The ‘Cultivator’ was staring off into space right before the entry to the flat outcropping. It had seen that expression before, on people focused on screens. As long as nothing physically interacted with them, they’d keep staring until they’d finished reading or poking at whatever program was holding their attention. At least the helmet kept most people from seeing the person inside of it completely not paying attention to them. It had a copy of 3D minesweeper on there, and with a big enough map that could take hours to solve.

First impressions were very important; with the guy in the field it had wasted its opportunity to come off as cool, since it was mostly just wandering around and taking constant feedback damage from all the plants. On this barren mountain, it had the luxury of being able to build up an image instead of just trying to get it over with as quickly as possible. Taking back the arm-or, it put the thing on specifically to show off how cool it was. Blasting the guy with missiles would be counterproductive on a first meeting.

Now it was just a matter of waiting…

A couple minutes later, the guy indicated that he was done messing with his menu or whatever by throwing a rock between the experiment and his companion. Convenient, as that gave it another prop to set the scene with. Before it could hit the ground, it grabbed the stone with telekinesis, and raised it’s right arm to gesture in time with the movement it made with the rock. It wasn’t like it needed to point, but it certainly made for a more comprehensible scene.

Rather than dwell on how little power it was working with, it flexes its bicep and brings the stone up to its chest. Dropping the thing gently on the ground so as to not draw attention to it, the experiment pulls up a bunch of dust from the dry parts of the mountain and releases it in a puff of smoke. If it did the sleight of mind correctly, that should have looked like it crushed the rock to powder.

“Human person, let me deal with this. Take this with you, I'm not strong enough to use it,” it says, turning toward the girl.

Instead of simply handing over the device, the experiment activates the factory reset to re-link the arm to the helmet without the torso acting as a medium. Wireless connectivity wasn’t infallible, but it was better than trying to use motion controls. The helmet interface was extremely useful for anything that needed precision of any kind, and factory resetting would also have the advantage of reinstating some of the child-proof features on the weapons. There had definitely been a few cases where someone put on the armor and then immediately hit the ‘All The Missiles’ button.

As the human grabs it’s hand, the experiment trips the switch and the armor disassembles itself into its constituent pieces, then activates its repair function to reform directly on the new user’s arm. That was probably flashy enough.

“Guy looking for a fight,” it says, turning toward the ‘cultivator’, “you can just walk away. There’s no need for this to end in violence.”

Smiling at the human, the experiment does it’s best to look kind. Peaceful, even. It wasn’t like it wanted to fight anyone. Not only was it incredibly weak right now, it legitimately had no grievance with anyone on this chunk of rock. Sure, it was some sort of created ecosystem most likely developed for malevolent purposes by its ultimate enemy, but that didn’t mean that it had to kill everyone.

It would probably be enough to destroy their institutions, crush whatever infrastructure was providing resources to the greater war effort, and plunder the economy.

In response, the human swings a rapier in the air. With the weapon’s passing, swirls of motion build on each other, drawing more and more air into a massive spiral moving toward it. Dirt and grit from around the plateau build into the wind, making the tornado hurtling toward its position visible. Before the experiment can react, it was caught in the generated updraft, tossing it up into the sky. Apparently this was what all the specks getting tossed out of the forest were.

While it was floating in the air, it would at least be able to look around and confirm or deny a few theories. It looked like most of this part of the island was farmland. Everything around this mountain was farms, though there was a walled city next to the forest and some sort of fishing village to break up the monotony of grain. Off to the right, there was a mountain that put this one to shame. Absolutely enormous, it was also visibly smoking. That probably wasn’t very comforting to whoever lived around the place. It looked like there was also a giant dune-filled desert on the way over there, as opposed to every other direction being cut off by water.

Stood to reason then that this area was entirely controlled by that walled city, since they had the natural desert boundary to disincentivise encroaching armies, and also a natural choke-point with the narrow band between the fishing village and city itself preventing passage to the fields of livestock beyond. Might be interesting to be not in this general area, since it was apparently already in kill-on-sight status.

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And there was the ground.

