Duodecimarch Revolution Redux: Metroid x Worm x Warhammer etc Multicross

[X] Bumblebuzz

A number of cars were going down the streets of Brockton Bay, constantly bouncing communications between each other with technology that operated on principles not even named by the locals. In the lead was a yellow Camaro of a quite recent model, not so stylish that it would immediately stand out, but definitely of a higher-end line; a black stripe dividing its hood as it drove on the snowy fields with special tires.

Bumblebee was more than five million years old. A veteran in a profession where life often didn't last for more than seconds when the shooting started. He was young by the standards of the Autobot Elite sure, but he was well familiarised with the streets of earths in various timeframes and timelines. And these snowy conneticut roads were nothing to him.

Bumblebee: When a human driver is making the lights on only one side of their car blink in a regular pattern, they're indicating they want to head in that direction.
Hot Shot: And what if they're you know, lying?
Bumblebee: Most drivers don't do that because most drivers aren't exhaustports.
Hot Shot: And if they do?
Strongarm: Autobot protocol on this specific issue cites a need to adjust to the change in traffic conditions as far as is necessary to prevent a human fatality, avoid a collision and maintain secrecy if unrevealed in that order of priority.
Hot Shot: Thank you for the manual excerpt Strongarm, very fascinating.
Bumblebee: Try to not make my job harder Hotshot.
Bulkhead: Hey come on, we've all had that phase. I remember when you were a rookie yourself.
Arcee: Five Million Earth-Cycles ago's a pretty long time to be bringing up embarrassing stories.
Bumblebee: Yeah do you want me to bring up what happened on Tyxtak II?
Bulkhead: Now let's not get too hasty...
Red Alert: I'm not really seeing how any of this applies to the lesson at hand.
Roulette: It probably doesn't but we'll have to suffer through it anyway.
Bumblebee: Hey it's not suffering, it's important to learn.
Drift: Perhaps it is best to admit surrender on this particular issue.
Windblade: Bumblebee give up? Are your circuits fried?
Crosshairs: Nah, even the tallest mountain gets worn down eventually, give it time.
Override: You guys really do know how to break in regional COs don't you?
Hound: Hey, he's not my CO.
Dust Up: Aw come on can you keep the comment clear of this furnace scrap for five milicycles?
Bumblebee: Hey, communication matters! Besides, talking things out is important. What are we, decepticons?

Being in charge of Autobot Scouts as Co-Commander alongside Override on some of the Earths that Autobot interdimensional command had uncovered lately was not a job he'd recommend for everyone, he certainly didn't think that someone like Hot Rod or "Rodimus" as he liked to call himself now would be particularly suited for it. It was a task that required being good with low-tech humans, much lower tech than the humans from their own reality. And far too many fellow members of the Autobot Revolutionary Army were too focused on blasting the bad guys rather than how to make the future better.

Bumblebee's musings were disrupted briefly by the sudden swerve of the car in front of him, prompting the playing of a youtube clip blasting out "CRASHIN' FRASHIN BREAKDANCERS!" from a Spongebob episode to express his rather intense displeasure at this entirely unsignalled turn in a manner that wouldn't get him as many stares as playing something more...profane would have.

The barking of gunshots definitely broke him out of his brief anger as his broken vocoder made a series of warbles while he identified what sorts of weapons were making them.

A quick zoom revealed an ongoing car chase, Police Cars pursuing a modified Hummer that had the military model pintle nest re-added; a gangbanger with a pentagram printed onto his coat while the M2 browning rattled off .50 calibre slugs downrange, tearing through one of the police cars like butter.

...That was definitely some firepower for satanic gangsters. But let's see...chronosignature...yeah these were people coming in from Paragon City's "Primal Earth" universe, not natives to Earth bet.

It would explain why the police didn't seem to expect one of the other hummer's hatch to open up and the person inside to let loose with a Javelin anti-tank missile, old surplus weapons in his native timeline outdated by the Rikti war; but completely, absurdly, ridiculously overkill against police cruisers.

The missile slammed down into the nearest cruiser, a spray of molten metal spearing into the vehicle whose petrol supply burst into flames while the vehicle was sent into a fatal front flip as its hood was virtually pulverised, the crew inside reduced to a paste you'd need to pick out with a spoon to fit into a coffin.

Another car trying to come in from the intersection was met with a fireball lobbed by one of the Hellions leaning out of the open window, conjuring up the wad of hellish demon flame and flinging it with little concern into the cruiser that became a molten death trap for its officers; their screams mercifully cut brief by their throats being incinerated by their cage of melting windshield plastic and warping soft metals.

Bumblebee decided to follow, shifting gears as naturally as humans breathed. He'd stay a bit away, hacking into traffic cameras to keep optics on the situation while he pinged the other autobots about the crossdimensional crime incident, warning them to keep an eye out as the hummers approached a rendez vous point with what they seemed to assume would be their salvation. So far, Bumblebee didn't see too much reason to get involved, no civilians were being injured just yet, even as a fourth and a fifth police car were shredded by the Heavy machine gun, the head of the driver of the fifth car smearing onto his head and his car smashing into the SWAT armoured vehicle behind him as his dead hands refused to leave the steering wheel.

It was when a bus not yet warned of the developing firefight was driving by that he decided that secrecy protocols could wait for a bit.

Bumblebee: Local law enforcement's not going to be able to save that bus in time, alright. Hot Shot, Strongarm, keep close and canvas for witnesses, keep amnesiacs at the ready. Don't forget this time alright? Don't want to tell Ratchet we'll need another mass amnesiatic again.
Red Alert: Primus you'd really call Rachet on us?
Arcee: Oh he will.
Hot Shot: Alright alright I'm going. Any civvies nearby?
Bumblebee: Most are sleeping but this noise is going to wake them up in a hurry.
Crosshairs: Ah wonderful, this is what we're gonna have to tell the Primes innit? Oily brilliant.
Override: We'll handle informing the Council of Autobot Primes. Don't worry. Just focus on your objective.
Bulkhead: How'd they slip through to this timeline anyway? Are our efforts at keeping the portal situation under control working?
Bumblebee: Questions for another time people.

Bumblebee extended his wheels outwards and swivelled them to a degree no normal Camaro could ever manage to make a turn that would snap a human driver's neck like a twig; tires screeching as his metallic frame extended rapid solar-pulse cannons out of his hood just above his headlights.

The second Javelin missile fired was shot down trivially by Bumblebee; its achingly slow supersonic warhead protoform's play to reduce to harmless ejecta before it could make more than three meters out of its launcher, just far enough to get the attention of the Hellions as he folded his wheels back into himself and raced down, simply shrugging off the heavy calibre rounds thrown his way.

Assault Rifles, shotguns, and magnums all bounced off him without any appreciable impact as the lead of the satanic cultists let out a loud and profusely profane series of swearing about "Cape gadget cars!" in reference to the possession of souped up personal vehicles among many of Paragon City's metahumans.

