World Tree MUSH

    The investigation into New Constantinople keeps getting some weird and concerning new data into it, but finally there's been a... semi-lucky break! A survivor, one of those who originally went to the colony, has made it through the Vine and decided he'd much rather stay in the existing, established colonies than test his faith on New Constantinople. The end result being that now, the location of the survivors is known! Although, why they too did not join him is a bit of a mystery, the man is something of a mess and undergoing therapy right now.

    This time the Vine is a shade closer to the swamp, but that's okay. According to the information given by the company that sent the request for offworlders, the 'colony' such as it is, is right on the edge of the swamp, though on the north end rather than the eastern end that the Vine opened up to. This time the air is a bit chilly, compared to the normal mugginess, and things are quieter than before, with little movement of birds or beast.

    "Let's hope that thing learned its lesson and stays in the swamp this time," Valerian remarks, stepping out of the vine into the swamplands with a bundle over his shoulder and being carried by a leather strap. He grumbles a bit as he looks at the swamp and squints a bit, assessing whether or not the strange dragon-alike that lives in it is going to be coming out to greet him. He is hoping that the fact he ate one of its bodies will give it concern to keep its distance. 

    "We should head to the colony ASAP. I'm getting really tired of this planet."

    Teleporting into the rallying area, is a mid-sized Doll. It's inert for a moment or two, before it begins an auto-boot sequence. "Primus Nodes, Online. Sensor system, Online. Weapon Fabrication, Online. All systems nominal." it states robotically, before the familiar voice of Justina syncs on. "I was certain I turned that off... set reminder to disable verbose mode on return to the ship."

    The Doll-clad half-elf nods to Valerian, and turns yellow optics toward the northern side. "I am not detecting any signatures associated with the 'Heads', but I suggest we skirt around the swamp rather than plow through."

    "In fairness." Samus Aran notes to Valerian as she emerges through the vine, "You called her out to fight you in the swamp the last time we were here." The Hunter notes, resting her hand atop her arm cannon as she holds it in a low stance. Non-aggressive for now but ready to take aim at a split second's notice, in case there's a need; which there probably isn't right this second hopefully.
    Hopefully.

This time, Bryllu has gone for a roughly humanoid form, three feet tall, though with a set of wings and thrusters that allow her to fly. She didn't bring any sharp edges this time, instead she's got a rifle flung over her back that seems large for her frame. She immediately offers to link sensors with any who seem capable of receiving them. "I'll be up in the sky taking a good look around." She offers before taking off.

 
 "Eh, probably didn't learn anything from all that." A female voice came from overhead as Cyber Frost dropped from the skies and landed on her feet in a crouched position, one hand on the ground. 
 
 The cyborg straightened up and dusted her hands before limbering up a bit by way of rolling her head on her shoulders. "Believe me, I know the type, way too full of themselves to learn any lessons." Which was ironic because Frost saying that was a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. 
 
 "Frankly, I hope it didn't. I'm itching for Round Two!" Her icy blue eyes almost sparkled with intensity, in usual form, Cyber Frost's hopes and wishes are entirely self serving. She didn't seem to have any of her weapons out currently, though that was not really an indication of whether she was ready to fight or not. Cyber Frost was -always- ready to fight. 

    Bryllu takes to the sky while everyone else picks a route. The sky is... pretty empty though. It might seem sinister, and maybe it is! But the major reason seems to be that there are basically no wind currents in the area right now. It's a very still region, at least at the moment, which isn't usual for the previous visits, but who knows if it's strange for the climate?

    Being up high does help if she wants to guide people though. While it's small, a little hint of fabric and some plastic or metal or something can be seen at the edge of the swamp after a little movement that way! Hard to spot if nobody knows just where to look, and doesn't even stand out temperature-wise, strangely enough.

    Those on the ground, well... it looks kind of boring? Still, as said, but without many animals around... at least at first. As the swamp is approached, the sharp senses and sensors of the ground crew can spot that several small 'mounds' are actually just slow-moving animals half-buried in the ground, mostly still.

    That said, Bryllu will probably catch a flash of heat the instant before something long, hard, and very sharp blitzes through the air, attempting to impale her. A moment later the *crack* of the projectile breaking the sound barrier can be heard by all.

    "I wouldn't mind a round two either," Valerian admits to Frost as they walk along, "It was strong enough to put up a good fight and could do some pretty cool shit." 

