She lands in... Probably this is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, what with all the ruined buildings slouching against each other, the moaning wind heavy with sand (that's covering the ground and some of the ruined buildings), the very aesthetic rusted playground...

It's quiet, except for the wind and the rustle of sand. At least at first. 

"Very different aesthetic here. I like it though. Hard to tell if the locals intend for flight so I guess I'll walk for now."

She picks a direction and starts walking. She looks around with a big smile on her face.

- At which point she hears a not-very-distant low boom and some rumbling. And then some whizzing, and some whistling, and some crackling pops.

Well that's the direction the fun is then isn't it. She starts running in that direction.

She finds: 

• A collection of assorted robots (metal a dark brown interrupted by corrosion and old scratches), in various states of 'blown up'

• Not all of whom are entirely dead

• And one of whom is being apparently vivisected by a smiling humanoid. 

"Stop screeching so much, I didn't blow up your core," she informs the screaming robot as she starts hooking up wires from a device of some kind to assorted points in its chest cavity. "Though if you want to like complain I need more data on speech..."

"Stooop!" one of the other not entirely dead robots wails. 

"There we go!" chirps the possibly insane humanoid. "Great data, keep going."

Hmm, usually the less numerous side is the champion side. "Hello there. Do you need any help?" She'll take out her axe at a small size, only half her height.

" - What are you?" She abandons her current task to look at Akira.

"Usually I would say I'm a helper but I'm not quite sure what I'll be around here yet. I wasn't quite planning to be here and I don't know how things work around here enough to know."

"Wellll if you don't know what you are you should let me take you apart. For science!"

"You know plenty of people have tried nobody has ever succeeded. When someone hits me enough I just disappear and reappear a while later. Come to think of it I don't know what will happen if I disappear here. Will I show up back home or will I show up again here? Interesting question... I'm not eager to test it though because home is boring at the moment."

"Hmmm, good point... I might have to put you through other tests first! Though do you know what the threshold is for 'hits you enough?' I might be able to get some good data before hitting that. Like this guy," she steps on the vivisected robot currently trying to crawl away from her, "Isn't dead yet."

"I don't know how strong weapons are around here. I know how many attacks it takes with weapons I'm familiar with but I don't have a local point of reference."

"Sounds like something to experiment with!"

She tilts her head both ways. "You know what, sure you can hit me once with whatever as long as it's not like a finisher attack if you have that sort of thing around here."

Hmmm given what the ideal tools for investigating someone's internal mechanisms are, she's going to start with the good old fallback of 'a knife.' (She's fast and strong, and it hits a lot harder than a knife should, but it's definitely not a finishing move.)

The knife feels like it's meeting resistance as it passes through her but when Jackass pulls back there's not even a scratch. "I think I could take about a hundred hits like that. More if I was actually trying to protect myself."

" - You don't bleed."

"Not usually, no. Some special weapons back home make me bleed."

"That's so cool!!! I want to investigate more, even if it's sad I can't take you apart..."

"I like your attitude. Experimenting with things is fun. It's also an important thing for champions to be willing to do."

"So you'll stick by me?"

"Sure, like I said you're fun."

"I'll finish getting my data on these guys first, then!"

"Alright." She settles in to watch, trying to understand the purpose of what Jackass is doing. Maybe there's some sort of investigation mechanic?

Seems to be! She's got a couple of small machines she records things with or hooks up to the robots, and after she finishes off the two living ones she goes and grabs a pickup truck. She drives it right up to the edge of the killing field and starts putting assorted robot parts on it, in between all the analysis.

Definitely seems to be some sort of analysis mechanic. She'll have to be careful about what weapons she shows off she wouldn't want to mess up local balance too much.

She finishes with the efficiency of someone who does this a lot, then stretches out her spine and arms and says, "That's that! C'mon, let's get going."

"Sounds good, where to now? I'm guessing we're going to a base of some sort?" She walks over to the passenger door of the truck.

"I'm gonna introduce you to the Resistance."

"Ah yes, the scrappy underdogs fighting against overwhelming odds. That's a classic for a reason."