A LAW rocket smashed into his hood, exploding against him to spray a jet of molten copper at supersonic speeds into his chassis. He didn't even flinch or bother with his shielding, letting the impact harmlessly absorb into his armour plating before he made quick note of the area.

The last of the cruisers in the chase was a puddle of slag after the demon the Hellions summoned was let out the back of one of their cars, the horned beast gnawing on one of the dead officers while its companion; a winged and cloven-hooved creature of fire and brimstone whispered the sins of the surviving officer into their ear. People were starting to stir awake, but Hot Shot arrived with a knockout pulse to put them all back to sleep as the device let out a sharp ping that no normal human could remain conscious after hearing.

The demonic pacts the Hellions made precluded them from such a description, while was fine because Bumblebee always enjoyed what was coming next; taking another LAW to one of his headlights and reaching out an arm towards the nearest street lamp and using it to redirect himself into a break dancing like flip while his body unfurled to proper size.



"~Ya'll cruisin' for a bruisin'~" Bumblebee played out of his repertoire of clips as he grabbed the next Javelin missile fired at him straight out of the air and flung the missile back to the launching hummer, reducing it to a flaming wreck full of corpses.

"What the fuck is that thing?!" One of the Primal Earthers managed as their warlock snarled angrily and released a gout of flame in the shape of a laughing bull's skull from his mouth in a breath of fire.

It was magic to be sure, annoying to deal with as magic only partially cared for actual durability and was so rooted in conceptual quibbling. But Bumblebee had his faith in Primus, who had seen him through more than a few implausible situations, a bit of hellfire from an amateur warlock wasn't going to be enough to end his five million year long career.

He pushed through the flame and looked towards the Bus, seeing one of the people on it was still conscious, his scanners indicating they were a parahuman.

"~Kid look away.~" He clipped before his mace extended from his arm and reduced the offending warlock to paste; matter disruption fields scattering his particulates into a fine sizzling mist while his other arm formed into a cannon. A whine and a "pitew!" sharp sound heralding a yellow spheroid of sunlike fury vaporising another Hummer, easily moving himself into the way of another LAW rocket toprevent it from hitting any buildings.

"~Starting to piss me off with that.~" He added as he kickfliped around faster than the human eye could perceive, smashing on top of one of the remaining hummers and sniping the winged demon with his solar cannon; scattering its essence back to the hell it crawled out of.

The other demon, larger and almost minotaur esque, let out a bovine roar and threw itself at the Autobot, horns first to slam into his shielding and douse him in hellfire. Grabbing the bull by the horns, Bumblebee found the ground giving way beneath his feet while he was being pushed back by the bull demon towards the bus, his optics glancing over to the people inside.

The only person awake, a girl of maybe twelve years, was shaking hermother in a panic before he heard the screeching demon and the bark of gunfire getting closer.

"~Gonna be alright kid, trust me.~" He said, trying to sound reassuring with his clip choice as he pulled the demon in closer for a brutal uppercut to its jaw, smashing it clean off of its skull before spinning around, extracting a short sword and jabbing it into the monster's chest; turning around just as he sensed Hot Shot getting close and presenting the Demon to the speeding Corvette that his pupil had taken the shape of before he transformed and raked it with ion fire.

Strongarm tackled one of their Brute archetype villains; a man swollen to great size and strength by his hellish artifacts into a red skinned pseudo-demon, the Hell Maker; though the only hell he was feeling was the larger Autobot smashing his face into the pavement.

The Demon shuddered as the other summoner among the Hellions flushed it with magical energy, regenerating its wounds and letting it peel itself off of bumblebee's sword to claw at Hot Shot, missing but carving into the bus' bathroom section, burning sewage adding an odor that made bumblebee glad for his ability to turn off his olfactory sensors whenever he wished.

Bumblebee; Hot Shot stop bringing the fight near the humans!
Hot Shot: Hey come on, I'm still a work in progress here!

One of the 50 cals opened up and tore into the pavement, Bumblebee throwing himself into the path of the heavy machine gun to block its spray of hot lead and giving a pyrokinetic hellion a chance to spray him in hellish fire. Not dangerous to himself, bu the could detect the headlights on the bus behind him melting.

He popped out his shoulder missile launchers and released a series of seeker warheads, tearing through gangbangers in short order with precision directed railgun launched shards released as soon as the missiles detected their prey and the right trajectory, blood filling the streets before the missiles self-destructed; his solar cannon vaporising the last remaining hummer.

Hot shot had decapitated the Demon behind him, letting its form crumble back into Hell.

"Aw man fuck this I'm not cut out for these high level types." The last of the hellions managed before Strongarm caught him in an ice cannon blast, engulfing him in frigid cold that would allow him to be revived at a later date for interrogation.

"So...we always do this much collateral on stealth ops?" Hot Shot asked as Bumblebee shook his head.

"~Nanomachines son.~" He replied as he let a canister full of them spill out onto the ground to repair whatever damage needed to be fixed.

"Oh yeah...but uh...kid, what are we gonna do with him?" He asked.

"Autobot protocol has clear instructions on what to do with children in this situation." Strongarm reminded him as he pushed open the melted shut door for the bus and offered a hand to the girl.

"~That stick ain't gonna help you.~" He said, pulling from yet another clip with another voice.

"~But I'm a friend.~" He added.

"Uhhm...uhhh.." She said, holding onto the baton in her hands until her knuckles turned white "Are you a...uh...tinkerbot?" She asked, gulping as she slowly approached before stepping out.

"~Not quite.~" He responded.

"~Can you keep a secret?~" He inquired.

"I uh..." She managed, stuttering as a shadowy sihlouette of herself flickered near her. Her breaths shallow and panick stricken.

"~Need a ride?~" He asked as he transformed back into car mode and opened up his doors, her eyes flicking back to her mother before he popped out one of his minicons from the hood; Firebreak saluting her before helping his larger companion move people out of the bus and to shelter.

"...Okay...strange car ride with...weird robot..." She gulped as Firebreak brought her unconscious family into Bumblebee and helped them strap in as his avatar; an excited looking young man with brilliant yellow hair, manifested via hologram to avoid suspicion that could naturally arise over driverless cars.

Seat belts fastened and clicked, and bumblebee quickly took a look through any data about her available to find where to drop her off.

"~Hey kid, you like any music?~" He asked as he drove off from the scene, notifying the rest of his team that he'd be away for just a bit to see to the human element.

[X]: Shadow of Retribution

In a splinter timeline of Primal Earth categorised by Portal Corps as Earth Epsilon-Zeta-191; "Confederate Earth" for its temporary survial of the American Confederacy after the civil war up until its destruction in the second world war; a beast with three heads whipped wings that blocked out the sun in the midst of a continent shattering storm of its own creation. Its mammoth body's simple act of movement enough to slay millions as they sought out the last living people in this dimension with malevolent glee. There were lights and forms seeking to fight it; the last heroes of this world and the Primal Earth volunteer force that came over to help them in their darkest hour.

