Rebel_Scum

As well as being another indication of the at least semi-intelligent nature of said corruption, which was why she didn't leave just yet. "So first you don't want us to find this place, and now you don't want us to leave... what's so important here that no one can know? Perhaps you would care to come out and discuss things like a rational person, instead of the cheap scare tactics?", the peacebringer said aloud, to... well, anyone who might be listening. Should she receive no response, either spoken or otherwise, the option to leave was still open. After all if she could get in, she assumed she could get out too.

-----------

If the machines possessed any listening devices in the particular hall Ildela was currently in, they would hear the stalker's somewhat hard to make out mutterings as she searched around the door to no avail - something about locked doors and how they related to someone by the name of Unicron. Regardless though, she stopped when she found the apparent access panel. "Oh cool, there's a switch after all", she commented. Silly her assuming a machine city wouldn't need such things, since the machines would communicate with whatever controlled the door via radio or some such.

She frowned though when opening the panel revealed some sort of hand scanner. "Figures. Where's a dragon when you need one", she complained to no one in particular. Still, no problem. Fingerprint scanners, DNA scanners, retina scanners.... all were things she'd come across in her former profession. And some talents you just didn't lose. Of course there was always the comedy 'shapeshift into dragon' option but she doubted she could do that precisely enough to work. So instead she settled for the more mundane method of prying the front off of it and messing with the bits inside to bypass it.

-----------

Meanwhile, it was about at this point that those still around the fallen Aineruda would possibly spot Kethara emerging from the surrounding forest still dragging a by now most certainly dead assassin through the air behind her.

Being still in Dwarf form, pulling the staff free was what you might call 'easier than it would have otherwise been'. Unfortunately the fact that the thing sprouted tentacles when touched, while useful to know and thus avoid, didn't really help her that much. She considered flipping the staff around and blasting it out of pure spite, but didn't think she was quite at that point yet. Though precisely what point she was at, she didn't quite know. With nothing else really blatantly obvious to do, she more or less just wandered aimlessly around the grove, occasionally poking something or other to see if it reacted. And if she got no interesting response, the idea of going and requesting assistance from the elves would probably find its way into her mind eventually.

--------------

Ildela however was not what you could really call an untrained observer. Prior to certain events that will be left undescribed in which she obtained her current shapeshifting abilities and general lack of need or care for just about everything, she'd made a living from getting into places she shouldn't be and either doing unpleasant things to people inside or stealing all their stuff. Or sometimes just some of their stuff if she was feeling kind. But still. There was no secret passage she couldn't find, and there was no locked door she couldn't get through. Or so she liked to think.

That plus the clearly present markings on the floor that in the real dead ends she'd seen didn't go right to the wall but in these did, fairly blatantly tipped her off that yes maybe these walls are different and worth investigating. Of course, the fact she knew they were doors didn't really help her once it came time to figure out how to get the buggers open. Oh sure, she could pull out the fancy rifle that Rikti guy gave her and start blasting holes in in, but she liked to think she was more sneaky than that.

Sadly she didn't have her friends with her, and no way to get them to her, or she'd bet Cassie could've hacked the door open just like that... mechanical genius and all. But no, instead she had to rely solely on her own talents... actually that just might work, if they weren't quite airtight. She started looking around the door for cracks, gaps of any kind between the door and the walls around it where air might get through.

--------------

Kethara just sort of floated there for a moment, confused. "Free the humans.... right. I'll get right on that", she commented eventually before going down and picking the guy up. A feat which she made appear far easier than it had any right to be - the guy being about half her height again and all. Of course, really she wasn't actually picking him up. She was extending the same energy field that let her fly around him, allowing the corpse to give gravity the finger as well. Then it was more a matter of dragging him through the air back towards where the others had been, rather than carrying him.

Ildela highly doubted it would, given the reaction earlier. But given that back out there was death and staying here was boring... Only one way to go. She gave one of the cameras a friendly wave before proceeding further into the complex.

---------------

Paxtera had been watched by things unseen more than once in the past... well, in her past. Thus it didn't particularly bother her, really. She had more important things to worry about... like how to get that watcher out into the open. Disturbing their creations might work, but she didn't really want to start just outright blasting things. And the pool of tar... well it looked like tar but that didn't mean it necessarily was. So she wasn't touching it. Instead, a faint flash of the familar golden light and she pulled from apparently thin air what looked like a fully functional Nemesis staff, which she proceeded to poke the tar with the non-functional end of.

