"...Somewhere I can be important," Bellona Three says. "And learn new things and all, but - I want to do things no one else could do." She's quiet for a moment, before: "I want to be unique - actually unique, not just someone that everyone merely thinks is probably unique." (She's been the most bothered by having other versions of Bellona.) "And... I don't think I want to get dropped on another version of El?"

Bellona One just hums. "I'd like to be important too, but - it's not as big a deal? And I want somewhere with a lot of options, I think - I... I want to date around, kinda." Separating from El felt very awkwardly like a breakup, for all that they weren't dating. "Somewhere with way more advanced science than our own home, too - I want to see what happens when everyone knows all the stuff Bellona Two traded Truth for." Also so she can learn it herself. 

"Actually unique, huh. How do you feel... about being the only living human?"

To Bellona One, "High tech, lots of cute girls. I think I know just the place."

"Huh. ...Positive, so long as there's a few nonhuman people around," Bellona Three says. "Though maybe not too many?"

Bellona One just giggles at Zera's description of her world desires. 

"All right. Hang on." She banks into a dive and they emerge into a ruined city, cracked concrete towers and bent steel ribs, fading into the tangle of an old-growth forest that is slowly but surely marching to the city center.

Zera sets them down in what was once an atrium for some more expansive building near the edge of the city, the long-since shattered glass dome roof allowing easy access. Some small group of animals bolts further into the underbrush.

Woah.

- It's weirdly beautiful, actually. Bellona Three hops off Zera and looks around in fascination.

There are the remains of a second story to the building around what's left of the perimeter shell, and a few half-collapsed stairs going up. Faint rushing water in the distance.

"The natives do exist, I promise. They can be a little touchy, though, and I don't have any pre-existing relationships here."

"I'm fine wandering until I find someone," Bellona Three promises. 

"All right. Call my name loudly if you ever want to leave. I won't be watching, but my ana-self can pick up on something like that."

She nods. "Will do."

"Good luck!" Unless Bellona One has any goodbyes left to make, they'll be leaving now.

The two wave at each other, but that's it. 

Then dragon and other girl disappear.

Leaving Bellona apparently all alone.

She's going to explore the ground level in the atrium first - she already saw the area from above when flying in, so she doesn't feel an immediate need to climb to the second floor - before looking for an exit. 

Based on the layout, this may have been a market or shopping center of some kind when it was still inhabited.

She sees two easy exits: one deeper into the forest and one closer to the sound of water.

She got a good look at the open area across the ravine when they were flying in, but the forest was more impenetrable to her - she'll go that way first. 

The forest is deep, dark, and slowly coming back to life in the wake of the dragon's departure. She can hear birdsong starting back up, and the chirruping of miscellaneous insects. There's a suggestion of a path leading from the mall into the verdant depths.

Standing nonchalantly in the shade of a thick oak by the side of said path is a dilapidated vending machine.

- That's very weird and out of place, going by the degredation of other structures - she walks up to it and touches it to analyze its contents. What exactly is this thing made of, if it's lasted when the building didn't - ?

It is made of thin shell of rusting steel over a highly advanced nanofiber composite weave, and an internal reservoir filled with various alloys and plastics and odd tools that she can only liken to those used in automail surgery, only they're not designed for anything external to manipulate.

Some kind of commerce thing associated with the mall - ? If you could extend automail concepts to automated construction, something like this could be used to create customized items on demand perhaps... The exterior of the weird box does seem to have some kind of interface - she can't really tell if it's meant directly for consumers or for the backend of some kind of manufacturing shop...

The interior doesn't seem to have degraded at all, which is fascinating - why have the exterior be more reactive steel, though, if they were capable of this kind of material science...

No helpful explanatory placards, unfortunately. No sign of any other supporting infrastructure in the immediate area either, come to think of it.

Officially weird!

She touches her hands together and then the box, aiming to alchemize the front open without damaging the contents. 

