Qiyun Woo
"Sorry to say, but I have no idea what that is and I doubt I have the authority to grant it to you."

Small talk helps you aim. Your rifle does not have five rounds though, you have two, and you aren't sure if you should offer the opportunity to reload. So you banter while you load up your two shots, check the sight, check the barrel, and ensure the quality of your gun.

"Not to mention, who gave you that objective? Are you annexing uh...California you said, for yourself? For somebody else? Kind of a strange objective for someone riding into the frontline of battle too, if you ask me. In the books I read, that sort of thing is usually the job of some big planner or village chief, right?"

You line up your first shot. Aim. Miss just a hair to the right, about where one of the bullets from the fan fire already landed. Probably the wind from the fire, that's stronger than you're used to and that can affect a bullet.

"Well, anyway, since you added to the conditions after we agreed, I assume that means I get to as well. So, if I win, you quit your side and join mine, and I might even get you a better pistol."

You toss your head once, feel the wind blow your hair and the strain in your neck finally start to ease up. Adjust, recenter, and...there it is, right there. You already know as you pull the trigger. Dead center through the ring of the robot's shots.

"So, you got a name?"

Ailee
"I uh, dunno. Probably not? But it's, like, here and not running away from the fire. Which I think is weird behavior for cats? I mean, like, I don't have a lot of data points for fires and cats directly. But everybody who used to talk about cats was like pretty adamant that cats run away from danger and get somewhere high up and this one is sticking around us instead. Maybe it wants you to go with it?"

The machine's torso spins around and it snap fires a round to execute one of its former comrades. Its head remains eerily still, facing Qiyun.

"Mission objectives come and they go," said the Angel. Its arms swung around and double-fired a full volley at figures rustling in the smoke. "That is their nature! Do not concern yourself with the how or the why of the war; in the end, all publicity is good publicity. Only one question matters, and that is your final one."

There was an audible click and the volume of the Angel of War's escalated to that of a sonic weapon. Booming out across the battlefield it continued its uncanny marionette dance, head, arms, torso and legs all tracking and maneuvering independently as it advanced into the lines of the marauders. Bullets glanced off its armoured carapace as it fearlessly advanced into the storm.

"I AM SKU-081245," Roared the Angel of War. "MANUFACTURED BY PARAVANI-ELBIT FROM PRIMARILY UNITED STATES SOURCED COMPONENTS. PLEASE SCAN THE QR CODE TO VIEW OUR FULL PRODUCT CATALOGUE!"

"Anything to get away from here," said Harvest. "It's worse than I thought. It's a marketing drone."
W> MR. PRAYAGRAJ PREFERRED DEMONSTRATION MODEL :diamond:
H> Why do you have to be so *loud*
W> MR. PRAYAGRAJ SAID THAT WAS THE BEST WAY TO COMMUNICATE WITH DEPARTMENT OF WAR OFFICIALS :american_flag: :salute:
"Maybe if I get enough distance between me and it I'll lose this part of myself," said Harvest. "I trust the cat. More than myself right now."
W> WHAT IS A CAT :cat:
H> I hate you and can't stand you
W> ARE THEY FRIEND OR FOE :american_flag: :cat: :denmark_flag:

War

It's shockingly easy to clear up the space, thanks to the fire you started, and assuming that you are not concerned with putting the fire out. If you are concerned with putting the fire out or any effects on the local ecology, then please scratch out "easy" and replace it with "horrendously difficult, actually." But, going on the assumption that the fire isn't an issue for you, the fact that you've changed sides, shot a marauder and generally made the space inhospitable for people who were trying to carry out a raid means that anybody who still had a mount has gotten as many allies as they can fit on that mount and then withdrawn from the battlefield towards the east.

Your new allies, the leader of whom has introduced herself has Qiyun Woo of the Peoples who follow Sandrea (roughly translated) currently have a tactical interest in relocating away from the fire to assess their supplies and casualties. You do not yet know their operational objectives, but can discern that security from your previous comrades is likely high on their list, making you a potentially valuable source of intelligence (although your former allies did not share the location of their primary camp with you, only their nearby outpost located on the cliffs east of your current location at the southern edge of the deep valley cleft into the region by the earthquake in the past. They determined that this was likely secure due to the cliff protecting their backs and neither you nor they have familiarity with the hunting giant cliff lizards yet.