---------------

In the air though, Kethara had a definite advantage. The jumping elf's path was more or less a set trajectory, he had very little to alter his path through the air once he left the tree. The young peacebringer on the other hand could move at will in any direction. So she did, flying out of the way of the elf just as he jumped, so he couldn't change his jump to not miss her. She then proceeded to try and bash him in the back with an energy-enhanced punch as he went past, though given the need to remain out of knife range she quite probably missed outright.

In Ildela's mind, leaving wasn't an option. She'd come here for a reason and wasn't gonna leave until she got something meaningful done. However, staying out here getting shot at wasn't an option either, because she couldn't keep evading these turrets forever. And let's face it, no one likes being shot at. So the remaining option was to go down, into the city where neither the turrets nor the hunters could follow.

Her course through the sky, previously mostly undirected, abruptly changed. She was still flying decidedly erratically, but now she had a clear direction. She was going down, looking for an entrance small enough that the hunters couldn't fly in after her.

------------

Immediately, Paxtera was on the alert. Trees simply didn't grow that close to one another, without someone encouraging them to do so. Meaning inside was presumably the source of these mutating plants. She went closer, but stopped at the entrance, coughing as the smell of the place assaulted her. Then a burst of energy and she transformed back into Dwarf form, thanking the powers that be that said form had no sense of smell. Thus freed from having to smell this foul mess, she proceeded in past the wall of trees.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was wondering if the mutation had started at the Heart Tree and spread here, or started here and spread to the Heart Tree. Somehow, the latter seemed more likely to her.

Ildela stopped as she heard the thing powering up, then less than a second later hurled herself to one side to avoid what she decided was a highly disproportionate barrage. "That was completely uncalled for!", she yelled at the turret. Nevermind that she'd snuck in to begin with, into somewhere she probably wasn't supposed to be. But that didn't occur to her. What did occur to her was she was being shot at by a very angry turret for seemingly no apparent reason.

She of course didn't stop moving during all this thought, escaping into the air and performing what could loosely be defined as evasive maneuvers to keep the thing from hitting her. Of course, she did still have her energy shield and remained confident it would deflect most of the munitions being thrown at her. Of course, by the size of the explosions and bullet marks she guessed that the little but that inevitably would get through would probably turn her into something between a fine red mist and a smear on the wall. So the aim of course was to not get hit at all, even with shields.

----------

....was she seriously lost? That wasn't right. Paxtera had been from one end of time to the other, and back again. She didn't get lost. Ever. Yet somehow she now was. Just perfect. Well, two could play at that game. Space and time after all were only different dimensions of the same thing - if you could manipulate one, you could probably manipulate the other. Which sparked another idea in her mind, that of whatever was causing this being caused by the same thing that made the token's thread invisible to her. An intriguing theory but one with no evidence to back it up, so she filed that in the 'to think about later' box and went back to the task at had. Namely, un-scrambling this scrambled space. The air around her seemed to shimmer with a faint golden light as she directed her not inconsiderable power into doing precisely that.

Abbie of course wasted no time in advancing further. If Darkgloom wasn't careful, she might find herself trapped between a rather agitated Kheldian and a rather hard wall. She might even find herself slammed against said wall more than once by said Kheldian if she was silly enough to stand still long enough for Abbie to grab her. Her barrage hit the Dwarf's armored skin without apparent effect - the Dwarves may be slow and comparatively not very dangerous, but one thing they did have going for them was being impressively hard to damage.

Abbie felt it, though. Enough to know that she couldn't keep taking hits like that forever without a little help.

Kethara almost laughed when she saw the guy pull a sword to fight her with. Then of course she remembered what her sister was capable of with merely a sword, and decided not to. Meh, not like she was going down there anyway. Not when she was perfectly capable of blasting away with energy bolts from here, perfectly safe since she knew for a fact he'd left his gun behind.

...unless he had a second gun. Or a bow, or throwing knives or whatever. But still, way safer up here.

-------------

It seemed the elf would live, anyway. "Very well", Paxtera replied, standing up and moving back to let the other elves get to their fallen leader. "Our apologies for not taking the time to ask, but gunshot wounds do tend to be rather immediately fatal if one is hit in the right place." With that she made to do as she'd been asked and follow her daughter after the assassin, but a voice from the ground beside her stopped her dead in her tracks.

