[Episode Two] Union

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Deimos hesitated to step out from the depths of the ship. It was hard to deal with temperatures like this with metal strapped to you, but he knew that the crew would need him to help in case of another renegade machine attack. He took a deep breath, letting the frostbitten air pour into his lungs and turn his insides into popsicles before it poured back out against the warmth of his zipped cloak collar – one that let only his eyes up pop up above it.

He strode down the lift into the snow, which crinkled like a bag of potato chips and rose to his ankles. He could feel it sucking the warmth from his boots ever so slightly. He kept his arms tucked to his sides beneath his cloak like a blanket with his hands buried in his jacket pockets to ensure the metal one doesn’t turn into a reusable ice cube.

He watched the others barrage one another with snowballs while it escalated from quaint to outright dangerous.

Then he saw the massive snowball.

He knew it was either going to strike Miko or he would do something about it - but cutting it in half was not the first thing to come to mind as a spinning disk of slush came barreling towards the fox boy. At the last second, he kicked off from the frigid earth, his foot sending a long trail of ice hurling along with him in an arc of powdery white. He landed on the frosty top with a downward kick, shattering it underfoot before it could make its way inside of the ship.

It took Deimos a second to feel the traces of slush that had soaked down between his pants and boots, dribbling through his sock and chilling his heel to the bone. He shivered in place for a second like a joy buzzer. His tail even went rigid, with every hair sticking out like needles.

“With that out of the way, I think it’s best we don’t use up all of our energy just yet.” He raised an eyebrow with a slight grin on his cheek. “In cold weather like this, it’s easy to get exhausted if we’re not careful.”
 
"Who cares, Deimos, that was totally WICKED!" Juryrig clapped his hands together and squealed; twas an epic and brief showdown! A true show! "That snowball was all 'BWAAAAAM', I was like 'It's over, Miko-kun, I got the high ground!', and Miko was like, 'High ground? I think NAWT!' and then he was like 'SCHWOOM' and cut it like hot butter! Or cold hot butter! It was awesome either way!" The madman cackled merrily and maniacally, his spirits high as always.

"Good game, Miko! Good game! Now where's - Munchie! Get over here, quit sleeping in the snow!" The turret got up, and bounced back over to its creator with some difficulty; being similar in physiology to a potted Pirahna Plant didn't do Munchie much favor. It jumped back onto the Horse, where terrain wouldn't be its arch enemy.

"Heheh... Now uh... What were we doing again?"
 
"Hiking up the mountain," came Marie's reply, hardly noticing the snowball fight of absurdity, still torso-deep in thought as she waded through shin-deep snow, looking down at the ground as she thought about further improvements and optimizations she could make to...everything, really. "Going to wherever the objective was again."

Ideally, she'd buy one of those black-boxed communication runes or muon communication systems. That way she could link up all the drivers together to freely communicate with each other on a cloud basis. Those were expensive, however; so she'd have to settle with something more primitive. Besides, those were huge...

Ship first, though. The ship still had too many fire hazards in its wiring, and slightly idiotically, Marie had neglected to fix those as she worked on the pair of drivers. Error on her-COLD!

Marie let out a yelp as her forehead contacted the broken giant snowball and slid out of the way, into the snow drift to the side of her. Oh, that was embarrassing and undignified. She quickly got up, brushing the snow off of her everything and warming herself up by forcing her electricity in loops around her. Uh, oops.

Well, taught her a lesson. Not like she ever learned from multiple times of bonking her head into doors, pillars, taller people...once even too close to a live tesla coil. That was, to excuse the pun, a shock.
 
Caesar knew he didn't really have to try to dodge the snowball. Instead He'd carve a path through it, and leave the frozen boulder a pile of steam in his path. Like Reman, he could control the power of his main key in the form of kinesis. However, instead of aerokinesis, Caesar held out his hand to whip up a large wall of fire, to carve his path through the snowball. He walked forward, doing it only enough to avoid being hit, but also not letting his target view it enough to get clued in.

"So where are we going exactly? I think the crew is getting tired of this prattle."

"I'm not sure. The overseer was leading us to another intact unit, or something... Right? Dahlia?"