Lightning mixed with twisted gravity and alien psychic malice until it was tinged a leering yellow flickered from the storm and the scaled body of the behemoth into aircraft, the fading light of the brave heroes growing ever dimmer with each passing moment. Nothing they did seemed to work, whatever hurt they dealt healed in an eyeblink, and every time its threefold malevolent directly turned to one of them, they died. A woman; partnered with a truly ancient being of dark energy driven by their old remorses and regrets; a Shadow of Retribution; shifted form as she sought to dodge this malice.

Teleportations through faultlines in spacetime made by her power were done, her form becoming like a black phoenix based on the body of one of the Shadow's partners in an era when Dinosaurs still walked the earth while she let out black flame to at least buy time. Every moment bought for the Impervium armoured Vanguard troops overseeing the evacuation below was precious, and the composite that they became following their merging was of one mind in this martyrdom.

It was a battle worthy of song, thunderclaps and shrieks exchanged; her form changing again and again. Sometimes into a crustacean brute of quark star density, sometimes into a wispy squid like being whose furious dark power was released in countless energy bolts and alterations of spacetime and gravity; sometimes into a giant striding creature that had evolved to feast on amoebic seas. But it was never enough, her friends fell one by one, her dark fire grew weaker and paler. The creature fed on death and hate, and this world was dying. The air was growing poisonous, its usurped control over natural processes tearing the planet itself apart while it storm consumed the world.

She fought still, even as the sorcerer she had stood beside for a decade wailed his last as a cackle followed lightning that ripped him asunder, his soul pulled away into one of the jaws of a monster that hungered for worlds. She fought still, as six eyes turned towards her, evil joy in three minds as they sensed prey starting to lose hope. A tiny thing that was so very tired after this battle across an entire world. A battle where she had saved maybe a small trickle of people from the end of all they knew falling from a crack in the heavens.

The throats of the thing glowed yellow and their eyes' pupils disappeared in a golden glow while their triple cackle assailed her thoroughly battered hearing; preparing for the finishing blow. She screamed back at it, a roar of defiance rather than fear, ditching her shifts in form and returning to her normal body; clad in hooded and cloaked black light armour and form fitting electromesh as she threw all she had in one last explosion of darkness. The atomic bomb could not be so furious; but her power dissolved into nothing before the golden death, her beam erased by its advance as if it was never there at all before it engulfed her.

A bond that had lasted a decade was severed, a body that had endured the worst imaginable for a decade was smote by a pain never before imagined. Fluctuating through her at every level as two became a pair of ones once more. A satisfied trill coming from the monster as the energy finished washing over her and charred blackness hit the scoured ground below.

A truly old mind was forced naked into the void once more by a death. The broken, bleeding body of the being they had shared a body with for years no longer able to hold onto their bond as they breathed their last beneath the oppressive shadow of a twisted thing of golden scales and vast wings. Cacaphonic, bell like cackles from a behemoth almost too big to be believed rang in their ears, and the howling thunderclaps of a hypercane whipped into supersonic motion by a thing of three faces that they had tried to stop together drowned out the sound of this city in an alternate timeline crumbling away.

The earth splintered and its blood gave off its life's essence, radioactive heat dimming and its maws gluttunously feeding on the souls of the dead that they had sought to save in their portal corps expedition. They had fought hard, they had fought well, with incarnate fury and worldshaking might. It was not enough, and the golden devil king of terror drank from their demises. Bioportation escape was interfered with by the energies the monstrous, alien thing gave off; unwelcome in this planet or metaverse; a monstrosity whose cackles drove the monsters and beasts of the world to frenzied madness.

They had fought hard, with every technique they had, but here he was, staring at the broken body of his partner as she had been reduced to barely a quarter of her body mass, the remainder so badly damaged by gravitonic and electrical energies and raw psychic malice that not even her healing factor could save her. A skeletal jaw rasped as their black cloud form rose above her body, a nimbus of dark energy without form or shape.

"R-run..." She managed before Maria Steinbeck died at the age of thirty six; a hero since she had manifested her mutant powers at thirteen; long before she had met her shadow. There were no eyelids to close, nor eyes to shield in the first place, but she still looked towards the essence of her shadow as she passed, her soul pulled from her body towards the monster that turned its attentions to the planet itself. The world was shaking, the tectonic plates were splintering, the heat of the world fading as it drank from it like a tick.

Souls flowed into horned mouths, the dragon drinking greedily of the deaths of an entire ecosystem. The beasts it had driven to madness with its presence would die in turn, and all would be ready for its lover from the stars so very soon.

The Shadow wanted to fight, to stop this thing. But they sensed the fire of Vanguard's portals flickering as they were in the last stages of pulling out. The power armoured soldiers of the United Nations' primary sword and shield against the threat beyond pulling away as fast as they could.

"You deserved better...Maria..." The Shadow said with a somber tone in their darkweb, their quantum song now a dirge of mourning. They had lived two hundred million years, but saying goodbye was never easy. Not to someone who had worked so long to overcome their own darkness and help as they always wanted to. Not to someone who had so much to lose...and people to say farewell to.

"I'm sorry." They said before they stretched space to make their escape, seeking to flee before the monster could turn their attentions to them. Too late then, for the gravitic disturabnce made the beast whip itself into action. The storm bent to its will; seeking them in the corners of altered and unseen existence; golden death closing in. The portals were swarmed with their deadly energies, cracking at the seams. But escape was not impossible.

A brief terror that even this thing of darkness could not shake off ran through them, six eyes glaring at them in particular. Knowing, hungering. There was one chance, and they would take it. Their kind, the Nictus, could not survive for long without a host. And already he could feel the weight of aeons closing in. Heaviness for something tha had no weight was no fun experience, and they dove into the cracks between stars; entrusting their ability to sense those in tune with their desire for atonement and retribution to find their way through a twisting unplace.

Sights barely comprehended and even more scarcely imagined flashed by in the great unreal. It was not nothing. Nothing required reality to express. It was unbeing, without rules or form to shape it. More tolerable for them than most, but they grabbed at the first cord of sensation they felt with all tendrils, pulling themselves through into another universe of a cluster of realities bound by shards and winding wormbeasts in manyspaces rather than the brilliance of the almighty source. One being pulled into collision in as much as such things held meaning in this realm.

Reality returned, different, strange, but reality. The air tasted of New England, but not Rhode Island as they were used to....Connetticut but not the Conetticut they were used to. There was a city here, one very different from the one they knew to be here. And while they could still feel the Soruce, it was more distant here, while the cloying threads of the Sharded Beasts had wormed their way into everything like the strings of a puppet.