    "Sammy! I didn't start that fight," The Dragon Juicer protests to Samus, "You weren't there the first time, but it threatened to eat me! I had to hit it on the nose and assert my dominance over whatever it was."

    Aloy can track, and lingers around the others, but she's pretty quiet right now because there's nothing to track yet. Every once in a while, she'll tap her focus and glance around, looking for any recent prints of any kind, but she isn't in a chatty mood. Which is normal. Her bow is out, so she's hanging around the back of the group to provide ranged support.

    "What was that?" Aloy asks, turning toward the sound. Yes, she has a radio communicator so she can hear that if need be.

 
 Gone were the days where Frost was an impatient rookie fighter who'd fall asleep if there wasn't immediate gratification. Not so much because she found her discipline though, but rather because with her current cybernetic body she could just zone out and deactivate non-essential systems and activate them whether she needed them. 
 
 Besides, making conversation certainly helped. "Right? Hahah!" The kunoichi punched her fists together excitedly as Valerian agreed with her that a Round Two would be great. "That was pretty cool how you ripped her head off by the way. You could share notes with my Sifu I bet. As much as I hate to admit it, he made ripping heads into an art form." 
 
 Frost got distracted again as Valerian and Samus started having their own argument, which oddly helped out with her concentration. Just at that moment, her heightened sensors picked up something rapidly approaching from the skies. "Uh, did anyone else hear that?" Asked the cyborg as she looked up. "Sounded an awful lot like we're about to get bombarded." Maybe.. taking cover could be beneficial for everyone. 

Bryllu reports wirelesslessly to the ground, > "Spotting some synthetic material, fabric and--incoming." < She turns off one thruster and moves sideways, enough to prevent the projectile from hitting her head on, but enough to clip one of her wings, forcing her to adjust her flight, and she heads down closer to the ground, > "Kinetic weapon, detected the energy source in time to react, but only barely. Be careful, these weapons seem designed for Valerian Railton's preferred source of fresh juice."

    Samus does not respond to the moniker 'Sammy'. Not at first at least. 
    "I was there." She replies flatly. 
    "You started the fight."
    The sound, however, causes Samus to raise her cannon by a degree.
    "Something opened fire." The Hunter notes to answer Aloy and Frost.
    "Bryllu, are you alright up there?" She radios up, having totally linked systems with the digital human when she offered earlier.

    The projectile feels odd when it clips... ultra hard, but fragile at the same time, and as it arcs past it splinters in midair and disintegrates. However, forewarned is forearmed, and the next heat flash is a better predictor of an incoming 'spear' launched toward Bryllu. Perhaps this is why no birds are in the air?

    Meanwhile, on the ground, the arguing group gets to see WHAT is launching these attacks. One of those burrowed mounds nearby shifts, and dirt spits out from an orifice. There's a faint squealing-hissing noise, then a massive vent of steam blasting from the sides, withering the grass it's buried under as the 'spear' is launched from the organism. A spire of gristle and bone tightly-compressed that blasts toward the flying target.

    "Hey thanks. Getting the head off like that was only possible because you froze her face and made it more brittle so that I could break it. I think if you hadn't, I wouldn't have been able to sever it from the neck that easily," Valerian admits to Frost, giving credit where it is due regarding his ability to rip off that head. Frost did freeze it first, which made his life a lot easier, "Honestly, though. The hardest part are when they have huge trapezius muscles, because then there's just too much density." 

    "You OK, Breezy?" Valerian asks to Bryllu, watching her land near them. The crack about his juice preferences is let to go, since it's not precisely inaccurate, "I wouldn't call it preferred. It's like when you get grape juice because apple juice is out of stock. It counts, technically, but it's not a /real/ dragon." He laughs a bit and then looks towards the creature. 

    His first instinct is pretty basic. He dashes over towards the mount and attempts to stomp on it, the impact strong enough to create a crater in the ground from the force of it, whether he actually got the creature or not.

 
 Despite being under threat of enemy fire, Cyber Frost still managed to shoot Valerian a thumbs up when he complimented her own abilities. "I know right? I have my own techniques to handle that though, maybe I'll get to show you my stuff this time around." She had to admit, it was fun to just casually discuss beheading with someone that didn't freak out a bit, it reminded Frost of home. 
 
 At the very least it didn't look like anything was going to land on them any time soon, which was more than one could say about Byrllu who was about to get a direct hit by -something- if what Cyber Frost was hearing from Samus was correct. D'oh well, it wasn't as if Frost knew her- and it was not like she could do anything about it. 
 
