Pylo did not understand how this could have possibly happened. In fact it was so perplexing she was willing to guess this might very well explain the panic of the locals and their accusations that the Terrans were some kind of bioweapon.

Although every instinct twisted a little to tell her not to admit her ignorance this was just too baffling.

“What am I even looking at here?”

Her attending representative from the Ministry of external affairs waggled her arms and gently pinched each hand against another in a nervous fidget.

“Well... we are still gathering evidence and witness testimonies... we wanted to correlate with your own records and details before making any conclus-”

She huffed heavily, shedding out the less than useful refuse from the medicinal cocoon she had stuck her face in. She was going to have to take another shower after this. Stone fuckers that was annoying, her ovireticuli had only just finished growing back.

“Then to the best of your knowledge what do you think happened so far?”

“Um, I’m not actually fully abreast of all of the details, I could pull the digest but it would take me awhile to actually get a full overview of it so you see-”

A figure drifted into view and interrupted the sputtering representative.

Angular, very canner aesthetic but with a simplicity that suggested a more urban lineage then Pylo generally saw some where as isolated and underpopulated as Redweed.

At least anywhere just prowling around like this.

“I believe I can assist some with that... “

Pylo tilted her head to face the figure and ruffled a little, she was not sure what expressive body language would suit the newcomer to start with. And after running her senses over the silica and canisters of intensely resonating cultures she concluded there was not much actual info density in their lexicon for posture anyway. At least not beyond some external translation actions that were wholly conscious for them and thus not an avenue for her to leverage.

So she simply settled back into the terran modality and frowned.

“Who are you and why can you help?”

The assemblage of objects shifted and unfolded into another arrangement bringing a visual pattern expression plate to face towards her and the External Affairs representative. Vaguely dancing with a running tally of strange symbols that Pylo vaguely thought matched the cadence of their sub-communicative impulses.

“I am ▙◀ a Diagnostician and Engineer Generalist. I volunteered my expertise and services for the reconstructive investigation of the disaster area. At the request of my contacts in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, maintenance branch office and the Ministry of External Affairs’ ship care services branch office, You are the ship-tender Pylo? I am at your disposal”

Pylo tilted her head a bit and tried to parse, it was a lot of credentials, and they connected with a lot of confidence to a great many concepts. This ▙◀ spoke about their field with the same way Pylo herself would have spoken about tunie. And with a quick ruffling and check on her attending guide and their dawning recollection as they conversed ‘covertly’ with contacts from the main offices by the docks she guessed that was corroborated by the official dock masters of the port.

“Alright well can you explain what precisely happened here?”

Pylo waved vaguely at the massive wreckage that seemed to almost spiral out before her in a spiraling mess of destruction and possibly even slaughter.

“Well that spot in particular appears to have been where an oxygen enriching symbiote collided with a local eatery. Punctured the privacy barrier sheeting and then burst it’s internal bladder containment. This proceeded into it shedding the oxygen store over the eatery’s equipment and symbiotes and burning away the insulation of their spice cabinet. Which I believe caused an unfortunate blend of enzymic compounds to be released which eventually congealed until the mass exploded violently and well -”

Pylo had to stop them there, the flow of words seemed certain and sure of themselves but all the little detailed steps of precisely what followed to what were confusing her and all the jargon and specifics were getting tangled up.

“I’m sorry try that again I had trouble following, how do you KNOW that’s what happened?”

She was getting a sinking suspicion she might have run into a species with an oppositional expertise. That happened sometimes, all beings in the reef had different areas of capability, things which their minds and bodies were just better suited too.

At least that is what Pylo took away from her comparative cladistics and social physio survival traits lessons. It might be an abbreviation but Pylo liked to think of it as “do what you find easy and everything else will work out”.

However that sometimes lead to two people meeting that had entirely different versions of ‘easy’.

Which Pylo honestly rarely thought was that much a problem, there was very little you could not solve or squeeze your way by if you were especially good at talking. And honestly Pylo was so relieved that Sirens found that to be so easy.