As soon as it landed, the human followed up with another stab. Air, condensed from the tip of the blade, smashed into its chest. Fortunately, that was just air and it did absolutely nothing. It couldn’t stop it’s tail from wagging as it thought of how great it would be to have that ability to gain height whenever it wanted to see the map.

“That tornado looks like it’s incredibly useful. Can you use it all the time?” it asks, still hopeful for diplomacy.

His response was less than stellar. The human does the same stab move as before, but launches himself forward simultaneously, hitting himself with the air to speed his strike directly into the experiment’s torso, at which point another blast of air shoots it forward. Before gravity can start to take effect, the human is ahead of it and hits the experiment down toward the ground. Again, before it can even process anything happening, the human is in front of it again and hitting it straight up.

Still no damage worth mentioning, and it was in the air again.

Looking around this time, it could see the sun going down over the horizon. It was definitely more of a ‘going around to the other side of the island. Day came later over by that giant volcano it seemed, and then probably even later on whatever’s to the left of it. On the other side of the sky…

That’s no moon.

That’s jupiter.

This is an artificial asteroid engineered to support life, placed in the atmosphere of jupiter and serving some sort of inscrutable purpose.

Belatedly, the experiment notices that it has been getting blasted further upward. Upon consideration, there had been a lot of lightning strikes recently, and it was now the highest thing in sight. From the northern part of jupiter, a surge of electricity blasts through the experiment’s body. Incredible power, coursing through its nerves. It was a good thing it was practically indestructible by ordinary methods, because this ordinary method came very close.

Gravity came back into effect, and, crackling with massive bolts of lightning coursing through its nerves and over its extremities, the experiment crashed bodily into the ground. It pushes up to its feet, and opens its mouth, burning flesh releasing an acrid smoke that used to be lungs. That was going to be annoying to heal.

The human was still there, and honestly, the experiment was starting to get a bit ticked off at him.

“That could have been enough to kill me. I would be able to use lightning on command, if only you would stop trying to fight,” it states matter-of-factly, taking a step forward. It flinches internally as a static discharge shocks it from arm-to-ground charge temporarily equalization. “Looks like I’d need to do something to keep the electricity contained. Maybe I should share it with you.”

Again doing another of those cheap teleports to the other side of the plateau, the human stays silent and leans on the blade he had jammed into the rock.

“Jackass, answer me! Alright, if you won’t talk, I’ll beat the hell out of you.”

Metaphorically. Electricity was easy to manipulate with telekinesis. Electricity was just electrons, and electrons had negligible mass. Raising his arm toward the human, the experiment channels its inner palpatine and launches an ever increasing barrage of electric death. Said human responds in kind, holding up an arm and funneling more and more air into the voltage. The experiment had a lot of amperage coursing through it though; the increased air resistance was futile.

Building into a visible ball of crackling electricity, the air holding the charge slowly approaches the human. There might even have been some sort of expression of shock on the human’s face, though probably not as much of one as what would be on there once the ball hit. Unfortunately, all the experiment could see was the ball, now glowing plasma as the over-compressed fluid superheated. Then, something gave and the ball accelerated.

Apparently the human’s moves were even more overpowered than it initially appeared, because the plasma shot back toward the experiment. Raising its other arm specifically to have a physical barrier in case it didn’t work, it grasps the oncoming ball telekinetically. Fortunately, air was similar to electricity in that it had very little weight. The electricity within the blast was enough to sear it at this point, so it made the decision to not add even more energy to the ball. It took a moment to make sure it knew where the human was, and tossed it back at him.

Again, the human bounced it back, but harder this time. In that case, it would gladly oblige him. This was an incredibly unstable ball of plasma. Eventually, the human was going to hit it hard enough to break whatever membrane was keeping all the energy contained, and that was going to make a big bang. He kept moving though, so it kept having to pause and aim at the new location. It wouldn’t do to have this thing go off in some random direction and then blow up a city. It might need that city.

On the fifth bounce, something changed. The ball definitely got hit with more than enough force that by any reasonable metric the entire thing would explode, and it came back with so much speed that stopping it all at once would have the same effect. With little option otherwise, the experiment holds the ball with its arms, and lets itself be pushed backward into the mountain itself, the stone melting around it as the ball continues its course of destruction.

This could take a while to deal with.