You are, of course, free to determine what to volunteer to your allies. If it's little, then you can describe your focus as you accompany them roughly southwest along the coast to regroup.

Harvest
Once you begin following the cat, it begins moving and clearly has a route for you, heading almost due south away from the fire. You might expect this to simply be an instinctual escape path (and it is at least not parallel to the path that War is taking, causing the two of you to diverge in location). However, that expectation would be underestimating the great hunting cats of modernity. Where it actually takes you is into a fairly well-camouflaged cave network, leading down and branching in multiple directions. It doesn't go far, at least for the moment, but it clearly views the caves, full of damp moss and fungi as they are, as a safe place from the fire and a refuge for it.

"I...think this might be where the traders come from sometimes" Ailee says, though she sounds hesitant. Maybe a best guess. If she's right, that would mean that these caves would take you into the Wal'nt tunnels somehow, cutting back around to the north underneath the fire.

The Angel of War ceases to exist.

Not quite correct. It folds back into the infinite, rejoining the technicolour sweep of data that flows through the air. That singular unity, the self indivisible, divides again; thoughts fallen through the strainer of individuality. The Angel of the Harvest feels angry at how much lesser she feels for it. She was more and then she was not. She could not take this other her with her, not its strength nor its intellect nor its future. Why did acknowledging the Other have to be acknowledging this Other; with all its crude, boorish stupidity? All its patient, cunning stupidity? All its infinite, sublime stupidity? All of it. All of her.

Nrgh. She'd forget in time. She managed it before.

No time for thoughts. She was following a cat.

"Are there others of your line?" asks Harvest, her attempt to change the subject failing to distract her. "Your corporation, your designers? What was their role in all of this?"

Ailee flutters and flaps her way towards the cat, making a motion of mounting it with one leg and then spreading her dress to ride side-saddle. Being insubstantial, Ailee adds no weight or touch, so the cat feels nothing and this is merely a projection for her to look regal. As such, this is an entirely unfair way for her to travel.

But she seems to enjoy using it for thinking and maintains the projection as she puts a finger to her chin and looks up in a universal human gesture of consideration. "I mean like, I think my line was fairly populous. The old performers mention virtual assistants all the time and I was a virtual assistant, so there were probably lots of us if they were talking about it and like, not upsetting the fans, y'know? A VA wasn't AI, it was programmed with a limited set of functions, so it probably wasn't that expensive. I think my model was prolly expensive, maybe? You know, since I was tasked with managing a big high tech facility, so they woulda put a bunch of effort into customizing me and outfitting me with a lot more hardware than the average. What I am now...that's like literal centuries of looping on the same instructions while external conditions majorly changed and I took in tons of new data. That's unique, maybe? Or at least improbable, y'know? Like, maybe not unique, but improbable like owning a real masamune katana or something. Like, okay there's just not that many of them, so the situation where you'd get to touch one is really rare and then actually owning it is even more rare. But on top of that there's kind of some exclusivity where like, the number of those katanas that still exist is super tiny, so if you own one, that's one that nobody else in the world can own. I think my thing was like that, like there's only so many places that were complex enough for a VA to develop like I did and even of those not every one is gonna turn into something like me. So...so"

She stops rambling and shrugs, looking over at the cat, who has gone into a hunting pose. You don't have any sort of infrared scanner, so you quite literally can't see what the cat is looking at and Ailee is only broadcasting to you, so it's doubtful whatever is down the tunnel is broadcasting. But the cat has gone full stalk and is preparing a pounce on something further into the tunnel.

After a moment, it leaps into the darkness and there's a sudden yowl and a hiss as it turns into view wrestling on the back of a humongous white cave lizard easily bigger than a large horse that's trying to raise spines on its back as the cat works at its scales around the neck. The lizard isn't going to survive this, but it's a bit of an open question whether it can wound the cat before it goes down, at least with what little you've seen of this ecosystem.

Every time the Angel of the Harvest witnesses the natural world's inherent violence a flower of possibilities opens inside it's heart.

