Heroes, Great and Mighty (Exalted x World of Darkness)

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Angels had come up rarely in Malcom's briefings. From what he had understood, they were semi-autonomous mechanical servants of a powerful occult supercomputer known as the God Machine, who's existence spanned the globe and who's goals and motives were obtuse and difficult to understand at the best of times. Due to how little anyone knew about it and the apparent randomness of many of it's actions, the God-Machine was regarded as more of a natural phenomena than an independent, decision making entity.

As it's servants, angels were tasked with whatever goals the God-Machine set for them, and would attempt to accomplish them with the singleminded focus that only a computer could have. When assigned a task, they were built from the ground up for the sole purpose of accomplishing that task, and grated whatever powers and knowledge the God-Machine felt necessary for it to have. If it knew of them, it was because the God-Machine had wanted it to know of it.

Unfortunately none of this helped answer Malcom's most pressing question.

"Should we run?" He asked, glancing at Naomi, who looked tenser than he had ever seen her. "Those bindings will hold it in place, right?"

"I don't know." She whispered back. "I don't know Malcom. This is not what we were expecting and I have no idea if running will help. For all we know it's trapped here because it wants to be trapped here."

State purpose and function. The angel repeated, apparently unconcerned about their current crisis.

"I think it wants answers." Malcom said quietly. "This is out of my depth, should we talk or run?"

Naomi mulled the question for a moment before answering. "Talk." She said finally. "Is this area secure?" She asked the angel.

Confirmed. Outpost is no longer in operation. State purpose and function.

It was oddly insistent on that.

"We're investigating." Naomi said, failing to elaborate further. "State your purpose and function."

Destroyer Class Type 2, Tier 4. Assigned to monitor and contain breaches from adjacent reality.

Destroyer angels were the 'killer robots' of the God-Machine, designed to annihilate anything the God-Machine didn't like anymore. Given how thin the Gauntlet was in this location, it likely meant rogue spirits from the Shadow. Although why the God-Machine didn't just leave it to the werewolves like the Seers did was anyone's guess.

"Why are you chained up?" Malcom asked.

Mage faction Seers of the Throne were attempting to study this unit.

There was silence for a moment as they waited for it to elaborate, but the angel said nothing more. Eventually Malcom was forced to continue questioning it further. "What did they want to know?"

The mechanisms of this unit's construction and implementation.

Naomi suddenly looked very interested in this. "Were they successful?"

Negative. Data retrieval attempts ceased upon discovery that this unit's construction were incompatible with Seer arcana. Collected data was abandoned along with with this unit and this location.

That lost Naomi's interest and gained Malcom's. "If we release you, can we have that data?" He asked. Even if it was useless for the mages, he might be able to make something of it. His powers were very different from theres.

"Malcom what are you doing?" Naomi hissed, looking concerned. "We don't know what it will do if we set it free."

This unit is not contained.

Malcom froze in the middle of forming a reply. Naomi likewise ceased her movements. Slowly, they turned to look at the angel, who stared back at them with it's single glass eye.

"But... you're covered in magical bindings." Malcom said. Indeed, looking through his second sight, it was almost difficult to see the angel through the volume of magical entrapments that had been placed upon it.

This unit is not contained. Current lockdown status is insufficient for long or short term detainment.

"Insufficient?" Malcom asked, now uneasy.

"Imagine you're a living tank and a group of children tie you up with string and twine and claim they have you captive." Naomi said. "All you would have to do is make a minimal effort to move, and everything would be undone.

Correct.

That officially put Malcom on edge. He knew enough about Awakened magic to know that it was potent stuff, and not something you took lightly. That this angel considered it's bindings to be little more than a nuisance spoke volumes of it's power.

The only thing that prevented him from grabbing Naomi and getting the hell out of there was the fact that it had acted utterly benign so far. Answering their questions plainly and treating them like visitors rather than intruders. Since it was built to execute anything that crossed the gauntlet, it probably didn't care about them so long as they didn't interfere with it's duties.

That didn't mean that they should take it lightly, however. As far as Malcom was concerned it was better to get out of there as soon as possible.

"I think we should go secure that Seer info and go." Malcom said to Naomi, giving the angel a glance. Since they were no longer addressing it, the angel seemed content to simply observe them.

"Agreed." Naomi said, aiming her flashlight around the room in a quick scan. It took a few minutes and a few more spells on her behalf to track down the abandoned research (asking the angel proved fruitless, as it didn't know where the data was and didn't care either) but they eventually found a room with a number of papers scattered about. Most seemed to be hand-written notes, along with diagrams of occult matrices that Malcom recognized as being a mixture of Awakened symbols and God-Machine iconography.

"Interesting. Normally a dedicated research station would be more organized." Naomi said as she examined some of the papers. "This looks like it was done independently, or by a small group working in secret."

"What does that mean for us?" Malcom asked.

"Nothing. Seers are as big a threat to each other as they are to everyone else. This was probably someone's attempt to get a leg up on their co-conspirators. It doesn't tell us anything of Seer activities for Boston at large."

Malcom frowned. "So this whole mission was a bust, then." He said unhappily.

Naomi shook her head. "Not necessarily. We know now that this wasn't apart of the larger Seer strategy, and we can likely keep it that way. We also know that whoever studied the angel didn't report it to their associates. The methods of the God-Machine. is always an interest to mages due to how unorthodox they are. Just because the mage studying the angel wasn't able to make use of the data doesn't mean others can't."

"Can you?" Malcom asked, picking up a book that looked like a research log.

Naomi shook her head. "No, a Moros might, possibly a Thyrsus, but I'm a Mastigos. Spirits and occult automata aren't my area of expertise."

"So that means whoever was here wasn't a Moros or a Thyrsus." Malcom said.

"Correct." Naomi said, looking as though she approved of his deduction. "It's not much, but it is a small piece of a larger puzzle."

They spent the next hour gathering the discarded papers and organizing them in to different piles based on what they contained. A lot of it was nonsense to Malcom, the arcana contained within either too obscure or too specialized for him to easily understand.

There were however several documents that resonated with him. Diagrams that looked incomplete that he might be able to finish, or notes that he felt it might be able to make use of. The problem was that he had no idea which would be useful and which would be a false lead. He could just grab anything that looked useful and ask for a copy later, but it might just end up being a waste of time.

[] Take whatever looks interesting.
[] Ask Naomi what she thinks he should take.