Flipping through the various outfits, the experiment eventually settles on a purple version of the same thing the human decided to wear. If that style of dress was associated with the highest authority in the land, it would be a fool not to take advantage of the potential for misinterpretation of its social status. It looked like the panels of cloth that made up the bottom were sown into the top, but the whole thing could swing open if you removed the sash thing going around the waist. It could see a slight issue with the outfit though.

“What are you doing?” asks the human.

“Look, I just want enough room to have my tail free,” it responds, taking the back side of the outfit out of its mouth. “I don’t have a knife, so there’s really nothing I can use to open up the fabric other than my teeth.”

“Okay, are you going to heal before we go to distract the Chosen of Heaven?”

That was new information. What was a chosen of heaven, and why did it care? There was the whole ‘able to throw a giant ball of compressed air’ thing, but the other guy had been able to do the same thing but with a rock. It didn’t have to do much thinking to suspect there was a similar capability for other theoretical aspects like water and fire balls, and if that wasn’t a compressed plant stuffed into its face, it didn’t know what was. There was the intangible inventory system thing… Oh hell, this was what the whole place was designed for wasn’t it? They’d drop someone in here, power them up passively, then throw the newly minted soldier at whatever it was they needed taken care of. Murder suddenly jumped up the priority list for the experiment, but the current arrangement meant it was going to have to wait. Dang ‘assistance’ impulses.

“I’ll heal in a while. My top half isn’t necessary for this, I don’t think. It’s not I’ve got the arms of my armor, or the torso to hook them up to. Where is this ‘chosen of heaven’ right now?”

After a moment of checking the screens, the human answers, “Over there, that ship with the giant hole in the side that’s letting all the water in.”

“Alright, now that we aren’t being watched by some sort of druid, you don’t need to pretend like I need help walking,” it claims.

“I was mostly holding on to you because I do not know when the leg is going to start throwing me across the entire town,” the human responds.

“Oh. That’s an entirely reasonable fear, and while I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do to assuage that while still being honest. How about this, you lean forward, I get on your back, and then you lift your other leg. If you close your eyes and angle your body correctly, it should be just like teleportation over to the ship.”

“I didn’t get a lot of that, but I’ll follow the instructions,” the human states.

Somewhat concerning. If the translator function wasn’t working properly, then who knew what it could be making humans think it was saying? Actually, how was the human they were going to distract understanding what it was saying? That might be one of the aspects the ‘chosen of heaven’ got during their training period. Being able to understand things easily was extremely convenient, which was why they had translators in the first place. There was no reason to think that the enemy wouldn’t also pre-install their soldiers with low cost interpretation software. With the slightest bit of additional consideration, if they were installing things that converted intent already, they may as well be putting in blockers and content moderation. Suggestions to do things that weren’t approved by the overseer, like ‘not fight’, may not even go through at all. That would explain why the human just stole its poison and ran off.

Stopping the armor’s skating function, the experiment taps the human’s back.

“We’re here. Mind handing me that poison?”

“Why is everything on fire?”

“I’ve been with you this whole time, I have no information you don’t have.”

“My eyes have been closed, and you’ve been riding me!”

“Well I was thinking! It’s not like this town going down in flames has any impact on what we’re doing.”

“Fine, but how do I know that the Chosen of Heaven is still in the ship? The arrow hasn’t stopped pointing at a single location since he got knocked in there.”

“The helmet is tracing his individual energy signature aura. It is weird, but it turns out aura is a trackable phenomenon with this thing.”

“Why would he not have moved this whole time?”

“There’s the usual suspects, like he’s dead, or got stuck in the hold, or just didn’t feel the need to leave. Probably a trap though.”

The sun slides leftward, passing the giant cloud of probable death to sink below the horizon of a mountain. The docks are still perfectly visible, the residential area of the town casting plenty of light from the blazing inferno consuming the residents. Visibility helped to emphasize how there were no people other than the two of them, the workers likely having run to their homes to try and save their loved ones from burning to death, or their possessions from a similar fate. If they just waited, the ship would probably sink at some point. Once enough water filled the hold, the entire boat wouldn’t be able to hold itself upright and fall over, at which point the liquid would have a much easier time making its way into the structure and filling it enough that the buoyancy provided by the air remaining within it wasn’t enough to counteract the weight of all the other materials. On the other hand, this ‘chosen of heaven’ had already shown the ability to manipulate air. Keeping the whole vehicle pressurized while waiting for them to approach, then dropping a whole boat suddenly was a perfectly feasible strategic option.

“You stay here,” the experiment tells the human, “I’m going to set off the trap.”