[Episode Two] Union

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Alipier Observatory Exterior

"Alright. Let's cut the chit chat for a moment. Who's on call if something goes wrong?"

"M- Me."

"Cool. Just great." Romulus let out a deep, disappointed sigh as he knew Reman's reliability was less than on par. Even then, they don't know anything, and probably wouldn't trust him anyway regardless. Though the captain still trusts him, so that's a miracle in and of itself... Ignoring his obvious problems, he continued. "Marie, You'll be there to receive any transmissions from him if something goes wrong. That's where me and A3 come in. If it goes wrong, run to the door, We'll cover you." Romulus paused for a moment. "Reman."

Reman jumped a bit at Romulus's more aggressive remark. "Y- Yes?"

"You had better not jump forward and try and fight whatever is through that door. I don't want you risking everyone's lives like I heard you did the first time."

"Yeah. I'll... I'll be careful." Reman walked toward the observatory doors, readying to remove the pipe silently. "Everyone else ready to go?"
 
Present Spatial Coordinates: Alipier Observatory Exterior

The mentioned automaton loomed over the other members, the sound of whirring electronics and the hissing of steam emanating from his hull. At the current moment, unknown to all (Romulus being the possible exception), A3 had the Sound key inserted into his driver without being armed, as he deducted it would be useful for the situation.

He was thankful that he was given enough time to reconfigure his drivers to function with his new tools, else he'd have been severely under-equipped for the mission ahead.

He paused at the question, before responding "Positive affirmation, hasten individual defined as Reman." He aligned himself towards the door, prepared for breaching.
 
Alipier Exterior

Marie nodded, an agreement to Romulus’s ‘plan.’ Now she had to list out the details of her own. Many details of her own. Also, figure out the cards Romulus was playing.

His move was confusing at best. Maybe he needed more time to plan, maybe he needed something . As always, he wasn’t to be trusted. But he was isolating himself from them, so at the very least they were safe for now. Which confused her.

But, no time to worry about that...Marie hoped that Osco was near full-function as of right now. She needed to link up with Osco’s Pixy network, so she could communicate with anyone just about anywhere...

SARCOM. The name stuck in her mind. It was the name that had been consuming her idle thoughts every chance she had ever since the Pixys offered their information exchange.

SARCOM. The name that could provide everything. Wealth, yes, but a scientific revolution, even moreso. She needed its secrets. She wanted everything it knew, hungry for what it had kept secret from the world, hungry as the day she was retrieved by the Institute expedition. Every last word.

“I have a request,” Marie stated before they went in, her mind in a slight self-induced daze. “Two, actually. If we find anything SARCOM related...please give it to me.”

“And Osco, I’d like to link up to your Pixy network. For communication purposes,” Marie inquired.
 
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Alipier Observatory
Exterior


Dahlia jolted her arm upwards in defense as the large violet sheet of crystal sprung from the wall in an attempt to move the snow. That was something a little new. OSC-01 on the other hand wasn't nearly as phased, eyeing the girl as Juryrigs device went forth to clear out the remainder of the snow.

As the swathes of snow were cleared away from the wall, a small door-frame came into view. An old wooden door sat inside of it, the deciduous planks of which has become warped and bent from the pressure of the ice. The robot gave a hum as they slowly tread by the apprehensive foxperson on their way to the door. "The title of Overseer wasn't picked for vanity."

The robot placed a metal hand on the loose handle of the door, halting their approach as they placed their flat cheek against the side of the door. The green light behind their glass eye flickered away as a series of alternative lenses and scanners took over, one after the next. There were no notable thermal signatures, or movement. Barely any life at all had persisted this long into the wrongful ice age, except perhaps a few- Voffen Millroaches. No electric disturbances either, not that the building had ever been professionally wired.

A solid minute afterwards, the Overseer pulled away from the door. They looked back at the group, their left eye realigning itself. "All clear." The Overseer gazed briefly back at Marie, holding up a finger.

Dahlia nodded, and took a step back with a gesture to the robot- albeit, she frequently looked back at the younger of the group.

Alipier Observatory
Interior


The wooden door creaked as it was pushed against, the loose handle not wanted to cooperate. Another press against the door, and nothing budged. A quiet bout of whispering could be heard coming from the outside. On the third heave however, the aged door simply snapped in two- the bulk of the door breaking away from the rusted metal hinges.

