A conspicuously low number of low-danger traps.

The trio continued down a spiraling staircase into darkness, Lockhart leading the way with a torch she'd grabbed off the the wall... The only torch, Haruka noted. How did anyone normally get up and down these stairs...? Regardless, she was taking up the rear with the cannon in tow. It wasn't difficult, but it was cumbersome, and she was making a special effort not to bump her captain. Besides that, her eyes worked perfectly well in the dark... There was no need for her to keep up with the torch.

Lockhart, meanwhile, was running her mouth a mile a minute. "I can't believe you can just carry that huge thing, just like that! What an incredible android! Say, do you shoot eye beams? Do you fly? Can you turn invisible? Does your head come off?"

"That's classified, to be revealed on a need-to-know basis within the squad. Please try to focus on the path ahead," Haruka reminded her.

"Man... I want a dream about being an android," Lockhart commented, stifling a yawn. "Oops, can't yet, still in the middle of this one. Uh... So, stairs, stairs, stairs... Aha!"

When the adventurer shouted, Rebecca nearly ran into her fat backside, and Haruka nearly joined that pileup as well. It sounded funny, but it had almost been incredibly dangerous: after all, the stairs had run out. Below them was a long, dangling rope where the staircase ended. It seemed it would be a climb from here on.

Haruka spoke. "Captain. Before descending, allow me to scout ahead. To do so efficiently and safely, it seems I must answer one of your questions, Lockhart..." The android held her palms down, then casually stepped off of the staircase. Before she could begin plummeting, she began firing jets from both her hands and the soles of her feet, instantly calculating the correct balance of propulsion to offset the extra weight of the cannon and allow her to float in place like a certain superhero. "Remain here. If I can find my target and destroy it, there may not be any need for you to descend at all."

"Thank you, Haruka," Rebecca agreed to the plan, nodding. She smiled at Lockhart. "Haruka's simply the best. There's so many advantages to having a handy android around."

Haruka smirked at the faint praise. "Handy" was a funny way to describe the android who had almost single-handedly saved the human race in space battles, but it wasn't technically an incorrect statement. "Wait here," she reminded the pair, then began to descend...

The chasm seemed bottomless, but Haruka could tell the signature she was chasing was getting stronger and stronger. By the time she'd left the faint torchlight of the others, she had become certain she'd find what she was looking for at the bottom. Just as she let herself become distracted...

Haruka saw something falling away from the propulsion beneath her right foot. It was a string, barely visible... The first? No, simply the first she'd noticed! Strings were falling away all around her, and, as only made sense, traps were activating! Haruka heard the buzz of projectiles all around her, then felt some embed in her.

She didn't so much as flinch, continuing her descent as she pulled one from her shoulder. "Poison darts...?" The android allowed herself a small smirk again. She'd definitely been right to go first. After all, poison darts were certainly no danger to a synthetic being like herself. Although she looked like she was standing in a giant beehive of flying weaponry, she fearlessly pressed forward.

Now, she was almost close enough to the crystal that she could fire if she wanted. She could see its enormous, luminescent surface clearly in the darkness below. "That thing... I've never seen anything like it, not across all of space. However, it shares that evil signature. It must be destroyed-"

Before Haruka could set up to fire, she became aware that she had triggered two thicker ropes than usual. They seemed so thick, she couldn't imagine a human would fail to see them, but she'd carelessly stopped paying attention. These ones cause projectiles to fire as well, but as opposed to tiny, harmless darts, these were enormous steel javelins!

Haruka spun in place to barely dodge one, then spun the other way to avoid the other, like a hero from an action movie... Unfortunately, the cannon was affecting her weight slightly, and she couldn't come up with that calculation quite quickly enough. The javelin hit her...

No. It somehow only caught her nearly skin-tight pilot suit, propelling her towards the wall and pinning her there. Haruka couldn't believe how strong the **** of the primitive javelin seemed to be: as she hung with the spot just above her back pinned to the wall, her jets at stable propulsion weren't freeing her from it automatically. Deactivating her jets to simply pull it out would be too risky, as would firing from here... She had no idea if there was some kind of followup to this trap. Instead, she increased her propulsion, easily tearing herself from the part of the suit the javelin had pinned with a loud rip.

Finally, Haruka was able to complete her descent, gracefully touching down on the stone floor. The crystal was now right in front of her.

"Amazing!" Rebecca shouted from behind her.

This was surprising enough to actually make Haruka jump. She whirled around to face her captain, nearly hitting her with the enormous weapon on her shoulder. "Captain Astara! How did you- I told you to wait at the top!"

"Nevermind me, are you all right?" The captain tilted her helmeted head with some concern. "It looked like one of those things got you."

"Ah, no, they caused only superficial damage. All is in place to destroy the crystal, as directed."

"Excellent!" Rebecca nudged Lockhart, who had also somehow descended while Haruka wasn't looking. "See how impressive our android is? She calls a tear like that 'superficial damage!' How professional."

Haruka raised an eyebrow, then felt to the back of her suit... then clicked her teeth with an expression of irritation. Her hand was touching synthetic skin. There hadn't been any damage to her mechanical body, but she could feel the damage to her suit was far worse than she'd feared. In fact, when she felt the seat of her pilot suit, there seemed to be nothing at all. Her bare, Asian-toned ass was completely exposed... well, as exposed as anything was in this darkness. "Yes, as an android, I am capable of regulating my emotions to an extent humans are not... While completing this mission in such a state is hardly optimal or, by human standards, respectable, it is, nonetheless, completely feasible."

"Androids are really somethin'," Lockhart agreed with a nod, yawning again and wandering over to a corner to sit. "Say, I think I'm gonna get on that nap now... I'll see you girls later, okay? Wanna have that robot dream."

The android frowned, glancing back at Rebecca, who was struggling to keep her eyes off the wardrobe malfunction and the one area of Haruka's body that wasn't exactly slender and graceful, but perhaps a little exciting. "Captain, I am beginning to get the feeling there is something unusual about this place, this crystal, and our guest. Perhaps, before firing, we should consider taking samples, running diagnostics, and-"

"I'm sorry, Haruka, but this can't wait," Rebecca reminded her, crossing her arms below her chest. "I can't be this close to finally ridding the galaxy of Missing Memory's signature and risk any mistakes! I need you to destroy that crystal with a shot, right now, point blank!"

Haruka thought... that was a profoundly bad, illogical idea... but, nonetheless, her hatred of that signature was too strong. She could hardly contain her desire to wipe it out, either, and so, her cannon was already charging. "Stand back, Captain. Hide behind something-"

"There's not really anything to-"

Before either of them could say a word more, the cannon fired. Way too early, in Haruka's estimation. Had it misfired? Nonetheless, it seemed to do the job, as the crystal was breaking apart. No... not just breaking apart. The intensity of light was increasing. It was reacting... it was exploding! Haruka's synthetic eyes were flooded with light before the world grew fuzzy...