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A2     Without the backing of YoRHa, this outing could be considered 'clandestine' at best. Aimless, unprepared, amateur, and other such synonyms are possibly more suitable. After a certain amount of coordinate data had been gathered (and then leaked) by parties cleaning up a situation for YoRHa to bury the hatchet and establish ties, it seems the military organization, and the Android race in general following them, had seen no interest in following up on the unrelated data. In fact, they'd quickly scrubbed all mention of it. This is a good enough reason for quite possibly their sole surviving detractor to look into it, and if there is one thing she is good at, it is looking after herself while wandering the strangely thriving battleground of Earth.

    Though people are forced to initially use the heat mirage of a Warpgate located in the strange, crater-shaped desert full of glossy ceramic and silicate sand and surrounded by stone ruins built on even older super concrete and alloy ruins, they gladly get to step out of the burning sun pretty quickly (it's always the midday sun in this desert someone could swear). The destination that is called for involves scaling down a ragged cliff wall of thankfully enough jutting layers of slate and granite to make it more of a platforming than a wall climbing exercise, and into a narrow cavern bored into the side of the cliff, which leads into a maze of surprisingly cool sandstone tunnels, clearly mined out by crude tools.

    A2 barely looks out of place here. Despite the tattered remains of Gothic chic, her frame is dusty, scraped, faded, and burned enough to almost blend into the white-ish sand and greyed ruins. There are Machines along the way, but they constitute an odd sticking point; none of them are armed, none of them are hostile, and none of them seem to be doing anything. They're odd, hyper-simplistic robots, built on nothing but waddling feed, stacks of perfectly cylindrical pieces, and a simple, ball-like head with twin yellow dots for eyes, without so much as a pair of arms to do anything. All they do is stare northwards, and occasionally walk in that direction, stopping and starting every few minutes. This leads the southeast-bound group past them without incident, eerie as it is, and into a caving trip with some kind of nebulous power signal somewhere ahead, and the vague tromping of mechanical feet barely audible from above.
August Kohler Even if August hasn't been able to get involved in the previous missions as often as he'd like, he's still invested in assisting A2 with YoRHa. She's helped him out enough times in the past that returning the favor is definitely something he wants to do. Wearing a hoodie over a shirt and cargo pants, there's a knife and a pistol at either side of the redhead, and his right hand is covered in burn scars, with several more concealed by his sleeves.

Moving to climb down the wall, focusing on leaping carefully from layer to layer of rock with a mix of climbing, August stops briefly to straighten his clothes, staring ahead at the weird machines. He doesn't attack them, because they don't seem to be hostile, and instead moves forward, keeping a rear guard as he speaks, addressed primarily to A2. "So, what the hell are we looking for? I'm sort of out of the loop. Signs of stuff like those machines back there, or worse?" A point of his hand towards back where the machines were, as August momentarily listens to the sounds of tromping, and decides to keep his hand on his gun in case of problems.
Kyoko Takada     The appearance of seemingly entirely useless robots is becoming par for the course. While still weird, it's starting to become a background kind of weird, just part of the planet as odd as sudden shifts in climate and terrain, and the rampant plant life. Alpha-39, clad in a desert-appropriate cloak over her equipment and using her red-eyed mask once she's entered an area that's rather less than the burning brightness of that desert's sun, arrives in a series of silent drops from stone to stone. Using her extended visual range is more useful than waiting for her eyes to adjust, but when able, she lifts the mask, looking about with her finger just off her SMG's trigger, and gives a partial answer to August's question.
    "Folks upstairs being shifty about the mission. Nothing new or surprising about that. But if they don't want it looked into, all the more reason to look into it."
Starbound Flotilla     Pavo isn't here to help A2, or even to help the Watch, and the extent of her mistrust for the YoRHa group is rooted mostly in the fact that she feels no benefit to her to collaborate with them, and so she does not. Her gleaming hoverbike looks like it's made of inscribed stone and gleaming gold, and seems to be built out of two segments connected loosely over a large, glowing, floating, yellow, diamond-shaped gem. The whole thing hums softly as it zooms towards the cave, pinging gently to scan it and map it out, and trying to get in as fast as possible. Pavo has ideas about what this might mean, and high hopes about what to expect.
All-Seeing Eye      Wearing light, baggy, breathable clothes coordinated for color, All-Seeing Eye tromps through the slippery, silicate sand much as he did on his previous outing here. His expression could best be described as 'totally wanting to complain but not wanting to be the first one.' He's developed a certain disdain for sand as of late, with its tendency to get everywhere while simultaneously clinging tenaciously to one's boots.

     This disdain is nothing compared to the disdain he feels for secrecy, however. All secrets have reasons to be kept, and YoRHa's hesitance to provide information on the seemingly independent machines found on the last mission hasn't sat well with him since he departed. If they aren't telling the full story there, what other secrets are they keeping?

     Any good policeman must draw information from multiple sources--even if those sources are unsavory. The first time they met, he and A2 barely said two words to one another. Since then, he's learned that she's considered a war criminal by her people, and has agreed to apprehend her. He might still try, if he doesn't like what she has to say.

     His boots hit the ground a few seconds after August's question, the Exalt sticking the landing with more showmanship than is really necessary. One hand is placed over his heart, and he bows before August. "Mr. Kohler,~" comes his merry greeting. He greets everyone else present, with the exception of Pavo, who doesn't receive even a nod of acknowledgment.

     "It does cast doubt on YoRHa's motivations, doesn't it? If there were some way to spread this nullification of aggression we've seen, I'd think for the sake of the war effort, they'd want to seize it as soon as possible. Instead, it was all but dismissed as irrelevant." He hums slightly, and in that infuriating way that people who can't mind their business do, he adds, "I just think it's interesting, is all~"

     "Oh!" He claps his hands together as he enters the cave, using echolocation to map out what the light can't reach--and hopefully, being aware of any threats before they're aware of him. The clap appears to be just the gesture of an overly chipper Paladin, but is in fact meant to bounce soundwaves off of the walls and paint broad swaths for his perception at once. "Before I forget... A2, you and I need to have words before the day is over!" His tone is sing-song, but it probably can't mask his intentions. Especially not for August.
Azure Armature Much like mice requesting milk when offered cookies, when you provide a location, you should expect people to show up - even if the data was scrubbed and the whole thing was loudly ignored. In fact, as others showed up for their own reasons, one prevailing reason why a desert drab form bursts from a sand dune to land in a crouch near the gathering praty, continuing towards the cave after dusting herself off.