"Hmm?" Paxtera turned to look where the elf was pointing, raising an eyebrow as she noted the discolored plants. "Well, that can't be good", she commented. Plants weren't her thing so she'd be unlikely to offer anything more helpful, really. She took off into the forest, following the direction the mutating plants were spreading in, in the hope that the end of the trail may offer some clues. Experience had taught her that things such as this tended to spread outwards in circles, not in lines. Thus the suspicion that something might be directing the corruption in that direction, and since such a thing obviously wasn't here at this end it must be at the other if it existed.

-------------

Which she probably would sooner or later, as when nothing happened after she decloaked she just sort of shrugged and wandered off, not bothering to cloak herself again. Thus, random chance plus the fact that the city was ringed with the aforementioned turrets meant she would wander into range of one... eventually.

"No, but with some more time we're fairly sure we can find it", Paxtera replied, not quite amazed anymore by Bisys's complete lack of self-regard. "We thought we should bring you back first, rather than let you die from being too far from your master. Finding the token but losing you would leave no one-"

Gunshot.

In a forest, of elves. Who did not have the technology to make guns nor the inclination to do so even if they did. To say that alarm bells went off in Paxtera's mind was an understatement, if the speed at which she hurled herself into the air in the direction of said gunshot was any indication. Kethara wasn't very far behind, either, the two of them probably equally concerned about someone getting shot in a place where there were no guns.

The younger peacebringer however veered off as her mother pointed toward the woods.. Basic powers of observation regarding direction of blood splatter and such suggested that was where the shot had come from. Pax would handle the injured and possibly dying elf, and so directed her daughter to run down whoever had shot her. Kethara flew into the woods at only just slow enough to fly around the trees without hitting anything. The gunman's trail was easy to pick up - the man didn't seem to be taking much care to be stealthy in his escape and Kethara was in all likelihood faster than he was. Thus it was probably only a matter of time until she caught up to him, unless he had some dirty tricks of his own to misdirect or delay pursuit.

Paxtera meanwhile hit the ground next to the fallen Aineruda hard enough to kick up a small dust cloud, only barely slowing down enough to avoid injuring herself in the landing. Noting the location of the gunshot wound, she refrained from making a more detailed examination in favor of simply placing a hand over the wound. She closed her eyes in concentration and Aineruda glowed briefly with greenish Kheldian energy as Paxtera did her very best to heal her. Nevermind this was a species of alien she'd never encountered - experience had taught her that peacebringer healing worked on pretty much anything organic and more than a few things inorganic with at least some degree of success. So as long as the elf was still there at all, it should help. Hopefully enough to save her life.

Kethara rushed over to see if she could help as her mother passed the satyr back to her master. "As we said, being apart from her master seems to have what you might call an adverse effect on her. We would assume that being brought back will at the very least stabilise her, if not restoring her entirely... But we suspect said restoration will require her real token." Rather than get straight back on finding that though, the peacebringer hung around a little longer to see if Bisys would be ok or if more drastic measures would prove necessary.

Paxtera said nothing, merely gesturing for her to do whatever and then watching with a certain amount of curiosity as she did it. Once it became evident that the silver thread was Bisys', she quite casually waved a hand at the collection and the whole lot slid to the left, following the threads back to their positions at an earlier point in time. Most of them quite obviously diverged, more rapidly as the display approached the exact point where Patches had ripped most of Paragon from its dimension. Two however converged instead... or rather two should have converged.

Instead, it seemed that the second thread of Bisys' token simply vanished at that point. No that wasn't right, it was still there. Why wasn't it visible, then? That was wrong, and not only because it meant Paxtera couldn't follow it forward like she'd been planning to. No, it was wrong because these threads weren't supposed to be invisible, under any circumstances. It took a power equal or perhaps even greater than hers to render her incapable of seeing one of these threads, which meant most likely someone quite deliberately didn't want the token found. That or some part of the universe had thrown the dice and rolled a one.

Bisys of course heard all this, in a more or less stream of consciousness fashion as the peacebringer muttered to herself while studying the display - thankfully it was merely a display, or moving it around like that would've royally screwed things up. Apparently she'd forgotten for a moment that the satyr was even there.

That, however, quite effectively reminded her she had company. And said company appeared to be doing badly with the situation. Not good. Very not good. She always forgot how badly this place sometime affected those not used to time travel. Welp, simple solution for that. "You need to get back to your master, we think...", she commmented quietly, glancing back at the threads for a second to see where Jade had gotten to in the time she'd been gone before again taking the satyr's hand and disappearing into another of those golden portals.

