This world is definitely... Well. 'In the middle of a war' might be an understatement. They're dropped off in a ruined city with shattered bedrock that's sliding gradually into a fluctuating, violent sea. Heavy clouds race overhead, causing frequent storms and rains feeding the massive waterfalls cascading down jagged cliffs and running over the faces of ruined skyscrapers. 

There's signs of more recent activity, though. A pretty new looking missile silo just off shore. And a distant figure of someone wrapped in a heavy cloak who turns around the edge of a building as they watch - the person in question doesn't seem to have noticed them. Flying machines patrolling the skies, though they're starting to corrode in the salty humid air. Otherwise... Wildlife, mostly. Rather abundant wildlife. 

Martin eyes the clouds and tugs the brim of his hat down to shield the brass plates of his face from the rain. 

"I hope it's not like this the whole time we're here, or I'll be solid green by the time we get off this planet." 

"Given the data I downloaded about this planet's weather patterns, the likelihood of it raining the whole time we're here is one point seven percent. The likelihood that it will rain tomorrow, however, is..." 

Ivy is very good at calculating probabilities and less good at knowing which ones will be reassuring to her crewmates. She continues to give Martin weather predictions as the two of them follow Kit through the streets. 

Kit, for his part, is following the cloaked figure, because that's the most interesting thing he's seen so far that he can get to by walking. 

The cloaked figure: seems to be heading towards a very weird sort of back alley formed by a jagged cliff and a half collapsed skyscraper...

Which contains an elevator buried in the cliff.

"Ooo, an elevator! I wonder where that goes," Kit whispers, all faux innocence. 

They'll wait for it to come back rather than try to catch up before the doors shut. 

In the long-suffering tone of someone who knows for a fact that he's going to be ignored, Martin says, "I feel compelled to remind you that it is most likely private property, and the owners may not take kindly to our intrusion." 

"Trespassing and potential violence?" (In very much the way another person might say, 'Cake and ice cream?') 

"This just keeps looking better. Of course, if you'd rather stay out here and rust..." 

As he speaks, he's looking around, trying to spot hidden cameras, speakers, or anyone else hanging around in the area. 

No one else in the area! Which is honestly a little weird. There's pretty clearly a place for someone to hang out when guarding the entrance. It's just empty. (If they look really closely there's faint signs of a struggle, though the person who went down earlier didn't seem suspicious of the lack of a bouncer.) No obvious cameras or speakers. 

Also they hear a very faint rumble and clunk that might indicate the elevator has let whoever out.

Then there's nothing to keep him from strolling up and calling the elevator.

Despite Martin's protests, the other two follow. 

The elevator seems old - it's made of metal that's started to corrode, and it jerks and shakes and groans as it's moving. But it works, and it takes them down what's probably two stories or so, opening in an underground lobby. There's electric lights, groups of human-like beings standing around talking to each other, what might be a stall to buy things from, and a few less humanoid robots are apparent...

And there's a distant sound of a fight and a crowd cheering. 

"Oh, great, an underground fighting ring!" 

"Oh. Great. An underground fighting ring." 

"Yes, we are most likely below ground level at this elevation," Ivy comments distractedly.

She wanders over to get a closer look at the nearest robot. 

Nearest robot: comes up to about waist height, with a cylindrical body and a spherical head and comically small limbs. Its eyes glow a bright yellow, and it's currently just standing there, a humanoid android looming over but not looking directly at it - the android's talking to a different android about the fights and if they need to upgrade anything or capture a new combatant.

While two of the androids nearish the entrance turn to Kit. "Where'd you capture a machine lifeform like that?" one asks, gesturing at Martin. He sounds impressed. 

Oh? Well now, isn't that a revealing assumption for them to be making?

"Would you believe, I found it hanging upside down from a rope around its foot, half covered in rust."

Martin doesn't love where this seems to be going. But since Kit's statement is technically true—he has, in fact, found Martin in that state before, and it was rather embarrassing—he doesn't speak up to correct the record just yet. 

"Hah! So you're here to enter it in the fights?"

Martin is going to hate this and it'll be hilarious. Kit can't wait to watch. 

He spreads his arms wide in an exaggerated shrug. "Why else would I be here?"