OSC-01 slowly stepped into the dark bunk room, looking around to make sure no one on the inside saw or heard that. Before proceeding, the Overseer quietly set the other half of the door against the wall, shaking the handle off.

The inside of the room was entirely dark, but the cascade of reflected white light coming from the outside was enough to cast the room in a pale white glow. The room had quite a few meters of floor space, but nothing compared to the main hall. The uneven stone tile was soaked in a few inches of icy water and slush that had leaked in from the doorframe. To one side of the room laid six bunk beds in poor shape, thrown aganst the wall to make way for plenty of other items that appeared to have been shoved inside in a hurry. Lockboxes, a looted cabinet, and piles of musty blue and yellow tapestry laid strewn about the floor. One broken trunk laid on its side, squares of white photograph paper sprawled out of its mouth. In the corner of a room was a large vertical dresser, one double door fallen halfway off its hinges.

At the other end of the bunk room was another door, a heavy oak one that seemed to fair better than the last one. Osco took a few steps into the room, stepping on one of the damp photographs in the process.


And nothing happened. Humorously, the robot opened their wings wide and took another step, before looking back to the captain with a nod. Dahlia stepped into the room slowly, looking around as her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. The apparent... paraphernalia shoved into the room had certainly attracted her curiosity. Some even resembled discarded clothing. Marie felt a quiet alert from her communicator, highlighting a new channel that previously didn't exist.

The captain waved back to the rest of the entry party, motioning a few to enter as she spoke in a hushed voice. "People lived here... how long ago?"

The Overseer gave no reply but silence, scanning the adjacent halls for any other activity. They didn't know, either.
 
I wonder if they have flood insurance?

Arbles pursed her lips into a grumpy frown as she clambered inside, the interior """soil""" of snow and ice going halfway up her boots. She had elected to not feed the Juryrig's idea of using her as some sort of ammo to melt snow. Mmmmostly because it would probably kill her, but also because of the sheer lack of respect for the tiny pilot that idea demonstrated. Thank the void that there's nothing for Reman to screw up in here. I like this Caesar guy's way of handling him. She sighed quietly as she trudged through the interior snow. Her voice was quiet as she asked, "Where do you think Ferrus - pretty funny name, I think, means iron - would be in here, anyways? Also... I'd say a few centuries, but not really like... A thousand years. Even in this weather the door would fall apart naturally by then." The second sentence was directed towards the captain, in response to her question.

Arbs crossed her arms for a few seconds before picking up one of the photopaper sheets, expecting anything on it to have been ruined by water damage.
 
Alipier Observatory
Interior


The alchemist, on the moment he out both feet inside this room, he reeled back, then chuckled and shook his head. "Nah nah, brother, we're not home... Looks like it, though, I'll give them that. Probably... Five hundred years or something. Never thought something so old can look this sad to look at!" He looked about with a wide smile on his face.

Ah yes, the sloshing wetness under his feet, the sheer messiness, it implies some tragedy had occurred... Ah how he knew it so well. He pulls up a soiled tapestry, the smile eventually going away from his face as, subconsciously, swapped moods. "So there in... All the more reason to wonder why. Why would it happen to them...?"

Thereafter, he made his 'eerie' smile again. "..... Eeeeeeeh, who cares! Ruin happens to everyone, tall or small. Especially smalls." He drops the tapestry, and haphazardly made his way to the other heavy oak door. He gripped onto it, bringing forth his strength! "Now with all due respect, we're burning the hourglass here just doing sightseeing, mission first, people!"

Meanwhile, Munchie found a rock to nom. It likes rocks.
 
Outside Alipier

The smashing sound of the door startled the scientist out of her stupor, causing her to fall backwards, body buried in a snowdrift. A surprised electrostatic discharge pulsed outwards into the snow, creating a little bit of resistance-induced heat, which created a slightly damp and unhappy Sage.

For the second time today, dammit, she got lost in her own world. Well, third. It was just that this was the second time she got slightly disgracefully shook out of it.

Marie approached the door, squatting low so people could see over her as she peeked in. What was their primary objective again? Right — look for stuff. What was hers? Look for SARCOM. She of all people wasn’t letting a salesman get his grubby hands on that kind of thing, she’d heard enough horror stories about marketing departments completely failing to understand how something worked and subsequently pushing out a completely wrong advertisement campaign.