------------

Back in Patches, Jade would most likely notice as the air just to his left seemed to ripple slightly before with a flash of golden light there was quite suddenly a familiar peacebringer flying alongside him, carrying a clearly unwell Bisys. "Lack of your presence seems to affect her rather badly", Paxtera informed him in a mildly apologetic tone.

What she may have not realised was that while limiting how many people could attack her, it also limited how many people she could attack back at the same time. And Skulls weren't known for their resilience, so Abbie doubted they'd hold up her friends for long. Truth be told, she knew that in a straight up one on one fight there was little chance she could beat this chick... Well, not without every dirty trick she knew, anyway. Which was a few. Fact was though... It wasn't one on one. Quex, Dreg and Josiah... Well, Quex and Dreg were there to help. She still wasn't entirely sure what Josiah was useful for if he was useful at all.

That's mean and you know it. The kid's trying.

I know. Still the truth though.

Maybe, but he's not gonna get better if all you do is insult him and make him feel useless.

Fine. When I encounter a situation he might actually be useful in, I won't hesitate to ask.

Just in time to catch a claw to the face, if she didn't duck fast enough. "Eyes on me, 'darling'", Abbie commented in her very best insulting tone.

(( Yay for taunt. ))

"It may surprise you to know that at some point in the however distant past there were no elves in this forest either", Paxtera commented to the indignant man. "Things changing is one of the very few certainties in life, either adapt and move on or be swept under. Trying to hold it back never works, trust us on that." She then proceeded to ignore him and turn her focus back to Bisys. "If you will come with us, please."

Presuming the mechanical satyr took her hand, the pair of them would quite abruptly vanish into one of those golden portals Paxtera was so fond of. "And there she goes again", Kethara commented, sounding entirely unsurprised. She looked down at a watch on her wrist, counting the seconds until her mother reappeared mostly for lack of anything better to do.

--------------

Meanwhile, somewhere else (Or perhaps somewhen else) the two of them promptly reappeared in what appeared to be a small room. The place was undecorated, aside from a well used couch sitting against one wall and two heavy wooden doors on either side. The only other thing of any note was the strange aura that seemed to hang over the place, as though the universe wasn't sure exactly when it was. Out of the corner of her eyes, Bisys would keep catching glimpses of events that'd already happened, as well as a few that hadn't.

The weirdness however disappeared for the most part when Paxtera... grabbed it? How does one grab something like that? Probably even Pax wasn't entirely sure. Regardless, it colasced into what looked like a number of faintly glowing threads, intertwined with each other. "One of these is yours... but which one?", she commented mostly to herself, studying the collection of threads.

--------------

Well that's not good..., the stalker thought to herself as she noticed that particular instruction. Now where was that location? As far as she could tell... nowhere near where the others were. Good. Not important then, aside from absently wondering what a reaver unit was. Maybe that was their name for that hunter thing they'd blown up?

More important things, though. Specifically, how to communicate with it? More importantly how to communicate with it and not have it immediately try to vaporise her? Hmm... perhaps a message through its own channels? But would it understand? And would it try to vaporise her anyway? Meh, what was the point of being immortal if you didn't take a few risks. Using the machines' own communication channels, she sent what amounted to a friendly greeting. Sadly not the universal greeting, since she doubted machines from another dimension would get the reference at all. But still, she sent something. In probably completely the wrong format or whatever but one would assume that if Patches translated one way it would also translate in the other.

For now though, the stalker remained cloaked. If she got a favorable response, maybe she'd consider cloaking herself. But given that said cloak was probably the only reason they hadn't already tried to vaporise her, she wasn't too keen on discarding it just yet.

I do this sometimes, when I'm playing and something in the music I'm listening to sounds at least vaguely like that beep.

A lesser person would've been knocked off her feet, maybe even thrown backward by the impact. Abbie on the other hand, was a half ton of Black Dwarf. It'd take a lot more than some wimpy little chick with a shield to shift her. "Well well, look what the cat dragged in", she commented, taking a swipe at the brute with one massive claw. Or at least, where she thought the brute was. Damn shadows making it hard to see. Abbie hated fighting people like this.