Armature (aka, 'Blue') mutters something darkly about a mis-calibrated something-something transmatter something-something over her breath, moving at a broken, almost foot-draggingly odd pace in the sand.

"I see there's actually people here." She observes, potentially going for the 'most obvious statement of the year' award. "Good." She mutters, checking something on a pop-up digital wrist display. "Then there's probably still a job. Asset recovery?"
A2     How A2 trudges through this slip'n'slide of artificial sand and crumbling rock in high heels will remain an eternal mystery as will many things relating to that footwear. Navigating this particular desert seems like second nature to her, easily keeping ahead of the group no matter the pace. When she answers August, it's with the usual tired, apathetic tones as always, without so much as turning her head back to look at him.

    "Don't know. I don't think anyone does but the dead woman. She probably thought she was on to something when the Machines killed her. YoRHa doesn't care, or doesn't want to care. Not even if she died for it. They'll just bring her back without even remembering it. What she was living for." She moves on to Blue without indicating that she's changed address. "That's enough reason for me, even if it's nothing. Someone has to remember the lives they lived."

    She essentially ignores All-Seeing Eye as long as possible, though the air between them indicates she is mutually disgusted by his presence. Regardless of his intentions, she talks over him just as he gets to 'have words', cutting him off with "I'll pull your arms and legs off if I feel like it. Don't test me." It isn't sufficiently loud or angry enough to come across as bluster or threat; it's a an almost animal expression of factual hatred.

    The caves themselves are a simple matter to map out, lacking any extreme verticality, and with most of the tunnels winding back in on each other almost like a mesh than passages, excavated for the purpose of clearing something out, rather than getting from point A to point B. There are several areas there scans discover large, metallic objects, several of which have a power signature, while several more passages bounce scans complete with a solid deadzone of some kind obstructing them. There doesn't /appear/ to be anything significant radiating from further in though. No energy spike or mechanical thrumming. It might just be too far at the moment.
Kyoko Takada     August and Blue get about as casual a greeting as a hand-signaling child soldier in full camo can give without letting go of her gun. Alpha-39 looks between Pavo and All-Seeing Eye, and then avoids looking directly at either one, apart from the slight nod she gives the latter in returned greeting. In particular, she's not saying anything regarding potential, near-future, violent conflict. Telegraphing intention strikes her as counter-productive, in the most general sense. She'd probably be the type to never use her turn signal, if she ever ended up driving on a highway.
    "Memories," she repeats, the tone neutral. Her value-judgment on the concept can be saved for another day. "Do we know where to find those? I don't remember seeing a black box in the wreck." The caves are largely trivial for her to follow through at this point, and the details of scanning are beyond her current capabilities.
Ezekiel Gravez     Trailing up behind the group, the gunslinger picked up his pace until he reached his destination. As he enters, several of his party are already engaged with the one called A2. 'Finally' he muttered to himself. A sense of relief overcame Zeke, which came at a good time too, all things considered. When A2 and Eye clash, it begins to set off a few red flags. The entire group seems hostile, but not attacking. That usually means there's answers to be had before hand.
    Zeke ponders the entire trip and in reality, he had no relevant questions of his own that weren't already being put forth. However, one thing did seem a little disconcerting. It's quite possible that A2 chose this location to do actual battle, and it was worth noting the environment. Sand, of course! Just like Rubi-ka. Endless wastes and overmined tunnels were typical on his home planet, where the Notum Wars lasted nearing a century.
    The conversation settled into sentiments, and what they mean to people.. and this is where Zeke finds a sticking point. In a space where world views come into contact, there will always be conflict. Ezekiel was brought in for this purpose, where world views matter. Its virtues and morals are always etched upon the tips of bullets. Its inescapable. Where they is no detente, the only thing left.. is the sword.

    But not yet. It's time to see where all this plays out.
All-Seeing Eye      A2's interruption is met with a jilted frown of indignance, as if he can't possibly imagine anyone not wanting to hear his voice. And when he hears the threat in its entirety, his lilting voice does manage to produce a single, incredulous huff of a laugh. "Ungrateful as well as delusional," comes Eye's response, turning his nose up. "Tragic."

     He allows a few moments to pass, holding his head high and his eyes shut indignantly as his hearing maps the way. Only once a suitable amount of time passes without the musical delight that is voice does he deign to treat A2 to it once more. "Are you sure it was machines, and not one of YoRHa's own?" She has experience with them, a certain familiarity to complement her enmity. She's probably his best chance at an accurate answer to that question. "The machines themselves have a decentralized memory that deletes every thirty seconds. It would have been very easy for a third party to kill her and blame it on the machines' enmity with humanity."

     He looks as if he's about to say something else, when the sight of one of those 'dead zones' catches his eye. There's no hum of electricity in those spots, which means it's either simply natural geography, or they're actually sound-dampened. The latter is too promising to pass up--so he attempts to pierce through the stone walls with his vision, hoping to find something other than just 'more rock.'
August Kohler As All-Seeing Eye greets August, he gets a glance in acknowledgement. "All-Seeing Eye." August doesn't seem to be very happy to see him, though he doesn't much like him in general. "Realized you were working with the problem?" He says this with confidence, even if most of his source of YoRHa being the problem is just faith in A2.

