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A2     Eryl need not be too disappointed too quickly. As he walks around the park, he'll be able to begin to see something of a pattern, in the loosest sense of the word. Going off the Machines' behaviour, there is indeed a great majority of units engaged in roate mimicry of the generally stable, baseline consensus of what constitutes 'fun that people have in an amusement park'. Here and there, there are slightly more divergent and specialized roles settled into, like Machines that have taken on roles like decorating and launching fireworks, as similar aspects of 'what goes into a theme park'. More rarely, there are Machines with much more diverse and experimental ideas. Some are clumsy and experimental, like a couple trying to play a water pistol game but in the process of trying to figure out where the water comes from.

    Some are matured, but essentially dead ends, like the Machine apparently permanently 'on break'. Some of them are fairly advanced, like the idea of a stamp collecting game, and Eryl actually eventually comes across a pair of Machines awkwardly arguing over whether it's allowable to hide a stamp by carrying it around. A small few can be construed as successful leaps in logic, such as the hard hat Machine who had diverged so far from the baseline to correlate 'fun' with 'safety' and taken it upon itself to build a way to keep other Machines away from the 'dangerous' section of the park. Individually, they all appear to be pretty dumb and oblivious to the significance of what they're doing, but if taken as a whole, it certainly resembles a convergent form of a certain computational paradigm.

    All-Seeing Eye asks his question to separate Machines. 'Dory' responds all but immediately, reverberating with the words "We do not know much about humans. Androids were built by humans, but Androids and Machines do not get along. There were once billions of humans who got along. Humans had things like 'fun'. They did things together. If we understand fun, we can get along with Androids. That is what we decided."

    The absolute most subtle 'blink and you'll miss it' megaton bombshell drops when the green-eyed Machines respond shortly after, having paused before answering. Specifically, the very first word the 'father' Machine uses. "I think humans must have had a wonderful time." The 'mother' adds. "I think it's very complicated and mysterious. Humans must have been geniuses, to invent things like family and fun." The 'child' says. "I like fun. Humans invented things other than fighting, so I like humans." All three of them use that same word, in fact.

    August has to go to the same barricade as the Flotilla, where the Machine in a hard hat holds up its gigantic hands and waves its half a warning sign at them like a fan. "Careful. Dangerous beyond here. Broken machine." It intends to keep them out of there quite firmly, until George brandishes repair tools. Then, the Machine takes a long bout of what is probably intensive, low-power processing, and then says "Repair. Okay. Repair man can go in.", and then puts its tremendous strength into yanking its heavy scrap barricade aside with brute force, not having really built it to be opened normally."No. Broken machine only here. Rest of park is safe. Safe for fun. Have fun and be safe. Being hurt is not fun." Hearing 'hurt' is a bit odd, considering these things normally don't even have a concept of /death/.
A2     It seems that the roller coaster works perfectly fine. It is, in fact, currently in service, with one set of cars going around the tracks in an endless loop, and another parked at the loading platform and primed to go. True to the pamphlet, Nova finds that there are no seatbelts, which seems incredibly dangerous. Whether or not those two wish to ride it depends on what A-39 might want to tell them, because when she approaches a much more tenable vantage, closer to the heart of the park, she can get a better bead on the flying units, and see that their movements are totally unrelated and completely disconnected from the ones on the ground, despite their festive outfits. They move in perfect synchronicity only with each other, scouting the tracks for something on repeat. Their eyes are yellow, but frequently sputter in a vaguely suspicious way. None of them are simply lift units; all of them are armed, and none of them leave the proximity of the castle, which is vacant of all other Machines, even pedestrian ones.

    Those on the stamp hunt find some odd results. A few are literally hidden like scavenger hunt eggs, but a few have been appropriated by wandering Machines, who seem to believe they've each independently had the clever idea of hiding the stamps somewhere with them, and who stamp their cards themselves. One demands on selling its stamps as if it's running a store, however it seems to accept any kind of random baubles anyone can find on the ground as payment. Anyone who can get to nine stamps (probably Azure Armature, given cheaty teleportation) will encounter the last Machine, on a bridge leading to the roller coaster, tells them that the tenth stamp is unavailable. The tenth stamp, apparently, can only be gotten from going to the theatre, but the theatre is currently off-limits due to broken machinery. She can ascertain the actual gates leading to the castle plaza have been chained shut too, probably by Mr. Hard hat, who has apparently done a fine job communicating this to other Machines in the area. They're quite serious about it.

    Somehow, the empty ghost of a plaza, at the foot of the pastel pink fantasy palace lit up like a child's dream, feels a little ominous.
All-Seeing Eye      "/You/ think?" says All-Seeing Eye. A hand rests upon his chin as he turns his head. The gesture is purposeful, of course, as it's rude to speak to someone while pointedly looking away. He's smiling with interest, his internal sensory drone still recording the exchange. Eye steps past Dory, striding up to the 'Father' machine.

     He turns his head slightly, giving each of the three green-eyed machines a cursory examination. "You're not part of the independent network here," notes Eye, abandoning his simplistic manner of speech. "Nor are you part of the... 'official' network." An apologetic shrug is given. "Was this all your idea, this..." He lifts a finger, twirling it around in a lazy circle. "Mission of peace?"

     His smile widens, and he poses another question to the machine family, for the sake of posterity. YoRHa likely won't accept this at face value, so some prodding is necessary. "It's lovely," he says. "But I'm afraid the Androids have been fighting for so long, something like this would be... hard to accept. I'm a friend of theirs," he says, leaning forward as if sharing a secret. "And I'd very much like this to work. Could you tell me about yourselves, so I can help the Androids understand?"
August Kohler August is admittedly super scared of this roller coaster, and the fact that it's the most likely candidate for 'ride to die in'. However, he needs to know what the hell those flying things are if he's going to further investigate this park, and that's the best way to do so. The fact he won't be alone helps his courage, as he slowly nods to the machine, and then heads into the ride at the loading platform. Once they're in his seats, he takes a breath, exhales, and raises his mirrored bracelet to eye level.

"Persona."

The Tin Soldier is summoned, taking a seat behind them. It keeps its gun-leg at an angle where it can quickly lift it out of the seat, which probably goes against all safety, but this ride isn't about safety in general. The true purpose of the Persona being there, though, is to keep them safe. Both of its metal arms will be wrapped around the shoulders of August and Nova to hold them in tight, August focusing on the Persona and the superhumanity it presents fully. Hopefully, that'll be enough to not get launched out of the coaster.
Starbound Flotilla     Hooray! This WAS the right way forward. Thank goodness for that old Syndicate Intuition. Seft, at least, isn't one that's going to go back on their word. Some of the broken things, they do make sure to repair! Not, you know, the people who happen to be broken machines. Biteblade even eventually joins in. After a while, they wind up heading to the coaster as well.

    It looks like there's plans to head up. Albeit, it seems, not much space; they wind up cramping around together nearer the back, curious about where this might be going and how much of an opportunity this might be to get into the palace zones. They're ready mostly to jump off when they see a good opportunity, holding themselves in place with grappling hooks instead of anything more practical like repairing seatbelt systems. All six of them look about as you'd expect any six people to look when cramming into one coaster ride with people like knightbots.
Nova Terra     Nova huhs as she fails to find some restraints, "Doesn't seem very safe." Not that she's concerned with her own safety in this situation. She's been in worse situations. Probably. Still, Nova doesn't turn away from the ride, settling in to the seat. She can always steady herself with her telekinesis if it comes to it.

