World Tree MUSH

The past week has been strange for Ash. OK strange is reletive, but goign from one earth to another still feels odd to him. It seemed many such places were still also getting used to travelers from 'elsewhere.'

So here is a world that looked somewhere between under-city where everything has been used and repurposed a few times, and also a place where new shiny state of the art would crop up and rub elbows with the used grime. Ash walked these streets very obviously armed, and with a large sheet wrapped body slung over a shoulder much to the indiffrence of anyone around him.

"...Target capture was easier back home..." He laminted as he waited at a crosswalk. The person bound and in the process of being transported said something muffled and wiggled. Ash adjusted his grip on the person's legs and sighed. "Look if Ordis has directiosn right it's another block." More emphatic muffled noises from the 'package. caused Ash to sigh, "it really is nothing personal. I took a job, I'm goign to get paid. You'll have a new employer. Seems tidy enough." He didn't realize the man had a family or that his new 'employer' would hold them hostage as leverage to ensure good behavior. Ash wouldn't have taken this job if he had known.

The light changed and Ash continued his walk, much to the wriggling ever increasingly noisy package's terror.

Ayla has wandered off for a bit from where she'd been staying with the Glabados fundies--because well, she's a Cavewoman, and they do what they want. She'll be back there eventually, likely--but for right now, what the heck is this place? This didn't look like anything close to home!

Ayla finds herself in a trash strewn alleyway between two very high-rise buildings--one that extended up into the blackness that seemed to lie above--was she underground? It felt almost like being in a cave, and yet...

"Well look at the fresh fish."

A group of toughs wearing a hodge-podge of plastic ballistic armor, gang regalia and biker clothing started to come out of the woodwork and surround her. Their leader, a large man with dark skin and a fiery red-dyed mohawk grinned at her. Instead of incisors he had a form of fang-like dental implant designed to inject victims with a pleasure/pain receptor reversing drug known as Desade. As the vampire-cyborg gangs did.

"One bite from me and you'll be flying sky high, spud," the man grinned at her with his horrifying metal teeth.

Ayla wasn't sure what he was talking about but she didn't seem to care, she was already picking up a nearby trashcan and hefting it over her head...

    Fortunately there's one person who isn't native, but looks like he belongs. Trenchcoat, sunglasses, hair out to --> here. Blues isn't really a fan of this place. It has robotics, but still nothing like what he is, and it seems less... friendly than he's used to, at least the humans are.

    Ash might get a look, but that's just what gets Blues moving. He's not going to jump into anything unless it looks like trouble is going to turn really bad... so he's probably the LEAST conspicuous around, considering not far off there's a cavewoman lifting a trash can. "This world isn't right either, I think..."

Ash glanced towardsthe allyway right as Ayla landed and tilted his head.

"Is that a," Ordis's voice glitched, "HEATHAn SAVAGE- displaced woman from a diffrent world, or local in barbaric dress?"

Ash sighed, "I can't make heads or tails of the fashin here, but she looks like she skinned a kavat and is wearing it so I'm going with not from around here." Before he bothered asking, Ash sat his package down and tied him by the legs to a lamp post. "Risk to package seems minimal." In a single fluid motion he corkscrew jumped across the roadway while throwing a pair of knives at the gangers. He didn't know these people, and wouldn't shed tear if they died, but he wasn't aiming to kill. this was not his home and he wanted to scare. Hence aiming for legs rather than simply use his shotgun to blow faces off. Of course they were augmented, so it might not be nearly as easy as Ash would assume.

Unfortunately for Ash the gangers weren't just in the allyway, and even though he had managed to extract his target without setting detectors off it hadn't been quite as clean an escape as he assumed. A team had been sent out to retrieve this package. Normally the parent company would simply write the asset off, but the man was serving as a debt-slave, and they took the idea of these trying to avoid paying that debt as worth the added expense. After all one had standards to mantain in the business world, yes?

So as Ash lept to help scare the gangers away, others would be approaching; one flying drones as overwatch while three others were moving in on the ground. All of them armed, and all experianced in dealing with 'asset reclamation.'

The gang toughs aren't defenseless--but they probably weren't also guessing they'd run into a cyborh that was hundreds of years ahead of the kinds of consumer-grade cyberware they could easily get ahold of. The first knife strikes one of them in the back as Ayla shoves the trashcan down over the leader with fang's head--another knife sails and pins through a third one's hand--sticking his own hand to his leg, embarrassingly!