" - Hm?"

"Well, it's always important for there to be a challenge. If victory is inevitable what's the point?"

"...On the one hand, yeah beating things up is fun. On the other, I'd prefer the kind of challenge that's like, flying an exploratory FTL ship around surveying stars." And, much more quietly, "Well, for everyone else's sake..."

"Oh, certainly lots of things can be enjoyable. I just get the impression this world is focused on combat. And the risk of failure adds a lot to the experience there."

"War's been going nearly six and a half millennia now. Some people are sick of it, I guess."

"That's a long time... I think the longest time a champion has spent back home before giving up is 10 years. How long have you been here?"

"...A while." Shrug. "It's impolite to ask a lady her age."

"... Have you been here your whole life?" Is she a character or just very committed to her role...

"Been outright off planet a couple times. Been to the Kingdom of Night and even properly into the Kingdom of Day - we're in Twilight now, which is where I'd recommend staying - and I've only been in this region for what, thirty years? At least this most recent stretch..." Shrug. "A lot happens here, so I swing through pretty often even when I'm mostly elsewhere."

(She's speaking casually, lightly, like it's all one big joke... But Akira gets an odd sense of being watched from her.)

Akira doesn't mind, people trying to puzzle her out is fun, most people just dismiss her as an NPC. "Oh cool, it sounds like this world is really big then. Mine is either a lot smaller or absurdly large depending on whether you count variants as different worlds."

"You're not from this system, huh?"

"I don't think I'm from anywhere you could get by moving in a straight line."

"Then where are you from?"

"That depends how specific you want to be, the latest variant I spent time in was The Cloudy Expanse of Wings, the corner of variant space me and my siblings spend time in is called the Realm of The Siblings and the entire collection of all the variants is called Terraria."

"Haven't heard of it!"

Akira drops slightly but immediately perks back up. "You should try visiting sometime whenever you finish with this world, or if you want a break I'm not sure how that part works for champions."

"I'll see what I can do. But it's a bit of a long haul, here."

"It certainly sounds that way." Akira stares into the distance a little. She's pretty unsure what's going on. Her two best guesses at this point are that Jackie is a method actor and this is a persistent state world or Jackie is an NPC unaware of the nature of the world.

"We've been making progress in the war..." she says, staring ahead as she whips the truck between buildings, along long-destroyed roads. "But the enemy's making progress, too. Hard to tell who's advancing faster, sometimes." And, under her breath: "Or who's losing slowest."

They break out of the group of buildings, into a wide sandy stretch. There's a cliff with a tunnel ahead of them, but no way they're getting the truck up that...

So Jackass turns and heads for a narrow crack in the rock. "We'll start picking up speed a little bit from here," she says, hitting the accelerator. "You know we've got units now that could outrun this truck? Could just jump up that cliff, too. And they wouldn't get too overheated, though they'd have trouble hauling all this back..." Heavy sigh. "And now we're starting to see enemy units that none of the rest of us relics can keep up with."

"Ohhh," Akira breathes. So this isn't a champion Jackass is a helper like her but probably one more constrained by champion mechanics... maybe she's a support type champion? "It sounds like that might lead to the stalemate breaking one way or another."

"In our favor, hopefully." Still, she's staring ahead, her grip on the steering wheel tight.

Akira is quiet for a time... it's clear that her casual approach to things is bothering her companion. "I'm sorry if I'm being too casual... I'm not used to things mattering... Where I come from it's pretty easy to fix any mistakes you make. I don't think I was quite internalizing how it seems like that's less the case here."

"...You're fine with me. I'm usually pretty casual." She sends a grin Akira's way, her posture relaxing. "Stuff's permanent here for most people - usually not for YoRHa, the new units, though they'll get pissy if you make them 'waste resources' because you talked one of their units into participating in some research..."

"Research like how you wanted to take me apart?"

"Some androids have a proper respect for the advancement of science."

"If your people built them I wouldn't expect taking them apart to yield new knowledge. Am I missing something?"

"YoRHa's the same side as me, but for some reason they didn't put me on that weapon development committee. And the group they did put on it are very sloppy about their stress testing, just as a professional opinion."