Reman was still pretty far away, and though the snowball fight was fierce, he barely got a drop of water on his suit, an unusual sight for how dirty it was. Still, this was of no consequence. What was though, was the fact that even though he didn't fully trust the overseer, he was walking into a place entirely by her will. Plus, one of the new crew members... Unsettled him. It was if he saw a faint visage of it in one of his nightmares... Still he had to focus on the mission he's not really there to sit idly by.
 
Mikodimus could not help but laugh as the events unfolded. He expected a reaction from Jury but this wasn't it. He watched the foolish dude bounce around like a kid in the school yard who just pulled a prank. Miko had to admit that something about this guy was good. Like a brother you fight with then go grab a beer with. This thought pleased him greatly. He pulled and yank his feet free from the snow having buried them to brace for impact.

As he took his first step forward he for whatever reason reached down and gave the Rhea a pat on the head. "Lets get moving Imōto." He took another few steps then it clicked what he just said to her. Weird he would call her little sister in an alien tongue. Was his subconscious trying to be funny? Either way he figured she would have no idea what he just said and it would be forgotten moments later.

"Come on Jury, lets go see what damage we can do over the next hill." He yelled out to his new found friend walking in his direction.
 
Winter Wonderland

Dahlia continued trudging up the winding path cut into the mountain, choosing to blissfully ignore the scaling chaos of snow unfolding behind her. The metal book hung by a leather strap over her shoulder had a much better view, however. They took a special note of the young rascal they had found in the cargo bay, and the bright flash of light that sprouted from the ground just before impact. It was soon however, gone in the cloud of snow. "Your crew is trying awfully hard to cause an avalanche," the host remarked.

"As I am aware..." Dahlia replied, huffing as she broke yet another footprint in the barely-touched pool of snow. The Scholar turned their head to look at the two men to her side, pulling the scarf further up over what was left of her pale face. She wasn't entirely sure how to answer, instead snapping her head back at the Overseer incarnate. "What exactly are we looking for at the end of this signal, Osco."

The book swayed silently for a moment, before the green circle on the front started pulsing once more. " BTC-03, another specialty Oakland unit. I don't remember it being this... harsh, however. They retired here long ago, with my..."

Dahlia cut an eye down at the absentminded book, coaxing the words out flatly. "Your?"

"Sister unit."
Dahlia shook her head as she upped the pace as much as she could, wading through snow to take cover alongside one of the raised rock faces to the shoulder of the path. This is getting out of hand, now there's two of them. Well I hope they're a little more sociable."

The path wrapped between two rock faces as it descended into a small crevasse, which lead to a tight squeeze between the rocks and the large icicles that had draped from above. Upon reaching the light at the end of the crevasse, the crew were treated to a new sight- albeit still one being pelted with ice. The snowy trail dropped in elevation into a smooth and rounded ravine, rocks of all sizes causing distortions in the blanketed surface. Perhaps, it was once a stream. What remained of the trees here either hung draped over the ravine's lip, or laid in chunks buried deep beneath the white slush.

The hard, ice-topped snow gave way to softer powder as the team worked their way up the foggy riverbank, quickly finding a path of least resistance. Dahlia soon stopped though with a quiet whistle, pointing to an object peeking out from the grey haze. The grouping was steady in their approach however, soon coming upon an old truck partly buried in the snow and coated in a thin layer of ice. While there were no recent tracks visible, the truck laid with its front engine block stuck in the snow, the bottom of its grey frame hung up on the large rock. And there it lay, cast out like a toy.

But around the side of the truck was another, much stranger figure standing frozen still in the ongoing downfall. It appeared humanoid at first, but it's exaggerated and misshapen features became clearer as Dahlia approached. The figure was yet another robot, comprised of matte green and black metal whose paint had become faded. Their upper half resembled some kind of heavy armor, but their bottom half gave way into a set of sprawled metal tendrils, which lay twisted and clunk to the rocks around it, barely visible under the snow. Their arms hung with dead weight, one of them featuring a set of industrial clamps as opposed to traditional hands. Ice had formed a thick sheet over their torso, but in the center of their chest laid an unmistakably familiar slot, meant to hold some kind of absent device.