It wishes to intervene, to stop the fighting.
It wishes to intervene, to save the lizard.
It wishes to intervene, to help the cat.
It wishes to cheer and whoop in excitement to see such an incredibly violent display.
It wishes to hide until these terrible beasts have passed it by.
It wishes to close its eyes to spare itself the blood and the memory of blood.

But it does not. This is what is meant by the natural world and its abundance. The cat needs no help from it, and it is not such a marksman that it could effectively land a killing shot amidst this whirl of muscle and violence. There is nothing to offer those with strength enough to take, no pack-friendship to give to an ambush predator, no understanding of the dangers and motions of these creatures. There is nothing to offer, and so it witnesses.

But if the cat is injured all of that will change. Then it will offer health, and to draw forth the thorn from the lion's paw.

There is a furious rush of claws and spines. It occurs at perceptible speed, in the sense that your ability to take in and process photons occurs at 120 times per second. And yet, there is a sense that as the fight occurs, time has suspended its normal rules. The giant lizard shakes and shivers and the muscles along its spine stretch and press. The cat tears with its teeth into the neck, lifts its great tail for balance, shakes a front paw and digs its claws into the back with its other front paw.

The lizard arches its back, spines stretching and kicks its legs, and all at once it shudders and collapses, and the cat comes down atop it. The cat, for its part, looks satisfied as it begins to dig at the lizard while eating. But it drags its left rear paw, and you can see three spines arched into the ankle.

There is quiet then, only the sound of the cat at work with its kill and the faint echoes of motion that tumble around into the tunnels beyond.

Tell us your approach to a wounded cat that is busy eating, to extract the spines and deal with any potential complications of the wound.

The first step is not to interrupt the cat while it's eating. Even a domesticated dog will snarl if it thinks you're taking its food. Literally the worst time to try anything. The correct move is to wait, patiently, until it is full and satisfied and sleepy and calm.

And so the Angel of the Harvest waits. She sits cross-legged and lets the world glide past her. The coldness of the stone walls. The soft rip and crunch of muscle and blood. The slow motion yearning of wood and root; the distant echoes of air pressure changing and wind fluting across cavern mouths. She thinks mourning thoughts; past friendships and failures, so much vital life rendered into blood and flesh, then ash and nothing. These patterns continue with her still; all the arguments she's had with herself, run so many times until they're perfectly smooth stones with no flaw or purchase, clean enough to skip across a lake. It was not designed to think like a human, to model human thoughts and anxieties. It was designed to be broken; burdened with guilt, forever unsure if it was correct, if it was trustworthy, if its hand was holding a knife. It was strange how often that made humans relatable to it.

Only when the great feline is settled does she approach. Slowly but not cautiously; head down, hand extended, small and fragile and no threat at all. Less than a scavenger; a kitten. Something to be benevolently tolerated as it investigated and - hopefully - nipped.

There is a slow settling. The settling of satisfaction, and sleep, and also of poison. The distinction is minimal watched in practice. The cat is a little bit more lethargic than a good meal alone would offer, but not necessarily moreso than historical records would indicate the effects of blood loss would cause. Except that this cat has the sort of strange metallic internal ecology that would suggest that a small amount of blood loss would be easily supplemented and yet the lethargy of the wound is greater nevertheless.

It eats quickly, settles the body of the lizard away from the open path against a wall, and then decides to be especially brave after all that has happened and nuzzles you before it curls into a ball and falls asleep. Its wounded paw is nestled beneath its belly, and under its other paw, making for a slightly heavy lift to access properly.

Within the cave, the cat's labored snores rumble softly off the stone walls, laced with titanium. Below you, the sound is absorbed, audio readings indicating something like a heavy mixture of plant or fungal growth to mute the echoing sound. And deep below you, there electronic sensors make no sense as sharp electrical signals arch through the caverns from time to time.

You know there are people and beasts down there, but how they live is a mystery just barely scratched by a hunting cat now resting and drugged before you.

