Chief Engineer Shen

    Although such things didn’t exist in his time, he’s not in the least surprised by the contraption due to his experiences in the grail war. However, he has no idea as to what the piece of technology was doing, and he’s somewhat inclined to destroy it; not out of malice but for precautions sake. Quirking a brow as it emitted lights and made noises, it’s only saving grace is when it’s presumed owner makes an appearance.

    “I would keep such things to yourself, lest you wish to find it in pieces” he suggests with a light sigh, “someone with less patience than myself would not hesitate to destroy it.” Assuming she’d mind losing it, whatever it was but he can guess it had performed some type of scanning; what for? He cannot say.

The scanning protocol doing it’s job, Lily wasn’t surprised to see someone when she walked around the corner. She offered an apologetic look towards them. “Sorry about that,” she said, “easy to forget someone might want to do that here...but you’re right.”

Her drone then shut off its lights, and buzzed back over to Lily’s side, hovering about head height.

     She was sitting on her heels out of the way of foot traffic, resting her legs before another long excursion out in no mans land to do more mapping, when suddenly some nobody came to her. “Ah, another military type” She thought after a brief look. “You don’t need to know much aside from you being stuck here, and you’re on your own, but that’s completely by choice of course.” She scooted herself over to make room on the wall. “Come on, let’s sit and chat, I’m about to go over my map before I head out anyway. It’d be good for you to copy it down since you’re new.” 

Lily shrugged. The matter of being stuck here wasn’t too big a deal to her. Sure, she does miss her friends and colleagues, but it could be worse. They’d survive without her, and she would without them. At the invitation, she nodded and took a seat next to the other, thankful for both their offer and the ability to rest her legs. “I figured I’m stuck, but being stuck here didn’t seem so bad at first glance. Was wondering if it was hiding something.”

“I can show you,” That way, she can stay around longer. What a loser, right? Anyway, the albino smiles and leans forward, “Is that okay with you~?” Luckily for this lady, Kachina actually LIVES in District Alpha. She can definitely show her what they look like and this way, maybe even become awesome friends!

“More than okay with me,” Lily smiled and held out one of her hands towards the other. “Lily. Lily Shen. I appreciate the help, really.” It’s not like she trusted every stranger she met in the city, but she felt she could let her guard down a lot more than back home. Even though XCOM won, you never know who wishes they hadn’t. But none of that mattered in Hive City.

@gremlinengineer​

    “Hey don’t touch that,” taking strides to pick up the Upa robot that had escaped her grasp upon her arrival to…wherever this was. She’d been looking for it for over an hour and had finally located it, although it wasn’t alone; someone was poking at it. Wrapping her arms around the device in an almost protective manner she eyes the young woman with some suspicion. “You weren’t doing anything strange were you? This thing only has basic functions, you wouldn’t get much from it,” assuming she’d been trying to dismantle it or something. Kurisu was one to often jump to conclusions when it came to other people and their intentions, but not when it came to theories and the things that intrigued her.

Well, it’s not like she expected to be able to have that thing forever. Though her initial reaction was to be defensive over the accusation of doing ‘anything strange’ to it, she had to admit, from an outsider’s perspective, she must’ve looked a little bit sketchy.

“A resistance… To free the world from what exactly? You must come from a war-torn land, am I right to assume that much?” with curiosity she peered closer for a better look at the tattoo.

“Hmm. And the language is different from the one you speak. That is interesting.”

“From an alien species. Long story short, they took over the planet a couple decades ago, and I helped kick ‘em out. I’m kind of a big deal back home.” She spoke that last bit in a humorous tone; she didn’t have that big of an ego.

“Um…yes, they are real,” she said, a bit uncomfortable as the other person came close to observe them. Once again Bunny had to wonder if a human like person wearing animal ears was a truly uncommon sight. Everyone in Ever After didn’t bother batting an eye at her ears, choosing instead to be amazed every time she transformed. The same was true of her friends and family in Wonderland. As a result she never saw how it might be unusual to others.

“I am a rabbit, after all.” The next White Rabbit, to be precise.

So they are real, then. Lily wasn’t sure whether or not she should be more interested or, to be honest, slightly deterred. She leaned back again, giving the other some of their personal space back. What the girl said next didn’t make things easier for Lily to understand either.

“A rabbit.” she repeated, skeptical of the claim. “I can believe the ears are real, but you look pretty human to me. More or less.”

“Maybe you can help me out here,” she said casually, taking a moment to adjust the sleeves of her gloves. “So there are districts here, I’m told? How can I get to them?”

At first glance, Lily almost dismissed the girl as just another child. But when they turned, it was hard to miss the giant key on their back. The kind of which she’d find on the kind of toys she played with when she was little. She must be some sort of robot, right? Despite that, she still seemed ‘young,’ and Lily couldn’t help but feel concerned about her. With her drone following next to her, she made her way over to the little girl.

“You... have bunny ears. Those... are those real?”

Her curiosity made itself evident with the tone of her voice. It was a mix of curiosity and a little bit of wonder. She didn’t feel any shame in leaning forward to get a closer look at the girls ears. If they were fake, they were the most convincing fake bunny ears she’d seen. Lily imagined that, if it was really desired, XCOM could genetically alter someone to grow bunny ears... but why would anyone want that in the first place?

“Well, I can tell you one thing,” Lily mused, loud enough for the other to hear, “you wouldn’t be easy to miss on a battlefield.”

Referring, obviously, to his bright jacket and floral pattern shirt. Compared to Lily’s own outfit, which consisted of black, dark greens, and a muted orange... she wouldn’t want to be responsible for his life.

But, then again, she’d never have to be. She’s not a commander. Nor is this city a battlefield (as far as she knew.)

In front of Diarmuid from around a corner would fly a drone, coming to a stop a few feet from him. It would pause, raise itself a foot or two higher, then initiate its scanning protocol. The drone illuminated the area with blue light, with a grid on the ground and a spinning blue line similar to what a submarine radar would look like.

“You don’t look too happy to be here.” Lily said, noting the other’s expression–or lack-thereof, in this case. “Why’s that? Anything I should know about this city?”

Of course, as an XCOM member, her top priority was intel. Nothing right now would be as useful as gathering important intel about the situation she found herself in. She’s in a completely foreign place, with potentially foreign threats. She could take care of herself, but there’d be no backup from the XCOM project should she find herself in trouble.

“So,” she started, crossing her arms. “How long has this place existed, anyway?”

You’d think a city that kidnapped people from who knows how many worlds would have some sort of reputation. But she’d never heard of it, and she had accessed to some of Earth’s most classified information.

Maybe, Lily thought, the reason it had no reputation is because no one ever came back from it to talk about it. That’d be... concerning, at the very least.

@gremlinengineer

“Often, tattoo is used to display one’s status or simply for decoration. What might yours be for?”

“Symbol of the resistance. I was apart of a group fighting to free the world.” She shifted her arm a bit to show off the tattoo better.

But being able to just pick someone up and plop them down in a new city, full of hundreds of others who were also taken from their own worlds (and from the looks of some of them, some of their worlds were obviously much different) was something else entirely.

But... aside from that, the city itself didn’t seem to impressive. Not anymore so than the cities ADVENT had created, as much as she loathed to admit it.

Adjusting would be relatively simple, she thought. It’s a city; she was used to those. She still had her GREMLIN (what would she do without ROV-R? Adorable little combat drone.). They even gave her an apartment. How nice of them.