If the androids are paying attention, they might notice that his right arm (up to at least the forearm, the rest being covered by his sleeve) is made of brass clockwork. It's not identical to Martin's, but it clearly runs on the same technology. 

Eh, it's unfortunate, but sometimes you can't find a good prosthetic, let alone a new arm entirely. Honestly you're lucky when you get one that even works. They'll overlook it. 

"You'll want to talk to the receptionist over there then," one says, gesturing across the entry hall - where there is indeed a woman with bright, almost neon purple hair leaning idly on a desk. 

Though there's three androids - two men dressed pretty plainly, in faded combat fatigues with old guns slung across their backs, and one woman dressed in a rugged getup that manages to squeeze an impressive number of shades of black into one outfit. It looks better quality than the two men's clothes, an impression reinforced by the exceptionally nice white swords floating crossed behind her and the very fancy guns she has at her hip and the daggers she has strapped to her leather boots for good measure. The only thing that doesn't look quite as nice is a battered wooden mask with fading paint that she's wearing slightly askew so it hides only a third of her face. 

There's also a machine - squat, but looks bipedal - on its knees next to them, currently sobbing and saying something mostly incoherent about its mother.

The partially masked woman seems to be arguing with the other two androids. There's a quiet, intense anger building in her expression. 

Martin's attention is drawn by the crying robot. He breaks away from following Kit towards the reception desk and drifts closer.

—oh, hey, an argument. And wow, nice outfit, someone's got a sense of style.

Kit will wander in that direction as well, trying to make it look casual and like it was his idea in the first place for both of them to come over here. What are these people arguing about? 

It possibly started as some variant on 'Hey you asshole, cut it out.' May or may not have involved attempts at diplomacy or playing within the system. 

It's rapidly becoming about if machines can have 'mothers.' If their tears matter. If this is fun or not. 

The woman seems - not just angry, but conflicted - 

"It's a piece of trash," one of the men says. "We got some money off of it and the other one. And they're not useful anymore. Maybe we can get a few pennies out of scrapping them, so may as well dispose - "

- He's cut off mid-sentence as she punches him in the face. 

He goes down, hard - not just down but back, the force of her blow sending him flying across the room. He slams into one of the stalls - through it - into the wall. 

Several things sound like they just broke. He's probably one of them. 

The woman takes an almost surprised step back - 

And then the guy's friend shouts, "You sympathizer bitch - !" and tries to pull his gun. 

She punches him almost reflexivly. He goes flying into a different stall.

There's a lot of people shouting. Security closing in on her, assuming this is an argument that turned into a brawl, trying to break it up - 

She looks at them. She looks at the crying machine. She looks at other machines, cringing in corners or slouching despondently. She looks at the pathway to the still cheering - heckling - crowds. 

And something snaps.

A gun manifests in her hands in a flash of gold. She shoots down one of the security guards - spins and shoots the other - 

One bullet each, and they're dead. 

There's a lot of people reaching for weapons now. 

"Warning," says a box floating beside her. "The current course of action is not advised."

"Too fucking late." She opens fire on anyone pointing a gun at her. 

When the first shot is fired, Martin scrambles to protect the machine cowering on the floor, shielding them with his body as best he can. 

Ivy steps off to the side, finding a good vantage point from which to observe the melee. 

Kit started grinning when the first punch was thrown, and laughing in delight when it was followed up with a second. 

He doesn't bother getting himself or his crew out of the line of fire; if they get shot, they'll heal. Instead, he hangs around, tripping people who try to flee, jogging their elbows as they're about to fire so they hit their friends instead, and generally adding to the chaos. He laughs the whole time. 

She pulls out her swords once things get chaotic enough for melee - her Pod floats above her, droning out analytics on those around her, dropping some kind of forcefield to defend her from projectiles - 

She's fucking deadly, even as a girl in a tight-fitted black top and miniskirt comes running from the back rooms, a small and plain but well made sword in her hands - 

"You survived the fall of YoRHa and this is what you're doing?!?!" the woman shouts at the newcomer. "You fucking coward!" She closes - the newcomer's strong on the defense, stronger than anyone else who's been fighting - 

It buys her maybe a couple extra seconds of life, before the woman cuts through her neck and she collapses. 