Pain was in the air, sorrow, grief. Flashes of otherworldly power as threads stabbed into those who crumbled before dire pressures and pains. But they were strings with no handle, puppets with no ventriloquist. No goal was being worked towards, simply an aimless feeding.

Odd, but not the goal of the Shadow to investigate as they crept through the air as a wisp of blackness; folding space around themselves to render them hidden to the eye. They felt something in an emptied school, its doors barred by heavy snows and its halls emptied of students who sought to get home before the roads became unnavigable. It was empty of even janitorial staff, but there was something here.

Someone afraid, someone lost. Someone trapped in a cage of iron. A cage crawling with insects and worms and other things that crawl and fly. A thread was in her, a twice-thread; deep as her panic had forced her into unconsciousness to escape terror the waking mind could not bear.

This evacuation would have had to be fast and disorganised, and based on the hour, she had been here many hours. Nobody would come. Nobody would help. She would likely die here, in this increasingly cold locker bereft of warmth from the now shut off heater. A dreadful way to die. Barbaric even.

Who had done this to her? Who had made her suffer like this? She was already given power, but cold was a cruel reaper and nobody would come here. Not without a phone in her possession to at least give a clue to where she might be as her loved ones doubtlessly worried.

They approached, their form remanifesting as a shapeless black, purple and ghost blue cloud; like a blackened protostar surrounded by a shadowy nebula. There would be retribution, there would be convergence.

She awakened, sensing the input of nearby cold insects that realised their presence and letting out desparate, hoarse wails for help. Her throat was exhausted, parched, her body bruised and hurt. The Shadow reached to the metal with tendrils of blackness as they took on a more solid form; something between centipede and octopus and stabbed claws through the metal like paper.

The door came off easily, and space distorted around her as she was pulled free, dropped before the shadow that hovered over her as she saw it retake their true form; the Nictus studying her and letting their own threads feather near her mind.

"Oh...o-oh god I've died....I've died and this is the reaper...fuck fuck no no no!" She wailed, terrified as many were by their sinister seeming countenance as they quivered once then twice, pulsating and stilling the air; lowering the ambient lighting conditions before deciding to act quickly.

"I don't want to be dead I don't want to be dead please plea-" She managed before the shadow reached its ropes into her body and sank into her spirit. A soul she didn't know she had was joined by another as the blackness reached into her mind to share their vision.


"I am Shadow of Retribution, and I do not mean you harm. You are Taylor Hebert, yes?" They said

In this mindscape, she found herself in what she considered to be her safest place, her bedroom with her computer turned on and nobody to bother her...she saw the Shadow as once more, a nimbus shrouded dark star, for that was what the Shadow saw themselves as.

"Where are we?" She said, starting to comprehend where she was.

"In a meeting place of our minds. The doors behind you are your memories, behind me are mine, and the many I have shared them with." They replied. Her doors were like an apartment complex, their doors an infinite hallway of memories divided on door style based on who they were with at the time. Not even fifteen years yet before two hundred million, and the lived experiences of every melding they have ever had. A bucket of water before the ocean itself.

"Wh...who....what are you?" She asked, starting to calm down. This didn't feel quite like being awake to be sure. It felt closer to her rare lucid dreams which were always some of her more pleasant experiences; just being in control for once.

"You can call my kind a sort of symbiont. I am of the Nictus. A species beyond your galaxy, beyond your universe. Like you, I am cast from my kind, for I cannot abide by the evil we do to maintain our empire. Mine is a long, lonely war with few friends. But I will bring about absolution, if not for my species; then for myself. We can assist each other, Taylor." Their voice was not hostile, not quite gentle, but serious, and willing to understand even as it coldly reverberated through this mindspace.

"What do you even want?"

"I seek a host, one to become one with. My prior partner gave her life for our shared cause and I must wear the raiments of solidity if I am to survive. I sensed the anguish of your dreams, the loneliness of ostracization. I sense also, your longing to pay justice to those who wrong you and others."

She felt it to be too good to be true. She tensed, looking down and realising she wasn't wearing anything before realising that this was a mindscape and immediately formed something around her; the sort of cool looking outfits she'd like to try if she could have afforded them. She shielded herself briefly, but there was no sense of such desire or want from the Nictus, the sexless being continuing to float near her, calm and serene.

"What do you get? Why should I let you in? You pull me out of the locker and you just offer me...this...what's in it for you?" She was always suspicious of authority figures, especially ones who seemed to be too nice. Something had to be shady beyond its shadowy form.

"Not only do I get to escape my limited lifespan, but host and symbiont feed one another. Empower each other, and we gain the means to realise goals we could not on our own. It is not an option for me, but a necessity." They said flatly and honestly, their reverberating voice coming from nowhere in particular.

"What and let you ride around in my head talking to me like Venom?" She said, apprehensive about this still.

"We will become one. A composite of our two personalities, unlike your current symbiont, which watches through your eyes with alien intellect and remains silent. Perhaps it is best I show you. Fear not, there is no pain in this process. "

A selection of minds was offered, histories of millions of beings they had shared a form with and all they remembered up until their separation. A wealth of knowledge to put all the Earth's libraries to shame. Information beyond imagining, beyond even her ability to properly visualise as she looked around until she grabbed at the nearest door that looked like human architecture. She pulled through and a hall of pieces of the life of the prior host; Maria.

Her struggles with a family torn apart by drugs and getting caught up in violence between crooked cops and brutal thugs, her feelings of despair as the richer kids in her school sought to pick on her for seeming vulnerable as she tried to cope with a decaying family and the eruption of powers she didn't understand.

She tried to make differences, felt like she was getting nowhere; and then the sky turned green and ripped asunder with portals as an army of armour clad, ceratopian frilled aliens with three fingered hands and deadly plasma weapons emerged. A War of the Worlds shortly after she had gotten her powers, a cataclysm that saw psychic malice, advanced technology, and all the might of a world's superhumans brought forth in a six month bedlam.

A father she wished could just be better reduced to ash in a rare moment of lucidity pushing her away from a green sun of roiling plasma fired at soldiers across the street from them. A mother she wanted to be closer to reduced to an empty shell, mind frayed by invasive psionics and dreadful loss as she said nothing after witnessing a brother she loved be crushed not by Alien armies; but by American soldiers mistiming artillery fire.

Taylor saw Maria try to put her life back together, bouncing from foster families until she just ran away from it all. The trouble she got into, the bad crowds she fell in with that wanted to use her for her warmth, her wit, or for her dynakinetic power that gave her great control over energy itself.

Trying to find her way in life with everyone from Mafiosos to Satanists to a Mutant Gang called the Outcasts to a menacing organisation with a spider logo simply known as Arachnos. She was troubled, she did things she was not proud of, but she couldn't bring herself to take a life outside of the heat of battle, and that lead to her pulling out, hiding, running, escaping those she jilted, trying to reinvent herself under a new name and new costume.

