Chapter 3 - Plotting
The general area was pretty much silent and the Last Galerians regroup after their victory against their enemies. "Is everyone alright?' Ash asks, and they respond. "Of course." Nitro puts her arm casually against her hip. "Leo and I are fine." The child says, with his friend resting on his shoulder "What do you think?" Parano says, crouched in front of a corpse and holding out a bloody knife. At the tip of it, is a green colored eyeball. "That was rather sudden, but we handled them effortlessly." Ash says to his comrades, his voice sounding victorious and proud. "We could have used a little warning though." Parano points out, head turned away from the leader and focused instead on programing the circuit in the corpse's eye socket. "Maybe I should have scanned the area beforehand. At the time, I thought I didn't need to."
Nitro begins to walk toward the armored man and begins to circle him slightly. "Ash...wouldn't you say that was...reckless?" Her last word alluding in tone to his recent criticism of Parano. He turns his head slightly to the woman and glances with the corners of his eyes. "Perhaps." He says. "Perhaps? Mm hmm..." Her voice has playfulness to it and she slightly turns and smiles to Ash, her hair covering half of face again. "What are you getting at Nitro?" The leader begins to catch on to what she is trying to say. "Oh nothing...it's nothing..." Nitro begins to innocently downplay the thing while throwing her hands out in the air and then closing them together. Although it may seem like she was trying to point out hypocrisy, in reality she was just merely playing with him. She enjoys pointing out little flaws or mistakes he makes here and there, knowing how much of a perfectionist he is. The fact that Ash had the most powerful mind in the world yet still made a few mundane mistakes now and again was something that always amused her. Not in a malicious way of course, despite her personality she viewed Ash with high respects and enjoyed spending time with him. To her, he was one of the few things in the world that didn't bore her.
She would never notice the way he made her felt at times. And when she did, it caught her by surprise. "Strange..." she would think to herself, that someone as numb to everything as her could feel something other than hatred and despair. It was completely different from anything else she had felt and Nitro couldn't explain it. It brought her a joy completely unlike what she felt when she destroyed something that bored her, or when she tossed a one-liner at Parano for kicks. There was a blissful, pureness to it that felt good and perhaps even...real? "Reality? I wish. Would be nice though..." This feeling, whatever it was, she wanted to feel more of it but Nitro didn't want to get her hopes up, if it was even possible for her to hope. "Is this real? Or am I just lying to myself? Hmm..." She, of course, kept these new feelings to herself - as she did most things.
"Well, I'll try to not let that happen again." Ash was aware of Nitro's playfulness, but he sometimes had troubling telling if she was serious or not, his general no-nonsense and work-minded attitude was to blame for this. Ash turns away from Nitro, who had a slight smile on her face and set his sights on Parano, who was putting the finishing touches on his next creation. "There...it's ready..." Parano says, standing from his lowered position. As he puts away the small knife made for eyes and little pieces of machinery, the corpse reanimates and springs to life. "Uuuuggghhh..." It's moans are something out of human zombie horror films that used to be a thing of fantasy. But now, in the 26th century, this was no longer the case. "Hehehehe...I implanted circuits in all the eyes of these corpses. They'll be surprise waiting for anyone who tries to follow." Ash was surprised by Parano's sudden decision to think ahead. "Good work. It'll buy us some time." Parano turned his head a little at Ash's words, he wasn't used to being praised by him. Or being praised in general for that matter. A weirded out and perhaps slightly annoyed expression appeared on the knife man's face. Ash too, felt out-of-place at his words but he felt a sharp decision like that deserved praise, no matter who it came from. "...Anyway, they'll attack any humans that come this way. They're kinda sloppy...but you can't expect much from a corpse."
Spider walks up to the two during their exchange of words and asks Ash a question. "Where to now, Ash?" The silver-haired man looks down at the child and instantly remembers the plan. "From here we enter the large sewage drain that is right next to this apartment. We enter through the sewers and we should find ourselves within a part of the tunnels that connects to the base. It's abandoned and because of this, it shouldn't have any real defenses at all." Spider begins to see the plan come together in his head and he nods in agreement "Going through the sewers and into a base...sounds cool!"
"Well as much as the idea of sloggin' through the sewers disgusts me, It's probably the best course of action." Nitro disliked getting herself dirty but the idea of a sudden attack out of nowhere appealed to her. "They also won't know what hit them either." "Got no problem with that!" Parano says. "When you're in my kind of work, getting dirty is second nature!" Parano's single greatest enjoyment was killing and when you kill someone, you are bound to get dirty. Well, it was possible to keep blood and pieces of flesh and organs from getting on you but where's the fun in that? "Alright then, let's go." The four reached the grassy area behind the apartment after descending from a blown up part of the third floor wall. A metal fence blocks their way but it is no match for Parano's quick slashes. An opening is formed and the four go through it, electricity still sparking from parts of destroyed fencing. They slide down across the sloped end of the drain and find themselves at the bottom of it, among countless debris and a small trail of water. Entering the large entrance of the tunnel, the four are now within the sewers of the city.
End of Chapter 3