    Besides, Nova has some help in staying in the car. She turns her head to glance back at the Tin Soldier as it secures them. She's not had a good chance to look at the thing closely. Huh, a strange creation.

    Returning her view formward, Nova manipulates some controls on her suit's wrist, zooming her view in on the flying robots in the distance. They might be armed, but that doesn't say much about their behaviour considering the others here have also been likewise dangerous, yet passive. Nova does admit, "At least if they turn out to be hostile, it'll be something familiar in this weird place." Nova grips her rifle a little tighter, in preparation of the ride. Would be unfortunate to lose it!
Kotone Yamakawa So Kotone is off hunting for stamps, that's right she's playing along with this trying to use it to get a chance to ask questions as she helps Eryl in the search for what's going on. Given her cousin Miho's development of android AIs, she has a very loose idea that the machines could be just mimicking? So she's looking about to see for ones who might be divergent from the rest. She starts to just wonder how the machines are developing here as something is going on she'll also while looking for stamps? Seek out any games that might be functional or could be jury-rigged into operation to run a little experiment. Her plan is to see if she can get the machines interest in trying a working or fixed game, maybe she'll be lucky and find something like a ring toss?
Eryl Fairfax     Eryl begins to smile again as he comes across more and more of the irregular machines. Certainly, some seem to have evolved into layabouts, but some are exhibiting excellent leaps in logic. Park safety, bartering, retaining the stamps themselves... but there's no sign of these ideas spreading. The one 'on break' is by themselves, and the ones holding the stamps seem to have reached the idea separately, save the two arguing over the idea.

    It's a society of individuals. Having ideas, but they're not transmitting to others. Their memes start and end with each of them. Eryl finds himself rubbing his chin as he trades one of his business cards for the stamp from the barter-bot and gets his stamp. And yet, all these machines came to this abandoned park and brought it to life. All of them are dedicated to 'fun.' That meme spread among them. Perhaps the majority are simply not intelligent enough to go beyond holding to a single adage? Or perhaps they just lack the life experience to go beyond it? The park is not exactly bustling, meaning they are all in a bubble of a single, resounding idea. This does not promote depth of thinking...

    Eryl does get nine, not as fast as some others due to taking his time. Here he learns the tenth is in the locked-off theatre. He did have ambitions of going in there, but learning that it is deliberately locked off has him unwilling to just do so. So instead, he tracks down the machine in the hard hat and talks to him.

    "Good day!" he says with a closed smile and open arms. "I've been looking around the park, and I must say, you've done an excellent job of keeping things safe. However, I have heard that the theatre is closed due to being unsafe. What exactly is 'unsafe' about it?" He also really wants to ask why this machine decided 'safety=fun' but now is not the time.
Azure Armature Meanwhile:

Azure Armature roots through a trash can, pulling off the top of the rusted piece of unused metal whith a few nuts and bolts in it seeming placed there because that's where trash goes and obviously trash should be put in there.

Nevermind the fact that Machines don't normally PRODUCE trash, at least, the kinds that go in trashcans.

She finds the stubby in the can, presents her stamp card, and recieves a stamp.

After the machine that wanted to see her 'biggest human smile', she was already over this. But she had to complete the card. She had to.

Which, leading up to the locked gate and the hard-hat Machine, has Azure Armature, hero and Chosen, elite solo operative and magitechnological marvel...

Arguing with an automaton about getting into the area for her last stamp.

"But I have all of the other stamps. I am not having Fun. I would have fun, if I had the stamps. Can I just go? I'm very strong. I can even fix the broken things."

"I don't want all that time to be wasted."

    All that time...
            All that... time...
A2     The way the green-eyed Machines look at All-Seeing Eye, or rather, the way they look around him, subtly turning to try and read most of his face and body, with little flickers of their eye lamps that almost seem like blinking, is close to something one would describe 'emotive'. It as at the minimum, some form of primitive 'social awareness', put on by beings that are mechanically eusocial at best. "No." the father Machine admits. "The amusement park was the idea of these Machines. We came from a nearby village to see it. Families go to amusement parks." The 'child' Machine says "I wanted to go with mom and dad!". The mother Machine continues "I think it's a nice idea. It's not as clever as our leader's ideas, but disconnecting from the Network is hard and scary. I hope that they can be left in peace."

    The roller coaster absolutely looks like colourful suicide for the whole family to enjoy. It might have been given too little credit, however, because when it takes off, the forces involved actually plaster everyone to the seats anyways. The thing must be moving at 150 kilometers per hour, /easily/, and no amount of fantastic loops and swirls can dislodge someone unless they actively fight to get up and fall out. Even standing up in their seat, someone would remain firmly planted (albeit buffeted by heavy wind) until they took a loop, where the cars would be going so fast they'd catch them after falling off the top anyways. It's certainly nothing that would be approved at Disney Land.

    Unfortunately, it's still absolutely unsafe, but for completely different reasons. At the hideous speed the coaster is moving, Nova barely has the time to reaffirm the information A-39 had ascertained about the robo-buzzards flying around the fantasy palace before they are immediately set upon. Unlike the Machines down below, these ones transition from holding yellow to aggressive red the instant the cars travel within a certain proximity of their patrol pattern, synching up with the rest in the air. Halfway around the track, the riders are swarmed at high speed as roving pods of fliers swoop in and match speeds with the roller coaster, hovering around them in a flock and blasting them with deluges of energy attacks, unfortunately entirely to their advantage due to how tiny the handful of cars is as a 'battlefield'. It'll be at least two minutes until the cars swoop into the giant heart through the center of the castle, and provide some cover.

    With the nicer Machines on the ground, a last assessment of the various stamp areas lends significant credence to Eye's forming theories regarding the amusement park being a single 'organism', engaged in divergent neural learning patterns. The more they are examined, the more each individual 'personality' looks sort of like one of the thousands of iterative runs that neural computers go through, preserved in one clunky body each. It might be due to their greater sample size and more varied environmental stimuli that the running process is so far much more successful than that little cave.

    Finally, the hard hat Machine confirms one of the vagueries of what it had insisted before, unfortunately a little too late for the coaster folk. "Theatre is closed. Theatre has broken machine in it. Dangerous. Not fun." It makes something like an electric engine rumbling sound, maybe the equivalent of an anxious noise, when Azure Armature insists on going anyways. "Not seeing play is also not fun. Broken machine is kind of broken that is hard to fix. Please be safe." The last words seem sort of plaintive, rather than rebuffing, like something a concerned parent would say to their kid taking the car out at midnight.
Starbound Flotilla "Woah woah woah! I don't like this kind of lightgun-coaster!"
"Bad machinesss are shooting!!"
"Smite 'em out of the sky!"
"Scared. Not if they get us first!"
"Shields up! Heads down!"
"Swiftly! We have no time!"

    The Flotilla call out among each other first, fightened and caught off guard by the events, but before they can be battered too much, they figure their strategy! Curling and sliding down into the seats, holding themselves securely with grappling hooks, they cover the top with a set of shields -- in varying styles, ranging from riot shields to elaborate massive shells to heavy tower shields -- and begin firing their ranged weaponry out the sides of the car. It's like they've made their own trap-door for the "floor" of the coaster car, and they're trying to use it for cover! This way, at least, there's only a limited gap to strike at them with, and their bruises won't multiply. They just have to last a few minutes!
August Kohler As the ride kicks off, it turns out the Tin Soldier isn't needed to secure them, because the speed does so for them, so it lets go, preparing for a potential fight instead. August screams as the ride kicks off, exhilarating speeds freaking him out, and he holds onto himself as much as he can. He doesn't even see the robots for a while.

