so that the others can get in closer. The aim is to make it pop like a balloon- and Nort does similar as his shots focus down the second big energy ball before it can be used, causing it to implode/explode before it can be used to cause significant damage.

    Raylene's ducking in close causes the huge Emily-probe to shift its monumental head to look at it, giving Alty the scope she needs to get in...

    With Vanileth's help she goes on a super-spectacular charge against the core of the giant probe, streaking inside and hitting the core cluster which was designated as running the whole shebang right here. With that taken out in a spectacular crushing shinki charge, the flaws of a centralized system even among nanomachines are illustrated as the entire thing seizes up and begins to drift downward, colliding into its own energy ball and crashing against a mountainside. The whole thing cracks and splits in two.


    With the guardian dispatched, you can push through the now-clearer storms to see what's in front of you.

    https://i.imgur.com/TxdsqXV.jpg

    What looks to be a huge structure made of reclaimed materials towers nearby, with heavily processed but still-recognizeable chunks of some sort of building being partially used to make it. This is the Central Command Node of the nanoprobes, hopefully containing some sort of governing intelligence or remnants of whatever created them or /something/ that can be used to take this whole thing down once and for all, and your last stop on the crazy train.

    Also, Alty's now infected with nanoprobes as well. Have fun with that!

    It comes crashing down. It all comes crashing down. And from the wreckage, a tiny sputtering little figure comes staggering out. Alty covers her mouth and coughs up a bunch of nanoprobe sand. "Oh god it's in my joints and all my screw holes!" She moans, summoning her Jelly can again for a deep, calming pull of the contents within.
    Before a tiny holoscreen pops up in front of her with a shrill warning beep.

    WARNING: Viral infection detected. Current systems damage is at 00.01% and climbing.

    "Oh... That's not good."

>> SUMMARY[Alty] >> We better handle this problem before I go the way of Nier Automata's bad end.

Emily is still looking bothered as the battle goes on. "I ... think I miiiight need to ... uh ..."

She deflates when the copy-Emily comes crashing down, and she sighs with relief. "Okay, whew," she says. "Guess you don't need to see me take off the last CPU core this week."

She glances at Alty, and does a double-take. "... also, can someone see if one of the nano-reclamation units is still working?" she says uncertainly. "They probably aren't, but ..."