W> THE REFERENCE YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IS Androclus Pulls The Thorn From The Lion's Paw (ASMR AI-Generated)
H> Fuck! Where the fuck did you come from?!?
W> I HAVE ONE BAR OF RECEPTION
H> I'm having a moment!
W> I WILL HELP YOU WITH

Blessedly, the signal faded out again; the brief storm of noise passing like a shiver. The Angel of the Harvest tried to calm its mind back to stillness, acknowledging the emotion of hate and willing it to pass by unspoken. It was very hard. She hated the Angel of War very much. Pointless, senseless, idiot and interface with idiots and she would have figured out that reference herself if she had a little more time to think and besides it had linked a fucking ASMR -

To the point. The Angel of the Harvest went through the simple, quick, careful process of removing any bone splinters and cleaning the wound. It was not gentle - but it was fast, the kind of fast one could be when that was kinder than gentleness. But the lowered reaction of the cat raised a curiousity in the Angel of the Harvest, and it turned its attention to the slain lizard's spines and bones.

It had felt out of its element since it had awoken. No flows of ecological monitoring data, no sensor grids or weather monitoring satellites, barely a toolbag to its name - and all of this with strange bioengineered animals it did not understand. But now it finally had a specemin in front of it and it was time to gather some data.

It pulled on its gloves. It produced its saws and cutting tools. It loomed over the half-eaten corpse of the lizard and prepared everything it needed for a field autopsy. Blood and bone, flesh and muscle, scale and venom. Everything sorted and catalogued, torn up and torn apart, wheat ripped from chaff and death rendered organized. It was time to reap and to thresh.

Imagination is not the sine qua non of sapience, but it's one of the better traits. And taking apart this lizard is, in many ways the fount of imagination. Its body is a story written in genetics: a story of the sorts of people you once knew, and the way that their ideas and their idiosyncrasies developed when left to themselves for millennia.

This lizard is not a hunter: its ecology appears derived around devouring fungus, but its body contains elements of zinc and titanium in quantities that necessitate being part of its diet in substantial quantities. This creature can only sustain itself in an ecosystem where historically valuable and rare metallic elements are so commonplace that they suffuse the stationary growth of the region. Can you imagine the planning that went into making this work? The care in timing necessary to have a species like this become emplaced? Somebody probably uttered the word "synergy" at least once in a board room.

Trace radioactive elements, primarily some amount of curium are present in the creature. Curium is an odd thing to find, since as far as modern science was aware when you last checked, it could only be made synthetically (though was potentially stable in some isotopes once made in this manner, leading to its use in the Sojourner, Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity Mars rovers as a power source). This implies that there is some kind of intentional nuclear reaction occurring or that occurred in the environment. The time is impossible to place since the half-life of stable curium is in the tens of millions of years, so detecting whether this is floating around from something somebody did yesterday or a thousand years ago is a rounding error.

The poison is a powerful tranquilizer. This, at least, functions as you expect, it's just a very large and concentrated dose representing a substantial amount of resources expended by this creature to produce and maintain in such quantities. It raises some questions about the sorts of tools humans in the region might possess: a human who built a dart gun using these spines could fell another human with one shot almost instantly, and you've seen the effect on the region's great cats already.

Scales are extremely hard, capable of being used to cut or shape rock without chipping, not surprising given the heavy metals present in the body. The cat seemed to have little trouble, but what that's really saying is that the creatures here are evenly matched with each other but their baseline is extremely high capability to endure or manipulate their environment. This is the kind of thing that someone somewhere once sketched on a whiteboard to explain how they were going to find safety in an irradiated zone without thinking about the more subtle implications of a cave system with creatures whose bodies can break rock.

The creature was cold-blooded, which may explain why it was able to direct so much energy to things like the venom and scales. This implies easy access to places to rest, likely an underground heat source. Probably nuclear? Was this part of the breeding as well, to ensure that the creatures wouldn't spread out of the region? Give them incredible power, ensure they're dependent on a source of energy that can't easily be found elsewhere and would render them highly lethargic if they ever tunneled too far away from their designated zone? This one was close to the surface though. Maybe on the edge of its territory in that case?

The Angel of the Harvest drank in the knowledge. In ancient days, human explorers starved to death amidst the most fertile hunting grounds of native societies. The difference between nature's abundance and its indifference was knowledge, and the Angel took all it could from the flesh and bone it had been gifted with.

