Newbie Mission

Misaki asks Marshmallow to circle the area around the truck wreckage and crater, and jumps back into the van.

"Ugh, it doesn't look good," the teen speaks over Mochi's speakers. "There's nothing visible in the crater, and there are tracks leading away. The tracks lead to a wreckage of a truck, where there's all this super grossness."

Misaki describes the carnage and the tracks to Kuroi Hitsuji as she saw it. She continues driving towards the crater.

"There's a chance that the object, whatever it is, is still buried there, or it's still in the truck though."

"Maybe we should walk the last 150 meters, Don't want whatever happened to that truck to happen to your van and our only wheels away from here"
Well of course it isn't going to be this easy, I was just getting my hopes up of an early and easy payday, Kuroi smiles dejected.
"I suggest we look at the crater first and then check out that wreckage, did you bring a shovel?"
Kuroi makes sure that his weapons are ready, for what wrecked the truck. Takes his ballistic mask on, and adjusts it, makes sure the filters in the gasmasks are fresh.
"Alright, I'm ready."
Draws his Savalette Guardian with his left hand and takes a small ampule from his breast pocket into his right hand.

"That's a good idea. I don't want Mochi to get hit with lasers," Misaki replied. In the corner of her vision, she brought up the overhead views of the scene with the Dalmatian and Optic X-2 overhead. When the van got close to 150 meters, she stopped.

Misaki's body stirred as she exited VR mode, and she squinted as her cybereyes adjusted to the lighting condition. She cycled through low light and thermographic vision as she looked out of the van ahead of her.

After that, Misaki stood up, walked to the back of the van, and opened the doors, letting a tracked ground drone out of the back. She patted the drone on a panel on top.

"I'll follow you with Pretzel," Misaki said. She went back to the driver's seat and plugged her datajack in.

Misaki jumped into VR hot sim mode into the Doberman tracked drone. It rolled around and appeared in front of the van.

"Wsup," the drone said.

As the van stopped Kuroi exited it, scanned the nearby area with his eyes, as an Oni he had a natural affinity to low light.
Kuroi tries to cover Misaki as she is preparing her drone, the drone was a tracked thing, pretty smart in this forest.
"alright I will take point" And Kuroi moved forward with his Savalette Guardian ready for action.
The drone rolled around to the front of the van.
"Hopefully nothing"  Kuroi replied, as he started to sneak ahead, keeping his eyes open for any trouble.

"Ugh... UGH! Gross. I have to clean off the mud off Pretzel's tracks after this," Misaki said through the ground drone's speakers. She followed the Oni until the reached the edge of the crater, and the drone's camera stack stared into the pool.

"I guess I can wade into the pool and look around... but it might be better to poke a tree branch in there first."

The camera array on the drone turned to look at Kuroi in a questioning manner, as if to emphasize that the drone had no arms.

Misaki leaves VR, and hops out of the van.

"Ugh, gross."

She trudges the distance from the van to the edge of the crater, dismayed that her sneakers are getting muddy. Along the way, she tries to grab a long tree branch or something to poke into the pool.

Misaki frowns.

"This pool is really deep." She squats down, and tries to swipe the tree branch deeper to see if there are any submerged objects.

"KYAAAAAAA!!!!," Misaki screamed as the hand lunged for her and missed. She jumped backward and nearly stumbled to the ground as she scrambled to get away.

"What was that?!," Misaki gasped.

There was an audible *POP* as a panel snapped off of Pretzel, and an assault rifle aimed at the murky pool of water.

Kuroi watches Misaki thrash around with her stick in the crater, as he sees the hand reaching out towards Misaki, he crushes the
Small ampule in his hands and sniffs in the released gas.
"Ahh yes"
"let's stand back a little maybe you have stirred something up we didn't intend to" Kuroi makes a worried smile.
Kuroi Trains his heavy pistol on the muddy surface of the pool.

Misaki shuddered. "What was it trying to do, drag me in?"

"I'm going back to the van, I'll watch over with Pretzel." Misaki switched to VR mode to operate Pretzel as she walked back toward the van. She drew her pistol, just in case, and raised the pop up turrets on the van.

Once seated inside, Misaki jacked in to the van, but switched to VR mode with the ground drone, looking after Kuroi.

Kuroi picks up another branch, a bit longer and starts poking into the pool of mud in the crater.
"maybe we could drop a grenade into it, but it might ruin what we came for. Any ideas?"
Kuroi tries to poke powerfully into the pool. Almost as if spear fishing.

Misaki did her best to dry off after she had gotten into the van. The toolkit that she had in the vehicle had some rags which she used to wipe her arms and legs off.

"I don't know. It would help if we knew what we were looking for. Let me go check the truck."

Misaki has Pretzel stay next to Kuroi, and keeps a window in the corner of her vision trained on the Oni and his circumstances.

Meanwhile, she switches to VR cold sim control for the recon hoverdrone.

"Bunny? Follow me at current altitude and cover me." Misaki always felt a little delicate when operating a small drone like the recon drone, but she deftly flew above the treeline and made her way to the truck site, with the more well armed Dalmatian tailing her.

Once she got a good view of the truck, she reduced altitude to take a closer view, looking for clues about whether the truck had anything removed.

"My guess is that whoever was driving the truck had gotten whatever the object was, and then somebody took it from them. It's just a complete guess though. I'm going to follow these tracks," Misaki said over commlinks.

Misaki took the Lochheed Optic X-2 higher in altitude, and then began tracing the tracks of the giant chicken for about 300 meters away from the truck. She requested the Dalmatian to remain further back to preserve stealth.

"Ya know, a T-Rex can be considered a giant chicken?," Misaki laughed. "Anyways, whatever you do to rule out the crater, if anything, we should probably move the van forward soon."

"yeah I think your right about the object. I'll catch up soon."
Kuroi starts moving in the direction of the wrecked truck.
"I think your right, a T-rex has alot of similarities with a chicken, but I sure hope it isn't a Dino."
Kuroi throw a glance now and then behind him, to make sure that nothing is following him.

Misaki lets the RCC autosofts manage the chicken tracking. She jumps back into the van and pulls the van forward to follow Kuroi. The ground drone stays by Kuroi's side.

"What the frag? What is that thing?, Have you ever seen anything like that Misaki?"
Kuroi is unsure about this, but his eyes finally lands on the symbols and he tries to make sense of it.
"Misaki, do you think that chic, I mean house has taken our stuff?"

Kuroi stops dead in his tracks.
"Hello I'm often called Kuroi, I was sent to investigate the thing that crashed into the forest."
"oh yeah by the way, I do not enjoy being cut, so tell the other guys to take it easy."
Kuroi relaxes a little, but he still has his gun ready.
"and also who are you? And did you see the crash?"

"Uhhh... nope," Misaki replied. "Can't say that I've seen a house with chicken feet, sorry."

Once the skull started talking, Misaki redirected all the drones.

1. Marshmallow, the recon hover drone, was directed to perform a wide circle around the clearing to monitor the surroundings.
2. Bunny, the armed hover drone, was directed to stay high above Kuroi
3. Mochi, the van, was asked to stop 50m behind Kuroi

Misaki then switched to VR hot sim with the ground drone next to Kuroi.

"Hello. My name is Pretzel," Misaki said to the skull, through the drone's speakers.