She did not like considering what she would do if her expertise were something like... well anything else really.

Talking was just so useful!

And she was very good at solving all of her problems with talking.

However.

“Very well daughter of courtesan. To be more specific, this puncture here is in the shape of a standard symbiotic bladder favored by our numerous and productive citizens such as the External affairs representative there yes?”

Pylo nodded a bit. Then caught herself acting terran and gave a proper affirmative chirp to ▙◀. She supposed when pointed out like that it did make sense that it kind of fit the shape of the little symbiote they had attached to all of them.

However she never would have guessed one would be able to punch through a wall like that.

“So then it is surmisable that a bladder would have traveled at some speed to puncture this fabric. If you look here you can see the stress fraying of where it was stretched suddenly and with great shock of the impact”

Pylo chirped affirmative again and leaned a bit closer, splaying out her limbs to get a good surrounding coverage of the sight with more surface area.

That... sort of made sense? Although she still felt like the diagnostician must have been guessing she did not feel like making everyone think she was an idiot for not following what was being said.

So silent positive affirmation that she could follow his story it was.

“So as you can see the line of motion that would puncture here, compared with the line that followed from the nearest feeding store for the symbiote bladders continues more or less directly into the epicenter of the former eatery’s crater”

Pylo tried, she really did try to follow the logic but she internally flailed and gnashed and sprayed solvents everywhere in frustration.

Or she fumed internally imagining herself doing it.

She didn't actually understand the arcana of this absurd creature, and worse the stupid assistant seemed to be following along like this was reasonable and even getting grating little insight sparks over it!

It was one thing to not really be able to follow when Tunie talked about ship things, that was understandable starships were vast and they traveled at ludicrous speeds.

Their thinking should be arcane and difficult to follow, the meaning of their language rooted in bizarre swooping flows.

But even Tunie at least spoke the whole extent of a course out at once!

This however was some random unrelated scattering of random details with no clear logical connection. But Pylo could TELL that it made sense to everyone around her.

It was infuriating. They were treating this absurd madness like it was readily understandable as the correct hybridization of a corporate charter and a mammalia Duchess so that inheritance rules would properly apply from both parents!

Fine! whatever! the stupid reef tender that used a symbiotic bag to actually live in proper vacuum thought it made sense! Pylo was going to just pretend she understood the explanation and take their factual read of the situation as truth.

“Ah I follow now... right! Very Good Thank you! So if that is the case, can you tell me what actually happened here? I am concerned for my passengers and this is not the kind of behavior I have come to expect from them. Can we move on?”

▙◀ shifted and rotated its over all assemblage of geometric parts, reminding Pylo more of what some of the junk store holds were filled with then a normal person. But nonetheless she could detect an undercurrent of smug, but polite acknowledgement that she had technically told a lie about how easily she understood the absurd arcana.

“Ah, of course ship-minder Pylo. I would be happy to help you... Judging from the trail of destruction and the overlap of further damage I believe that we should direct our-”

Pylo zoned out the explanation and waited for the boxy canner weirdo to get around to actually telling her which way to go.

Trying to keep a polite and professional posture externally while she writhed and fumed with her insides. Her passengers were apparently driven utterly crazy by some kind of stupid series of accidents as far as she could tell.

And then somehow managed to be exactly in the wrong place at the wrong time and set off some other disturbingly precise disastrous yet magically perfect apocalypse.

Her highly fragile, ridiculously easily injured, vital to her contract important passengers.

Said passengers were apparently galavanting about leaving a wake of ruin behind that Pylo was growing to appreciate with equal parts amusement and horror.

She was not sure what she was going to do after finding them.

Honestly it was equal odds she felt she would stick them to the walls of their living space with packing mucus or congratulate them and drag them willing or otherwise to her next bar crawl just to see the hilarious repercussions.

After all if they somehow managed this just from getting something to eat what would they do if she actually figured out how to make them drunk?