A2's own reaction to All-Seeing Eye has August moving several steps away from him, and his hand on his gun kept there firmly in case of a potential problem, though it doesn't seem there will be one. Instead, August moves to reply to the android woman. "That's fair enough. And if she thought she stumbled upon something big well, then we can probably use it, can't we?" Another glance towards All-Seeing Eye at this time. "And if YoRHa killed one of their own...then they're probably covering something up, and if we can find evidence of what, perhaps convince others to work with us."

Mostly, August keeps progressing through the caves. The hostility in the air has him on-guard, even if he's a significant source of it himself. There's not much he himself can do, being more of a combatant than anything else.
Starbound Flotilla     Pavo intends to just keep on her hoverbike, surging straight through the mesh of tunnels, powering on. Even her cave-scanner picks up a deadzone... Yet, she winds up heading right for it. Revving the hover-engine, she surges straight into the tunnels, skidding and occasionally bouncing around, engaging in absolutely no subtlety whatsoever. True, she may not know what the deadzone is, but she figures the larger power signatures with metal are more machines, whereas the deadzone... Inherently, that has to be something more interesting. Maybe she can cut into it on her way further back inside?
Azure Armature It's good to have a reliable set of people in these circumstances, especially with a broad set of skills - such is true where she was from, and such was doubly true here. Azure returned A-23's handsign with a nod of her own, lingering on the other operative for a few moments more than strictly professional with a favorable smirk. "If it wasn't possible for others to assist or complete the mission, it wouldn't be an open contract."

Blue frowns as she looks between the verbal jousting between All-Seeing Eye and A2, sighing lightly. "Will this be a problem?" She asks, clippedly, as she shifts her tan scarf up around her nose to keep the sand from getting everywhere. Her context was... limited, from missing a few operations, but to have things shift 'so suddenly' was surprising.

"If the memory core is a physical object, it's a simple technology retrieval. The body will do outside that, or effects. Nothing complicated -- unless it is?"

"Is it complicated?" She asks the group, an open tone to her question.

"Because it's sounding... complicated."
A2     A2 responds to A-39 only after a long pause. "Those things. Files. They're memories only as far as you think they are. For us, they're what YoRHa want you to believe. What they allow you to remember. What they put it when it's convenient. The only memories of mine I can trust are from after I left, and from before I was built." She shakes her head. "It's proof that someone lived. If someone decided they wanted to see it, and YoRHa erased it, then I'll see it on their behalf."

    "Tch. Does it even matter?" she then responds to 'Eye with something perhaps uncharacteristic in assumption. "You're saying that like they're any different. Like YoRHa sending us to die against the Machines somehow isn't just YoRHa killing us themselves with a few extra steps. They're both sick, and I'll exterminate them both." She goes deeper into the caves without bothering to engage the argument any further.

    As expected, most of the metal clumps are machines, all of which are either wrecked or have broken down. There aren't any real signs of serious combat down here, maybe a wandering Resistance squad at most. Many of the Machines look like they'd become lost or somehow trapped, or wandered in after they'd already suffered severe damage and were unable to reach that factory far to the northwest. Sand erosion is a constant here, replacing the archetypical streaky rust of the Machines found closer to the coast. Those few that have power signatures are generally crippled or useless. A2 makes sure to vindictively stab or decapitate each one of those they pass.

    The deadzone on sensors turns out to be not very dead. What they end up wandering into isn't some kind of anomaly, but a big fat military gate wedged in the stone, with blast doors that look sufficient to have shrugged off the blast that had almost certainly created the desert above. The numbers 0-43 are painted atop it, which seem relatively meaningless, but the keypad still buzzes with power, which is odd since that should have been picked up. Even more strange, a pair of fixed guns flank either side of the door, which- oh.

    Within a second, the entire, unfortunately narrow passage is filled with a deluge of what initially look to bullets, though the streaking white projectiles burst and burn where they land, guided by laser sight. It's only two guns, but this close and this narrow, it's actually a really nasty barrage to be sat in front of, and clearly intended to be that way. Even weirder, there's /still/ no energy signature even from them firing. Judging by their aesthetic, and by not shooting strange, dark orb,s they don't belong to the Machines either. A light above the door flashes red, but if there is an alarm connected to it, it doesn't sound. It might just be broken. It's likely unnecessary too. The gates look to be multiple layers and are firmly closed.
All-Seeing Eye      Eye very much looks like he wants to continue the discussion, but after a moment of crossing his arms and fixing the back of A2's head with a disapproving frown, he manages to quell that urge. Shaking his head in disappointment, he edges around the machines as A2 slaughters them without remorse, sidestepping as one might around a noisome customer in a restaurant.

     His vision allows him to see the guns. Surely, he figures, they won't activate without some sort of external stimulus. Of course, he has no idea what constitutes an external stimulus, and he realizes this when one second passes and the hallway is filled with burning projectiles.

     Rather than retreat, Eye charges towards the guns as his clothes rapidly bear an ever-growing number of bullet holes, his skin ever more charred as the projectiles tear through his body. He drops to the ground in a baseball slide, hoping to either dip under the stream or divert the weapons to himself. Sliding across the ground and kicking up a cloud of dirt in his path, he swings his forearm, calling forth a steel cable whip.

     The weapon lashes back and forth in the hallway like a streamer, crackling with purple electricity that illuminates Eye and his immediate surroundings. More importantly, it's redirecting the projectiles away from him and his... allies, for the time being.
August Kohler The machines get a glance from August as he passes by. "Looks like we're getting closer to some information. As soon as we're out of crawling through these caves, the happier I'll be." Soon, they're reaching the gate, which means they've found something. But the power is still on...and so are the defenses. "Shit, get down!"

