Yours Truly

The pile of blankets lets out a slight terrified yelp as it hears a loud explosion on top of it, causing the pile to gently recede inside of itself as the woman starts to sit up, slowly revealing a silver haired Japanese woman in a frilly black and white dress, which was promptly covered by a blanket hood thing as the woman pouts at Stella. "Why are you throwing a firecracker at me you meanie bakaaaa." The backpack slowly crawls towards her back on tiny tiny little metallic legs after she says this, as the pile of blankets on her legs recede to reveal whatever was left of her dress.

The pile of blankets shifts a little more as Stella nudges it with her foot, before it rolls starts to roll away from Stella's foot, "Bluuhhhh mom stop kicking meee, I don't even live with you anymore, I'll wake up and get the bots to do the chores tomorrow or something." the pile mumbled and whined slightly more distinctly in feminine voice with it a distinct Japanese accent that Stella probably didn't recognize. The pile itself continued to roll until it bumped against a white bag and came to a stop, causing it to start shuddering and letting out an odd clicking noise as the pile mumbled something about the futon being hard this morning.

A Symphony for the Devil

Meanwhile in a small corner of the room, a small pile of blankets shifts slightly on the floor as everyone else started to screech, introduce themselves, their qualifications, and generally do much more useful activities. After a couple more moments passes, a slight and barely audible yawn is heard from inside of it, as the pile gradually resolves itself into a small blanket covered humanoid shape as whoever is inside of it sits up, before a slight bit of shaking caused a young pale skinned woman's face to reveal itself after a small piece of the pile fell away. The woman pile lets out another yawn as she lazily blinks and stares at the rest of the group, before she mumbles something about, "Oh hey I see she got the facial resolution assembly AI to work after all, the script is still pretty random thooooo," and unceremoniously flops back down on the ground to fall asleep, with a contented smile on her face.

Alan replied by quickly recasting the spell fragment he had managed to gather, before he took a couple of steps to back away from the sphere of energy that forms and states, "Kai, the sphere of puzzling maximization, it made a data cable run through it fire a deadly stream of whatever data was sent inside of it coming the other way, and it turned my attempt at a laser data hacking gun into this...fancy crown right here, and no I don't have a way to control what it makes or even move it yet."

Immanuel tried his best to stifle his urge to jump a little in his seat as he heard Crow's voice come from somewhere behind him, and he nodded in her direction before he confidently stated, "The errands went about as well as can be expected, at least in the sense that we ended up with the same amount of people we came in with, and got what we came in there to get in the first place. And while we did get jumped by a caller, they seemed...only slightly more competent than the rest at least, too bad that they got away before we could take them out, there no other sign of them before or after that though," with a friendly tone of voice. A tone that immediately disappeared to an almost stereotypical icy and clinical one after he heard Chise speak, and decided to respond with, "....wow, because we all know that's a great way to convince people to hand over something they almost died to get, casually insulting their competence before semi politely asking them to outright give it to you while also not stating what you wanted to use it for." He leaned back on his seat before he continued with, "Especially since you are, as you yourself said, just a random stranger who met up with us by chance, a random stranger who didn't actually do anything to fight the card's user if I might add." He then raised his glass and let out a slight chuckle before he finished up with a friendlier, "So you know, take us all out to dinner a couple more times first, talk about your hobbies, tell us what you're planning on trying, be less of a dick, and we'll think about it."

A very dead man and some nerd-Union Street, Seattle-October 31 2064, Apparently still 8:29 PM somehow. (Theme: Outdoors) Solomon nodded and said, "In that case we'll see the rest of you later then, call me once you guys are done alright?," the strange librarian turned around and started to set off to join a crowd crossing the street after he said this, and without looking back, he simply said, "Come on Halley, let's uh, go somewhere we're a little more welcome to," and their oddly silent senator shooter begrudgingly did, her sense of self preservation overcoming her desire to confront the man she had tried to kill herself, and find out just how the hell he managed to survive. She managed to stick with Solomon for a fair bit as they headed towards the cafe right across the street, an impressive feat considering how pushy the crowd was being at the time, up until she bumped up against another familiar face, and disappeared to the sound of a truck suddenly braking and blaring it's horn. By the time Solomon noticed that the young reploid was gone and turned around to try and find her amidst the crowd, he was too little, and all too late to see her go. ________________________________________________________________________ The other nerds-Fortunate Son, Union Street, Seattle-October 31 2064, Apparently still 8:29 PM somehow. The party meanwhile, felt a wave of warmth and comfort waft over them as the doors closed behind them with the sound of a fishing line being reeled in...or perhaps the sound of a revolving cylinder spinning? It was kind of hard to tell. The place itself looked kinda...normal, you'd expect a gun store specifically designed to look like a giant revolver would be as ridiculous inside as it is outside, but other than the fact that you saw more antique AR-15s set on an American flag decorating the walls than normal, and the vidscreens were trying to get you to buy inherently superior American made guns instead of whatever the fuck a NERP is, it all just came off as a gun and America themed supermarket if anything. The music was even pretty calming as well, the sweet backdrop of low volume country music and wide open spaces granting a nice bit of respite after the offensive barrage of increasingly better targeted advertisements and cramped crowds of the Seattle streets. The people seemed...well they're still modern day Seattleites of course, but at least the ones inside had no incentive to push or pull you around the place, and seemed to be minding their own business well enough. It was only when one of you took a closer look at the carpets when the six of you realized that they bore the imagery, symbols, and flags of thousands upon thousands of the former USA and current day UCAS's enemies, you know, for the customer's edification. It didn't take too long to find the path leading to the "Americana", the barbecue restaurant you were supposed to be meeting the Senator in, the six of you were led into a tunnel and given keys in exchange for your tickets, and you soon found out what they were for once you opened the doors, and found a pair of gyroscopically stablized electric Harleys waiting for someone to climb inside of them, and easily ride the star spangled tunnel heading up, until you arrived at the Americana itself, and opened the door to a rather tastefully decorated saloon. Theme (Americana) The smell of barbequed meat hits the six of you right in the face when you entered, and the chorus of a certain song you heard in the tunnels played in the background just as you spotted the Senator himself, a tall and slightly muscular blonde haired man in a brown tailored suit, who had an American flag pin decorating his breast, and a wide and 'friendly' smile decorating his face as he stood up and bid them a 'warm', "Welcome!," before he dropped his pretenses a little with, "I assume that the six of you were the freelancers that clown of yours was talking about?."