The robots oval-shaped head laid slumped to one side, a hollow black eye staring down into the cold white that was slowly consuming their figure. It seemed like they had been cast out as well, ripped of anything useful and left to stand until it ran no more.

Dahlia pursed her lips curiously, holding up the metal book as if the Overseer was watching from it's spine. "It this them... BTC-03?"

The Overseer could draw a conclusion quickly, but still found themselves a bit in wonder as they examined the model. "No... This isn't even Oakland work."
 
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I don't think we can get in the robot

Marie examined the robot. It was iced over and in awful shape. So, she did what any other engineer would do to something iced over: She started removing the snow around the area.

"Can I get a tactical pilot here to...melt the snow?" Marie asked the group. "Or anyone who can clean off the area, really -- we can probably drag this back and take a peek at its functions."
 
Arctic Zone

"Wait a moment... This model looks familiar." Caesar inspects the model before him. Every aspect of it... it seemed like his work. This was definitely the prototype he made in the project. Something seemed off about the whole thing though. The tendrils and all the other bits were a little different from his initial design. A little more... Twisted than he originally made. The extra limbs, the paint, the hands...

Curiosity subsumed Caesar. He walked up to the machine, and started circling around it. And then on the chestplate, he saw it. A slot, one of his design, shoved in the center of the machine's chest. He abruptly stopped, and took out the grey key.

"Captain... Permission to activate the robot."
 
Winter Wonderland

And so Jury set out to do just that: time for chaos, CHAOS- Wait! What's that over yonder, just on the path to the see of this plot?

"... By JOVE, a robot in the snow with an identification differing from what Blue Boss expects...!" Juryrig seemingly popped out from behind Caesar, immediately stepping back to get a better analytical look.

He pointed his finger to the sky, and proclaimed, "That means it must be alone and unprotected!" He put both hands back onto his sides, and let out a attention-grabbing whistle that's actually got a tune to it. "Munchie, clean it up, I want it alive! Horsie, you're built for loot this big!"

With the assistance of the Alchemical Horse, Munchie remained perched on the construct as it proceeded to use its powerful jaws to break the thick layer of ice, chunk by chunk, as if it had a insatiable appetite.

"The small, lost oven can melt the leftover ice. Now I argue we're more than capable of bringing this with us! I promise it'll still be in it's same crappy state as when we first found it, but no promises if I put googly eyes on the photoreceptors!"
 
Mountain side

If it weren't for the travelling circus that clambered along the mountain's side, the pallid scenery and the echoes of wind that made icicles sing would have been haunting. At times, when the conversation on the trail went quiet, Deimos had troubles wondering if that shiver running up his spine was the creeps or jack frost running a finger up the boy's spine.

When they reached the place of the wreckage, he couldn't help but approach with an air of caution about him. His focus had been less on the lumbering machine that was strewn beside the truck and more on the truck itself. Snow and age gave the truck the look of chapped lips, bright red with cracks strewn about. He ran his hand along the frigid surface before turning his gaze towards the pile of scrap that was once an operational automaton.

Deimos wasn't in the mood for playing "fingerpaint the ruined robot in fingerprints," keeping his stance a few feet away from the machine at closest, but it was enough to get a good view of its full figure. The eggheads were better with the up-close nitty gritty than he could ever be, anyways.

He kept his ears tucked back while he craned his neck to and fro, surveying the general area. "Perhaps it'd be a bit better for our purposes to ask where this thing even came from...?" His gaze ended in the direction of the captain as he shifted his weight onto one foot, causing a bit of slush to crumple around his ankle. "We're not exactly close to anywhere that has this kind of technology on hand are we? Hell..." once more, he turned to face the truck, its antique bumper frozen in place of a failed plowing maneuver. "That's assuming the people that made this thing were the same people to be driving in this..." the fox boy swallowed at the idea that had slammed into him like a freighter.

What if the people in the truck were running from this?

"Even Osco isn't familiar with this machine. Do you... do you think it'd even be safe to jump start it?"
 