But August does finally see them, when their energy blasts rip into the cart, one of them impacting his arm and burning him with another screech. The Tin Soldier rises in its seat, lifting that gun leg and sending out two blasts. One is a massive plume of fire, visible from below, which could be seen both by the Paladins present, and more importantly, by Azure Armature. It's a bit ahead of the car so that if she teleports, she'll hopefully land right on top of it as it speeds by.

The other is August's attack, which is followed up immediately after. A hail of bullets rains forward, trying to hit the drones, though the Tin Soldier does duck every so often to try and not get knocked out of the car, occasionally flying out in a loop and landing back in the seat afterwards. August shouts out to the others. "This ride's a goddamn trap! SMASH THEM UP!"
Nova Terra     The speed is not that much of a concern for Nova. She's been on her fair share of machines that go fast. It's the rapid and frequent turns which get to her, the Ghost gritting her teeth as the coast goes through corners and loops. Nova has new respect for the Dominion's fighter pilots who have to go through this kind of thing often. While also being shot at by the enemy!

    Oh wait, here comes the enemy. The flying robots quickly become hostile, but that's not really all that unexpected. Trying to duck further into her seat to avoid the fire, Nova attempts to move her rifle to aim at the fliers. However the quick turns of the coaster are making it hard, the Ghost struggling to get an accurate shot. So she resorts to methods less affected by the ride's zigs and zags.

    Reaching out with her mind, Nova begins gripping the flying drones with her telekinesis, taking August's words literally as she attempts to smash them against each other.
Azure Armature Armature looks at the robot. She repeats herself. He gets worried. She insists. He gets ameliorating.

Finally, she gets the answer she wants, and nods firmly. "Do not worry. I am a champion. Broken machines are my specialty. One of them. You are in luck that today I came prepared for..."

The operative trails off, her scarf fluttering and her arms crossing dramatically as her shoulders square. "Broken things."

With a few steps, her form flickers and she walks through the gate, sauntering across the bridge to the Theatre.

She has absolutely no idea what's coming, but it's probably nothing, right? It's probably some super dumb 'I'm THE MEAN ONE, GRR, BAH HUMBUG, I HATE FUN' Machine that's being edgy. Then she notices, out of the corner of her eye, the flare.

She drops to one knee, hitting her radio. <"This is Blue. Kohler, how hard contact?"> She wonders, looking up at the sky. Is it... that serious?

<"I've got a lead on... one of our objectives, inside the theatre.">
All-Seeing Eye      "The Network," mutters All-Seeing Eye with some semblance of recognition. So that's what they call it. After a brief pause, Eye nods his head. "I hope so, too." This is said less for the Machines present, and more for the benefit of any YoRHa personnel assigned to watch the recording. He rocks on his heels, debating what to ask next. It doesn't take him long to come up with another question.

     "If you don't mind my asking," he begins, "How many other Machines do you know of who don't want to fight the Androids any more?" He angles his head backwards, then makes a backwards sweeping motion with his arm. He's gesturing towards the roller coaster, and the ongoing skirmish with the buzzards. "Are there many... villages, or are most Machines still like the ones up there? Is there... more than one Network?"
Kotone Yamakawa In Kotone's search for any functional gamers she doesn't find any games yet she hears about the theatre? That catches Kotone's interest.

"So it's broken and hard to repair? Maybe I and some of the others could take a crack at it."

She does take note that it is dangerous so she expects there is a hazard or something that might attack them all.

<<There's a broken machine at the theatre I'm hearing from one of the machine's here, sounds like it's dangerous but it could be a lead.>>

Also it looks like the machines here might be more akin to neurons in a single brain rather than each one being its own thing?

She's going to make a beeline for the theatre through to see what she can dig up she will take the time to cloak when she gets near there given the warning she was given.
Eryl Fairfax     A 'broken' machine. What does that entail exactly? Does he mean a ride, or a machine like him? He says that it is 'hard to fix' though... Eryl shakes his head, not wanting to jump to any conclusions. He'll see it when he sees it. He was just beginning to ponder how he could justify his own intrusion when Azure makes her own case. "We'll be careful," he promises the machine, before backing up and doing a running jump to grab on the edge of the fence and hoisting himself over.

    And then he spots the flare soaring through the sky, drawing his eye to the rollercoaster ride being accosted by machines. Immediately, he rolls up his sleeves and points a finger, tracking the ride as it swerves around the track. Inside his head, Original Face crunches data as fast as it can, crunching the numbers on how the machines follow and orbit the car, waiting for the palace before him to give him a clear shot.

    Finally, he gets an 87% chance of a clear shot on one of the flying machines and lets loose. The tiny slug flies through the air, trailing fire as it combats air and gravity to drive through the machine's metal chassis. One down. "I'll give them cover until they can get off," he tells Azure. "Please proceed, and keep us posted as to what this 'broken machine' is."

    And with that, he continues firing, a slow and steady beat of highly calculated shots chasing down the fast-moving flyers.
A2     Once again, the trio of Machines that All-Seeing Eye seems to be set on talking to all look between each other, before talking over each other as they all try to speak at the same time. "No." "Not really." "I don't know." They pause, and then just the one continues. "We disconnected from the Network a while ago, so we don't hear much from other Machines. I hear that something happened and the Network broke down some, with parts of it becoming their own Networks. I hope it was an order. The Network breaking would be scary."

    There isn't much opportunity for searching questions with the rest of the group. Most of them are stuck trying to duck flying energy bullets at incredibly unsafe speeds on an utterly ancient and irresponsibly unsupervised theme park ride. At the velocities involved, it only takes a couple of shots on target to send flying machines tumbling away and spiraling off into chunks of scenery, smashing into support struts, crashing into the ground, and exploding in decorative landmarks, where they shower the riders with pelting hails of fine scrap. Eryl sniping them from the ground sends a row of Machines rocketing into each other like pinballs, scattering their formation and turning them into fiery smears on the sides of the whimsical pink palace. Given the small area to cover, there's not a lot they can do but concentrate on the Flotilla's shields and try to wear them down, but there aren't nearly enough of them here for those attrition tactics to actually be effective.

    What happens instead is that one red-eyed Machine seems to get a bright idea only after having been shot through its central chassis, and steers its flaming dive right into the tracks, kamikaze diving into the coaster rails and causing the chunk of track that bridges the heart-shaped gap in the castle to collapse in on itself. The roller coaster derails spectacularly, sending everyone still aboard careening into the castle interior, where the cars plunge hundreds of meters, smash through several layers of decorative skylights and faux wooden attraction floors, and collapse straight into a dark, dingy basement room, briefly filled with an explosion of dust, dirt, and smoke from the ensuing electrical fire in the ruined coaster cars.
A2     They're only there for less than a minute before the lights flick on by themselves. They aren't emergency of proximity lighting of any kind, but huge, theatrical spotlights, which sweep over a circular, empty floor space, likely meant to be filled with an orchestra, that they now stand in, surrounded by extensive rows of tiered seats on all sides, and finally a grand stage at the very front, red curtains pulling away as the lights focus on its center in rehearsed unison. The uncanny for spectacle culminates with a Machine actually wheeling out onto center stage, striking a non-sequitur of a pose, as if ready to perform.