As the sparks from her reaction zap through the casing, an exclamation mark inside a triangle appears on the interface panel and a mechanical voice says "Alert: unauthorized access detected" and a quickly ballooning yellowy-orange field of some kind pushes her hands back and then her away entirely.

!!!

Unfortunately, she was in the early phases of deconstruction, immediately before instituting a controlled reaction - so as she's pushed back, her nascent reaction flares blindingly bright, loops in on itself, and kind of just. Minorly distintegrates the front of the box. 

Bellona very intelligently drops to the ground, rapidly throwing up a wall of hardened earth between herself and the runaway deconstruction, just on the off chance it explodes. 

No explosion, but yes toxic-smelling sort of burn-y odor.

...Oops.

She'll stand so she can evaluate the damage, and also start moving away from the odor - probably not great to breathe in. 

Looks like some of the compounds in that reservoir don't especially like to be exposed to oxygen. The whole thing's kind of melting into a sad waxy lump.

...She should not get close enough to the toxic-smelling lump to analyze it, at least not without creating and testing some kind of breathing aparatus - actually, she can make a basic gas mask very quickly, to enable such poking before it finishes melting. 

She can get a sense of some of the interesting chemistry going on there! Maybe even without losing the tips of her fingers!

It's going to be no good for the local ecosystem, that much is for sure.

She'll create a protective glove for her flesh hand - the automail should be fine - and after a quick analysis she'll alchemize the lot into something harmless - hydrogen and oxygen naturally can be clumped into water, the excess hydrogen can pretty much just react with oxygen in the air, it's fine, it'll do that on its own if she purifies it and sets it on fire - metals she sorts out by potential danger, uses the numerous carbon atoms to wrap anything deeply iffy in layers of diamond, any radioactive atoms will be a pain in the ass but she can manage those fine with a casing of alternating layers of diamond and water - most metals can just be turned into rocks by attaching them to carbonate or carbonate hydroxide - which she has the atoms for in abundance, though heavy metals will have to be prevented from just leeching out later -

If she gets into the chemistry enough, she may not notice someone else showing up to the scene of the crime.

"Yo, what the fuck are you doing," comes a voice from above.

She looks up - blinks - one of the natives, clearly, is her entire body automail - she's got a few missing skin panels so possibly - 

"Uh, I kind of accidentally destroyed it, and then I didn't want it damaging the local environment so I'm neutralizing the more dangerous compounds."

"Fuckin' prodigy of destruction, huh. Didn't they tell you not to mess with the YoRHa shit, kid?"

"YoRHa???"

Bellona's interlocutor descends from her perch in the tree (by doing a completely unnecessary frontflip down) and stalks closer. The underbody below the missing panels of skin is the same black as the remnants of cloth that cling to her torso. Combined, the effect looks something like tattered lingerie. A wickedly sharp sword hovers just behind her back, a ring of the same yellowy-gold circling around a weirdly complicated-looking hilt.

"Yeah, YoRHa, the self-important space commandos. I thought you were Resistance. Who the hell are you?"

"Bellona Elric - I'm not from this universe actually, and I got dropped here with, uh, kind of minimal explanation."

"What the fuck. I do not get paid enough for this shit."

"You're- human?"

She pulls her gas mask away - she's neutralized the toxins anyways - and smiles a bit sheepishly. "Yeah."

"Aw, hell."

"What's wrong?"

"People are going to flip their shit when they find out and it'll be a huge pain in the ass."

She probably should've guessed it'd be something like this when Zera said she'd be the 'only living human,' oops. 

"I'm not really... Politics." Being the Herald of Andraste sucked enough, especially after the Truth took her hand and her ability to close the stupid Fade tears with it, meaning she was both a figure of tremendous religious focus and an abject failure who'd given up on even trying to save her timeline in favor of saving a girl she hadn't even met for the sake of a timeline she'd never see - 

Annnd now she's sad. 

"Well, I'm not about to tell anyone. You don't either, problem solved."