As the turrets suddenly set off, August reflexively moves his eyes down to his mirrored bracelet. "Persona!" The Tin Soldier manifests in blue sparks, moving to take energy projectiles in August's stead. The shots that hit it strike true, burning into its metal body and causing August to stagger back from pain, clutching his chest with both hands. That seriously hurt, but he's moving to counter, as the Tin Soldier surges forward miming a roar, raising its gun-leg and moving to send a thick gash of fire back at the rightmost turret. If this proves to be effective at all, there's a second blast towards the leftmost turret, trying to burn through it. "Focus fire on the turrets! We can deal with the door afterwards!"
Kyoko Takada     Alpha-39 isn't bothering with the machines less out of any sense of empathy than out of one of futility. If they're here to do anything, it's to either transmit locator information or to blow up, and attacking won't stop them from doing either of those things. They're not otherwise armed, so her finger stays off the trigger.
    The case of the guns ahead is not the same. While lacking obvious controllers, that makes precious little to no difference, and A-39's SMG is brought up by reflex, immediately following recognition of what's ahead, and before any sign of motion. It's too late to shoot when you've already been shot, but if they're not moving...
    They move. She fires. It's rapid fire, further than point-blank, and without the time to take careful aim or the leisure to trace her shots. There's no reasonable way for her to take out both turrets before the hallway fills with fire in the opposite direction. She drops and rolls, trying to get All-Seeing Eye and the Tin Soldier in-between her and the defenses, but given the narrow passageway, she doesn't make it unscathed. The pain is an unwelcome distraction, liable to get her shot again. Her breath hisses through it.
    Her stims are a moment away, but it's a moment she doesn't have. She fires again.
Ezekiel Gravez     The more that Zeke hears about YoRHa, the more he doesn't like the sound of it all. The words rattled slowly in his inner ears, as if it came through a layer of water.

    "Those things. Files. They're memories only as far as you think they are. For us, they're what YoRHa want you to believe. What they allow you to remember. What they put it when it's convenient. The only memories of mine I can trust are from after I left, and from before I was built." She shakes her head. "It's proof that someone lived. If someone decided they wanted to see it, and YoRHa erased it, then I'll see it on their behalf."

    If that wasn't a declaration of self-governance, then nothing was. It was also an admission. If one were to follow a path of logic, then one would say that YoRHa was supressing the truth of their entire condition, all the while claiming sovereignty over it as final authority. This fight was over their own making, and thus internal to it. The Watch would never accept this as an applicant situation. But, what will come of this situation is going to happen here, and now.

    A2 follows down the path deeper into the catacombs, which seems more and more sinister to the strategically minded. It feels almost like a trap. Holding back a bit, Zeke extends the needle array from the tip of his cyberdeck and buffs full boat. Personal Notum Harvester, Notum Overload, Izgimmer's Wealth, Hippocampal Augmentation, Fleeting Immunity, Improved Dark Movement, and a host of others.. all load while his hands work fast as the motes of azure technological and scientific symbols of Timespace and Matter swirl like a nimbus of digital chi. Hexagonal shields surge up and down his form, layering himself in patterns that flow up and down his entire form. While doing so, he does not advance.

    The sound wave of autogun fire shakes the mines as the fight is engaged. Luckily for Zeke, he wasn't quite in the path. He slaps a button on his NCU belt, activating Flim Focus. His eyes harden, as a bubble of time space seems to allow him to move forward but anything outside of it seems to slow. A hail of lead greets the walls nearby, showing him with shrapnel. It's like watching moth's swarm an electrified bulb. Instinctively, he concentrates most of the nanobot shielding to his front. This is NOT how he wanted this conversation to go. If there was going to be any form of diplomacy now, it may have to wait.
Starbound Flotilla     Pavo's hoverbike is immediately ripped up. The gold-armored form atop it covers its head and dives off as the soon-burning vehicle slams hard into the doors -- likely failing to do any form of damage -- and Pavo herself scrambles backwards as hard as she can, trying to take some cover. She spends a while pondering the solution as things cool down, thinking... Well, something that well-defended certainly isn't going to let her just dig through it with her Matter Manipulator.

    Here comes ASE, and Pavo has no problem silently keeping to cover while he works. Same with August, really; both get narrowed eyes and a general sense of grumpy you-go-first when it comes to big turrets. The others are likely to well enough deal with the turrets. Pavo is more concerned with the door; as the others hopefully take them out (or at the very least draw the fire), Pavo rushes in. She's not nearly as good as George is when it comes to hotwiring keypads and other doorlock things, but she's not bad at all, and certainly second best among the Flotilla.
Azure Armature Armature is a bit less than wholly on point as she moves, a concerned - or more specifically 'worried' - look taking over her face. "It matters for mission cohesion. If everyone isn't on the same or similar page, or even reading out of entirely different strategic leaflets, when it comes down to the goals of an operation, they can shift wildly. Nobody gets anything done." Armature reasons, for once trying to be a Team Leader instead of an edgy hired gun.

Maybe she loaded social charms today.

"We're not here to question the objective, are we? The 'why'? That's for the planning stage. Recover the thing, then worry about the deep meaning behind..."

A warning goes off in her head, but others - notably, Ezekiel - are hollering for people to squad up behind him, which Azure is more than happy to do, getting winged and chewed up as she dash-slides in behind his nano-cover, slapping both palms on the cave's ground as lines of light travel across the ground, sprawling like circuitry in angles and dots, and springing forth extra cover around Graves, an instant Chest High Wall for him to soak behind, before using the time to probe the door and the contents behind it with her 'wrist computer', analysing for any sort of signatures. "Hope there's not a whole legion behind this killbox of a hallway..."
A2     It takes a couple of Elites to actually cover the entirety of the hall for volume of fire. Even All-Seeing Eye can only deflect so many of the thousands of rounds, and Ezekiel's nano-barrier winds up stripped away at an alarming pace, without either gun stopping to cool or cycle more ammo. The additional cover buys them more time from the onslaught, but the rounds seem oddly more capable of chewing through energy defenses than the mundane rock around them To try and bolster the front, A2 jumps out between them, her sword an actual blur of motion that moves so fast it seems to exist in several places at once, peppering the walls, floor, and ceiling around her with holes. Returning fire is difficult for reasons other than just sheer volume of suppression as well. It could be intentional, or entirely by accident, but a significant volume of the return shots are picked out of the air by the turrets, up to and including the SMG bullets. Someone trying to charge down the whole length of this corridor, rather than coming out the more recently excavated side passage, would be swiss-cheesed immediately, to say nothing of if the blast doors were to open and a fire team were to add to the guns.