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Winter Wonderland

Miko went about helping his new friend Jury. While it seemed like a lot of work to free this frozen tin can, if Jury wanted it then Miko felt the need to support the cause. Using his vector powers he dug anchors into the snow to ensure the truck did not decided to slide around as they worked on getting the bot unstuck.

"I wonder why out in the middle of nowhere there is a truck and a bot." He said aloud as he worked. Once the anchors were in place he decided to check out the inside of the truck. It was covered in snow so first had to dig before getting to the door to open it. He figured there might be something in the glovebox that could give them a clue.

Miko waved for Rhea to come join him. She would have a more easy time climbing into this truck to get the items than he world.
 
Rhea's pride could only barely withstand the damage it just took in an extremely brief period of time. She was beaten by snow, then plopped out of the snow and got head patted for it. Hey, maybe normally she might not care about getting head patted but- she felt like this was a declaration of war! She quickly and swiftly kicked the offending patter in the shin, and swept her leg to the side- and something moved under juryrig's feet for his trouble of blasting her with a truck sized snowball.

After that, with an irritated scowl under her protective gear, she stamped off towards the rest of the group, only just now spotting the machine, wisely, she chose to keep her distance. At least untill she spotted te truck- and of course she went right for it! No it wasn't like she was doing it becuase miko suggested it, or anything! "Fine i'll, look around. No more snowballs though."
 
Mountainside Riverbank

Dahlia scratched her well-wrapped chin, running a gloved hand over the empty ocular sensor of the robot. She swung the book gracefully back onto her hip, and twisted her head to look at Caesar. "You sound like you've seen something like this before. What is it?" The face of the metal book displayed a flat green eye, trained on Caesar. Perhaps, to remind them of that little deal.

She took a few steps back, landing beside Deimos. Her blue eyes darted over to meet his. "Bivona doesn't have too much in the way of automation, but a few high-class dives in this sector do. What it's doing out here though, is anyone's guess."

"It looks pretty well iced over. Not nearly as much high-grade stuff. I say we keep weapons drawn. If it's hostile, I doubt it'd be able to do anything quick."

---

Inside the truck lied... not too much. It appeared to be a rental from Bivona, given the loose paperwork not-so-gracefully shoved in the glovebox. The rental was listed under a man named.... Todd Bonzalez. No picture. An empty holster sat in the crook between the drivers seat and the center console, once holding a full-size pistol.

The Scholar turned around, motioning for Mikodimus and the like to be ready.
 
Miko took the blow to the shin by Rhea like a champ. This caused him to just smile, he could tell already this was going to be a good mission.

"Find anything good in that truck Rhea?" Miko asked in an excited voice. He wanted to be the first to find something of value. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Dahlia motioning for him to pay attention. She must be about to do something wild and hard telling what might of this. He took a few steps back away from the truck. He made sure to keep Rhea within sight in case he would have to eject her from the truck in a hurry.
 
Caesar sat a little dumbfounded for once, this twisted mechanical frame's prototype was known only to him, yet here it was. Fully built and twisted beyond it's printed model, sitting on the hydraulic table of an insane alchemist. Caesar gave a snappy reply shortly after thinking it over. "Somebody's been stealing my blueprints. Captain, the foundations of this model are innately mine, but there have been some clear-" Caesar paused a minute to look at the tendrils and the head of the unit before continuing on. "Changes. The core is what matters though."

Caesar stepped onto the horse, thawed out the key slot, and inserted the steel key inside the machine. It's familiar insert sound ringing out like usual, with the addition of a robotic "STEEL!" ringing out from the robot itself.

"This is one of the machines I made to test keys upon their discovery. I believe it's model name was in it's alpha series... A3? I'm not sure this unit even functions... Let alone with all these additional modifications." Caesar hopped off the horse, and waited. "It should respond to me... Maybe it's been damaged beyond repair?"

A few seconds after, the machine lurches upright, lights flickering to life but for a brief moment, before it goes properly dormant.

"I think my assumptions are corre-"

The machine finally arises to life, brought back by the key's innate properties. The only sound that can be heard from the machine is a deep, resonant announcement of it's startup.

"C-C-CRITICAL JUDGEMENT."