Once past the outer perimeter, the stalker ditched the Harvester she'd been hiding behind in favor of exploring the place on her own. As she'd suspected she found no trace of life - biological life, at least. Mechanical life there seemed to be plenty of. But how to communicate without it merely vaporising her? Hmm. Even machines needed some way of communication between themselves. Perhaps if she could find the right frequency or channel or whatever, she might be able to listen in on them and thus gain more information and a better idea of how to proceed?

It was worth a shot, she decided. Thus, she pulled out her radio and started scanning channels more or less at random. Though, 'radio' was really a bit of a misnomer. She called it that, but in reality the thing was far more than a simple radio. If it was in use anywhere in Paragon or the Isles, her radio could pick it up. Of course, picking up a transmission was one thing but decrypting it and then understanding it were both quite another.

Ildela didn't think they could see her. The harvester couldn't after all, and given its apparent purpose she didn't think it would make much sense to not equip it with the best sensors available. But just in case, she ducked down behind it to place the big machine between her and the city, using it for whatever cover it's bulk might provide from prying electronic eyes.

------------

Since no one answered her, Paxtera and her daughter followed along behind the group as they went. Seemed like they were discussing returning Paragon to its original place, and something about the big tree growing seeds. Given the way they talked about it, she presumed it usually didn't grow seeds, or at least not like the ones it was producing now. Unfortunately, she couldn't help. Magical biology wasn't exactly something she'd ever taken the time to gain any experience with.

That however, she did think she could maybe help with. "If they can't, we may be able to at least locate it for you", she offered to Bisys in that weird echoing voice of hers.

"Right, don't go for those ones. Got it", Abbie answered, nodding. "Doesn't change the plan. I'm gonna go get the attention of all the ones not asleep. Once they're distracted, you guys move in and take them out. Maybe we can flush out someone actually worth the effort." She waited a moment in case any of them had objections or suggestions or anything, but if they didn't...

A surge of energy around her, and she shifted into the form of the Ruktur, more commonly known as the Black Dwarf. Then a flash of purplish light, and she teleported right into the midst of the Skulls. "Hiya boys. I'll be kicking your collective ***** for the day." She laughed, and if the Dwarf's face was cappable of cracking into an overly evil looking grin it would've. She concentrated, and the familiar energy ring of her Sunless Mire encircled her to sap the lifeforce out of the Skulls as they moved to attack the hero in their midst. With her strength boosted by that energy, she started laying into them with her claws. The thought that she might have backup waiting to take advantage of their focus on her probably didn't even occur to them.

And, in that same swirl of energy, in she came. To find herself face to face with... nothing. Good. She spoke into her radio as quietly as she could manage, hoping none of the Skulls in the room were particularly attentive. "Grab your gear and hold on to your lunch", she ordered the others before silencing the device just in case any of them got the oh so bright idea of answering loudly.

Concentrating, she established a relatively precise fix on each of them. Then after mapping each of those to a landing point near where she was standing, she attempted to bring them all in at once. Not something she'd ever tried before, but theoretically it should work. And Lakara assured her she knew what she was doing, so Abbie wasn't too worried. She was slightly worried that the skulls would notice her in the back here before her teammates materialised, though.

(( Assemble The Team, go! Don't get it ingame for another three months or so I think, but meh. ))

And had she not been in mid-teleport at the time, she may have had time to consider that and its similarity to what happened back at the empty city she'd found earlier. As it was, she was somewhat occupied with getting the hell out of Dodge, then with watching the fireworks above. "Perhaps a little lacking in finesse, but we can't deny its effectiveness", was the comment received by the others over the established general channel, moments before the one who'd said it landed nearby. Now back in human form, or at least as human as someone with two souls (or four, if you counted Kheldians seperately) could be, she proceeded to inquire, "So now that that's over with, what's the next crisis?"

Whether an answer was given or not, some scant half a minute or so later a young female voice could be heard complaining, "Aww what, you killed it without me?", as its owner dropped from the sky to land neatly beside her mother. Pax just gave a faint sigh, and the child muttered something about at least letting her watch the show before falling silent.

----------

Elsewhere, a certain Harvester still had a tail.

Oh, Pax definitely heard it. In fact, heard it several times over from a wide variety of sources. "....and that'd be our cue to vacate the premises", she commented to herself in a faintly surprised tone before the Dwarf vanished off the machine's back in much the same way as it'd got there.

Reappearing on the ground below she looked up and watched it go, hoping they knew what they were doing.