    Fortunately, they're not incredibly tough. The corridor isn't big enough to allow heavily armoured 'deck turrets', and their advanced age doesn't serve them well when engulfed in fire and pounded with bullets. The chassis heats and softens, allowing slugs to rip through the molten exterior and punch through the internal electronics whilst they spark and pop in the crackling heat. The two of them blow up rather impressively for being small weapons, and leave a high pitched buzzing after-tone ringing in the cave tunnel. Thankfully, the alarm is still only a useless red light.

    The keypad also seems to be barely functional. It asks for a password, using an English keyboard rather than just numbers, or a real keycard reader. It might have been highly secure once, since it looks like it was originally made of military grade stuff, but in its decrepitude, it's easily ripped from the wall and leads are touched together to bridge the activating current to the doors. Only when they're open does the deadzone disappear. Azure Armature can read the disconnect from a sort of jammer, wired to the door and present further in, odd for the fact that it seems tooled to overtly magical senses as well as electronic ones

    The area just beyond that is likewise clearly not built by Machines, lacking their super-efficient use of materials in simplistic and yet bizarrely technical shapes, and samey, pre-fabricated metal. It also isn't built by Androids, lacking YoRHa's ultramodern monochrome, and the Resistance's cobbled together wastelander style. It's very, very old. Some sort of nuclear bunker, though perhaps 'silo complex' may be more sufficient. It's cramped as the inside of a battleship, but involves many stairs, railings, and catwalks around a radiating hub which might have once held missiles, though it's empty now. This place may have actually been struck as an attempt at preemptive disabling of a cruise weapon. It seems plausible, given the now-meaningless radiation warnings and schedules posted all over the walls.
A2     It was once inhabited by humans for sure. Anyone can tell that once they stumble across a chart for cleaning duty, and something listing meals. Neither paints a great picture, involving sixteen hour shifts, and weekly menus of french fries, baked potatoes, potato salad, and similar, with the threat of extra work for those who don't eat it all. Most of what can be found is standard stuff for living and fixing things up, albeit more futuristic than 21st century standard. There are a few keycards to be found in pockets and footlockers, but they don't correspond to anything in the silo (weirdly). There are a handful of weapons, elevators leading downwards, /incredibly/ old computers, and after some investigating, a pair of rusty old crates that have been locked down with layers of magnetic seals, pressure screws, explosive bolts, and wrapped up in chains as well, impervious to 'Eye's sight.

    A large power signature can be picked up from deeper down, likely belonging to a generator, with a more diffuse set of them surrounding the bottom of the payload area, indicating a vast area of powered machinery, which currently appears to be doing nothing at all. A strong wireless signal pervades the area, though whatever is broadcasting, the network is completely dead. Connecting to it yields absolutely no information or activity. The thing that stands out the most is that halfway down the silo, around a set of consoles, are what appear to be . . . pillars of salt. Literally floor to ceiling columns of solid white salt crystal, utterly out of place and unnatural.
August Kohler Once the turrets are down, the Tin Soldier is a bit of a mess, melted charred and burnt up all along it, and August clearly feeling the damage, having to hold himself to the wall for a few moments until he can ignore the pain and damage enough to keep moving. He keeps the Persona summoned in case of threats deeper inside, but ends up desummoning it once there doesn't turn out to be anything. Instead, he does the usual. Rifle through coat pockets and lockers and stuff for gear, grabbing one of the keycards and keeping it in his pocket in case they might find /something/ it'll go to.

The salt around the consoles down the silo is unnerving. "I already hate this place." August mutters, before moving to check if the consoles work at all. If they work at all, August will try to see what he can get off them, otherwise he'll return to the rest of the group to persist downwards.
All-Seeing Eye      "Ruined." Eye huffs indignantly when the deluge is finally over with, mourning the loss of his shirt. What isn't scorched or torn is blackened with his mechanical lifeblood, to the point where even a master tailor would have trouble salvaging the baggy garment. There is, of course, also the matter of the numerous bullet wounds burnt into his flesh, but these are met with but a fraction of the annoyance. Should any fragments of the projectiles remain lodged within them, he'll carefully extract them with forcefully suppressed winces. Can't appear weak before his fans!

     He rises off of the ground in time for the others to open the door, wiping his hands off and giving his pants a few open-palmed ruffles to clear them of debris from the turrets or pebbles from the cave floor. As he enters, he observes the posted notices with some interest. "Fairly average working conditions," he says to Blue. "If somewhat lacking in nutrition." They're probably the only two who would call sixteen hour shifts 'average.'

     There are points at which he has to duck beneath a low-hanging ceiling or edge around another Elite, thanks to the cramped space, but his ultra-peripheral vision minimizes these instances by allowing him to see everything around him at once. Everything, except the contents of those crates. "Hello,~" he says, navigating the labyrinth of forgotten furniture, long-past-relevant bulletin boards, and decrepit computers until he stands before the crates. His fingers twitch, and for a moment, a purple spark traces between them--but he thinks better of it. These things don't seem designed for brute force.

     He compares the metal on the crates to his memory of the crates used to store weapons for YoRHa operatives. Are there any similarities in the material's composition? As he recollects, the Exalt moves alongside August and begins checking the computers with him. In particular, he's searching for personnel files, if any still exist.