"That's new!"
 
Marie suddenly jumped back at the noise of the machine turning on. What was this? She'd never seen it in the Institute's systems before. None of their machine intelligence projects took this sort of form. And what was with that...driver sound?

"Should we be moving away?" Marie asked. It sounded like someone programmed in a confirmation sound for a capacitor discharge in the driver and it took that sound. The confirmation sound she made for her driver wasn't nearly as flashy, but she didn't need flashy. Needless to say...they did not need to get hit in the face by whatever could happen.

And, even without the fact that it sounded like a capacitor discharge, inserting a key did cause discharges of its attuned energy...that's why she made the minor tweak. If the energy wasn't handled correctly it could potentially harm the people around the user, and with an old robot like this who knows how many systems have broken down. She shuffled away a few steps.
 
Juryrig scratched his chin, and squinted, unphased by a loud, random statement. After all, he, Juryrig, Master of Chaotic Artificing, made loud random statements ever since he was born from the aftermath of his brother's backstory. As did his brother, actually.

"I see, the perfect minion... Disposable AND able to utilize the powerful transmutation magic of the Drive Key as a key component to its initiation. I vote we should color it like it were Cortess from Solar Exorcist™! No, no, not really right, but it said Critical Judgement, so clearly there's a cult that was involved in its restoration...!"

"Okay, okay, I say we should keep it simple and give this guy a robe from a cult member. I think the Cult of the Grand Beyonders have spares! Who's with me?"
 
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Rhea quickly explored the limited inside of the truck, before hopping out with the paperwork, rifling through them, shrugging, and hading it to dhalia- she'd probably have more of an idea of what to do with that. But she too jumped back when the robot sprang to life!

"Uh, what is that? Are we going to break it before it hits somone?" At this stage, she currently had... alot of snowflakes on her. Her black outfit was turning white.
 
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The large automaton was still, seemingly running through the subroutines required for its startup. The lights scattered about its body blinked white frenetically, internal hardware whirring and clicking as it loaded its low-level software
Suddenly, the light and noise stopped. Its servos and motors released their safety locks, causing it to slump over slightly with a deep thud.
And then… its eye lit up, the machine releasing a drawn-out, electronic jingle to signify its activation.
It straightened out its back, and attempted to lift itself off of the ground, looking at the group of people around it

“...a...istr...or… as...w...rd…”, it said, in a broken electronic voice, void of any emotion or personality.

“Administrator password?” it repeated, not looking at any person in particular.

Why the hell would you need a password? You’re an android, you can think and recognize people… A3?” Caesar asks, confused and frustrated by the queries of this machine. “You should be able to recognize a face… What the hell happened to you?

It looked at Caesar, its hardware creating deep and resonating clicks as it thought, “My Unit does not possess any form of recoverable hard disk data. My Unit may have incurred system-level damage from unknown sources, that which is beyond my Unit’s fragments.” It looked at itself, seemingly remembering something. “...my Unit does recognize the identifier as A3. ...affirmative, my Unit had been previously defined as A3, a deconstruction of A3-80N.” Its single gaze shifted towards its right arm, at which several canisters were attached. “My Unit’s inventory has not had been subtracted from, this afflicts an artificial emotion that individuals may define as pleased.”

Caesar looked at the machine in front of him, and back towards OSC-01 for a moment, before examining the tendrils below, replacing the standard bipedal design of legs. “A3, can you explain the movement fixtures below your unit? Can you remember if your standard model architecture was modified in any way?

A3 looked down at the sprawl of segmented metal tubes, before proceeding to look up into nothingness, “As my Unit had previously delivered informational data on, data which existed from before this temporal period has been defined as unrecoverable, and as such, has not been recovered. For your own convenience, my Unit’s operating system has defined the software of which is a requirement for the functionality of my Unit’s lower movement hardware as belonging to a third party, and as any individual of a numerical intelligence value beyond a single digit may determine, should be defined as a modification to my Unit’s original hardware.” The large robot looked back down at Caesar, tilting its head to one side as to suggest sass. “My Unit feels that it would be appropriate to deliver grief for my Unit’s verbal transgressions if they have afflicted any form of emotional or mental harm, but has defined such an action as being unnecessary.”