 Instead, the cyborg moved forward when they ran into what was apparently shooting things up in the air. Some kind of 'mouth' in the planet spitting out projectiles. "Whoa! What in the Netherrealm is that!?" Exclaimed the kunoichi as she brazenly moved towards it. 
 
 "Some kind of.. organic artillery battery.. thing, huh." While interesting, Frost was more the type to destroy things than analyze them. "I got this." 
 
 Cybor Frost charged up energy inside her chest before frying a freezing ray towards the 'mouth' in an attempt to freeze it solid and weaken it for Valerian's stomping kick. 
 
 "Unibeam!!" 

    Well that is... a surprise. "What in the... what are those?" Aloy asks no one in particular, knowing that the rest of the group is just as new to these as she is. The huntress narrows her eyes, and while Valerian targets the one that just fired, Aloy takes careful aim at one of the still-burrowed ones. Heat seems to be something these creatures can deal with, so she fires an experimental cryo arrow toward one of them, the arrow shattering into a blast of freezing cold.

Bryllu was much more prepared to take evasive action the second time around, and that one barely touches her before she lands next to the others. "This planet." She grouses, "Is cheating." She follows behind the others, "And look, Valerian Railton, I'm not interested in the debates about the specific varieties of sophonts whose blood you like to drink. You're a vampire with a peculiar palate."

    Well that explains what opened fire, at least. Valerian, Frost, and Aloy are already on the attack, so Samus lets them handle the spear-lobbing mound-creatures.
    "Are you okay?" That concerned tone is directed at Bryllu as she begins her descent and eventually lands.

    It would seem that the creatures aren't inclined to attack ground-based targets, actually burrowing in deeper as they're attacked! With good reason, because Cyber Frost and Aloy discover that ice is, in fact, their bane, causing squealing and curling up within the shell. All that being said... it sure is helpful to ALSO have a super-powerful stomp join in with that freeze, as while the bony shell proves to be incredibly tough, it's far from indestructible. It holds up surprisingly well to the stomp, but there's definitely some crunching internally just from the sheer impact. The shell, surprisingly, survived(though perhaps with hairline fractures), but the creature within is still pulped despite this.

    Now that nothing is flying, all the other mounds grow quiet though. They don't seem too put off by the death of two of their kin, perhaps lacking natural predators.

 
 "Well, -that- sure learned it, heh!" Cyber Frost grinned under her mask as the creature was in visible pain after the ice attack. It didn't quite matter to her that the others retreated, better that there's a few survivors to spread her greatness after all. 
 
 "Nice shooting there, red." Whether Frost was being sincere about her compliments to Aloy was... up for debate, but she nonetheless looked the archer's way with amusement in her cold blue eyes. 
 
 "Oh and little Byrllu is fine, awesome. Flawless Victory." She placed her hands on her hips and arche a thin blue eyebrow. 
 
 "Now what?" 

"I'm fine, it's just an aluminum alloy reinforced with a carbon fiber mesh." Bryllu explains the damage, "Easy to replace." She takes a look ahead at these things, "Just annoyed, I was hoping to get some real world practice with my new rifle, but I didn't want to focus on dodging those and shoot at the same time."

    "Things never go as planned," Aloy says mildly. "Adaptability is what's important. I guess we should stick close to the ground, for now. At least we know where we're headed, right?" She keeps her bow out and at the ready, nodding to Frost without much fanfare about the compliment.

    Now that the major reason for the stillness has been exposed, Aloy seems more ready to take point, heading forward to scout out the terrain and head for the camp or colony or whatever it is. "We've wasted too much time here, let's see if we can find these survivors."

    "Well. Let's stay on the ground and keep moving towards the colony. They seemed to calm down once no one was flying." Valerian says as he stomps a couple time to clear the snow and ice off his boot like he was coming in out of the snow rather than killing a monster. 

    "Hey!" Valerian seems offended, but only minorly, at Bryllu, "Don't you compare me to those Aztec shitheads! I'm from North America, not Central America. That's the Vampire Kingdom. I'm also not weak to crosses, garlic, running water, holy symbols, fire, sunlight, wood, silver, the soil of my homeland, wolfbay..." He waves his hand a couple times, "I'll show you the Vampire Kingdoms in my homeworld some time. They're way different. Weird fuckers." 