A hero in the shadows, a dark angel. One who would eventually draw the attentions of the Shadow. And together she would put her life back together.

Taylor felt a strange mix of feelings. Empathy, sympathy, fear...looking at the life of a dead woman felt strange, voyeuristic. Even as she tried to fast forward through intimacy that she felt uncomfortable bearing witness to or to moments that she didn't feel right looking into. But that sensation of loneliness struck a chord, and the bond she shared with the Shadow before her.

But the end of the hall came and the triple tyrant's bell like roar made Taylor feel a raw, animal panic and a primal desire to hide. The death of a world, the screams of billions, the sundering of continents and the roiling of an atmosphere. She pulled away, she couldn't bear to see how it ended, not yet, not like that. Not so much blood, not so much noise, not so much fear. She couldn't even bear to look at that monstrous thing in its eyes before she pulled out; heart hammering and breathing rapidly.

She looked for the first door, the source of them all; the door of the Shadow themselves, and they revealed it to her without hesitation. To show her the Ur-memories.

Like all Nictus; they were a creature close to the light energy based Kheldians, warped by dark science into a thing of shadows and vampiric hunger; to give themselves the ability to simply take the bodies they wanted and to drink from their energies to empower themselves. An abomination in the eyes of the Kheldians who valued consent in all things and considered their meldings to be partnerships, not conquests like the Nictus.

They were born into an ancient civil war waged across billions of galaxies, light and darkness in deadly struggle. Split from another Nictus and grown large and strong from the glut of energy they consumed in their infant, shard-state. They were a monster, an interstellar vampire whose progress was marked in drained corpses and hosts used and abused to their deaths.

She felt scared, seeing that Shadow reaping from a mountain of dead. That they would reveal such a darkness without prompting...without trying to hide or disguise it.

They were ashamed of this, of this monstrosity, of this barbarism that they only stopped when they started being able to appreciate the pain and suffering of others by chance, taking a host whose empathy helped to crack into the programming given to them by the dark hosts. The pain of every loss, the harrowing of every murder. It couldn't bring them back, but it meant they could no longer bear the butcher's bill in innocents now that they were forced to confront the horrible reality of the Nictus Path of Darkness.

Arguments were had, a rebellion was waged; the Warshades were born from many others who realised that the Nictus had not given themselves freedom but instead made themselves into monsters. They who would return to the path of consent, of understanding, and seek to undo all their forefathers had wrought.

The long, lonely war. Comrades lost, again and again and again. Worlds burning, worlds saved only to one day die later under the march of millions o fyears. Loss, pain, a million times a million dead faces. An enormity of memory so vast that Taylor felt as though she were mentally drowning, sinking into an ocean of something more ancient than she could comprehend. Names, so many names.

A tendril reached for her, drawing her out from the endless abyss of memory, and she breathed with unreal lungs and saw what kept them going. What would drive them to keep on doing this miserable task. The smiles made, the hope given, the redemption sought. And the everlasting guilt for what they had done in the past, and the gnawing pain from loneliness and ostracism. Warshades are few in number, but face an enemy beyond counting and all manner of other threats.

For wanting better, they wander alone.

So it was now obvious why they wanted to walk with another. Another loner, another lost soul. To be one.

Why they were drawn to a computer nerd who saw her few friendships deteriorate for her decisions to speak up criticisms she felt needed to be heard, for being ever so slightly out of place. Too tall, too flat, too toned, too unkempt. Too sad about her mother's passing. To grieve only to be met with not sympathy, but torment by those who saw weakness. To find pain for doing what she thought was right by what she was taught; the lessons passed onto her by a union man and an academic feminist; sneered at as the ramblings of a Soviet suck up.

She tried to run, to avoid getting into fights and hide away in her own shell. She got only more pain, more taunting, more hurt. And the shame of not being able to make it stop herself, and the fear of reaching out only to be burnt once again. Trust came slow, pain not so much.

Her pain was brief but intense, not the abyssal chasm of loss that the Shadow had experienced, but she understood it. She could look into that abyss and comprehend the idea of its bottom, and why one could see into it and still be able to see light.

There was understanding, and an offer of a hand.

"We'll....We'll work it out...I promise." She said as she joined hand to tendril.

Two minds became one, composited from both into a new evolution.

The Black Moth emerged from her cocoon.

[X]: Insist on speaking in the Cabin

Rolls:

Samus social rolls: Moderate success, passive
Arne social rolls: Small success, reactive

Agenda Advancement: Achieved

Samus

You gestured towards the cabin as the place to hold these negotiations; it'd be a rather tight fit, given that it was a dead man's winter get-away home rather than a place genuinely meant to be host to any large number of people, but it'd be more comfortable than just standing out in sub-zero temperatures for those gathered here who were not properly insulated. You'd lead the way, wordlessly as Arne took a moment to realise your intent and almost stumbled as he followed after you.

"You could have told me in advance you were going." He whispered to you through your helmet comms as you shrugged and made a smile beneath your helmet.

"There's a little need for some mystery, no?" You said as you opened the door, turning its knob and pushing in; seeing to your satisfaction that some of the people were following at least, glad to be in some place warmer than the frigid outside air.

Droplets of melted snow gathered on the floor, and winter gear was briefly shed to prevent overheating once the fire warmed interior was entered. Based on that fire, the starsetters couldn't have been here for all that long.

It had that rather kitsch feel one would expect from something largely scratch built to be a place for someone to unwind in the wilderness. Inauthentic in many places, like the polyester hunting trophy heads you found so macabre or the "fur" rugs made entirely out of synthetic fibres. But definitely kitschy.

You sat down at the first chair that seemed able to take the weight of you and your armour, Arne following and looking between the people in the room as if waiting for them to spring into some sort of action. Seats were taken, words wanting to be said but remaining unspoken for what seemed to be an eternity until at last Miss Militia spoke up.

"What is any of this about?" She said, her tone stern, like a concerned mother. Perhaps what she thought was best for children? You weren't sure.

Dawnmaker was the first to respond, ancient Kheldian wisdom mingling freely with the with of the Elvish Yurye host as he gave a small nod in response to the question before speaking with a voice that reverberated upon itself. Youthful, boyish, but with an old weight to it like someone who merely took on the aspect of a youth.

"We are from the reality of Primal Earth, in a series of universes connected by what we call the Source. There we are part of a team of young, nonhuman or nonhuman affected heroes called the Starsetters, I am its current Captain." He said, his two minds melded into a single composite as he spoke with angelic serenity.

"We categorise this planet as Earth Bet...though we aren't sure of any such binding element beyond the appearance of Parahumans. Are you familiar with the term?"

"Those with abilities but human origins are referred to as metahumans, so no." He replied calmly.