Leo would look out the window to find out that Alan's just kind of...standing there and trying to work out the kinks present in the code, before the man simply presses a few buttons and causes a ball of pure energy to appear in front of him. Another few moments passes as Alan tries and fails to actually order the ball of mana to do anything, until he gets a sudden burst of inspiration and accidentally turns a data cable into a deadly data based laser emitter after running it through the ball of mana. After a very brief montage of Alan damaging and further destroying and repairing his own drones plays out after setting up some of the cable as a data emitter in an attempt to find out if the effects of the stream of data could be modulated by what the stream of data is, Alan takes out a fancy glock he brought with him and assembles it together into what he hoped would be a lasergun he could hack into things with, but a run through the puzzling maximizer transformed it into a...red jeweled crown, that fires lasers whenever the fuck he wants it to if he puts on his head, which was, acceptable. Alan walked inside of the bus as a changed man, and he fired a laser out into the void just before he walked through the doors, and waved his hands around while yelling out that he's, "A WIZARD NOW HARRY!."

Immanuel was drinking down a tall mug of cool green tea until Marina asked her question, causing him to almost choke on it a little before he coolly replied with, "I have to admit, I do want to know why you conveniently showed up to help us out of the blue, did Crow send you there to help us? Or were you just being a good samaritan?."

Alan perks up as he spots the WaveImpMon casting a spell, and he quickly reaches for his cyberdeck to scan the damned thing before he hurriedly stands up and says, "Well if you need more data to regain some of your mass then feel free to ask me for help, as long as you're planning on sticking around that is, but for now if you'll excuse me-," he started to walk towards the flower after he finished speaking, seemingly intent on doing something, anything out of the junk data he actually got from that scan.

"Well at least I'm still alive in the future no matter what. Although I'm getting the impression that we don't get along fairly well over there...," he gave the Digimon's form a once over before he asked, "But anyway putting that aside for now, are you still injured anywhere? I don't know if Future Alan's any better with healing sufficiently advanced physical programs where you come from, but this is the first time I've did this."

"...you know, excluding the bits about data based evolution and digivices, all of this seems a bit familiar, like I've heard rumors of particularly intelligent animals learning to hack into computer systems and feed on data down in Frankfurt, they were even calling them Digimon too, after that ol-hmm." Alan pondered his next words very carefully before he asked, "Tell me, have you ever heard of an organization called 'ADVENT'? Nader, Harry and I just got back from helping a resistance force called XCOM fight against them...almost a week ago, and I think that liberating a world from an occupying force of alien invaders would be something more up to our future selves's speed, if we ever got around to doing it of course."

Edward tried his level best to remain as quiet as humanly possible when the assembled group went past the windows, motioning for everyone to stay clear of them and get past them, before anyone or anything noticed their presence in the off chance that would delay their seemingly inevitable encounter with the infected for just a little bit longer. He stays behind to watch the group's backs as they approach the closed door, letting out a sigh of relief just out of a normal person's earshot once the very last person is cajoled into entering, before he himself steps inside. "Alright then, Austin, do you see anything useful in this room? Or can we keep heading towards the armory?"

Alan looks up from his latest project for a moment as he reclines on a nearby seat, and he raises an unseen eyebrow before saying, "I'm sorry, but have the two of you ever met before Leo? Or does this whole multiverse scthick extend all the way down to having alternate versions of us running around the place?."

Alan focused his efforts with writing up an entirely new program, after reasoning that he has already proven capable of removing bullet and various other wounds from people with his programs, and since most of his anomalous programs so far had focused on healing ailments, he concluded that logically, since fatigue, drowsiness, and unconsciousness are physical impairments that he should be able to 'heal off'. The fact that Alan proceeded to convince Leo that the program he had never tested on a living subject should be used on an unconscious realized AI that presumably had very little in common with a human being's says quite a lot about their collective sense of responsibility, but the fact that the solid gold computing core spouted out random bits of dreams instead of say....causing them to scream uncontrollably in abject terror and pain presumably implied that the code worked sort of.