Dahlia took a few steps away from the robot, following the conversation loosely. It seemed Caesar had a little more under his belt than he had initially given. At some point she needed to pin him and Marie down and figure out more about this technology. OSC-01 on the other hand wasn’t nearly as interested. They glared back at Caesar briefly, before the pulsing eye on the side of the book rolled up to peer at Dahlia. This robot seemed intelligent, but it was hard to tell if it was more or less tact. ”I don’t sound like that to you, do I?”

Caesar paused for a moment, overwhelmed with what possibly they built into the robot, before snapping to a realization… “Is- is that sass?” In the background, OSC-01 chortled just within earshot. Caesar hopped back up to the table ahead of him, and looked straight into the ‘eye’ of A3. “They programmed you with a personality module, too… Alright A3. Can you do three things for me? I request the manufacturer name for the drivers for the aforementioned third-party parts, An explanation of your designated directives, and a non-hazardous test of Fusion Functions.

A3 once again began to stare at nothing in particular, hardware whirring as it attempted to parse its data. ”Case 0: Your query has resulted in a negative outcome. No manufacturing party has been defined via the third-party drivers. This delivers the product that the instances of third-party drivers may have been developed by an individual defined as independent.
Case 1: Directives defined as assigned to my Unit are… undefined.
Case 2: my Unit cannot provide an accurate answer as to whether my Unit can perform a test that would produce a… non-hazardous outcome.”
Steam gently spewed from its seams, as if it sighed.

Can you identify the key type inside your chassis? That’d probably be a test to see if your capabilities function. Give me Batch name and manufacturer name for the key.” Caesar equips the blue key into the Veteran, to get ready to react if the unit’s functions error upon testing the equipment. “Afterwards, I would like to give you new directives if you are able to respond to them.

“Affirmative.” A3 freezes up, the eye and lights changing to a silver white as the robot makes a shrill ping. “My Unit’s driver defines this key’s Batch as Steel, manufacturer name is defined as Romulus Aurum.” It, once again, looks down at the man. “My Unit expresses desire to query your directive requests.”

We are here on a retrieval mission for a child android underneath parent unit OSC-O1, It’s designated name is BTC-O3, and somewhere in this region is it’s resting place.” Caesar beckons the robot to the group, over by the truck. “These are my compatriots, and their leader is the blue-haired one, designated name Dahlia Morgan. There are th-” He briefly interrupts himself to look at Juryrig before turning back to A3. “Four. Four fusion users in the group, including myself. Unit Beta is within proximity, name Reman Argint. Units Tau and Psi are named Juryrig and Marie, and my designated callsign… is not to be spoken aloud.” Caesar steps up to the alchemical horse, and whispers it into what he can assume is the ear of the unit. “Alpha. Real name Romulus Aurum.

It listens closely, pondering… or maybe, recording what was said, it’s hard to tell from a mostly-featureless face like that. “...my Unit wishes to express understanding. My Unit accepts your requested directives...” said in a quiet, muted voice. “...including requested directives produced from beyond the current timeframe.”

Romulus steps down from the horse, and starts walking towards the truck. He was fairly confident that at this point, just in case, he had a new ally in the reparation of his deeds. His radial aura of smug returns, as he asks one last question. “Was the truck your doing?

A3 stares at the remains, studying them, before shaking its olive-shaped head. “Negative response. The transportation vehicle only possesses damage that my Unit defines as environmental, there is high possibility that this vehicle had gained the status of forgotten via its original user, this status extends additively to my Unit and inventory possessed by the vehicle.”

Double time, then. Let’s go find O3.
 
Some Wasteland of Ice...
Hey, do the Corpus live here or something?


One of the two exceptionally-childlike redheads grumbled to herself, weathering the comments directed at her from... Basically half the jackasses of the group, really. And the actual weather itself. Which was crappy and windy, blegh. "So many robots... I can understand the Overseer, but how are you capable of making something like that, and simultaneously fulfilling your own death wish? Those tend to be very... Conflicting interests," the pilot sighed.
 
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