"The two of you have entirely different cosmological signatures." You said, chiming in and looking between the two of them. It was something you felt had to be reiterated, just to be clear.

"People from related universes in the same multiverse or metaverse have a number of common patterns in their signatures. But the starsetters are completely distinct from yours, or mine and my partner's." You said, not gesticulating for now, figuring that making yourself look like you weren't about to explode into a long lecture about the mechanics of Pancosmological travel and exploration. You absolutely were to be sure, but it'd spoil the fun if they knew it was coming ahead of time.

"And why should I believe you?" Armsmaster said with a tone that made something in you strain as you briefly fantasised about slapping him for questioning you like that; Arne laying a hand on your shoulder when he sensed the scarlet flame in your heart and pulsing a blue spark into your emotional circuits; an exchange seen only in the othersight. Imparting some of his calmness, you calmed and shook your head.

You decided that just talking to him would give him far too much room to interrupt you and you hated being interrupted while talking. So you'd upload the information straight into his armour, overriding and slicing through his security measures and just dumping the information through his neural interfaces to shove it straight into his memory.

A procedure simple enough that you wondered why you had to think up a program to make his suit do it rather than him having thought of it already. Still, your mind formulated the program in an eyeblink and your armour handled the rest. If he wished to opt out, he could simply shut out the knowledge, like closing one's eyes.

He jolted briefly, a grimace forming beneath his helmet as he seemed to briefly seize up as you crammed what you thought were simply the essentials needed for him to understand the ultracosmic physics at play here. Basic stuff such as the Ekthesh-Hath exclusion principle and its chaos subvariance function or the Aska-Kadesh principle and how to make best use of its quasi-real pseudonumbers in metachronal equations along an arbitrarily high number of temporal and spatial dimensions.

Elementary stuff, you learned it as a toddler.

Besides, the distant sight revealed no chance of him dying or suffering any pain from it, so it was fine right?

He stopped his shaking briefly, clutching at his head.

"...What in the actual fuck." He didn't strike you as someone who swore very often, not based on how everyone else responded.

"I...okay...that was...something." He said as he went through several phases of emotion in record time, from anger to resignation to realisation as he went over the glut of information fed into his brain.

"Alright...so what does this change?" He said, shifting tracks to something of more immediate concern as he looked at you, then Dawnmaker.

"Nothing, realistically speaking. You're still at a legal impasse." Arne said, prompting you to hiss a bit at him beneath your helmet. Not the time for that sort of interjection!

"Well, Portal Corps has protocols for first contact between universes. Nothing for between different metaverses, but it should hardly be a problem. I am authorised to speak on behalf of the Starsetters, but not the United States government of Primal Earth." Dawnmaker said, folding his arms and offering his cards on the table.

You think that's how the saying goes.

"I am not authorised to do either of those things. My job is to ask you to come quietly and speak with people who can do them." Armsmaster said before Miss Militia raised a hand to urge Collin to take on a less tense tone, a sigh coming from him.

"I've already put in a word with someone who can speak for us. We can teleconference, if you would like that." She said with as friendly a tone as she could manage, clearly trying to put you at a sense of ease.

"So you are in effect, here to stall?" Dawnmaker said bluntly, like as blunt as a sack of hammers, So blunt you could hear the bluntness in your mind's ears.

There was a brief silence in the room, a cold awkwardness that drowned out the comfort of the fireplace nearby as Assault broke the ice with a small fake cough.

Ghor at last decided to step in, looking over the room having heard quite enough with his auditory receptors; his spindly almost skeletal form gazing upon the organics with concern.

The way he looked to you told you he didn't like where this was going, and that things needed his traditional avuncular touch. You decided to let him go ahead and speak for you, looking back to Arne to share some thoughts.

"+These people seem insistent on trying to provoke each other. Why is that?+" You asked.

"+Power display maybe? I don't know...adult humans aren't my specialty.+" He shrugged, not proud to admit a lack of knowledge but wanting to be honest with you anyway.

"+Look, I think we're wasting time here anyway. We should try and find the base of operations of this...Weltreich and deal with it. Like we always do.+" You said with a bit of mischief at the end of your sentence present in your gremlinish voice.

"+Ahah...yeah I'm...well, we don't have to be here, right?+" He said as he folded with pleasingly little resistance while you made a self-satisfied little purr.

"+You two are planning something, aren't you? I may not have your foresight, but I think I know you well enough Samus.+" Ghor cut in with a subroutine while he spoke of less interesting topics with Dawnmaker and the Protectorate.

"+...Come on, what are we even supposed to do here?+" You said with a sharp sigh. You were patient to be sure, but only when there was a purpose to the patience. You could wait for something to happen fo rdays, but sitting through all this nothing of direct relevance to you was torture. Your legs yearned to move, your mind hungered for new information, your eyes thirsted for new sights. And here you were in the middle of a conference.

"+Not cause too much in the way of trouble for us while we conduct our investigations. We are guests after all.+" The Old Cyborg replied before his attention shifted to Skjoldr.

"+And Arne, you should work on your assertiveness towards her. You wilt too quickly even when you aren't happy with a decision. Speak your mind, don't keep quiet. Fondness can turn to resentment frightfully fast if aches are left untreated.+" He said with a calm but stern tone, the last son of Cylosis and master of the Shock Coil was not his charge, nor a citizen of the same nation as he, but while here; he was a responsible adult present in the area and Arne was, like you, still a child.

The conversations dragged on for hours as you retreated into your own altered perception of time, a mental sort of fast forward to skip the uninteresting bits. Politics that bounced off of you were discussed ad infinitum while you decided to learn at your own pace by pilfering their internet for information.

It definitely wasn't the 2011 you were familiar with in your own histories of the far distant past. But it was a time of troubles. Monsters, villains, and an endlessly growing issue with an increasingly radicalised far-right that seemed always flushed with weapons from unknown sources. The world was in a state of decay, and the long frozen over cold war between the USSR and USA had just...kind of stopped. The Warsaw Pact and NATO just kind of trundled along aimlessly after the emergence of parahumans, as if unsure of which direction politics should take in a world where norms were so rapidly turned upside down.

Conspiracy theories cropped up all around the internet regarding shapechanging robots disguised as vehicles, sightings of "endbringers" far larger than the confirmed ones, alien activity, covert operations by a mysterious organisation that always seems to be at the right time and place and may be tied to the provision of many powers, and of course the usual redressed Antisemitism from the usual suspects. Pushed particularly by those that this "Weltreich" was diving into.

Nasty terms you never wanted to see again were cropping up with growing regularity, and calls for ethnonationalism and violence against labour movements perceived to be in line with a nebulous "enemy" they claim controls both the Politburo of the USSR and the finance capital of the USA. Which of course were well, your people. Not Chozo, the people of your mother as well as Arne's; and the people you wished you knew better. You felt...personally attacked seeing this invective...something sank, a sad feeling...why?