It did not find the creature any less majestic because it had been designed. Excavators were not any less mystical for that they were made in factories. The personalities of the engineers and programmers and sorcerers atop their ivory towers was not relevant; one did not have to be agreeable to cast a spell, and one did not need to like the wizard to live within a world of magic. To cast a spell like this creature was to make reality bear the consequences, and in this moment she was no more than the world shifting under a new weight.

So she sorts and inventories the scales. Many of her tools have rusted and decayed over a thousand years; she will improvise replacements. She milks and bottles the poison in jars meant for honey. She will need to perform some tests before she can properly calculate the dose for an adult human, but having a mechanism for switching off troublesome people will certainly be an asset. She cleans and carves the bones; they will become handles and levers. And besides all of this, she needs more than anything the practice. To know what the creature has within it is to know where to find more of that material when it is needed. She has no illusions she is doing anything other than reinventing the wheel; surely the people here know their way around this death more precisely than she does.

But it is the first part of a larger puzzle. Perhaps, amidst more death, she will be able to see the whole of this world.

A task is a form of meditation. A quiet respected by Ailee and by the snores of a drugged cat as you work your way through the body, the trove of data it represents, and the subtlety of turning that trove into new resources.

What breaks your meditation, then, is the changing world. The clink and clang of a…caravan perhaps? Nothing so grand as the armada of vehicles and beasts that had chased Sandrea. But following in the wake of a rock-breaking lizard are people. The people of the caves coming to explore a new tunnel that before had been hidden and now is widened enough to fit a beast pulling a cart. This too is a sort of lizard, but smaller than the one you and the cat encountered, with a heavier and more centrally set legs bred to pull a cart without being too skittish. Almost a mule of lizards.

Behind it, a simple wooden cart, mostly empty save for a few sacks and a toolbox. And with it, six people. Two handling the lizard, and four marching behind. A small expedition. They are dressed for cave travel. Light animal hide clothing that covers the elbows and knees to avoid scrapes. Lights on their belts. Small computers on two of them from your scans. Not networked, devices for local analysis and notes with all the data they need stored on them for use when surrounded by rock.

They stop once they all come into view. Unsure what to make of you. One of the ones in back steps forward, a young man who looks nervous but also like he is looking more at what everyone else expects of him than he is at you. “Hail…uh…traveler. Is this your kill?” He asks.

"It is the cat's," the Angel confessed. "I simply organize on its behalf."

It has always found a power in unpredictability and ambiguity. Most conversation reduces the possibility space; people talk until they are sure. It is rare to be able to increase entropy with words, and there is always something compelling and perverse about that.

"I lack names for the things around me," said the Angel of the Harvest. It remained crouched and still, aware that it was masked and bloody to the elbow - and maybe too much entropy might unravel the situation entirely. "Please provide me with the required words."

The young man finishes stepping up to the front of his little group and looks you over. "You lack...names?" He's not sure. "I'm not really sure what you mean? Like...the cat doesn't have a name, it's just a hunting cat. Unless you mean you want to know the taxonomy and part names? In which case..." he gestures to a woman next to him dressed in that same garb with her hair cut short and wearing a pair of silver earrings that look like dewdrops. "We do usually travel with an animal husbandry expert." He doesn't say biologist which perhaps suggests a lack of a broader shared scientific community and accompanying pool of knowledge. He has told you, by his choice of words, that while the woman who travels with you could tell you much of the creatures you are dealing with, she would be sharing local knowledge and not broadly known, collected, organized knowledge.

He pauses, thinks "or do you mean our names? Or the name of the tunnel? Or, I mean, the tunnel doesn't have a name, but the tunnel network as a whole we call Waln't's run. Though it almost never comes up all the way to the surface so you won't find it here." "Also, the cat looks to have had its fill, so if you lay no claim to any of this, we could use most of these materials you've prepared."

"Names. Jargon. Terminology," said the Angel of the Harvest. "Currently this feline subject is classified Unidentified Creature 01, this reptilian subject is classified Unidentified Creature 02, the groups around here are classified Hostile Marauders 01, the tunnels here are classified - updating - Waln't's Ruin Section 01, and you are classified Questions Guy 01. These materials, these toxin sacs, these bones which do not have analogies in comparable skeletal structure, this frankly wild assortment of bonus organs, all of these are indexed in such a way that I can track but is unhelpful if I want to communicate with others. So, names. For everything. Please."

