Our heroes, the De Facto Explorers travelling to Level A, Inc to the Restorationists.
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Sonny Helianthus: a sentient sunflower artifact examiner with Restorationist ties.
Slitheran Wurmtail (aka Squiggles): a mutated earthworm scout looking for trouble
Sneaky Pete: a mutated weasel scout. Pete's telepathy and night vision take a backseat when he whips out his electrical powers.
Lathar Bracken: a pure-strain human from River Bend. He's got the muscle, the face, and a mount for most encounters. Lathar's trusty beast of burden, No Name, travels wherever he does.
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Lathar, Pete, and "Doctor" Sonny Helianthus were still in the lower level room, with another large table and many chairs. Sonny continued to request more food, water, and medical supplies for his "test subjects" for the Level A facility.
One of the human-esque security bots returned, holding a square box with a handle.
Walking to the front of Pete, it opened the box, revealing medical supplies."
"If you stay still, it will hurt less."
The bot patched up Sneaky Pete almost as good as new, as if by magic. It moved over to Lathar and patched him up as well.
The bot returned to a position to near the main door. The other bot that had left the room also returned, pushing a wheeled cart. The top shelf of the cart held small bags, while cylinders that looked like bottles filled the bottom shelf.
"This is the water and the sustenance available for your test subjects. I hope it does not interfere with any tests or pre-existing conditions."
"What is it?"
"Snacks"
Pete immediately grabbed a cylinder, filled with water, and two bags of non-descript snacks. Lathar followed followed suit.
Once healed and refreshed, Dr Sonny requested the security bots to leave so he could conduct basic experiments. Oddly enough, all three bots complied. Sonny then turned to he ceiling and spoke out,
"Great voice, have you seen any other living creatures in your facility in the last couple weeks?"
"I do not see any on our logs."
"Are you familiar with winged snake being, Dardadell.... err... Daradell?"
With that question, the center of the conference room table moved, a large white screen emerges, a holographic image projected onto it.
The image was an odd recording back at the original building they discovered. A large snake-man with leathery wings floating down to the circular room below, it's forked tongue flickering in the air. The camera panned up to the broken window, as two large squirrel heads emerged from over the ledge.
"Yeah, that's the guy!" Sonny exclaimed.
The hologram went blurry and refocused in a different room, shaped like a slice of pie. The two giant squirrels both laid on ground, and the snake-man looked injured and tired, a shirtless man with blue skin, and a bandolier across his chest, walked up to him. Two other New Men came into view from the side, bearing rifles.
"Surrender yourself to the Iron Society."
The snake-man, speaking with a lisp, "I would rather die, get it over with."
The blue man walked over to one of the New Men and pushed his rifle away from the snake-man, "That's a waste. I have a much better idea."
With fear in his eyes, the snake-man lunged towards the blue man, and sank his fangs into the the man's neck. The blue man cried out in pain for but a moment, but two seconds later, the snake-man released his bit. After licking his lips, the snake-man bent over, and bowed toward the blue man.
"My deepest apologies, lord, your humble servant begs forgiveness for touching you, much less trying to hurt you."
The blue man nonchalantly waved him off, "I'll decide your punishment later, you may crawl behind me."
The snake-man then crawled under a table, and pulled a one meter by half-meter green case.
"You may have a use for this my lord. I hope it helps alleviate my transgressions."
"Well done, it's almost worth getting bit... Come, we must leave for Ulmin."
Meanwhile, in a cluttered room filled with junk, Squiggles had set off a collapsing pile of refuse, forcing him to find refuge behind a workbench of some sort and a cinder block wall, leaving him barely any room while wearing his newly discovered armor.
He began moving pieces from the pile to find some means of escape. A large watering trough settled, barricading Squiggles against the wall. Despite the ruckus, the worm was able to easily push the trough, and the junk atop it, towards the far wall, giving him a chance to move to a nearby door.
Squiggles pushed through the door into a room very similar to the room he had hidden in upstairs. A number of desks, chairs, and computer screens. Each desk had some sort of standing poster. Squiggles was unable to read what was on them, but each one had pictures of a purple hippo with toothy grin, giving a thumbs up. Quietly and efficiently working through another door, he uncovered the fairly recent corpses of three giant squirrels, until he moved on to the large room with the decapitated bot in it.
He left that room to find the black security bot and two golden bots patiently staring at a closed door.
Inside that room, Lathar quivered at the thought of mutant supremacists, especially those who wished to murder the pure-strain.
Sonny asked for a map of the facility but the map the computer offered showed a dozen buildings and nothing referencing any of the buildings the had uncovered.
"Guys... we need to find Squiggles then we need to go.... there...." Sonny declared, motioning his his in the apparent direction they had come from.
"Let's go," was all Lathar said before brandishing his sword and heading towards the door. He hit the panel to open it and saw all three security-related bots standing directly outside. The trio simply slinked past the three bots and headed around the corner towards the Vaters.
"I'm sorry Dr Helianthus. The quarantine is not complete. They must be successfully boiled, then castrated before we may continue."
"No thank you, let's go!"
The confused bots were even more distracted by a walking worm wearing some sort of nu-metal armor walk right past them and say, "Guys wait for me!"
"SECURITY BREACH, SECURITY BREACH, SECURITY BREACH!"
Lathar managed to get the vater doors open, and Pete wildly pressed buttons and panels.
Nothing happened.
A few panicked moments later, a feminine voice echoed inside the vater.
"Hello, where can I send you today?"
Pete whispered some instructions to Sonny, and Sonny gave the proper instructions to get them up one level.
When the doors opened, they backtracked to their rope dangling through the broken window and they emerged to the outside world. Sonny looked down into the room one last time, and despite a lack of pursuit, convinced the others to get out of the area, and down by the river as quickly as possible.
Pete was the only one who protesting, stating that Daradell had investigated where the jaguars were now, and so something of importance must be down there. Sonny argued that whatever he may have found was probably in the possession of the blue-skinned dude, and it was smarter to report back their findings to Justinian.
That move proved prophetic, for as they worked their way down-river, a large explosion could be seen rocking where they had just been, a mushroom cloud towering over the area.
The returned to River Bend unmolested and met with Justinian for a debriefing. His only question after they told their tale, was if the all-knowing computer provided them with any data on disk. As the group was confused he pulled out a small container the size of an eyeglass case and inside were dozens of tiny, reflective washer-sized disks.
"These can contain quite a bit of data, although most of these are music or recordings of fancy street plays."
Justinian paid them for his services and told them to come back in two days... There was a guarantee for more work.