Or was that just her justifying to herself the reason why she should have it instead? She wasn’t sure, anymore...

She breathed in, and then slapped her cheeks. Focus, Marie. Stop drifting away. Try not to greet the world negatively. There’s metal where the bunks are; that’ll have to do if you’re in a pinch.

“I need to secure that metal over there,” Marie told the group. “Right now I’m about as good as unarmed if I don’t have anything usable as a conductor.”

She began to examine the objects in the area. The clothing? The photographs? Might be interesting...for an anthropologist.
 
Intieor Alipier

Rhea, didn't notice the stares untill they were easily half way through the digging job as focused as she was. After a double take, and alapse in concentration, she quickly looked away and reastablished herself in the alternating job that was lifting snow out of the hole, and keeping it in place, or just dumping it to the side as juryrig's... metal dog did its thing. In the meanwhile, Rhea's face burned red as she felt the half imaginary, half probably real stares continue as she assisted. Those feelings of being stared at were only solidified in her mind, when she saw the captain glancing back at her, even as she was seeing the overseer off. She looked away again, of course. She hated those stares.

So consumed was she by these thoughts, that the child wrapped in winter gear, when she did find her way down out of the snowey waste land, into a slightly damp, probably mouldy basement-bedroom-storage combo looking thing, that she bumped into a very not comftorable back to bump into- the captain this time. At least she didn't walk headlong into the overseer "... Ah... ow... What's this now?"

Looking around at the, somewhat sad scene, she eventually deduced that surely, whoever used to live here took off peacefully... Leaving behind their clothes, and their photographs. Trying not to dwell on it too hard, she looked away from the captain she had bumped into, and sheepishly muttered a sorry, before skipping over to look at toe photograph that the pilot had picked up- and also towards the door. Just, definetly not the scattered bunkbeds, and scattered... what may or may not have been clothes.
 
Alipier Observatory Exterior

Reman removed the pipe with his Aerokinesis, setting it gently and quietly on the ground. Before he went inside, he stepped back from the crew a moment, inserted cyclone into the Process, and confirmed something in the menu. Two little panels assisted by Reman came back, before he pulled the lever in the back, Aiming the "barrel" of the contraption in the air. The process let out a steady stream of particles that eventually formed a dome around him, before a black suit started to shift itself around him, much as Romulus's design did. The particles themselves started to merge themselves into the physical components of the armor, which when completed, one by one melded with the armor. Reman was back into the armor, as before.

Prior to stepping into the building, he gave a thumbs up to the crew staying outside. "Let's rock and roll."

In Romulus's mind, he couldn't help but feel that this was a bad idea.

Interior

Reman took a few cautious steps into the observatory before taking a few measures of precaution. The first was to lay down a cushion of air so A3 wouldn't be heard tumbling down the steps, and the second was to activate his airflow visualizer in the suit. If anything, he was more than prepared this time.

Rather, He was ready to not screw up this time.
 
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The moment the door opened, or, well, collapsed was when Deimos opted to push forward to join the welcoming party. As reluctant as he was to reenter, he felt he couldn't stand back this time. However, he couldn't help his curiosity as the barracks came into view, dimly lit as it was by the doorway and the faint ghosts of light glimmering from the party's mechanical members. He crouched down next to one rusted locker and lifted a single sheet of paper so as to not have it crumple to dust in his fingers. "You know, you forget how similar these old civilizations were to our own sometimes. Hell... it sometimes even seems like we didn't really kick that far away from them years later, did we?"

He tried the lock of one of the doors, but stopped when he realized that even if he DID manage to pick the red-coated corpse that it had become, the creak of the door would alert even any hikers gearing up at the foot of the mountain. This elicited a sigh from him, as his curiosity had piqued. If anything would give a man a glimpse into the past life of a worker in a facility like this, it'd be where he kept his belongings.

"True, we've got an objective right now and all, but... I might want to come back here sometime to do a little digging. There might be a pretty good haul in a place like this." He whispered as he returned to the others' side. At the end of the day, a graverobber is a graverobber.
 