     Namely, who here would have authorization to open those crates, assuming the crates weren't brought in after this place withered away?
Ezekiel Gravez     Ezekiel attempts to push forward are met with hazardous reprocussions. If it wasn't for the aid of Azure Armature, he certainly would have ended up in reclaim. However, not without incident.. the spray of bullets decreases the effectiveness of the layered nano shields with each impact. Sparks cascade all around him, reflecting a shower of blue techno motes right back at the turrets. The holoscanner starts at 100% and quickly falls to 0% within a fraction of a second. When the cover comes up, it too gets slammed by the onslaught. Zeke drops down behind the cover as soon as he realizes he is in over his head, and the seige continues until the guns themselves overload on heat. He slides down the cover, his back facing it while a look of pained expression meets Azure Armature. There is a severe amount of scoring on Zeke's brown longcoat, as well a peppered hole in it where the upper shoulder appears wounded. Red human blood flows but not atrociously so. His left arm symbiant cyberarm shines under the organic layer of flesh, however tattered. Zeke inhales through tight teeth, and the dilation of time slows Azure's words. They seem to float past him though, as his focus wasn't entirely upon their meaning.

    Zeke looks down and then rocks his head slowly back against the failing cover, conveying the idea he will impaired, but otherwise really irritated by the damage done. The wound coveres Zeke's draw arm, which effective renders the Patriot useless for the time being until the HealDelta programs kick in. It'll take hours before he physically recovers. At the very least he can still silently command nanoprograms but the most precise of his weapons simply lay in its leather and circuitry ladened cradle. The holoscreen reads: Spirit-tech Cybernetwork Left Arm !!SYSTEMS DAMAGED!! Unable to Actuate. "Shit. Well.. " He spits to the left and onto the floor before wiping it with the back of his cyberdeck. "At least the threat is neutralized. Ya have my consent to slap me if I ever do that again." His eyes seem to drift slightly as he extends an arm forward for help standing.

    The rest of the scene plays out, but Zeke stays silent while he focuses entirely on regenerating.
Azure Armature Noticing the menu as they begin to move into the structure -- certainly after the shooting stops and someone rips the door open by messing with the panel -- Armature frowns, tapping the page with a finger. "This diet is strange. Empty starch cooked or fried in various ways - filling, but unsustainable. Perhaps they were on half or restricted rations." She observes, Ollie coming to the same conclusion. "Yes, I concur - though this bunker seems nonindustrial. Observational facility? Laboratory? ... Panic bunker?"

She walks while trailing a finger along the wall. "The state of dust-settling upon most surfaces indicates a general state of uniform nonuse, but also could be a malfunctioning ventilatory scrubber."

Ezekiel gets a pat on the (not ruined) shoulder. "You did quite acceptably. Your instinct was good, and saved multiple other people from heavy or crippling damage." She comments helpfully. "If you do not have first aid on your person, seek triage within the next..." She estimates. "Hour?"

The subtext there is that Armature ain't no medic. But she's being supportive! Ego was a regular casualty of the battlefield, and mental state was a condition to triage as well.
Starbound Flotilla     Pavo's eyes flick around after the incredibly awkward as hell entry. She'd been keeping her distance for good reason, but having the others here isn't really something she has that strong of an objection to. Now, though, she can work on what she's been suspecting. Heading deeper in, her approach is straightforward; she pings her own scanner, like she did earlier, glad that the jammer's dead now. While it can only check for structural layout, that's all it /needs/ to check for.

    Pavo is, of course, checking to see how this layout compares to the various mapping that 13O did. That one seemed carved by some ancient society, sure, but at the same time, it seemed like it might have been carved by the machines themselves. Is there some chance it was modeled after this? Some possibility that there may be a structural connection here? After all, that was at least part of the data that had been recovered here; what's the connection between this structure and that surreal ziggurat they'd been in before?

    This also gives Pavo an opportunity to fully wander on away from the group, or hopefully it does anyway.
Kyoko Takada     Alpha-39 clicks in a new magazine, covering the entrance, and only lowering her gun once others start moving in to the breach. Rather than immediately following, she takes a few minutes with her medkit. It's fine; she'll catch up.
    August gets a once-over, but since the Tin Soldier took the actual fire for him, there's nothing to do if he doesn't need bandaging. She can deal with capability-reducing conditions more so than lost vitality. This leads to the offer, "Painkillers?"
    Careful accepting those, she's only able to use the strong stuff, by this point in her life. Ezekiel gets another glance as she asks, though it looks like he's got some kind of handle on it on his own.
    In the end, all pass into the facility. The menu gets a comment from her, after Blue's. "Vitamin supplements, probably, not mentioned. Otherwise, they wouldn't live long."
    Down they go. At the crates, she tenses with the expectation that someone will immediately open them, and is subsequently relieved that this isn't so easily done. "Someone didn't want this opened back up without a lot of work and tools, if ever. I'd suggest taking them somewhere you don't mind blowing up and spreading a death plague over before you crack them." Though it's a somewhat different matter if they find a key.
A2     Oddly, there are no bullets to actually be found in the bullet holes. They have the general kinetic profile of gunshot wounds, albeit with a much greater degree of heat, but no real mass to them. No lead. Nothing. A2 lowers her weapon as the volley subsides, a few patches of her own badly worn artificial flesh turning stark white and drawing in flickering 'pixels' of energy, filling themselves in as the bullet marks fill in. She follows through the bunker door, then leans over the railing, narrowing her eyes at something on the ground floor, and then immediately vaulting over and taking the huge drop to the bottom without warning.

    August checks the consoles, and finds that they're unlocked and in sleep mode. Someone had been using them, and hadn't the chance to lock them again. They're actually still tuned into a geographic map, like something from wargames, with a number of area markers all over the globe, but no commensurate dots relating to any sort of forces on any side. It contains a list of stations that are universally set as 'BROADCAST UNAVAILABLE', and a timer that how now run into negative ten thousand years. Someone was indeed using this, and in the head of tactical launch when they stopped.

    The salt crystals are pretty creepy.

    The crates are indeed heavily locked down in a similar way to the emergency cache 'Eye had found the YoRHa agent using. In fact, they are moreso. Examining them, it seems very likely that one of these had been cracked open by YoRHa and then put back together as much as they could to be repurposed as a safebox for their stuff. These are so old they couldn't possibly be in use /by/ YoRHa however. Taking over the console and moving away from the tacsim causes the monitor to pretty abruptly start crapping out. All the programs that weren't in use have been hugely degraded to the point that even plaintext is badly fragmented. All of the personnel files contain only partial names, and the authorization list is a mess. The sole member of the outstanding class that isn't part of the military spectrum security ladder (so, probably someone intelligence) is referred to as 'GESTALT project lead N*?$&%(###-NO INTEGER'.