    It's unlike any Machine they've seen so far.

    The spherical 'head' that usually denotes a Machine Lifeform design is nowhere to be found, nor any sign of a standard chassis, with its 'eyes' being almost vestigial inclusions somewhere in its 'chest'. The thing is easily thrice as tall as any of the Elites are, and likely multiple tons in weight, with a much more complex chassis doing a lot more than usual to resemble the human form. Layered plating, wiring, pistons, and ostensibly armour, create the silhouette of a larger than life mechanical woman, her head a molded mask like that of the stereotypical 'Valkyrie' opera singer, with a massive, ornamental metal Victorian collar. It has every fine detail from fingers, palms, a neck, and articulated waist, and is even 'dressed' in huge swathes of curtain that make for a flared ballroom skirt obscuring its lower half, and something of a billowing shawl. The metal looks relatively new-ish, compared to the ancient and rusted patina of most Machines, and has been painted in several places for accentuation. The thoroughly 'custom' design's most alarming detail isn't quite part of it however: around its waist it has decorated itself with a daisy chain of Android corpses holding hands in a rosary ring, stripped right down to their identical, grey, anatomical doll 'skeletons'. They swish and jiggle like dolls when it pirouettes and takes its bow on the stage.

    Without any prompting, the Machine engages its vocalizer, and despite a tinny tinge, blares a surprisingly convincing "do rey mi" sequence all the way through and back, leaving off on a long, hanging note, warming up to sing. The next instant, the twin yellow lights buried in its torso flash warning red, and its voice spikes into a crackling shriek. Throwing its arms as if to accept an encore, the floor lights switch on to illuminate the whole room, and then countless swirling, spiraling, intricately laced rows and orbits of crackling dark energy blasts fly out of it in all directions, barraging the entire room under beautifully coordinated saturation fire that makes escape by air effectively impossible.

    For Kotone, Eryl, All-Seeing Eye, Azure Armature, the Flotilla members with their helmets on, and really anyone with a HUD, their displays are briefly hijacked by an unknown signal that causes their vision to crackle with flickering white text in an unknown language, bombarding them with some sentence or phrase in encoded lines and dots before disappearing as mysteriously as it had arrived.
August Kohler As the chaos goes on, August focuses on the Tin Soldier's control...but as the Machine crashes into the tracks and blows them up, he quickly gestures the Tin Soldier to grab him and brace him, doing the same for Nova with its other arm if she needs it. As the car crashes into the ground, August is battered and bruised, as is the Tin Soldier...but the superhuman durability of it keeps him alive.

And then, they're not alone. Forcing himself up, and the Tin Soldier in front of him to defend, August is pretty pissed. "This place is a trap. Fucking hate these robots." As the operatic Machine sings and sets off a massive blast of energy, the Tin Soldier leaps in the way, moving to protect those less mobile or tanky who need it, buffeting the Persona which in turn causes August tripping back from the pain and damage. The Tin Soldier raises its leg and fires its own flurry of fire, beams and bursts and spheres, dancing around some of the waves instead of eating everything the Machine has to offer. August shouts out as he does so. "The rest of them can speak, so why aren't you, you dumb robot? Monologue or something!"
Kotone Yamakawa Kotone is very glad she cloaked here. She makes her way in hopefully not noticed for the moment. Then she sees it it's like something out of a Victorian horror story from the looks of it. She sees the mask she has sene ones like that before and she then sees the corpses of android and there's a sense of horror. Corpses on display and it scares her, she's long stopped seeing androids are just machines given her own status in life. She shudders even worse they might not be a lost cause, so far as she knows. She doesn't hold out much hope ye she doesn't know till she tries the thing however seem to be quite mad and the lights come on.

She's been hacked alarm as come up the fear Kotone is feeling gets worse the strange writing is however saved to look it over later as she attempts to keep her systems clean the hack stops.

<<I have suffered a hack of some sort...has anyone else?>>

Saturation fire is the best way to deal with therm optic cameo, give them no place or way to dodge. She takes a hit or two and her form ripples, Kotone keeps on the move and starts to counter-attack aiming for the upper mass of this hulking machine horror. Her assault rifle barks as she lets the shots go and keeps moving.

<<This world...>>
Nova Terra     Nova's eyes go wide as she notices one of the damaged fliers begins crashing down, its course fairly clear, "Shit!" The machine goes up, taking a good section of the track with it. Nova considers her options and comes to a conclusion: She's going down! Nova grips the coaster car as hard as she can as it gracefully soars off the end of the track and down towards the castle.

    As the dust settles from the coaster's crash, the sounds of groaning metal and snapping wood can be heard, before a pile of rubble shifts. It finally falls to the side, revealing Nova beneath. She finishes pushing the rubble off herself before standing, "Never riding one of those again." She stretches out the crash, wincing at the pain, "Probably numerous bruises..." She touches her chest and winces, "Maybe a fractured rib..." Thankfully her suit will keep her going for the moment.

    Nova reaches down to pick up her dropped rifle. And just in time too as the spotlights suddenly come on. Nova sweeps her rifle around, searching for a target. Initially there is nothing, but as the curtains part Nova quickly turns to focus. She watches the robot cautiously as it moves out onto the stage and begins its act. It's hard to tell whether it's hostile or just putting on a show...

    ... That is until the large barrage of energy blasts is unleashed! Nova dives behind the debris of the crashed coaster car to avoid the blast. As she endures through the fire, her visor goes on the fritz for a moment. She taps it with her finger but it soon clears up. She wonders to herself, "Interference?" But now is not the time to dwell on it too much.

    Nova waits for an opening in the robot singer's attack before rising up and beginning to unload automatic fire into the machine.
Starbound Flotilla "*cough cough* Ugh... Call out if you're dead!"
"Nobody can call out when they're dead."
"Nnnnh... I believe that was the intention of his 'joke'."
"Buhhhh... can Floran call in dead? Wantsss nap after crash."
"Disoriented. No, no, we need to figure out what this all is about."
"It's about finding whatever damn machine's responsible for that and smiting 'em for the heresy, is what it's about. On those feet."

    Albert is the first on his feet after the barrage of damage that was the heavy crash. The others take a moment to make it up off their feet, administering quick little bits of stimulants and first aid, shaking their heads and trying to get their weapons back in order. All weapons point in the direction of the machine as it wheels out, ready, defensive, or prepared to strike, but all of them know better than to interrupt something like this. What /is/ it anyway...?

    The song begins.

"HOSTILE! STAR TWO, STAR THREE, COVER!"
"Ghhh! What did this machine-- Her assault shall be halted!"
"Frightened. It even got into my HUD! What /is/ that?! Shield up!"
"Star Four, Star Five, Star Six! Fire, fire, FIRE!"
"I'll smite it fast, before it gets into any other tricks!"
"It hasss decoration like Floran... Gah! Floran will ssstab!"
"Son of a bitch-- We gotta keep /moving/, not in cover! Watch those streams!"

    Albert, Seft, and Moonfin move to set up defense. Moonfin uses a flurry of sword parries to try to cut the incoming fire down by half or so, while Albert and Seft have a hefty shield each. They're immediately barraged by the impacts, and the twisting angles make it harder to take cover behind them. Pavo opens fire with rapid shots from tremendously heavy magnorbs, spheres that blast out and try to punch holes through the armor, while Biteblade launches huge bow bolts. George... Deals with enough damage that he just flatly refuses to deal with the cover, and starts moving to try to weave and dance. He's not especially light on his feet, but at the very least he can recognize a theme when he sees one. He tries what he tried on the others: Play to their narrative. He sways and dives in a way that's more like... A backup dancer!