Interior Catacomb Alipier
Bunks


Dahlia stepped through a thin layer of liquid slowly, lifting a hand to the flashlight attached at shoulder. With a flick, a dim beam of blue light was cast upon the stone walls of the room, trying not to disrupt the natural light too obviously. The dresser in the corner of the room caught her eye, as something reflected the beam back as it passed.

The first photograph the pilot peeled through did not yield much, the colors had become faded and the paper too damp to make anything out. However a photograph from higher ground seemed to have survived the water. Pictured was an unusual sight, possibly in the middle of some kind of mesa. Laying on the rocky ground was a large pile of muscle and mottled brown fur, six glassy eyes staring lifelessly away from the camera.

In front of the.... astonishingly large animal was a set of small figures, vaguely human. In fact, a few of them could have very well been humans. It seemed the camera that had made a mistake, as the same grey-skinned shape of a person was printed twice, same pose and smile and all. It was hard to make out details, but on the flip side of the image was a scrawl of faded ink lettering- though the script was illegible.


Marie found herself suitable metal in the form of a discarded lead pipe, 2 inches in diameter, half inch thickness, 18 inches long. Wrapped around the pipe was... a rather large piece of waxy paper, that just kept unfurling. The paper folded out into a poster of all things. The poster had a bright blue background, contrasted by a rather large silhouette. It appeared to be a man in some kind of bulky armor, giving them more of a monstrous appearance. The... thing was holding up the keystone of an archway that was being constructed with the aid of other smaller figures, quite proudly at that. On closer inspection, it wasn't a man at all. The silhouettes slanted head was disconnected from their shoulders, two broad yellow eyes matching the yellow text at the bottom of the poster. The tagline was written thrice over in different languages, the third being eerily similar to their own.

"We Owe Ourselves, Servants in Timeless Slumber and Eternal Wake. Dedicated To The Future We Dream."
-Incipere Restoration Committee, in partnership with Oakland Heavy Industries.

How cheesy.

---

Dahlia walked up to the wardrobe, carefully prying open the door with her hand off to the side to minimize squeaking. The careful practice was immediately dropped as the scholar backpedaled away from the closet with a muffled "GOOD-", a phrase quickly left unfinished.

Inside the wardrobe was the slumped body of another Overseer, hung limp with an arm around one of the racks. This one, however, was different from the one at the front of the party. It was bolted together with grey metal, and bore a thinner frame. The robots body showed signs of natural age, but held evidence of a recent attack. The Overseers torso laid ripped open from the back, loose wiring and bits of metal skeletal frame hanging out the back. If the OSC series was anything to go on, its reactor had been removed entirely. Surrounding the trashed Overseer were piles of leather and plastic-bound books in varying condition- though they all seemed soaked.

Without a sound, the pale counterpart of the corpse had hastily found its way to the scene. Only glancing at the captain in passing, OSC-01 placed their hand under the discarded Overseers blunt head, which had been snapped away from its neck in an unhealthy fashion. She froze for a moment, verifying the quality of the model was not what she was looking for. Osco tipped the head upright in between her fingers, eyeing the models face-plate. "Poor thing. Made it this far just to be ransacked." The left side of the Overseer's face had been cracked open from the eye socket, revealing an empty brain rack within the skull. Reflective black film hung from the loose sensor array, staring back at the two.

Dahlia cleared her throat, picking up one of the many roughly-bound books in the wardrobe. The pages were waterlogged, ink from each alien word running into the next."Hard to say, but the alchemist is right for once-" The scholar stopped, peeling a thumb away from the slick page. The scholar pulled the book up to her face, taking a quick whiff of... an unusual scent. She quickly pulled the book away from the pile, visibly sickened. "That's not from the bot. That's..."

As Deimos rooted around near the bunks, a strangely sweet but alarming smell wafted up from the floor, barely noticeable at the other end of the room. As he pulled away from the lockbox, he could see a colorful film that has been disrupted from the surface of the water. The source of the spillage was a large grey canister, left open and tipped on its side among the stack of bunk beds.

"Gasoline."


---

Alipier Observatory
Hallway


Juryrig peered out into the hallway connecting the bunk room to the rest of the observatory. Like the bunk room, there were no lights active here.