    Pavo, and potentially A-39, are the ones who eventually arrive at A2's destination, and there they find her staring before huge rows of identical computer banks in silent, shell shocked disbelief. It's not terribly hard to figure out why. The machinery that is jammed wall to wall and floor to ceiling, crawling through the next several rooms and filling a third of the silo like a mechanical tumour, is clearly of Machine construction, built into this area after the fact, and siphoning from whatever massive generator has powered this place for so long. It appears to be functional, broadcasting on at least one wavelength, but totally inactive. All of the screens are blank and covered in dust. None of its innumerable ports are in use. None of the extremely robust transmitters, using some format that isn't familiar to anyone present, are sending anything. It's a colossus of rambling communications and data storage machinery that is utterly, uselessly dead, visibly crumbling over most of its surface.
A2     "What the hell is- what is this doing here?" A2 almost whispers, taking one step back from the sight, and then the other, shaking her head as if unwilling to believe her eyes. "No. This- . . . how can . . . this is a /Machine server/! That's core infrastructure. This is their link to the Machine Network. Even as small as this, that thing should be coordinating all the Machines for miles! Ordering them around, gathering their data, backing up their brains, evolving their designs, coordinating attacks. I've /seen/ a main server before. There were /millions/ of Machines then. They went crazy trying to defend it, and they all shut down across half the continent when it blew up. That's the whole point."

"We're- YoRHa is tactically /designed/ to target these. Small, elite strike teams that suddenly drop from orbit, fight through local forces, and take out vital assets before a counter-offensive can organize. Cripple the Machines' backbone. Take them out at the root. The only way to make any real dent. The way to finally end the war. So if this thing has been broken for who knows how long . . . what the /hell/ is anything else doing in this sector? Where are the Machines coming from? Why are they even being built? What is the Resistance even fighting? Why does /YoRHa/ need to be here? This doesn't make any fucking sense!"
August Kohler "I'll be fine." August responds to A-39, before moving to the terminal. He's beared through it before, after all, he can do so again.

August looks over the maps, trying to get some sort of information out of them, but all he can get is that this place is ten thousand years old and someone was launching for war when something happened. August steps back, and stares at the console briefly as it glitches, but he has a worse focus. The salt. "This console was in sleep mode, which means someone was using it. Not locked, either. People don't vanish...goddamn, how the hell does /this/ happen?" There's a wide wave towards the pillars of salt.

August paces around briefly, considering it. In the end, he moves over to the crate to distract himself from the situation. "Need me to assist in carrying this out? I /might/ be able to melt through it later, if necessary." Though they might be able to handle it, it's still better than hanging around salt.
Kyoko Takada     Alpha-39 repockets the painkillers, and just keeps going down, rather than wait to see what people manage with the crates, eventually arriving where A2 had skipped ahead to. Unlike the android, she's never seen any of this before, but the explanation's good enough to hazard a guess.
    "The machines are acting weird. Their server's down. Isn't that why? New server gets brought up somewhere to replace the broken one, and something goes wrong with it? Lousy connection, data corruption, catches a logic virus that killed this one and half-kills itself before it's cured. Fuck if I know. You find a leader's corpse, and the soldiers are still running around, and all you know is that you've got a corpse and a mob." She's a little too tense to give a nonchalant shrug in punctuation to that.
    Gesturing with her gun, "Command had something to hide here. So they probably know what's down here. They don't want the grunts to know, which means they don't have a good explanation for why they're still sending grunts down. But they did send that operator, so could be they just don't know shit. Or they didn't, before the last series of ops."
    Now she does shrug. There are too many unknowns to do more than throw darts at a wall. The target's not even visible. "You tell me. What happens when a server gets taken out? And can you be sure the same thing would happen every time one does?"
All-Seeing Eye      Pavo says over the comms that she's had a kind of ambiguous luck. The Exalt's eyes roll practically into the back of his head, and he pushes the crumbling swivel chair away from the desk he'd been seated at. The crates are, for the time being, a no-go, but they do at least hint that YoRHa was aware of facilities like this, insofar as several of their own caches seem to have been built from crates like the two here.

     "Perhaps it has something to do with this," says Eye, gesturing to the words 'GESTALT project lead' dimly flickering upon the screen. "A gestalt is... a whole greater than the sum of its parts." A frown appears on his face, as his hand slowly raises to stroke his chin. "Not unlike the machine intelligence." His golden eyes flash with something other than their usual mischievous, coy displays--a keen, sharp intelligence. "Maybe," he says, on the matter of the crates. "I have a feeling their importance just significantly dropped."

     "I'm heading downstairs." He does exactly that, striding purposefully through the abandoned facility's clutter, until he arrives at the spot where Pavo and the others are gathered--looking upon the apparent Machine server.
Azure Armature Armature looks over - well, around, really - Eye's shoulder at the screen, frowning (more than usual) at the text. "Heavily corrupted. But the project name... GESTALT. Could mean the world. Could be an acronym. Hard to say. If the system has power, pull a copy of it for deep analysis. Even fragmented, putting things back in order could yield some useful scraps. A secondary objective win, perhaps. Tertiary at worst." She ruminates, before moving around the room. "Nutrition supplements... But those also don't last forever. Full shifts in a crisis means people are working, using energy. Inefficent when you're in a state you want to last out. Useful for a crisis though."

She glances around, filling in some of the details in her heads.

"Everyone - Human, Machine, YoRHa - has been here in some property. The previous inhabitants, then the machines, and now the rogue YoRHa agent we're here to collect. Why wouldn't YoRHa report a hub, though? There's a hole, a problem."

Armature crosses her arms, bringing one hand up to tap her chin while her thumb and middle finger rested on her chin.