    He seems much less concerned with imminent threat, "This one time, I saw a Vampire Hunter who designed a shower that poured water down in a circle around him while he walked around. Vampires called him the fucking Scourge of Juarez because they couldn't attack him! I'm not making this shit up."

>> SUMMARY[Valerian Railton] >> Literally all of this is canon to rifts

    "That probably explains why we haven't seen any birds here since day one." Samus mutters as she looks down at one of the mound-creatures, once Bryllu confirms that she's alright.
    Moving on.
    She does sort of stare at Valerian as he goes into detail about what vampires are weak to.
    "... Good to know."

>> SUMMARY[Samus Aran] >> Samus will remember that.

    Fortunately, the rest of the trip is uneventful, and it's not too long(a couple hours) before the artificial structure is in sight. In fact, a somewhat grizzled man is hurrying forward, wearing mostly leathers with a sewn patch on it from his original outfit, showing that he's part of the expedition.

    "Hey!" Not very formal, is he. Also... while the unusual shape of Bryllu might draw an eye, he otherwise doesn't seem weirded out by the ragtag group. "Glad you could make it, we were worried when we saw a flyer! Tried to warn you of that. Hope Lyra didn't run into you or anything?"

 
 "Sounds good to me." Cyber Frost agreed to the general statement that they should keep moving forward. Tactics and the like took somewhat of a back step as far as she was concerned since so far they've been able to outmaneuver and otherwise bulldoze over their obstacles. In fact, the kunoichi pointed stared at Aloy as the archer simply continued walking and suddenly. 
 
 "HRAAAAA!!" The cyber-ninja dashed towards Aloy, and then past her, delivering an explsive haymaker at the creature the archer had frozen, with such force that the impact made a mini sonic boom as her knuckles collided with the ice. "Not keen on giving any of these suckers mercy." She explained herself as she finished the one Aloy froze before moving along. 
 
 "Hm? What about Aztecs?" Frost furrowed her eyebrows at Valerian's explanation before blinking a bit at the radical difference in the Juicer's world. "Huh, good thing Kotal Kahn ain't here." She mused to herself before she marched along. 
 
 As they finally encountered one of the survivors Frost simply crossed her arms and let the others talk to him whilst she scanned the area. 

    Frost's brutal attack on the creature isn't really protested. Aloy lifts an eyebrow, but the lands she comes from can be very savage, and she can understand the sentiment even if she doesn't agree with it. So she just nods, to indicate she understood, and half listens to the vampire thing. "I don't really know what a vampire is," she admits. "Must be lost lore from before the Glitch."

    The bow gets tucked away at last, and Aloy nods to the approaching man. "We made it here in one piece, that's all that matters. Are your people safe? Do they want an escort to the Vine? That's the way off this planet."

    "Was that really necessary?" Samus asks casually of Frost. Before they reach where there's people.
    "We've had an encounter with Lyra, before." Samus says levelly.
    She does not detail that Valerian called her out for a fight the last time that happened. "Not this time, though."

    "Lyra... was that her name?" Valerian considers it as he thinks over the list of names and then frowns, "I did meet the swamp guardian. She was pretty powerful, I suppose." 

    He scratches his chin and then echos Aloy's question, "Are you all safe? The company sent us to evacuate you."

"Sorry, I think you may have warned me but I forgot." Bryllu answers, she doesn't sound worried. She shoves Valerian, "You got thirsty for the swamp guardian." She points out, with a tone that makes it sound like she's entirely unaware of the incorrect conclusion people might draw from that statement.

    The man looks surprised at some of this, then shakes his head. "A few have talked about leaving, but we have very little to go back to. If it weren't for Lyra and not knowing what the hell happened to give her those... powers." He grimaces. "You were lucky if you walked away from her. She does... something to people. Takes over their bodies completely. Or rewrites their stacks or something." He crosses his arms.

    "But to answer your request, we don't exactly want to go, but we need replacement parts and supplies, we're back to living in the stone age here!" Well, technically more like the middle ages, but he's not a historian. Or an historian, either. "We may end up having to go back anyway, if we can't figure out a safe way to live with something like Lyra around. You know about her then? Damndest thing... just one day she turned around and started speaking like we were all prey animals or something, and taking over bodies and flinging people around like we were rag dolls." Fortunately, none of them seemed to have glitched out and caught in the walls.