Alan jumped back into reality in a cold sweat, as he quickly realized that he was already facing down the barrel of a gun; letting out a slight sigh before the sudden braking maneuver threw the little guy across the bus, and made him momentarily flop like a fish. He brushed himself off a little as he stood up, before he cracked his knuckles and said, "I've never tried this on an actual person before, but if this works, then I don't think that you'll need anything to bind his wounds," before he took his cyberdeck up, and started to hack into reality once more. Only to end up causing the situation to go a whole lot worse as WaveImpMon's remaining wounds starts to bleed even faster than they did before as a glowing sphere seemingly appears out of nowhere to orbit it, "Uhhhh, this isn't supposed to happen, hold on I think I can-," Alan said before he tries to hack into whatever the sphere is and dispel it out of existence.

Loadout Drones Alan instinctively reeled from the unfortunately inescapable VR goggles a little when the being they had encountered burst into reality, and he let out a slight curse inside of the cyberspace as he blindly tried to find and access one of the exits he had made earlier with the help of his sniffers.

Alan keeps his hands in his pockets as he walks into view, knowing full well that raising his hands would be a futile gesture that wouldn't do much to prevent him from trying something, "More to the point do you know who's hunting you besides us? I'd like to know if I should be expecting company."

Stats at a Glance Loadout Atton couldn't help but roll his eyes as his half track drove by the perpetually screaming Punch, quickly countering by responsibly and sanely clambering onto the roof of his vehicle and hanging onto the banner for support as he took the mouthpiece in his hands and shouted out, "This is no time to be admiring the size of our enemy's hammer men! Not when he swings like a drunkard! And especially not when we're this close to knocking him out for the count!, So get on your feet get on your feet Iowa! Shrug off those wounds! And lead us on a forward march to victory!," in an attempt to be inspiring. Atton uses That is Naught but a Flesh Wound to heal himself and Iowa for 1d4+15 health, and healing off Iowa's stunned condition since he moves before her.

Mot did what any man would do after receiving two withering blows while travelling at high speeds on a motorcycle, and that is to thank the fact that the Giant skeleton had hit him just a little bit too softly as he and his trusty steed rebounded off of the ground a couple of times in painful, painful ways, before the man suddenly got back on his motorcycle again and attempted to try and lead the yellow imp on before jumping off his steed, and attempting to do an aerial roll before just shooting the fucker while it tries to aim and rebounding him back on his motorcycle again. Mot uses Confidence Booster on Yellow Imp, dealing a modest (5d10+12)+10% damage and healing himself by half of the damage he deals, and also taunting them in case they survive that because honestly, no one else can take that I think.

Immanuel slowly floated down from the skies with his two arms outstretched, a slight glow illuminating him as his armor gradually regained some of its bulk, with his cloak seemingly repairing itself and changing from a deep shade of crimson to it's original deep blue. He was still holding the epithet card in his hands as he quickly shifted back into his usual outfit, slipping it inside of one of his suit's pocket before he said, "Geeze, aren't you at least going to ask who mister electric spear fetish over here is before you ask him out?."

In response to this troubling discovery, Alan quickly writes up some basic hunter killer programs to help defend himself in case trouble rears it's ugly head. He then sends out another wave of sniffer drones to map out the inner mechanisms of the clockwork to give him the slight edge he'd need to try and ascend the tower through the gears itself, of course making sure to tell Leo what he's planning with a, "As soon as my sniffers finish mapping this place out I'll meet you at the top, going to try and follow whatever left this trail through the gears."

Alan scratches the bottom of his chin for a little as he thinks over what Leo just said to him, he's worked with AI before but that's sort of the thing, he's worked with them, never on them...but then again after what he managed to pull against ADVENT, would it really hurt to try? "Anything I can do to help? I've mostly worked on drones and such since I got here but I'm admittedly a better hacker and programmer than an engineer, especially since I'm learning to hack into reality, and since I can interface directly with machinery, of course if Snow there objects to having company then I don't mind."

Alan didn't even bat an eyelash at the fact that Leo's sword was both talking and a person, instead deciding to ask, "Well I know what an executable is, but can you explain what a polymorphic data file is? I've never encountered something of that name before, and...are you saying that the USB drive is capable of running data files on it's own? Because I don't know about you, but it doesn't seem like a good idea to just allow strange data drives to run unknown programs on your friend over there without knowing what they do."

Alan quickly flipped out his commlink as he got Frostbrute's message, flicking through his list of contacts for a while before he realized that despite everything, he still managed to miss this 'Leo' person when he was handing out his commlinks, and he let out a slight sigh before he picked his cyberdeck and a spare commlink up and walked off towards the bus itself. Alan waved at the weird little man carrying a sword around the place before he introduced himself with "Hey, I don't think we've met before, my name is Alan, Alan Tzar (pronounced Tschar); you said that you found a...USB stick made out of gold in the bus?"