Ai - Experienced Tech
Axe - Mutant Hulk
Cap'n Chang - Lucky Nomad
"Lieutenant" Vaolt - Mutant Trooper
Day 96:
In the morning, Axe discovered that all of his wounds had regenerated far faster than he had expected, which Ai chalked up to the berserker nanobots in his system. The party got back on the road early, and came across 4 chrome, skeletal humanoid robots, still a long ways away. Ai noticed that they seemed to have nozzles in their hands, and tanks in their lower torsos. Axe advanced while Chang fired a slug at the lead robot's tank, which exploded and lit the robot on fire.
The flaming bot ran at Axe while the others used their flamethrowers as best they could; one was out of fuel, and another's pilot flame was out, but even the working flamethrower and flaming robot had little effect, and they were soon cut to bits. Again, the Wizard noted that a signal had been sent to bombard the area, and the party ran down the road.
A few hours later, they saw a large cart holding a giant steel sumo robot, being towed by 4 small gnomes. The party tried to pass without conflict, but the sumo shoved Ai backwards 10' and into a tree. Axe cut it with his axe, but seemed to barely scratch its thick armour, while Chang ran around behind it, somehow turned on the oversized laser sword he had stolen from the steel samurai, and even managed to cut a deep gouge in the sumobot without disembowelling himself.
Vaolt activated his shock gloves and grabbed on to the robot, which then raised its arms as the air filled with static electricity, before discharging and overloading Axe's rocket boots, Chang's goggles and laser sword, and Vaolt's gloves, burning them all significantly. Axe was pretty much fine, and Chang was only blinded until he removed the goggles, but Vaolt's hands were both crippled.
While the melee combatants recovered from their shocking, Ai took a shot with the demoleculizer which took off half of the sumobot's torso, creating a gaping hole which Axe expanded significantly with a pair of strikes. There was no time to heal Vaolt's crippled hands, however, as the Wizard announced that the mortar tank was actually following them, and would catch up to them soon.
Chang asked the Wizard if he could make a decoy signal, similar to the robots', which would tell the tank that the party were moving somewhere else. He agreed, and split off from the party to plant the decoy, while everybody else continued down the road until they came across a group of null zombies being escorted by another 4 chrome skeleton robots, these ones more heavily armoured, and carrying advanced firearms.
Serendipitously, Chang spotted an abandoned bunker 10' off the road, and the party quickly ran inside and closed the door to hide until the patrol went past. It was unlit, but their flashlights revealed a single small room, with some old guns and ancient military canteens, as well as cans of beans which, somehow, seemed to be good enough to eat. Ai went outside and wrote "we're in the bunker to the left" on the road in Chinese, in case the Wizard came by and they didn't see him, and the party settled in for the night.
Around midnight, a gnomebot, similar to the ones that had been carting the sumobot around approached the bunker and came inside, only to be clubbed to pieces by Axe and Chang.
Day 97:
Another dose of healing goo got Vaolt's hands back in order, and, after a hearty breakfast of canned beans and stale water, the party got on the road, and wondered what had happened to the Wizard. Halfway through the day, they arrived at a river crossing, and saw 3 humans (actual humans!) working on a plesiosaur-like robot on the shoreline, with a jeep nearby.
From within the forest cover, Chang rejiggered his wrist communicator to their frequency and tried communicating with them via radio, but they clearly didn't understand him, and apparently only spoke Japanese. Annoyed, he then walked out of the forest and waved at them. They seemed unsure of how to react, but when Axe walked out of the forest, they jumped in the jeep and drove away while the plesiosaur started firing missiles at them.
Fortunately, they all made it into the heavy forest cover without being exploded, and, after Chang crawled up and confirmed that it was still patrolling, decided to go around the giant killer robot instead of fighting it. They went about 100m downstream from the robot, where Axe jumped across carrying Ai and Chang, while Vaolt swam across. Their plan seemed to work, as nobody was blown to pieces.