To his right, the hallway ended roughly in a transition back to nature. Stalagmites stretched to the ceiling of the room from behind a simple pipe handrail. To his left, the hallway stretched a ways. Two more doors were visible, one on either side of the hall, and at the end of the hallway was a tile staircase that went upwards to the ground floor. A bit of ambient light made its way from the top of the staircase, revealing a forgotten gray rucksack at the base of the staircase.
 
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Alipier Interior
Bunks


Lead. An...okay conductor. A more preferable metal than, say, stainless steel or titanium, but nowhere near as ideal as copper or silver. Sadly, as Marie twirled it around, slinging it around like a quarterstaff or bo staff with the weight of a concrete rebar rod, not a good hitting tool. A bit soft, too soft. If she actually wanted to hit something with it, the bar would probably bend into an L-shape instantly, leaving her slightly flustered. Awful for the generic purpose she was looking for, although maybe a nice way to project electricity at someone? Maybe...give it a test?

Then she heard the word. Gasoline.

DO NOT GIVE IT A TEST calm down Marie PUT THE METAL DOWN PUT THE METAL DOWN PUT THE METAL DOWN PUT IT DOWN PUT IT DOWN Marie calm down KICK IT AWAY PUT IT AS FAR FROM THE GAS AS POSSIBLE stop please you'll just make it worse FIRE IS BAD FIRE IS BAD please don't kick it away that'll make way too much noise SITUATION CRITICAL NO WEAPON AND ABILITY CANNOT BE USED please stop adrenaline causes power instability REMAIN CALM ADRENALINE CAUSES SPARKS DEEP BREATHING HELPS WITH STABILIZING STRESS

It must have been a full minute. A full minute of her own panic, shouting her down, as she desperately struggled with herself to stop panicking. A full minute of hell, hell which left her feeling slightly sick to the stomach, kneeling on the ground, hands tightly gripped around the lead rod. A hell that left her sweating with the stress, despite the environment being incredibly cold, a hell that sapped so much energy out of her, she felt like she just ran a mile without a single break.

"It's okay...it's all okay..." she gasped, gulping down air, gently steadying herself as she got up. She gently placed the lead rod back on the ground, putting it somewhere...she wouldn't touch. Dizziness and nausea were what currently clouded her mind. Awful things, they were. She needed a rest, badly, as she saw a slight glimpse of her own reflection in the water, face paler than normal.
 
Rhea stared at that... strange picture. She supposed it would make sense that they wouldn't look exactly human if it was some old civilization, but... they looked a little too human at the same time. And that strange creature in the background... maybe that was some kind of experiment this place did? If juryrig was anything to go by, scientists create some weird things so, it wasn't that far fetched...

As she contemplated the picture with crossed arms, she heard the word gasoline and looked over. Less concerned, more curious. "Gas? Where? Did somone leave some just laying around? She looked around and- while she could vaugely smell it, couldn't see any sign of said gas- the winter gear she was wearingdid little to assist her in her perceptive endevours. But she didn't need 20/20 vision to see Marie did not look okay at all.

... Maybe those keys really are making people crazy... She thought to herself and took a step or two back unconciously, from the potentially unstable individual. "Yoouu... You okay there? I uh, think we should make like a lighting struck tree and split. Maybe uh..."

She looked over, noting the gutted robot in the corner. "... maybe they didn't take the important bits out of here yet and, we can leave withotut coming back." Saying that, she rapidly side stepped towards the door- and did her best to bring the very warm, similar in stature individual with her, while keeping marie in her line of sight. She hoped that she'd find a chance to talk with the ca... no, with Osco alone to see if they could do something about the obviously crazy people with their weird magic button machines.
 
ISS Downrider
Archive Room

Inside the once-empty storage room, the familiar sounds of lifting, dragging, and paper shuffling could be heard as the Downrider crew’s resident informant had just finished setting up the basics of his new (mobile) office—making it into a semi-public archive, of sorts. File drawers dotted the walls and a large desk, with a chair on each side, the floor, effectively using most of the space available in the smallish, almost-cramped room. Though there was yet no carpet, a visitor could be easily deceived into believing of its existence by the sheer virtue that most of the visible floor was covered in blank printer papers and empty folders.