"Anybody else want to fucking go?!" the woman shouts. "Any of you fucking cowards got a good excuse for this bullshit?! You're supposed to be soldiers! Where the fuck are your posts? You're as bad as the enemy!"

That enrages a few people who'd previously been inclined to get the fuck out - causes an upswell in anger, hardens resolve, and several start trying to actually coordinate mobbing her - 

She bares her teeth and restarts her dance. 

Her enemies don't last long, no matter how powerful. And machine lifeforms start attacking her too - many of them crying out in fear, begging for their lives - 

She shouts something at her Pod, and a wave of crackling energy disables her opponents - she kills any androids this took down, leaves the machines - sets off at a blinding sprint, a shock wave trailing around and behind her, to work her way through the facility and kill anyone hiding behind their slave army - 

She's quick, and the machine lifeforms very very quickly stop fighting, instead blinking in confusion and looking around. "Are - are we free?" one asks, its yellow eyes flickering.

And then the woman skids back into the room. She was gone maybe thirty seconds, definitely far less than a minute. "From these assholes," she says, stabbing the larger of her swords into the ground. Her guns and the smaller sword return to their sheathes in golden sparkles, and the Pod comes to float beside her. 

Then she turns to eye the Mechanisms - she hasn't tried to attack anyone who wasn't showing aggression to her, so she hasn't done anything to them. "Thanks for shielding him," she says to Martin, almost grudgingly. Then, to Kit: "I didn't need the assist."

"No, you did not," he says with open admiration.

"I hardly did anything, really, it just feels wrong to be standing around while there's a perfectly good brawl going on. You, though—you were incredible."

Suspicious blink. "Fighting is what I do."

"And you do it so well."

He bows. "Kit Sinistre, at your service." 

"...I'm Gunner number Thirteen. People keep calling me G13."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Gunner number Thirteen." 

Because that wasn't, exactly, an invitation to use that nickname, so until he has a better sense of how she feels about it—or gets a more explicit invitation—he'll go with the name she introduced herself by. 

"I'm Martin, and our friend over there who's forgotten to introduce herself is Ivy." 

Ivy looks up from poking at the exposed wiring sticking out of a downed android. 

"All of the bodies I have examined so far are androids," she reports. "There is a ninety-one point seven percent probability that Gunner number Thirteen is an android as well." 

She snorts. "Just ninety one point seven percent? I'm insulted. What do you think I am, a fucking machine lifeform?"

"You are highly unlikely to be baseline human, but that only rules out one possibility out of thousands. There are enough strange things in the universe that it's difficult to account for all the unknowns," Ivy explains calmly. 

She squints. "You saying you're not from this planet?"

 "Oh, right, I forgot to mention. We're space pirates! This is..." He shrugs. "Eh, let's call it a vacation." 

Martin quietly goes around the room checking whether any of the rescued machines are in urgent need of repairs, fuel, or anything else.

A bunch need repairs! Including the disassembled mother of the crying stubby that kicked all this off. She... Needs a lot of repairs.

Martin wouldn't call himself a mechanic, but he's done enough repairs on himself over the years that he knows his way around a spanner. He reassures the crying child (they might or might not be a child, but that's how he's subconsciously thinking of them) that he is going to do his very best to help their mother.

Do any of the machines want to help him find the tools and spare parts to repair this poor lady? (And if he's really lucky, one of them might have some experience with repairing other machines and will know what to do.)

...The person with the most experience on repairs seems to be the grouchy android, actually, alongside her Pod.

"Don't bother fucking around with limbs and crap on any destroyed units," she tells him. "That's what maintenance's for. Focus on salvaging the core and the primary memory circuits. And get anyone else ambulatory, and get weapons functional on the goliaths and bipeds. We need to move asap."

Sure, Martin will go along with this plan. If the machines seem alright with it, that is. 

They seem to be? On the other hand, they seem to be mostly just doing what Gunner no. 13 says to do. 

It could be that it's a genuinely good plan, that they're scared of her, or that they're so used to taking orders that they'll do whatever they're told. There's no real way to tell when he can't read their body language yet.

For lack of a better plan, he follows instructions. 