"Thanks." Might not work for long, but hopefully she'll have enough time to get adjusted to this world. 

"...Gonna keep wandering around breaking stuff, then?"

She laughs a bit. "I just wanted to know what it was! But I'll try to be more careful, especially if poking things will get attention."

Okay great now just walk away walk away walk away walk away-

"Got a plan for where to go?" FUCK

"...I was just going to wander."

"That can be dangerous. What with the machine lifeforms."

"Machine lifeforms?"

"Full metal assholes. Aliens sent 'em to take over the world and kill all the humans."

"Do you know why?"

"Nope."

Nod. "War doesn't usually make much sense." Especially when it's actually an excuse to build a giant nationwide array in order to obtain ultimate power - probably not relevant here. 

"Just have to kill them before they kill you."

"Sometimes! I've been in some weirder fights, though."

"Then you need to hit harder."

"Not always quite that simple. Gotta figure out who to even hit first, some of the time."

"Whoever you don't like the look of to start, then go from there."

Giggle! "Works, except for when you initially liked someone..." (She'd always been bothered by the Fuhrer, sure, but Dante had struck her as trustworthy and likeable.)

"Hit them harder to make up for it."

"A plan I can get behind."

"Yeah. So."

"I'll go with you, if you want."

"Just wandering? You don't have anywhere specific to be?"

"I kill machines on a freelance basis these days."

"Then you accompanying me sounds good."

Why does she do these things to herself.

"Great."

She straightens. "Anything interesting in this immediate area?"

"Depends what you mean by interesting. There's usually one the big fuckers standing around the other side of the building by the bridge. Those are fun to kill. Heard about some kind of machine kingdom cult deeper in the forest, too."

"Cult? Like, do they worship something - ?"

"Their king, or something."

"So they're intelligent, separately from the aliens?"

"If you can call it that. Independent action, sure."

"Huh."

"Is it possible to talk to them?"

"Why the fuck would you want to?"

"Curiosity?"

"Pf. Whatever. Usually they only make sense by accident."

"As a scientist, it's important to verify things for myself!"

"Uh huh."

"If I'm going to pin one of them down... It'd be easier to start with one that's on its own, probably."

"Smaller ones travel in packs, mostly."

"The one on the other side of the building doesn't, though?"

Shrug. "It's like fifteen feet tall."

"I've fought bigger! But if it's inclined to attack first, ask questions later, that would be more difficult to disable carefully..."

"It's aggressive, yeah."

Hum. "Honestly I could handle a crowd fine, so long as they aren't flying or holding guns... Just like, sink them into the ground. Talking to them's most annoying if they're shooting at me." Nowadays. Being friendly was so much easier when she wasn't squishy.

"Flyer and gun models do exist. And flyers with guns."

Thoughtful hum. "Can scout out a group before deciding if I'm going to open with negotiations, then?"

"It's so much easier to just jump in and kill them."

"But then where's the sense of adventure?"

"What do you need that for?"

"Driving scientific discoveries! And, of secondary importance, having fun."

"That shit sounds like it's outside my programming."

"Sapient beings are defined by the existence of free will, and you seem pretty sapient to me."

"That is also outside my programming."

"Then what's in your programming?"

"Killing shit."

"Nothing else?"

"Pretty much all I need."

"Yet you're helping me."

"Don't- make a big deal out of it."

"...I won't. I promise."

"You want to go look at the big fucker?"

"Might as well start there!"

Back through the ruined mall and to the other exit. Bellona's companion seems to know the way pretty well, at least.

Helpful! 

Bellona falls into an alert silence as they move, given the fact they're going into a potential combat. 

There's a short grassy sward before the land dips a little to a ravine with a wood and rope bridge spanning it. The big machine is standing on the grass ahead and to their left, apparently idle, staring upwards and occasionally shrugging its massive arms.

Does it seem to have any kind of guns? 

It does not. This model tries to smash, squash, or squish you directly.