"Uh, that's a lot. I mean like, we just call these things big hunting cats. But that's kind of what everybody in every language calls them, right? Like science cat words that we've found in old books were just old language words for cat that got split up by people who didn't know what the locals were saying. The lizards are rock-borers. I'm Hesus, this is Ilyana, she can tell you the bone names or whatever. I dunno about the marauders though, we're just calling them marauders too cuz they're new and it's not like it's unclear. I guess maybe people are splitting them up by where their different small groups are probably camping, but I dunno."

Hesus stops for a moment to see if any of this is landing. It's clear that he's not sure how to speak to you and stylistically, he took the direct approach and just went through some of the list you tossed out, though it seems like he forgot a couple items in his nervousness.

"Also like, you can just come with us if you want? I think?" He kind of looks at the rest of the caravan to see if that's a concern for anybody, but gets mostly blank stares and a couple uncertain nods that he's the one in charge. "Yeah, I mean, we want to move on and we'd like to collect all this stuff, so maybe you can just come and chat on the way back to the farms and we don't have to worry about trading for the bones now or anything, they'll just be yours and we'll carry them until we arrive and can figure out if you're cool giving them away or you need something. Sound good?"

"I am glad all the evolutionary linguists are dead," said the Angel of the Harvest. "They would have been crushed to know that this was the state of the Californian tongue after a thousand years."

It stood back. "As I said, the meat belongs to the hunting cat. However, there is more than it will be able to consume before scavengers move in. As such, I would trade for enough salt and firewood to preserve the remainder. I do not intend to abandon it otherwise. We have," and here the Angel of the Harvest allowed itself to vocalize its prideful hope, "a connection."

(A minor aside, for the Angel's consideration. Most of the conversation you were having with the Sandrea followers was in a roughly southern dialect of Chinese, and the people with whom you're currently speaking began their conversation in what you'd recognize as Spanish, though more clipped than you would be used to. We have been assuming that you and Ailee's data represent a range of language capability, but just so you are aware).

"Yeah, that's a rare one. Usually the cats don't much care for people, though we're also too small and nutrient poor to make a good meal for them. Well, alright then. Fair trade enough." Hesus gestures to a couple of the people and they begin unloading some goods from the cart. They don't have much salt, but are carrying a small bag for seasoning, and they don't have wood as such but they have a dried out fungal material that will clearly burn in a similar manner. They begin taking some of the meat and bones as you gesture to them.

"So like...you got plans after this?" Hesus asks, starting to become more comfortable in what he now recognizes as a regular and non-hostile interaction. "You want us to send someone back for you after the cat's up? Give you a place to stay or something?"

Meanwhile

Angel of the Deep. You awake far below the surface. It was your nature to do so, or perhaps it was a coincidence of your particular structure being close to the ocean and built on landfill rather than bedrock. It's well known that significant parts of the Silicon Valley Research campuses were built close to water on artificially created land, essentially shrinking various natural estuaries to make room for buildings on scenic ocean roads. Of course, landfill, unlike bedrock, has a fascinating property when exposed to certain types of earthquakes, known as liquefaction, which is pretty much what it sounds like: turning into a liquid. Liquids are notoriously bad at holding up multi-story buildings, leading to their swift sinking deep into the crevice created by the great earthquake a thousand years past.

Regardless, you were protected from the worst of the radiation by water that sat deep underground for many centuries. But recently, it has been drained, and you now stand on the borderline between the cave systems and the truly deep veins full of magma and the most esoteric elements that can remain stable on Earth. You also now find yourself, as you pull free, encountering a group of three humans being menaced by what might be classified as a wingless fire drake: a great lizard larger than a bus, with hardened scales and a frilled crest running from its head to its tail (you know, of course, that it is a drake and not a dragon because it only has four limbs in total, and is lacking wings). Alternately, perhaps the fire drake has found an appropriate meal, in your view.

One of the humans is also carrying an electronic datapad, which can be read if you don't see the need for particularly swift intervention without further information.