"You--get in here!" Ayla stuffs the can over the man's head and torso, ironically likely protecting him from further attack and kicks him down the alley--where he careens about and ping-pongs off several buildings before rolling to a stop, likely unconscious.

"Who you?! You scary--like Dino men?!" she has never seen something like Ash before, and is suitably freaked out--Blues she hasn't seen yet.

    Well, Blues /was/ going to step in, if needed, but it looks like his involvement is limited to... stepping to the side as the trash can tumbles down the alley and slams into a wall. "Well that's not a damsel in distress. Guess my work here is done."

    A pause as he realizes he didn't do anything. And that the weird one with the bag is still there. "Everything all right here, you two?"

Ash landed on one knee, both handsempty and visible as he watched gangers either groaning in pain or running for it. "I..." His head tilted as he paused, taking the woman'sappearance in. She was powerfully built, but not so overmuscled to impede motion. Something tickled at memory. Shelve it.

"Ordis," Ashs' voice from inside the transferrence pod probably wouldn't register through the frame. "Got anything on that?" Dutifully Ordis flashed pictures of pre-historic dinosaurs along with art of... questionable authenticity on what a dinosaur evolved into a humanoid form would look like. 

"Uh no?" Ash finally spoke while looking to Ayla. "Still human. I think anyway?"

That's when a drone swooped through, shooting at the capture target, but instead of filling the poor man with holes it cut the cabling tying him in place as another ganger rushed in, lowering his shoulder nad scooping the man up. "Alright deadbeat back to the salt mines we go."

This whole experiance left the man screaming against hte gag placed in his mouth. He didn't like either option, but knew that if he went back his now former employer would assume he'd been the one that wanted out in the first place. He was now even more terrified.

Blues hasn't even rightly registered. He looks normal enough, and in fact far less artificial than many here, to be overlooked in spite of the treasure trove of technology he advances. So he might see the pair of hired guns hiding just out of Ash or Ayla's sight lines with autoshotguns in hand. It seemed that to these people this person was worth killing over.

"Heeey! Stop that!" Ash turned, throwing a knife at the re-kidnapper? Un-Kidnapper? WHat do you call someone kidnapping a kidnapping victim? Rescuer? Anyway Ash yelled at the man, trying to get his attention. "Stop!"

Ayla is very confused as to what is going on with that thing floating around Ash--some kind of talking floating crystal diamond thing?? She'd seen a lot of monsters and creatures made out of different things--it wasn't completely out of the imagination... but this one talked!

"Oh! Alya okay," she let her shoulders slump a bit as Blues stepped out and asked if they were alright, he'd probably register as a man wearing armor if it weren't for the trenchcoat that Blues already wore.

"Weird men attack--I Ayla, who you two?" she ducked her head as the knife after that went flying--realizing there was something going on behind her with Ash's 'quarry'.

"Eek! stop throwing knives!" she complained as if frazzled.

    Not much time for introductions. "Just a passing guy, seeing if everything is... okay..." Which apparently it is not? Because someone is again being kidnapped! Or something. Blues isn't really clear on what's happening beyond lots of yelling to stop it.

    He dare not use his cannon right now though. Grabbing a trash can lid, he does give a hand to the whole situation by winging it at high speed toward the man's legs, more to trip him up if anything. "Hey now, let's not just go grabbing stuff and bolting off!"

Ash's knife missed, if you can call slicing the man's pant leg open missing. He couldn't risk the shotgun given the target was slung across the man's back. So he sprinted forward, right into the crossfire of a pair of shotguns. The shells impacted, causing brief flashes of light to ripple around Ash's frame. He stumbled, his momentum checking at hte surprise reenforcements and then... vanished? Traces of smoke wafted from where Ash stood. Ayla and Blues both might see little tells; a footstep here, litter disturbed there. and then Ash briefly appearing first in front of one man and then the other, each recieving a single slash from extended wrist mounted blades before Ash appeared between the man carrying off his capture target holding his sword level with the man's throat. "Drop him."

Drones overhead recorded the incident, small machienguns targeting Ash. Their cameras saw the other two members of the ground team fall over, quite dead.