You'd get your answer to that soon enough alright...as soon as you could get out there and find the truth.

...Also they really like something called "Homestuck" based on the search term usage by people of around your age. You have no idea what that's about.

"Hey, are you zoning out there?" Someone's voice snapped you back to attention as you were met helmet to helmet with Chris, your head quickly swivelling towards him as soon as you were aware of his attention.

"No. I'm just doing research." You said, it was the truth, honest!

"Well...we're going to pack in soon. Seems like they're done back there." He said, gesturing to Ghor nodding towards Dawnmaker and Armsmaster.

"Now, you two. There is some manner of disturbance in the city of Brockton Bay. What in particular doesn't seem to be clear to the locals at the moment. But we have a number of options at the time being." He explained as he allowed a hologram to form out of his skeletal hand.

"A woman was recently found constrained by a number of blankets treated with a process unknown to the local inhabitants, who aren't sure what to make of the material's transformation into a means of restraint." He said as he showed a woman in tactical gear struggling against soft fabric that seemed to be imbued with some sort of life to re-restrain her every time she neared escape.

You examined that a bit more closely, looking at the blankets slapping away the hands of the people trying to remove her from them while she clearly seemed to be upset at her perdicament. It was kind of funny actually, getting the smallest of laughs out of you.

"That energy isn't anything like the signatures in this reality." You said, getting a scan through of the fabric, it was definitely being animated by something otherworldly.

"...Other extraversals? At least they didn't want her dead. But this seems like a sort of magic...maybe I could know more if I could get closer to it? It'd be interesting at least." Arne offered, a nod coming from you.

"That's the most likely explanation but nobody here seems to be aware of who she is. She's local to this reality though...so I wonder why she's here..." You clicked your tongue as you tried to theorise before Ghor moved the conversation along.

"A large number of police officers were found to have been killed in a car chase no-one can remember with extremely heavy weapons. Many report having lost track of some hours of time and awakening from unusual sleeping positions. And a few claim to have seen demons and robots." He said, flicking to a late-night news report as a frantic homeless dark skinned man breathlessly spoke to the heavily bundled up anchor.

"Are there any...investigations into that?" Arne asked.

"For the time being the police seem to be content to keep it entirely to themselves." He responded.

"Why?"

"It would seem that some would wish to keep this...quiet." He replied, arousing your suspicion almost immediately. Why keep it hidden?

"Dawnmaker reports feeling another of his kind, albeit warped and twisted. Darkened, he warns that these can be dangerous if they have not amended their ways; and has sought to establish contact as soon as possible." He said, displaying a nimbus of dark energy based on Dawnmaker's descriptions of what a Nictus were.

"Of course, Armsmaster is once again re-iterating his demand to get to speak with you at his headquarters. But for now, I will leave the choice to you." Ghor said.


Lead follow-up choices:

[]: Find out why and how the woman got bound by such strange properties.
[]: Investigate the absences in people's memories about a major shootout
[]: Accompany Dawnmaker in his search for the Nictus signal
[]: Follow Armsmaster to the Protectorate HQ

Rolls:

Scouting, Samus: Great Success.

Scouting, Arne: Great Success.



"If these people don't even believe in magic yet, then I think we should try to investigate the blanket first. Keeps them out of trouble and might answer a few questions." You said, flicking your eyes over to the news feed of the woman wrapped in the fight-happy enchanted blankets.

"Hrm, are you sure? We do have a few sorcerers here. And it's just one person affected." Samus said, tapping her foot just a little as she gave it thought.

"The sudden mass amnesia seems like it's more immediately concerning, memory modification on that scale means someone doesn't want something to be found. And well, you know how I feel about poking into secret places." She said with a small, giddy little laugh at the end of that sentence while you rapped fingers on the side of your arm cannon.

"If there's robots involved, Ghor can probably take care of it, right? But he doesn't get magic. And I uh, don't mean offence of course." You said, realising that the Cyborg was still in the room as you spoke, though he simply waved a hand dismissively and shook his head.

"You need not apologise. You stated a fact, not an insult. But I appreciate you having the concern for me all the same." He said with a small, gracious nod. You couldn't help but feel a bit warmer at that, craving the positive response and lingering on it for a little before you moved onto your next point.

"It's a question I think only we can answer right now. And with how little the media is being allowed to cover this, there's something going on here I want to know more about. Maybe I'm just...paranoid I guess? But it's worth looking at." You added, trying to map out the connecting lines in your head, fingers moving as if to draw the map out in the air.

Samus gave it thought and your heart walked the tightrope. She was as stubborn as she was lovely, and as much as you lingered on her every word, you also couldn't help but pay close attention to her heavy presence in the conduits of destiny and try to anticipate whatever scheme she had hatched up this time. But that unpredictability, that energy...it was nice.

Possibilities collapsed into certainties as her internal debate resolved and a mind whose gears were at once certain but mysterious to you finished their churning.

"It's just one person Arne, and we're not familiar enough with sorcery to poke into it. Not optimally anyway." She said as you had a brief exhalation, prepared to argue, but having that immediate feeling that it wouldn't go anywhere anytime soon.

A thousand futures went by your mind's eye and not in one of them did you win this argument, and knowing that before her stubbornness your own was like a puddle splash going up against a Tsunami, you wisely decided to concede the point with a small bow.

"Well...okay. Alright then, what do we do then?" You asked, mood shifting back to something more positive.

You accepted this as surely as you accepted that you were around two metres tall. That was just how it was, how she was. And you'd never ask for her to change that for your sake. No matter how many times it drove you crazy sometimes...the times it made you feel that precious warmth were worth it all.

"Well..." She said, trailing off as you felt your distant sight's buzz intensify.

...

Five minutes later you were accompanying her as she rooted around for any sign of evidence with her Scan Visor, marching in rather boldly and openly without any real effort to guise her presence or nature.

"For the record I think we could have toned it down a dozen octaves." You said as you kept to her side, her interest in her surroundings often manifesting by briefly lifting the front end of cars up to get a proper view of anything that might be out of her line of sight.

"We don't have the time for that Arne. Just trust me." She said, giving you a cursory glance.

"I do, I'm just making it clear we might get interruptions." You replied, your scan visor peering through police frequencies to make sure that the local law enforcement was maintaining their distance. You didn't like or trust them, and the colours of emotions that curled from them all reeked of a certain disdain.

Your incredibly keen hearing could pick out their every word with ease, no matter how they tried to whisper or disguise it. And it seemed that they were quite convinced the two of you were "tinker-bots" or "newfangled tinker suits". Some unflattering expectations of what lay within those armoursuits, though it seemed most couldn't correctly guess your ages given your heights.

"Best to ignore them Samus." You said to her through the comms, the brief sensation of the furnace heat of red anger coming from her as she overheard their commentary. It would take less time than they could process a thought to kill them all, but this wasn't the time to pick a fight. As much as you'd like to slap the shit out of most of these cops.