Having decided to use the past six hours in the most productive way possible while waiting for his bracer to be fixed, Ausse sat around the central desk with his legs on the tabletop, scribbling and highlighting away at official-looking documents and a logbook detailing his few days with the crew so far, along with bits and pieces of more... confidential... information. In a separate, tiny notebook, of course.

”Bryce Arvero... Arcandum Union... Comms center... “Satori”...” repeated the workaholic to himself, drawing arrows and making small footnotes, comments, and observations in a loose sheet of paper, before reaching the end of knowledge to archive for the time being. Soon enough, with his fixed bracer (courtesy of engineering), he’d have to go on and back out of the ship and into the observatory once more, so the ex-sergeant was to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

Speaking of which, he hadn’t heard any activity outside in a while—it was unusually quiet, especially for the parameters of this weird, merry little crew. Where was everyone?



...Oh.
 
Interior Catacomb Alipier
Bunks

---->

Alipier Observatory
Hallway


"Gas?!" Juryrig looked down at the ground, unconvinced that... Actually, judging from the sheen and the smell of the fluid all over the floor, it appears to be something... Nah. Nah, this was definitely gasoline. Definitely gas.

He didn't mind or care about the small child scooting past him, this scenario is just too good to pass up. "Alright everyone, we outstayed our welcome here in this area, let's just get a move on. Don't worry, I am a professional!"

The madman scrounged up metal from his haversack, with the help of Munchie to grab all that out for him, and rather than use alchemy, he straight up bent and twisted and coiled and slammed and slid and folded the metal, creating a jerryrigged beartrap within fifteen seconds. It had jagged, rusty teeth, and the springs within are so taut that you could just toss a rock in it and it will snap with the force of a crocodile. He chuckled, sets the bear trap midst the mess of oil that is everywhere, behind some damaged furniture, and stated, "If this trap ever goes off to so much as a sneeze, it'll snap so quickly it's gonna spark and light the floor! That goes for you, too, Marie, no puking lightning."

Juryrig chuckled at the joke, and waltzed through the door with Munchie right behind him. Now then, first step to show off these posers is to gradually analyze each room for-

RUCKSACK! "That bag is mine!" Juryrig, sharing "his brother's" curiousity at that moment, sprinted down the hall like a madman straight to the forgotten bag at the staircase, even leaving Munchie in the dust. He took off the haversack slung on his back, and free from the weight (that barely bothered him), he fondled, analyzed, and went to see what was inside this bag that captured their imaginations.
 
Present Spatial Coordinates: Alipier Interior

"Chemical substance C8H18, defined as gasoline, produces a situation defined as unfortunate." said the automaton, as it slithered down from the staircase. He looked almost annoyed, or as annoyed as a nearly-faceless robot could look. "Current development totals insufficient circumstances for My Unit."

It truly was unfortunate. Plasma doesn't exactly get along well with gasoline, but on the other hand neither do heavy weaponry, which was putting him at a disadvantage. While yes, the possible flaming doom wouldn't really affect him, the possibility of casualties was not an idea that he would entertain in the slightest. He did thank his foresight for not having his driver active else the place would have gone up there and then, although the steam that his Unit expels was a possible hazard.

Either way, he knew that something needs to be done right now. "Potential recommendation including combustion-encouraging individuals proceed to premises of decreased hazard potential." He pronounced as he looked over to the very-much-not-calm sage, making an assumption using his limited knowledge of her current lethality. "To lesser degrees, My Unit and individual defined as Marie should proceed as a required directive."
 
Spookzone, now with 500% more gasoline!

The tiny pilot looked at the picture for a couple more seconds. Must have been a hunting picture or something. Odd that they didn't take a picture of themselves with the beast, the smol thought. She sniffled a bit when gasoline was mentioned, only now realizing what the """water""" was. "I'm just gonna say, it's probably decently diluted because of the snow. Not that I'd want to test how diluted it is..."

She'd winced as Juryrig shouted and ran out into the hallway, before pouting. "Well, I guess we should make sure he doesn't get us killed..."
 
Alipier Interior

Reman looked around the gas-soaked room, taking a moment to admire the scenery before he took a moment to fully grasp the gravity of what the word "Gasoline" meant. He lifted up his boot, wet with the fluid that lined the room. A few steps behind him covered a dry corner in foot-shaped puddles of gas. Reman looked around, careful to make another step in the room for fear of spreading a trail.