Ash looked from Ayla then to Blues. "Hello Ayla. I'm Ash. You." He nodded to Blues. "I've seen you before, and while i'd like to stand here and talk I really do have a delivery to finish and the only thing keeping more gunfire is the fact i have a sword at this guy's neck. Innthat right?" His unblinking optics stared at the ganger that held the bound man. "Now give me my package and head for the nearest Vine out of here. I'd have let yoru friends walk if they hadn't opened up." There was a hardness to his voice as he looked first from Ayla ten to Blues. "You two have any stake in this or wrong place wrong time?"

the drone's weapons held their aim on Ash as the captive was roughly handed back over and only lowered when Ash sheathed his sword.

Ayla goes wide-eyed as Blues throw the trashcan lid like Captain America--not that any of them likely know anything about it. She had to wheel around to follow what Ash was doing--nearly getting spun by his momentum and force--her tail scarf whipping along with her and hanging down behind her.

But there was no strange carapaced horned man standing there, not anymore--but Ayla's ears were already picking up footsteps... but from where? Then her eyes finally found him--holding a blade to the man's neck. While her first instincts were to intervene--even if one of those weird guys was probably one of the same crew that attacked her, she also wasn't sure what was going on here.

"What you do with him?" she asked, calling out to Ash as she strode up toward him, tilting her head at his question and then shrugging.

"Was just passing through," she shook her head, relaxing when Ash's sword was put away.

"Ayla explore through here--looking for home world, can't find it," she sighed a little, dejectedly.

    "I know the feeling," Blues says as he rejoins the other two. "I'm not from here either. But what's going on here?" He gestures toward what Ash is handling. "Is that... a person? Why are you fighting over a person?"

    Hey it's a pretty good question. And Blues is looking just a little perturbed.

Ash nodded after taking a moment to look around. The drones lingered but were gaining elevation and appeared to be flying off. No fresh attackers. "I was hired to extract this man from debt-slavery." Ash frowned inside his transferrence pod as his warframe glanced to the pair of corpses. Thousands, no more than thousands, have died because of him but this felt diffrent. They werren't cloned troops nor were they indoctronated wage-slaves. In the transferrence pod he shuddered which might or might not have shown through the frame. Ordis finished the statement for Ash, his translucent projection hovered at head level around Ash's frame, occupying a space at his shoulder. "Operator Ash likewise is unable to find the path from our home system. So we travel between places as these... Vines... allow. As is our nature we take what jobs we can." Ordis's polite voice glitched, but the murderous screaming never surfaced, "In this instance payment will be access permissions needed to interface with the local info-net."

"Thank you Ordis." Ash offered Ayla his sword hand as greeting. "I have a feeling there's a lot more going on than i realize, and I'm pretty sure i'm gettign lied to, but they are aware what will happen if they try double crossing me. ORdis was quite adimant in adding a few stipulations to the contract."

Ordis gave a glitched mechanical laughter, but would not elaborate on what those terms and conditions were.

"Where is wierd voice coming from?" Ayla seemed to realize it was from Ordis though, as they floated there--sort of... fairy-like? But that didn't look like anything she knew of in that territory. Hell she hadn't even seen many fairies.

"He hunt person," Ayla shrugs. She isn't sure why the scary bug/lizard man wants that guy, but she isn't going to stop him. She shrugged and seemed to already concern herself with other topics--like poking at Ordis's floating image in the air near Ash, as if she was poking at someone's strange pet parrot.

"Ayla don't know what going on either..." she peered over at the dark-haired Blues and Ash, still not quite understanding what he was, but...

Sniff sniff.

Ayla sniffed at the air, blinking a little. From somewhere down the street, some portion of mystery meat hit burning hot grease and made the most /wonderful/ odor Ayla could think of right now.

"Mmm--food!" she was immediately wandering off--probably also in the direction Ash was moving in.

The way to a cavewoman's heart was definitely through her stomach.

"Stop that!" Ordis snapped, "Ordis is not a thing to be prodded at." THe little projection of Ordis warbled irritably. Then Ash caught the same scent oRdis did and the little projection gave an all too human sigh. "Location has been marked Operator. However ORdis must remind you that you do have a mission to complete."

Ash nodded and watched Ayla leave. "She reminds me of something..." Ordis snorted, "No I'm serious. Can't put my finger on it other than how she moves...." He shrugged 

Then he looked to Blues, "I can give you contact information if you would like to sit down at a better time to talk. I'm frankly thin on friends and far from home."

He shrugged and walked off wit his prize, such as it was. Food would have to wait, but food he would have.