Ivy helps while asking lots of questions! What does this do, why are they saving this part and not that one, how did these parts get damaged like that, what does that do...

Kit wanders around poking things and getting in the way. A few times, Martin asks him to hold something steady or pull the other end of something. He helps without hesitation, for all that he rolls his eyes and complains about it every time. 

For Martin - seems to be a combination of things. A bit of the first, a bit of the second, a lot of 'She's strong, so she's in charge' which seems distinct from the second thing in some important ways. They definitely respect her already, far more than fear her, and the child machine she initially leapt to the defense of has a clear and rapidly developing case of hero worship. (This is not hard to miss. The machines are talking nearly constantly about how 'cool' and 'strong' and 'awesome' she is. There's a few whispered recountings of the fight in amid all the order following, with her awesomeness getting embellished by the minute, including a lot of machines telling varingly implausible stories about times they've seen her fight before. One says she fought the entire Forest Kingdom and killed everyone inside the boundaries (a second machine asks how it knows that if no one survived; the first gets flustered about that); another says she beat up everyone in the desert and declared herself King of all machines; a fourth says she beat up all the YoRHa androids too; a fifth says she totally killed Adam and Eve (a sixth protests that that was someone else; the fifth points out she has the right swords. This sets off a pretty large debate); a seventh says she killed five goliaths...)

For Ivy - "It's a core, it provides energy and shit and holds the personality, but we need the memory circuits to actually load someone up. These parts got damaged by being hit." (She can identify exact attacks that cause exact damage, but getting her to is like pulling teeth.) "That's a networking node, disable it." 

(For Kit - 'helps without hesitation but bitches about it' seems to describe her, too.)

Kit is maybe a little distracted from being an asshole by trying to eavesdrop on all the stories. 

Only a little, though. He can multitask. 

At least Kit's in the sort of mood where his multitasking includes occasionally being helpful. Martin will take his blessings where he can find them. 

Eventually, Martin looks around for the next machine in need of his help and doesn't find one.

"What now?" 

"Now we march." Then to the machines: "Form up! I want flyers screening - you three on scouting ahead, stay in relay. Two goliaths in front, one at each of the division points, bipeds on flanks, injured in the middle - "

And a couple more instructions - looks like her plan has her ranging around but defaulting to the rear. She's not including the Mechanisms in her marching order - they can do whatever, they're not under her command. 

She gives directions, too - they're heading to a closer but different group of machines, 'Pascal's Village.' Seems Gunner number 13 contacted him somehow without any noticeable external effects. They'll rendezvous with her people there. 

It's nice of her to acknowledge that the Mechanisms can do whatever they want. They'd have done that regardless, but the thought counts for something.

What Kit wants to do is walk amongst the machines and ask them for their life stories and any interesting rumours they've heard. He's not pushy about it, just generally friendly and enthusiastic. 

Ivy has a seemingly endless stream of questions about how machines work! She will ask them of anybody who's willing to provide answers, including Gunner no. 13 if she'll tolerate this. 

Martin walks quietly with the most injured machines, offering support to anyone who has trouble keeping pace. 

Gunner no. 13 will not, in fact, tolerate questions. She runs off to 'scout' when approached. 

Most of the machines don't really know much! About how machines work, but also about anything in general. Most of them are pretty young, created within the last year or two, but a few are older - especially the rustier and odder goliaths. All of them were created in a factory. None of them are connected to the machine lifeform network anymore, most because the androids forcibly disconnected them at capture. But a few disconnected before that - the child machine Gunner no. 13 was protecting is one of those, he and his mother were apparently one part of a group of peaceful disconnected machines - the very same one they're rendezvousing with. 

"Ah, so you're going to be our native guide! Is it a nice place? Nice people?" 

"Uncle Pascal is the nicest! Most people are pretty nice, Little Sister takes my stuff sometimes but Big Sister always makes her return them and then she apologizes because she didn't realize it was mine. It's a really big village in the forest! It's very cool there which is nice. It gets hot here sometimes..."

"Is too much heat bad for you? I know I have problems if it's too hot or too cold." 

The cold is worse and no, he is not going to think about that right now, thank you very much. 

"It makes it hard to think!"