    Yes, George's intention at least is to try to figure this bot's angle by emphasizing its performance. He isn't sure what psychological aspect it has to emphasize, but at the very least he knows the practical one. This thing wants a performance -- will it stop shooting him if he tries to emphasize it by following the flow of the dancing motions and the motion of the energy blasts. But that's a bit of a longshot.
Eryl Fairfax     "NO!" Eryl shouts as he beholds the fiery crash, seeing the rail cars impact into the palace in a fiery burst. His feet pound the stone bridge as he races towards the theatre to check for survivors. He has faith, but they're in the belly of the potential beast. If the machine is like the little ones wandering around, and it's so dangerous they couldn't 'fix' it... he pushes that thought aside, and has Original Face begin crunching numbers on the possible injuries they would be facing.

LIKELIHOOD OF FIRST-DEGREE BURNS: 96%
LIKLIHOOD OF SECOND-DEGREE BURNS: 89%
LIKELYHOOD OF THIRD-DEGREE BURNS: 74%
LIKLIHOOD OF BONE FRACTURES: 94%
LIKLIHOOD OF BONE BREAKA
$*&*&!&#428_$^@!**@!_#&$#428*!&*#@!#428!__!*&#_&@!&$*@!#&@!_&!*@_#428*&@##428_&*

    The cybrog reels as the wave of interference causes his implants to experience momentary haywire. It's almost like how it was in the Multiverse pre-Paladin firmware update. He rubs at his face and takes a breath before bursting into the theatre. Any obstacles in his way is ever barged through, or has shots drilled into their key anchor points so he can just barge through on his way to help the others.

    When he finally joins them in the theatre, he beholds the massively divergent machine, and his eyes go wide. This is far far different to any he saw outside. Is it 'broken' because it exhibited far greater difference in thinking, to the point that it tried to change it's aesthetic? Certainly, that gibberish signal poses a threat, but maybe this machine could be truly intelligent?

    "Stop!" he calls out, walking up to the towering thing with palms up. "We mean you no harm! We only wished to investigate this amusement park. I am Eryl Fairfax, Grandmaster of the Paladins. Please, introduce yourself."
Azure Armature Normally, Machines followed patterns. Simple, utilitarian, without frills. The 'monster' here did not follow those rules, and did not follow those designs.

Armature, who did NOT crash into the theatre, and thus did not break every not-bone in her ABSOLUTELY HUMAN body, takes a step back.

Then she clutches her head. "Ghhk..."

The attempt on her psyche, the 'hacking' attack, spooks her, and momentarily, she blinks away.

For the moment, she does not return.
All-Seeing Eye      The explosion draws a sigh from Eye. He contemplates terminating the recording--not yet. It's just as well, too--the sudden surge of unknown information is captured on his HUD. He raises a cautionary hand to the Machine family, momentarily staggered by the overflow of seemingly encrypted information. He manages to stand up straight. "My assistance is requested within the quarantine zone," says Eye with a frown. He circles around them, standing behind the family and motioning to the entrance with a sweep of the outstretched hand. "Hostile software may be present and in use. I advise maintaining a safe distance for now." The recording is then terminated. After this, he offers the family a means to pursue the peace they spoke of.

     "If your leader wishes to pursue peace with the androids, you may bring this back to your village." An embossed business card is pulled from a pocket in his uniform. He extends it in an open offer to whichever machine cares to take it, if any. It contains his contact information. Once any of them accept it--or once an uncomfortably long pause occurs, he turns and breaks into a sprint, heading for the castle in the distance.

     Eye weaves between attractions, turnstiles and the odd yellow-eyed Machine on his way to the coaster. A waist-high fence bars his progress only until he vaults nimbly over it. Before long, the rails of the roller coaster are within sight, bent out of shape where a lone Machine opted to sacrifice itself. Before long, those rails are within reach. A steel cable whip is flung upwards and outwards. It snares around a length of railing, pulling Eye up and over the rails before snaking back into his wrist.

     Combat boots beat precarious paths along the narrow rails. Should the buzzards harangue him, he pays them only so much mind as is necessary to avoid falling. Dipping under the rails to swing from beneath them, stopping in his tracks to confound their targeting attempts, even lying prone with a sudden split. At last, he approaches the break in the tracks, and with a leap of faith, dives off.

     A whip curls around the tracks above him, and he falls, only to swing beneath them and launch himself headfirst into the theater. There, he free-falls, twirling in the air. His arms and legs spread out to slow his descent, and the moment he spots the light for the 'performance,' he latches a whip onto a light fixture and further slows his descent. From there, he swings down, engaging in a backflip for the spectacle of his entrance, sticking his landing and extending his arms wide for his captive audience.

     "Salutations," says Eye to the energy-blast-throwing, freaking-the-fuck-out opera-singing Machine. "Please take a deep breath and state the nature of your emergency."
A2     For whatever reason, the intricate waves of coruscating energy bullets alternate between white and black cores, and whatever physics behind them mean that the former are preemptively detonated and dispersed by energy attacks, whereas the latter are broken by physical attacks, with no interaction vice versa, making no one particular defense fully effective.

    Yet, this detail means that alternating lines and swirls of fire can be dealt with in their entirety. Indeed, the way the storm of hundreds upon hundreds of blasts are released is incredibly suboptimal. Most of them are flying off into thin air, or parts of the theatre where nobody is, instead of being focused on them in a ruthlessly efficient, closing grid, like the usual. There are shifting gaps and 'safe spaces' within the massive volume of fire, eminently avoidable, or at least interceptible, by paying attention to the interplay of the fusillade, as if it were solely for aesthetics. It's far from /easy/ to avoid, but funny enough, if George feels spry enough to jump and duck and dive and spin through the field of fire, he'll find it is entirely possible to be completely untouched.

    More or less until people try to make contact with the aberrant Machine. It raises its voice again, breaking a repetitive string of notes, whereupon its speaker crackles and screams "b . . . e auti..ful . . . BEA-TIFU-L, I M-MUST BE MORE, /MORE BEAUTIFUL/!!!" Aggravated, it /leaps/ off of the stage, slamming down into the center of the amphitheatre floor, splitting up the Elites so that they have to fight it from the outside. Normally this would just result in it being surrounded, but with its strange patterns, this results in maximizing the number of targets it can shoot at the same time, namely all of them.

    Where it lands, the floor rumbles and shakes, and then the Machine raises a foot upwards as some metallic bottom separates upwards like a car jack, exposing a wheel of laser cannons that all fire at once. Holding its fingers over its head like a ballerina, the thoroughly irrational Machine begins pirouetting to and fro, causing the lasers radiating from its base like spokes to spin and twirl with it, liable to bisect those who don't have the timing to leap over them, or at least get behind something.
A2     There appears to be no limit to the combined fire from the mechanical aberration. Most of the bullets don't appear to be /coming from anywhere/, just appearing as if by magic. Dumping fire onto it in return is also barely working. Though the usual Machines are quite easily scrapped, this one soaks up attacks as if it barely feels them. The newer-looking custom plate, rather than dumpy, toy-like chassis, is incredibly hard, and made of some futuristic alloy that outright bounces and deflects bullets and blasts that don't strike it directly on, resulting in a tapestry of shallow burns, dents, and gouges building up all over its body, but no decisive damage, in spite of its delicate looking frame. When the Tin Soldier's fire finally catches on the thick drapes it uses as a dress, the red satin burns away to reveal a metallic version of the ballroom gown beneath, effectively a hemispherical mountain of armour plating.