"... Or bad intel." She practically spits, after a few moments.
Starbound Flotilla     Pavo strides forward, checking among the servers. The stress A2 is going through is something she understands, in a deep and surprisingly painful way. "See, the way I see it," She rambles as she goes. "It's more than likely that this doesn't mean any deception. It means the machines moved on from this. The sparse bunch outside the bunker, none of 'em inside, the whole meaning looks like they stalled in the war." She prods and pokes among the servers, looking for a particular bit of functionality to scavenge and steal. True, this equipment can no longer process and coordinate the machines, but maybe that's not the point.

    She's hopeful it can still receive uploads.

    Sure, maybe it's mostly nonfunctional for doing what it was meant to do, but if her hope is right, it might be possible that it received something it might have passively stored. And if that's the case, it'll be enough. "Maybe they moved on from needing the servers. Maybe they moved on from needing the /war/. Maybe YoRHa is a ponzi scheme of inflated killcounts. The issue is that they can't be /trusted/, and most importantly, I'm not sure most of them even understand what they're doing themselves. So don't bother lookin' for meaning and substance in the war, because death doesn't have any more intrinsic meaning than life does. The only thing that adds meaning is gods."

    Hopefully she'll be able to find something she can extract. What SPECIFICALLY she's looking for an upload of is, at the very least, something that won't get in the way of what the others are looking for; if she nabs a hard-drive, it'll be only a few stray conceptual learning uploads and mind backups, nothing about the other tremendously relevant data the others are after. "Make your own meaning, don't bother with letting the big figures force you into boxes of opposing and supporting. YoRHa's scammers, or they're being scammed. The Machine Lifeforms are something totally different from what they were before, maybe totally new priorities. Well people who have power just because they were given it by some distant humanity aren't any different from people who have power just because they were given it by some distant god. Don't bother with 'em. Find a way to give them a proper insult."
Ezekiel Gravez      Zeke eventually makes his way over to the hole, and takes a look first before leaping, because reasons. He lands flat, and the gound beneath him does actually shake a little. For a large human, he seems to weigh more than he actually looks. Once he reaches his final destination, he immediately starts to actually investigate the machines. "I might need a lil space, folks. Aint done this a spell, gotta build up some. I'll need a power source, and a port to the actial DB unit. Grab summa dat cablin' and lets pull up some sleeves." Which, he actually does so.
    Once available space and start point are organized, he simply sits on whatever it available. He stares into space a moment, and his cyberdeck comes alive. Mathematical symbols and schematics start to build. The nanobot cloud protocol is sundered and his nannites start to infect the system. It takes at least a few minutes before the basic level electrical and mechanical blueprints start to scroll on the holoprojector. With quick and deft hands, he starts to move portions of the holo - which react actually to his touch. It's like a computer screen projecting in air in front of him. Code library begins to parse and Zeke begins to read it with severe interest. Within ten minutes he's able to get one computer working. Within an hour he'll have access to the actual network. The nanobot work like thousands of tiny ants, rebuilding and maintaining the machine until a shiny sheen begins to form over the aged metals. Again, a cascade of code begins to translate in real time, as if linguistics and geometry were working hand in hand. Symbols for TimeSpace, Matter Creation, and Matter Metamorphosis create equations that turn into work routines and before lone, Zeke begins to build an actual buffer station to hard link his cyberdeck to the ancient mainframe. All this, is done on multiple work stations. At one point, he even retrieves a set of tools from his ruck that seem to tweak pathways and such. The program eventually comes together, and then engages. The system can then power up, one station at a time until the entire mainframe is accessed... but that's unless something sinister happens, like an autovirus or security routine that slips QA.
A2     "Stalled." A2 sounds like she wants to laugh at that word from Pavo, but then winds up rolling it around for a little instead. She replies to A-39 instead. "No, if they wanted to replace this Server, they would have. They /should/ have. They'd have every reason to. There's a huge Machine production factory not far from here. We went there. If the new Server was fucked, they'd know about it. They replaced the one in Mt. Kaala in a month. It's like they just don't /give a shit/. Like here isn't worth bothering with."

    "Look, I know they haven't /given up/. Even the buggy Machines still try to kill you. They still murder Androids who wander off all the time. They still fight YoRHa drops tooth and nail. They still have goddamn anti-atmospheric entry guns for fuck's sake. This war's not over, so where the hell is it? Why is there a giant complex not even a hundred miles from here, churning out replacements for all the Machines we've scrapped for /years/, if they they're totally useless as weapons, not even part of the Network? A fucking /glitch/?" A2 sounds completely, utterly, and angrily incredulous."

    Jacking into the Server, on either Pavo's or Ezekiel's part, is something of a trip. Though All-Seeing Eye had found the inside of one of the malfunctioning robot's head comprehensible enough, the older data system the two try to access is strange in ways that cannot be simply dismissed as broken. The basic code doesn't run on anything close to binary. All the textual symbols it uses are some completely bonkers language that doesn't even translate Multiversally, composed entirely of lines and circles like diagrams of consellations. There are no roots or directories. Even trying to pick out something conceptually similar to an executable is guesswork at best. The data most easily downloaded is sheerly record data, for the fact that at least they can parse something visually captured. However, there is one outstanding trait.

    The decrepit colossus of computer power seems to have abysmally poor data storage. Outside of the reams of programming determining its actual function, it has a capacity for file storage barely better than a cheap hard drive: a few gigs at most. There's no way it could be storing any significant amount of tactical data on here, and in fact most of that space is completely empty, raising the question of what the storage is even for. There are no Machine backups to download because there is no information on the Machines present, period. The most valuable data to gain is what /appears/ to be references to other nodes, like a sort of cloud system, albeit the most nonsensical one imaginable. Math is math, and spatial coordinates are spatial coordinates. Two of them appear to be on the same continent at least. One is remarkably close by.

    At least carrying the lockers out is as simple as it looks. Difficult, due to their extreme weight, but it doesn't raise any strange or thorny questions. It's the only thing today that didn't.