"I know it's just..." She said, shaking a bit and then shuddering out her anger as best she could, an exhalation emerging from her afterwards.

"Why do you want to hang around military and lawmen anyway?" You asked.

"Because I think it's the best way for me to keep an eye on them. Close enough to monitor them, far away enough that they can't slow me down." She replied, giving you the response you've heard so many times.

"Well, you can't do that if we get into a fight with them first thing can we?" You said, just a bit smarmy as she made a stammering noise and piped down.

"The masonry here was definitely repaired with nanites recently." She said, switching gears as naturally as she breathed to let you know she wanted to move on with the conversation.

A quick subatomic level analysis confirmed as much.

"Alien technology, and a new particle too...cosmic signature inconsistencies are subtle but there." You mused as you looked through the scan data, your visor zooming in with more precision than an electron microscope.

Subatomic structures you'd never seen before, setting your mind alight with possibilities and questions. You wanted to work with this substance...make things with it. Ideas...what could you do with this?

"Transformation capable and able to shift its properties. Pretty advanced actually, but there's a specific vulnerability to extreme heat paired with other metals that can bond with the substance." She added, her mind already deep into the wonders of the sciences.

"But where to find the source?" You asked.


Write in search priorities: One per character

(Forensic evidence, eyewitness testimony, esoteric evidence, record comparison)

Search demeanour: One per character
[]: Helpful
[]: Friendly
[]: Agreeable
[]: Neutral
[]: Standoffish
[]: Interrogative
[]: Hostile

Time investment:

[]: Low
[]: Medium
[]: High

Write in specific search actions: Two per character

(Can be anything you think would be useful for the investigation.)

Samus

This technology was quite...interesting honestly. You could detect little traces of something quite different on them. An energy source, a substance really, almost living. Definitely quasi-esoterical, like the blood of a soul...if that made any sense. You were still learning in your lessons on the mystical. An energy source that went beyond standard spacetime and seemed to be partly of the essence of life itself...interesting...your suit produced a vial to contain the substance in a fizzle of light as energy emerged from your zero point field and coalesced into matter; dematerialising itself shortly after.

"Living machines it seems." You said as you stood back up and looked up at the somewhat taller Arne. He nodded in response while he took a moment to gaze over any and all signs of disturbances with his visors.

"Well, whomever they are, they are good at covering their tracks but not perfect." He said as your eyes followed his own and locked in on what he seemed to be focused on, your eyes zeroing in on some discarded shell casings that did not manage to properly dissassemble. You picked them up and let your scan visor work out the details.


Interesting, very interesting, you thought as you tried to imagine what had happened in your head. Some sort of battle that required an erasure of the memories of those involved and a brief inducement of unconsciousness...between one faction using demons and another with extraversal and advanced technology revolving around living machinery.

You decided to take a look at the video evidence taken from the traffic cameras. Flicking through an ocean of worthless data before you noticed a few things; a period of time a few hours ago had been tampered with. Utterly unobservable to conventional data monitoring systems or security, but there were enough signs of tampering at the sub-atomic level for you to suss out that the information had been meddled with. Hrm, why though? What good reason is there to hide like this?

"Oooh...let's see if I can reconstruct any of the deleted imagery." The purge was thorough, and this would be a bit tricky. But your brain was augmented to be able to handle superluminal ship navigation and combat manouvres and the complexities of superluminal calculations on its own in case computer support was unavailable; this couldn't be too hard could it?

It took a bit of thinking, but the traces that were there were able to be used to reconstruct the whole of the data. You were proud to say your armour was barely needed for the number crunching, just the interface with the technology itself and the collection of the information into images that you could then look over.

Your answer was as surprising as it was rather out there. The cars stood up, changing out of vehicular form into something much more bipedal, robotic humanoids engaged in battle with a series of gangsters who took heavily after satanic aesthetic. The way they moved was interesting, fascinating, so humanoid, so...organic. So many questions, so many mysteries. How to unpack them all...you just had to meet these beings you thought as you watched them tear through many of the gangsters with ease.

Whatever supernatural properties they had, these primitive, clunky cameras were in no shape to try and guess at it. There was clear ability to radically change mass and size at will, or at least in accordance to a set number of alternate forms. These it seemed, tended to be cars first and foremost; their leader appearing to be a model of....


General Motors Camaro from 2008. A pretty high end car, but not so high end that it'd stick out in lower-income areas. A slick, yellow sports car that was clearly well suited for high speed and low drag and would be more suited, you'd imagine in your particularly distinguished taste concerning vehicles; for a single driver, a couple, or a few friends. Wasteful and environmentally toxic if driven for more than joyriding otherwise though.

Others included a heavy duty police van that seemed to transform into a female robot...based on the rather odd inclusion of secondary sexual characteristics such as what seemed to be something of a bust as well as the vague hints of an hour glass figure. This puzzled you because it seemed like a nonsensical set of requirements for a robot to have.

"Why does the robot have mammaries?" You said, Arne shrugging while one of the nearby officers choked on his coffee upon hearing your words. What a weirdo.

"Might be a design choice? But they're pretty heavily armed for companion mechanoids." He responded after only a moment's thought.

"Come on Arne, theorise." You said, keeping it quiet so that the officer couldn't overhear the mention of his name as you let out a bit of a huff at your companion while the wielder of the shock coil sighed in exasperation and racked his brain a bit.

"You know I don't like hypothesizing without data." He said gently.

"I already have thirty theories." You countered to a scoff from him.

"Yeah that's a very...you thing." He replied with a smirk.

"But if I had to guess? Gendered society. Likely mechanical life forms more than conventional mechanoids. Not from here based on the sample we collected, and probably not wanting themselves to be discovered." The two of you knew that you already thought of that, but you just wanted to hear him agree with you as you patted the top of his helmeted head getting a weak and unserious "come on..." from him as he ultimately leaned into it.

"See, you got it. You just need to trust your deductions more." You said, offering him a thumbs-up while you gave a moment to decide where to go next.

You didn't find too many people who still remembered much of anything, but those who reported being awake at the time all reported a fuzz in their memories; to the point where most of them dismissed it all as a dream. One consistent thing though was that a girl got into a car that drove off to the west; and they do remember a lot of explosions and violence.

The police were unhelpful to the last and a single instance of empathic signal from them was enough to tell you they weren't going to cooperate with people outside of their system on this. So you decided to drop that particular route in a hurry.

Decisions:

[]: Follow up on the Gangsters to see if any of them are left
[]: Pry into the Police's business whether they like it or not
[]: Try to see where the kid was brought by the Yellow Camaro.
[]: Check back in on Ghor and co
[]: Continue investigating the scene for more detailed clues
[]: Use your ships to do a sweep
[]: Write-in