    It doesn't like that. Where its dress evaporates into smoke and flame, the Machine /screams/ "No NO_ No No- NOOO_O!!". A blast of visible, crackling energy radiates in all directions, as a series of tangled and overlapping rings. Rather than causing direct damage however, where they hit, digital equipment drowns in scores of umprompted intrusion alerts, and software begins going haywire and attempting to burn its own hardware out. Even with all ports shut down, or programming running on literal magic, the physical 'hacking waves' mess everything up when literally touched.

    Several slots in the dress open up and disgorge a fountain of missiles high into the theatre rafters, which arc back down as an artillery barrage to further complicate the elaborate patterns of death. Spikes sprout from the Machine's rounded base and spin like a deadly saw, making even coming close to engage in melee combat extremely risky. It's clear that this, far more than the clunky robots outside, is a better inkling of what the real threat of 'Machine Life' looks like. Even as a weird, erratic, clearly malfunctioning unit styling itself as an opera singer, the difference in model calibre is staggering. It's suddenly much easier to imagine Androidkind struggling in this war if Machines have actual warrior units like these; better optimized than these. The rest may as well be cannon fodder.
August Kohler As the patterns in the blasts become more clear, August ducks behind cover, while the Tin Soldier starts manuevering over and under them, though both end up getting hits by waves, causing August's former plasma burns to get worse and for him to let out another scream of pain. As the thing screams, August grits his teeth, and as the lasers come out, the Tin Soldier moves to yank August behind cover, the lasers nearly searing through both of them and cutting August in half, only narrowly being dodged. The flames aren't doing enough, though...

Until they burn through the dress, revealing the armor plating. The hacking waves are harmless as they fly through, since the Tin Soldier is a psychic construct, not digital in any form...but the missiles are a way bigger threat. One of them impacts into the Tin Soldier, sending it flying back and heavily burnt up and dented, which drops August on his knees long enough for more energy blasts to impact him and send him flying back. He's not dead or unconscious, but he's pretty decently burnt. The redhead has to force himself to keep moving...

And with a wave of a hand, the Tin Soldier forces itself up, and mimes a battlecry. The gun-leg spews out fire all over the battlefield, creating walls to both hinder and melt any attacks it can, as well as to burn the Machine if she moves in that direction. But that's just a start of the attack, as the Tin Soldier focuses a big wave of energy up in that gun, creating a massive burst of fire. It's a humongous fireball, and it's pointed straight at the hostile Machine.

"Take this, you piece of trash!" With a cry, August lets forth the fireball, hoping to burn her up and use the firewalls to keep her trapped so she can't dodge it. Probably not the best situation for melee combatants, though.
Starbound Flotilla "God, fuck, this is exhausting!"
"Star Six! Get back into /COVER/!"
"Such a dazzling display, and so deadly--!"
"Striking coming in from above!"
"Missiles! Incoming!"
"Isss coming off ssstage!"
"Get back! Get /back/! There's spikes!"
"Spikes-- Shit! Shit! It's in the armor!"
"An assault on digital fronts!"
"Swap to mechanical kinetics!"
"Strained. It's-- Ghhh-- It's getting into my systems! The waves-- They're burning! Watch out!"
"Move! Break formation and /move/!"
"Fine! Grapples, go! Thrusters at max!"

    The Flotilla are barraged by overloads, missiles, and energy shots more than enough. They decide to move into action. The grappling hooks are equipped, the thrusters are warmed up, and the group launch into action, splitting up and latching to fixtures around the theater, or to the massive monster herself. They start sliding around between and behind the walls formed by the Tin Soldier, zipping behind them for moments of respite, only to blast out with rocket-dashes. George is already into the motions, and while he can see where safety is, his body, reaching past its prime, can't at all easily get there, but at the very least when he does he can open fire with his shotgun. Pavo and Moonfin collaborate to try to work between the arcing missiles and bounce and swing off of the ceiling, gliding and dashing and blinking around to zip between gaps and hopefully minimize the damage while trying to focus melee damage on the upper body. Biteblade, Seft, and Albert have to stick to mobile flanking, with Albert launching heavy rockets from a rocket launcher, and Seft swapping to thrown hand-axes with elemental payloads to try to pierce through the structure of the machine, and set it alight with bursts of occasional fire. Biteblade is trying to learn the motions of its dance and pierce its head with a heavy bow shot!
Nova Terra     Nova can't believe some of the people here. Trying to talk to the thing when it's clearly trying to kill them! So regardless of their efforts, Nova just keeps up her fire and cover routine. That is until the machine singer launches herself into the air and comes crashing down near to Nova's position. Nova dives away from her cover just in time, quickly coming up into a run. She heads towards the edge of the central area and then jumps, clearing the railing to land atop the seats.

    Balancing atop a couple of seat backs, Nova turns to look at the results of their fight so far. And so far, they're not making a lot of obvious progress. Nova considers for a moment then reports, "Tch, regular bullets aren't doing a whole lot. Switching to EMP rounds." She the current clip from her rifle, swapping it out for a different one. She's just about to start moving when the singer emits the waves of interference. Nova swears under her breath as her HUD goes crazy, forcing her to raise her visor up to rest on her head. She can also hear her suit's reactor struggling on her back. She really hopes it doesn't explode. Thankfully though her weapon is more conventional than most Dominion weapons tech. So it's still functional.

    As the laser beams start sweeping through the concert hall, Nova jumps down from the seats and starts running along the raised floor. As a laser sweeps towards her she drops down into a slide, barely clearing underneath the laser. Rising again, Nova takes up and unleashes another barrage of bullets from her rifle. Though these ones are a little more unusual, each impact unleashing a small blast of energy designed to disrupt electrical equipment. Hopefully that applies to this world's machines too.
All-Seeing Eye      Neither the dramatic entrance nor the attempt at pacification are received well by the hostile machine. The first few waves of energy bullets are simple enough to dodge--at least, that's what Eye would say if asked. He moves in a fluid sort of dance around them, graceful enough to conceal the level of physical effort being put into dodging them. Some are rolled under, others squeezed between, others still allowed to approach until the last second. At first, he adopts an amused, condescending expression, but as the patterns get more complex his face sours into an annoyed frown.

     Gradually, he grows closer to the stage. She uses that word--I. When she leaps off of the stage, observant folks might notice Eye now clutches a dark metal spike in his right hand. He watches the arc she makes, giving an annoyed huff when the arsenal in her leg is revealed. "Enough." A whip emerges from both of his wrists, and each one seeks out the light fixture at the ceiling. He's pulled up as if by zipline, but it doesn't completely save him from her attacks. At the top of his ascent, he's hit by the crackling energy. His vision awash in warning lights and intrusion alerts, Eye snarls in frustration as he battles not just the Machine, but his own HUD.

     The messages aren't cleared in time to avoid the missles. He hastily shoots down the most dangerous of the barrage aimed his way, but the remaining explosions forcefully slam him into the ceiling, unraveling his whips and sending him crashing to the ground. The black spike in his hand is used as an emergency brake, stuck into the wall. It digs a score across the sheer surface, saving Eye from further damage. Attempting to retrieve it proves fruitless, however, and is deemed secondary to the rampaging machine. And the fact that his sleeve has caught fire from one such explosion. And the fact that she's /still/ shooting.