 
 Cyber Frost almost seemed surprise at Samus' protests about her alleged ruthlessness. "One less of those bugs to deal with." She responded to the Hunter's complaints. It seemed pretty straight forward to her, they were the enemy and they were here to kill them. Although, Cyber Frost did kind of just invited herself to this expedition and may have missed a briefing or two. Unless people forcefully told her to leave though, she'd stick around. Besides, as far as Cyber Frost was concerned, she was hanging out with the right crowd considering she and Valerian were gleefully discussing decapitating techniques moment ago. 
 
 "That crazy chick's name was Lyra?" Asked Frost incredulously as the survivor explained who was it that appeared to be behind all of this- following by laughing heartily at Bryllu's curious choice of words. "BWAHAH!! Oh, you're funny.." The ninja sniggered under her mask at Bryllu before focusing once again on what the survivor had to say. 
 
 "Bah! She ain't that tough!" The ninja frowned as the survivor started speaking of Lyra's apparent power. "Last time we ran into her we almost ripped her to shreds. If we can corner her and make sure she can't clone herself I'm sure we could finish her off once and for all." 

    Samus isn't even going to comment on Frost's logic. If the mecha-shinobi wants to kill the wildlife far be it from the Hunter to actually stop her.
    Technically the group doesn't have to deal with them at all if no one is flying, but she keeps that to herself.
    "So you're staying?" She asks. "Even with the risk that she presents?"
    People can be persistent huh.

    "I can understand wanting land of your own, so won't press it," Aloy says. "But I don't know anything about this Lyra. The other ones will have to give their assessment of that." She only seems mildly surprised.

    Samus sounding surprised just has her shrugging. "It sounds like they disagree with how their homeland is run. If they want to start a new community, there are worse places." Aloy has a weird definition of what makes an ideal spot to build a city.

    "Try to negotiate with her. Find out what she wants for peace. If that doesn't work, call me and I'll come kill her." Valerian says in a flat tone, looking at the man and holding out a business card.

Bryllu tilts her head sideways at Frost's reaction. "Did I say something funny?" The three foot tall mechanical creature asks, sounding clearly confused. "I don't think the swamp guardian should be underestimated, however. It's clear that we were too much trouble to fight but we have no real knowledge of the extent of the remaining power this being has access to."

    The man nods, "Yeah, the girl there has the right idea. Er, the one about our home. We left because of how repressed it is. Live as a slave or die free, I guess, but we'd prefer not to die." He chuckles, trying not to say anything about what Bryllu said.

    "Thanks for the offer of assist though. We may have to take you up on it, but we'll see..." He looks up, surprised. "But if you can get rid of Lyra... or talk to her, we don't know what she wants and she won't talk to us, that'd be great. I admit, I never thought I'd see anyone confident they could take on all nine of her at once, but if you already beat her as a group, maybe I underestimated you." He smiles, then sighs, "You'd best be heading back before dark, though. It gets weird at night. We... don't have much to pay with, but if you could send some replacement parts and medical supplies, and we can find some way to repay you, that'd be all we ask." He waves, starting to head back toward the settlement. "Just be careful!"

 
 To be fair, it was never a good idea to comment on Frost's logic, the cyber-ninja seemed to be the type to kill for the sake of killing, she killed it because she liked killing it. However, it also seemed that she was genuinely under the impression that those creatures were enemy soldiers rather than just wildlife. There weren't any non-combatants where Cyber Frost was from, if you stood in her way she'd show no mercy. 
 
 She made no further comment on the matter, particularly if no one pressed her on it, but also because she was too amused at Bryllu's comments. "Hehehe.." She snickered a few more times as the short mechanical creature looked up at her incredulously and she even bent low to pet Bryllu's head, taking some liberties with someone who was essentially a stranger to her. "Meet me after this mission and I'll tell you~." She promised. 
 
 Glancing up at the survivor, Frost wasn't really interested in their whole political ideology or if they were repressed or not, she was here because she wanted to fight strong opponents, and this Lyra was looking like a great target. "Oh she's powerful alright." Frost smirked under her mask. "But she can't scrap." For now, it seemed that they would put a pin on the topic of Lyra, but Cyber Frost seemed to share Valerian's belief that she could be handled with violence. She chuckled a bit more at the one survivor and was ready to move out again with the group when they were ready. "Well, that was fun.." 

"You realize I'm older than you, do you?" Bryllu asks Cyber Frost, clearly realizing that she's being talked down to to some degree. "But sure, tell me later."