After finding the road again, they came across a wooden arch in front of an enormous fuzzy dome rising out of the forest, which seemed to be full of fog or mist. With the help of his fancy goggles, Chang was able to determine that it was actually a solid wall, and that the jeep had gone through and not stopped. After some debate, Chang and Axe went up to investigate it up close.
A rock that was thrown at it disappeared, but reaching a hand through just hit the solid wall, so Ai rigged up a bit of the gnomebot that they had killed last night to Chang's wrist communicator such that it would emit a signal of a normal robot. Chang went through, and arrived on the outskirts of a small, seemingly feudal Japanese farming village, with a four-storey gleaming metal factory beyond, with two steel samurai flying overhead, carrying miniguns.
The villagers, all wearing what appeared to be army uniforms as ponchos over normal clothes, immediately noticed him, and offered him a poncho, which on closer inspection, was made of some kind of titanium fabric. He tried speaking to them, but again, they seemed to speak only Japanese. Chang waved the others through, and they were all also offered ponchos, but Axe refused his, which caused the villagers to retreat into their houses.
After some cajoling, Axe put his poncho back on, and Chang was able to convince one group of villagers to let them into their house. The two groups both tried to communicate, but it was ultimately fruitless. Chang sent a signal out to the flying steel samurai requesting access to the factory, and soon a large white orb on three wheels rolled in front of the house they were in.
Chang walked outside, and it opened a small compartment, and then used a laser pointer to indicate his goggles and shotgun. After much internal debate, he gave over the gear, as well as the sawed-off shotgun that Ai was carrying that it had seen and indicated. The rest of the party left their stuff inside the house, where the locals seemed to worship it, and then followed the orbot to the factory.
Inside, they were led past many villagers assembling robots to a "classroom", containing what appeared to be scientists, but they were obviously annoyed that the party did not speak Japanese, and left. Shortly after, a Chinese-speaking android arrived, and led them further into the facility, and down ten floors in an elevator. They came out in a chrome hallway lit with neon, which they continued down to another chrome room containing another, more convincing android.
The android questioned the party as to their motives and goals, so Chang told it essentially their entire backstory, minus the Wizard, over the next half-hour. It then said that the facility could definitely make a Takahashi machine, but that it wouldn't be necessary, as the party would not be able to leave glorious Japan, the only nation to survive the apocalypse. Instead, they would have their memories wiped and would be trained to work on the robots.
While Chang looked on in abject horror that any country other than China could be considered the greatest, Ai argued that it would be more beneficial to Japan if the party served as ambassadors of its greatness to the outside world. The android agreed that that was a wonderful idea, but said that they would still need to have their brains wiped to better serve this task.
After more ultimately pointless questioning, the party left, escorted by the other android, which was now assigned to keep watch on them at all times. The party, out of ideas and unable to plan with the android present, went back to the village, picked up their gear, went to their assigned house, and, after Ai booby-trapped the doors and they set a watch schedule, went to sleep
Late at night, something opened the door and disabled the android with some kind of needle before revealing itself to be the Wizard. He had caught up to the party, and asked them what they would do next, or if they needed his assistance. With their nannybot out of commission, they came up with a plan: they would go into the factory, posing as workers, sneak out a Takahashi chip and Chang's gear on an hacked robot, and then sneak out of the village in a group of nulls that would be escorted by hacked robots.
Notes:
So long as Axe lives through a conflict at all, he's now pretty much fine within a half hour, thanks to Regeneration (1/min).
Vaolt has been missing a lot of shots lately; turns out that's because he's been wearing his taser gloves (and willingly taking a -4 to shoot) the whole time.
It was discovered that the one-person food chip that Chang stole from the abandoned house last session was not capable of producing food on its own while they were opening up 80+ year old canned beans. Apparently it needs to plug into a larger machine.
Vaolt managed to get the scientists in the classroom to understand them a bit by saying "TA-KA-HA-SHI" loudly and slowly.
The Wizard congratulated Ai on her amazing plan to sneak out the Takahashi chip from the factory, even when it was entirely Chang's idea.
XP was 7, MVP was Ai for shooting the sumo and getting them through the bubble.
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