"Why... Why would a restoration committee be so careless?" Reman looked around and observed as much of the room as he could see. "This... This just feels wrong. The're not here for the observatory at all, are they?"

Reman waited and stood by for further instructions before he saw the party split into two. In his mind, he wanted to stick with Marie, as she was the only help he had. Maybe the giant, intimidating tentacled robot was a plus? Maybe if it hasn't tried to kill them so far... Maybe. Reman ran to catch up, walking lightly on his toes as not to spread more on the floor. "W- Wait up!"
 
"Call it a hunch but I get a feeling this was a room the committee didn't want anyone in." He pulled himself to his feet and adjusted his collar. As much as he didn't mind gasoline when he could catch a whiff of small amounts at a refueling station, it never helped that his senses were in overdrive 24-7, making this puddle almost sickening to the nose. "We shouldn't even stay in here long. As much as I love the smell of gasoline like the next guy, these fumes aren't exactly safe to breathe in for very long."

He pulled away from the cabinet. "But first... since Juryrig's outburst proved that no guards are around..."
He raised his leg before him and dropped a kick to the rusted padlock. "...I wanna see just what it is that they're keeping in here." He raised his leg again, then brought the metal boot down once more, cracking the lock and dropping its body into the gasoline-soaked floor below. "You know its a shame seeing all this stuff wasted. The price of it has been through the roof back at my hometown."
 
Alipier Interior
Bunks


Dahlia took another look around the room, met with a mixed bag of worried and now missing faces- which only grew in number as the alchemist laid a dodgy trap. The captain called back to Arbitrated and Marie, noting their finds. OSC-01 noticed the poster as well, but didn't need to examine it longer than a frame to know verbatim its contents. "Grab what you can, this doesn't feel like an accident."

The captain turned back to the bookshelf, quickly grabbing an armful of books. The flammable substance leaked from the damp covers, leaving faint splotches up her sleeve as she glanced briefly at the discarded robot. She turned to the other Overseer in the room, only to find they had silently departed through the now open door. Dahlia looked back at the remaining crew and huffed, following. "Right. I reckon Keith might be able to clean these up."


The lock came off with a clang as Deimos kicked it, providing not much resistance. Inside the black box was a sprawl of... various colored fabrics. Laying nearly folded- or at least previously so at the top of the pile was a thin white gown, which was matched with a frilly white headband, decorated with a crown pale decorative thorns that laid pointed in one direction.

Underneath the strange garb was a rather... large scarf of bright yellow and blue nylon, like a neckerchief. As he pulled it out of the box, however, it nearly knocked the short man with the attached weight. Hanging at the end of the scarf was a moderately large medallion, which had to weigh at least sixty pounds. It was made of stark white and black metal, molded in the shape of a crest of sorts.

Tied around the bottom of the large neckerchief were two more significantly smaller ones, colored white. One was trimmed with a large blue triangle, while the other mint.

Hallway

As Juryrig fumbled around with the rucksack, its contents spilled out on to the cold tile floor. The first was a lunch tin, which promptly busted open to reveal a mostly eaten tune sandwich and disposable plastic wrappers for several other serving-sized morsels. Along with the tin came several mechanical pencils and a spiral-bound notebook with a green cover, containing pages after pages of architectural sketches, various equations, and notes. Lastly, a dull green walkie-talkie fell out of the bag, landing face down on the pad. It seemed like the device had been cracked open before, a small fracture running along the plastic seam of the two faces. The front of the device held a moderately sized touch-screen that doubled as a keypad, currently black.


OSC-01 paced briskly through the hallway, not bothering to engage in babble over the alchemist that was kneeling in the corner. Instead, they found their way to one of the side doors. The Overseer laid her hand on the handle, noting the broken lock at the doors basin. After a quick series of scans through the crack in the doorway, the door was swung open fully.

The side room was equally dark, with a plethora of rotten bookshelves and disheveled furniture shoved in the back. The Overseer took a step into the room, examining its contents very briefly before noting the puddle of black liquid displaced by their foot. She shot a glance at the doorway behind her to make sure no one was there, before reaching over to pick up a swathe of the substance. The black gel was still malleable, but quite congealed. Small strands of copper hung out from the substance, torn and frayed.

The Overseer paused, before turning to exit the room once more.
 
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