"Ah, that makes sense, my siblings and I have had to change the things we've made so many times when they didn't work the way we expected."

"I know they've done like, three versions of YoRHa soldiers? And YoRHa are already a next gen built on lessons from earlier androids. But they could've done so much more... And could've told me what they're doing. I can exploit vulnerabilities with the best of them."

"There's always room to improve." She agrees cheerfully.

"But improvements are better when I'm on the case."

She giggles. "I wouldn't know but you certainly sound confident."

"Want me to show you what I can do?"

"As long as it doesn't involve trying to take me apart."

"Machine lifeforms only this time! Promise."

"Sounds fun then. There's still so much I don't know about this world."

"Awesome! I just need to find a good group then..."

"Oh, you're going to take apart more of the robots from the opposing faction? Sounds fun. Maybe I should test how effective some of my weapons are."

"Sounds like educational fun!"

"It does." She bounces a little in her seat.

She giggles. "Any sensory powers in your lineup for scanning for enemies?"

"Not really, most of my exotic senses were from being tied into how things worked back home. With some work I might be able to calibrate my entity detector but it won't be able to tell me what things are if I don't tell it first and I don't think durability here is enough like home to repurpose my senses for that."

"Awww..."

"It just means I'll be relying on your extensive expertise."

"I'll be nice and share some of it, even."

"And it will be greatly appreciated."

She laughs. "Let's get going, then."

"Okay."

Zoom! Off into the desert! 

This place is apparently pretty dense with enemies, who are in nice polite clusters far enough away from each other that Jackass can pick some off with a sniper riffle without the other groups pivoting to attack her. 

... well if they're showing off sniper rifles. Akira has one of those too. It's substantially weaker than Jackass's. When she notices she asks, "Is your gun representative? I have stronger weapons but they tend to be a lot showier."

"Heh, nah, showy's common. My original build was for intel stuff though, and intel work nowadays is sneakier - I've upgraded and all, but I still prefer not letting my enemy shoot back. Though if you can play the tank, go right ahead." She shoots another machine. "I'm one of the best snipers you'll meet though, and my equipment's top of the line - this gun doesn't look like much, but I'm swapping between nano-tip, explosive, EMP, corrosion, and energy rounds. Which the fanciest dedicated gun units usually have like, one of bullets or energy rounds and only one or two special attacks - you're doing about normal gun damage."

"Huh, guns in particular do less damage here? Or do you just mean ranged weapons in general? And how literal is the definition of ranged? I have swords that shoot waves of energy."

"Most of it has to do with their armor - even a pretty cheap machine gun can pulverize un-reinforced concrete and, like, trees. The armor's harder against sudden point pressure, but weaker against sustained and sliding pressure. And against being blown up! And shockwaves work a lot better than bullets, but - man, if you want to see what weapons can really do, I should drag one of those YoRHa out here. 13B's one of their highest end units, and she's got a sword that'll slice a goliath spider in half. A shockwave won't do much more than dent a goliath's main body; I'd usually just blow up their limbs and then wedge them somewhere so they can't angrily roll at me - but a shockwave from a sword like hers is plenty enough to kill multiple of these little guys in one swing."

"Huh, so armor is much more important here. I don't think a lot of my more dangerous weapons are safe to use from inside a car. Maybe this." She appears a rather large pink sword and flicks the tip in the direction of the enemies. There's a sound of a meow and a small cat trailing rainbows is launched towards the enemies at a speed much slower than bullets occasionally bouncing off the ground and releasing a sparkling explosion when it does. This is considerably more effective.

"What in the world?" She starts laughing. "Holographic weapon? You've got style."

"I just call it magic. I don't think there's any holograms involved."

"Like, old world magic - ?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"Best we can tell - though a lot of archives are fucked - this planet didn't have magic like, ten thousand years ago? Magic was introduced when two beings came over from another world, and it's still pretty rare - we don't know a ton of things about that other world but for whatever reason we've settled on calling it 'the old world.'"

"Oh. That's interesting, what sorts of things does the local magic do?"