     "Ma'am!" Eye calls, frustration apparent in his voice. His whips latch onto nearby chairs for long-gone audiences, wrenching them free of their fastenings. "MA'AM! Cease your fire and seek a cosmetologist or I will use deadly force!" One by one, chairs are hurled at the machine, in an attempt to throw off her aim and block shots headed towards those who are /already/ using deadly force, like Nova. Sure, he has to be on his best behavior while Eryl's around, but he can't be expected to control everyone here, can he?
Azure Armature After transmaterializing out as soon as the fight started, Azure Armature - 'Blue' - returns in a pop of light, in a crouched shooter's stance with an empty hand instead of anything actually wielded. "Sorry." She asides to the air, probably August specifically, for her bitching out.

"I thought it had affected me with something... from my world. Spooked by a Void that wasn't even real. Careless." She explains, before immediately having to combat roll away from the spray of missiles, one landing near her as she had to choose between plasma ball and missile barrage.

Scorched and impact-rattled, Armature prioritizes dodging the 'solid' waves of hacking above all other things, including 'into other fire' to avoid that awful, unpleasant sensation.

Her hand crackles with white lightning as she brings it to bear, lines of shining, sunlit - even inside, at this time of day - gold and brass spiralling like circuitry up her hand.

She sits there, tanking a plasma shot, before a large leviathan-dragon's head forms from golden light, as her aura fills with golden power.

"You have until I fire to finish diplomacy." She announces, the dragon's mouth filling with a pinpoint of power.

Then, heartbeats later, she releases the Pocket Hyper Beam into the dancing, rampaging machine.
Kotone Yamakawa So she's busy dodging the shots and holding her fire due to Eryl's attempt to talk to the thing, the machine speaks about becoming more beautiful. That is confusing an odd to hear from this machine. Her boss could be right that it's truly got something going on between its ears. She does keep on the move through even as the floor shakes she dumb jumps for a moment to avoid that. She does pretty well until it starts screaming and losing it about August destroying its dress.

The fire comes it burns the fabric away and something out of her nightmare comes a strange form of hacking attack. It's actually physical and she messes up as shes' taken a hit to the shoulder. Her vision fills with red hacking alerts a warning comes up about her shoulder. The servos in that location start going nuts she loses control of it and the systems are trying to burn themselves out int he process.

Kotone is spooked while this isn't a ghost hack. It is very rare for her to get hacked even on this level, it's past her barrier and she keeps moving to have to fire her weapon one-handedly if the attempt to talk it down fails. She moves to dodge the incoming lasers of doom, one slip up and the thought of a head hit? Fills her with terror, if the life support systems go out? She doesn't finish the thought.
Eryl Fairfax     Diplomacy fails immediately, as Eryl is knocked back by the waves of magical bullets, following by the rows of beams that cover the floor. He dives behind one of the crashed rail cars for cover, and begins assessing the situation. Poking his head up, he sees the standard fire being deflected by the machine's thick armor. This one is clearly of more quality construction than any outside. Those ones are simple, utilitarian. A human could put one together given parts. This one is a quality job, made by someone or something with clear aesthetics without compromising combat capability.

    And then August burns its dress, and it shrieks about how it must be beautiful. Eryl's last thoughts, before being hit by a seizure-inducing wave, is the possibility that this machine built itself before he goes prone behind his cover.

    He lies there, twitching for several moments before it passes and his implants reboot. Immediately though, her cries have given him an idea. Peeking his head out, he stares at the machine's waist. It's slim, clearly designed to adhere to a human notion of beauty. But still, there must be many parts and wires going from the upper body to the lower half, where it seems to have put most of its weapon systems. To fit all that, while keeping to that look, the armour must be thinner there.

    He has a plan.

    Using his armblades, he severs the link between the rail car and the others, before starting to push it right at the machine. Using his augmented limbs, he begins gathering speed, using the car as cover from the crazed thing's lasers, bullets, and hacking waves. This plan will work best if she is looking at him, so he yells the best thing he can to try and grab her attention.

    "HEY, UGLY! OVER HERE!"

    And with that, he grabs the bottom of the moving car, and hoists it upwards as hard as he can. Sending it upwards, spinning, a slow, heavy projectile aimed to crash down on her head. Something to take her full attention, something to hopefully make her raise her arms.

    All so Eryl can raise his arm blade, burning white hot as they vibrate against the air, and leap to slash at her waist as deep as he can. If not to sever it entirely, then to disrupt the instruments within, hopefully paralysing her lower half.
A2     Heedless to the walls of fire now crowding out the arena, the freakish mechanical performer obstinately waltzes and spins back and forth through the blaze, sweeping its arms around to complete the imitation of graceful dance, even though it's only spinning on a flat base. The fire going up its armoured 'skirt' eventually causes the missile launcher silos overheat and cook off, blowing up portions of the gigantic ballroom 'dress' from internal ammunition explosions.

    Salvos of EMP bullets slam into the thing's chassis next, to mixed effect. Where they hit the cleaner, more utilitarian beige sections of plating, then bounce right off without doing a thing, but where they land in the crevices of open machinery, they cause writhing bolts of electricity to snap and crackle from the Machine's internals, and cause its screeching tones to stutter and garble. The Flotilla coordinates much heavier and more precise fire from many angles, bashing its head around on its slender neck, roughly hacking away the plating on its torso bit by bit, and landing throwing weapons in the holes left by the ammo explosions.

    "J-J-JEA-JEAN-P-PAUUUUL!" the thing screams through its broken speakers, with even less context in its mad raving than before. "LOOK I AM /BEAUTIFUL/!" Either infuriated by the continued struggling of the Elites, or utterly oblivious to their increased effectiveness and simply moving to the next 'act', the thing twirls all the way back to the stage, ripping its lower half to pieces with its buzzsaw base and spinning lasers, and yanks down on the curtain ropes. Instead of the veils of satin moving however, the rafters creak and clunk, and then multitudes of heavy, lopsided shapes fall from the dark of the theatre ceiling. More android corpses, flayed down to their bare essentials, literally crucified to crosses of cobbled scrap and wire, rain from above and slam into the seats arranged around the center floor in gross mockery of an audience.

    A wireless command goes out, and /their/ busted vocalizers emit the static-stricken imitation of a canned audience ovation, lifted from some ancient recording. Far more significant, where the signal bounces between them, so do the 'hacking waves', diffusing and multiply in such a way that the crucified spectators reflect the assault back into the arena, emanating from their motionless mouths. A handful miss their seats entirely, smashing into the theatre floor at random, presenting a very real crushing or skewering danger to those on the ground.
A2     When Eryl has the temerity to call the thing ugly, it screams in a way that is no longer entirely in-character. Its battered and flaming 'skirt' separates, and then the freak Machine no longer bears any real resemblance to an opera performer, as four, equally spaced, humanoid legs pop out at the angle of a lizard's and lift it up off the floor, and a window into its skirts produces a huge, heavily armoured 'head' that is little more than a pair of massive jaws with a beam cannon behind them, attached to a flexible, serpentine neck. Using those grotesque new limbs, it leaps like a jumping spider, getting close enough to blast All-Seeing Eye off of the walls and swat the Flotilla members out of the air, before crashing back down to flatten August's cover and radiate more of those 'hacking waves' through the floor like shock ripples, endangering Azure Armature in her stationary position.

    The humanoid torso reaches up to spike the car away, giving Eryl just the opening he needs to leap into action and rip his blade through the connector cabling between the top and bottom halves. The bestial head acts on its own however, and lashes out to clamp its jaws around Eryl, attempting to plant gigantic, carbon ceramic teeth into his torso and yank him back, where it will try to shake him around like a wild dog, and blast him with its mouth cannon. It's just as well that his strike seems to have halted its movement by decoupling the navigation controls from its actual motive systems, because it lines the aberration up just long enough for August to smash it dead on with a giant fireball, and then Azure Armature's colossal gigabeam to punch straight through its midsection, wiping it out in a screaming, blinding blaze of light.

    Much like the smaller Machines, some sort of black box inside of it trips a dead man's switch, and the whole unit lights up from within, streaming fiery light from all the cracks in its chassis, and blowing up spectacularly, if more in the sense of pyrotechnics than a weapon detonation.

    Once the noise dies down, the echoing squeak of the theatre door being opened might draw attention to it, for how lame and unobtrusive it is. One of the larger humanoid Machines from outside is peering in from around the door, with a medium sized, then small stubby unit leaning out in vertical unison. Their yellow eyes 'blink' together at the carnage laid out in front of them, before exclaiming in their robotic monotone. "Visitors have fixed broken Machine. We must tell. Tell the village. Danger gone. Dangerous Machine gone. Now we can 'Romeo and Juliet'."

    Without any further warning, the gaudily dressed Machines run back into a reception hall, and begin wheeling in huge racks of dusty old costumes and painted wooden backboards, swarming to grab props and drag them into the theatre, completely heedless of the battle damage.
All-Seeing Eye      The sheer brute force of the Machine's attack sends Eye flying through the air. The android corpses ensure that he does so blindly, as he's struck mid-air by one of their information bursts. As such, he smashes ungracefully into the theater's seating before his hearing can compensate for the flood of visual stimuli. Digging a furrow into the seating arrangements, he comes to a stop in a heap of broken and snapped-off chairs.

     The explosion occurs as he's once again trying to clear the influx of warning messages. In the few seconds of quiet, his hearing can adjust. It's at that point the door creaks open. On reflex, he points an arm with a readied internal crossbow at the door. It's leveled at the smaller Machine's center of mass. When it speaks up, and proves its nonviolence, the weapon retreats back into his wrist. Eye stands, clearing both physical debris and the last of the glaring alerts swarming his HUD. "Well," he says, dusting off the seat of his pants and picking splinters out of his palm.

     "I suppose that takes care of that," says the Exalt with a nod towards the departing machines. He makes an announcement--largely for the benefit of August and anyone else who might still think the theater is a trap, despite the departed Machines speaking of putting on a play. "You'll all be pleased to know the rest of the outside Machines are just as placid as those two." He gestures to the door. "If none of you have further need of me, I believe a report is due on the developments here... posthaste." Eye gives a satisfied smile. Assuming no one /does/ need his help, he leaves the same way the Machines did.
Nova Terra     It's not until the machine singer is glowing and explodes that Nova finally stops firing and lowers her weapon. Smoke wafts up from the barrel as Nova lets out a deep breath. She raises the weapon to rest over her shoulder as she glances around to make sure everyone survived...

    Of couse it's hard to focus on that when there are numerous android bodies hanging from the ceiling. Nova has seen numerous corpses in various states of dismemberment thanks to the Zerg... But this is all the more disturbing to look at. Nova rubs the back of her neck as she asks, "So, uh, do we give them a burial... Or something?" How DO androids deal with their dead?

The news about the machines outside still being cordial in well received, "Good, not sure I can handle much more of a fight..." She moves a hand to press against her chest. Ouch. Yup, still fractured.
Azure Armature Getting up is painful, for Armature, and she waves off the crackling 'static' from her hand as the digital dragon she had conjured fades away. "That has far too long a windup..." She mutters, starting to address small shards of shrapnel lodged in her body with probing fingers. "Is everyone else functinal?"

The machines look in, and immediately start piling in to perform... a stage play?

Was that the thing?

"I want my stamp." She grouses, getting out of the way of the costume racks. "What is a 'Romeo and Juliet'?"
Kotone Yamakawa The horror of what happened to all these Andorids will haunt Kotone for for a long time with how her aguments work? She can't relaly forget anything without damaging her mind. So she's going to have ot live with it she keeps dodging she'll fire a few off handed wild shots on the monsterous machine. The hacking waves are coming and she stops her attack to avoid getting hit again even then she's caught in the back and interal systems start to feak out.

She keeps moving yet she's been slowed down with several interal systems now freaking out like her shoulder.

She watches in horro as Eryl is snatched but it doesn't last long as the thing is finally brought down.

"I'mg oing to need to have all my systems worked over...and a new arm..."

"A love story...about two lovers whose familys were locked in a blood fude."
Starbound Flotilla     The Flotilla is battered, beaten, and bruised, several suffering wounds that have knocked them out of the fight by the time this thing goes up in a blast of white light. Getting swatted out of the air isn't fun, for one's momentum or one's bones. But after they have enough time to get back onto their feet, they take a moment to watch what the apparent reaction is from the machines.

"More hostiles incoming--"
"Oh seriously fuck off with that."
"I find it hard to fault their dedication to stagecraft."
"Floran can fault. Really broken theater."
"Almost religious fervor. I like it."
"Relieved. Thank goodness this helped them."

    The Flotilla stagger out of the way of the new stagehands. George gives a little fingerguns motion, saying, "I told that guy I was a repairman." It's true! He did. He's also gonna check around later, presumably with Seft. He wants to get a better idea of what was going on here, and leads on following up with it, because this sure is a lot better than those weird... Sort of repetitive, stupid collectives of machines going through roles totally blindly.
Eryl Fairfax     The sudden impact of the descending crucified androids required Eryl to make some hard turns to avoid them. Their cacophonous scream hammers against his ears and his mind, demanding that he bite on his own tongue to keep it together long enough to launch his attack. The sudden eruption of the four legs and lower mouth takes him by surprise, and demands a quick recalculation of his trajectories to put his plan in action.

    But the cart is launch, and the attention drawn long enough for Eryl to get that blade good and deep. He can feel it severing important components, but the shrieking has him too distracted to handle his landing properly. As such, he is snatched up by the mouth, the ceramic teeth grinding against his metal parts and sinking through his flesh to draw blood. He cries out as he is thrashed, worrying the wounds. But this lets him slip the arm they caught in their mouth around, getting it to the right ankle that the elbow points down at the charging laser within the mouth and sink several shotgun slugs into it, breaking it.

    Finally, the singer is felled, and Eryl uses his free arm to push the jaw of the lower mouth off of him and roll free. Blood stains his clothes from the bite marks, but stands up straight and smiles at the stubby machines that rush in to reclaim the area.

    His first priority? Checking on those stripped androids that had been claimed. Searching them for any kind of serial number or identification code that he can save and report to YoRHa, even as his blood drips to the floor.
August Kohler As the machine finally goes down, August stops in a huff, desummons his Persona, and collapses to his knees in pain. "Thank god." He's going to sit here for a few moments, though he does nod to reaffirm Kotone when she explains what Romeo and Juliet is.

Even if the machines might not be hostile, and he knows exactly how she'll react, August still steels himself to tell A2 about this. This is her world, she deserves to know what's going on in here.