It had been years since she had a proper shower and she couldn't even remember if she had ever had a bath.
She wished that she could think about something anything but as she looked at the multi-colored filth that was being washed away from her she found that she couldn't think about anything.
'Kirito!" Asuna suddenly shouted, and she quickly turned to see what was going on and found that Asuna was being restrained by several women.
'Relax." one of the women said to Asuna.
"They have everything under control." Another woman said to Asuna as she pushed Asuna back into the room.
'We're running into more and more crazies." she heard another woman say with an irritated tone in her voice.
"Asuna calm down, I know how you feel but you still need to teach the new girl how things are being done and Yui is downstairs." a woman with long blond hair said to Asuna.
The woman's voice was firm and seemed to carry the woman's authority with it, for a brief moment she wondered how could such a soft voice send chills down her spine while at the same time making her stand up straight.
She watched as Asuna began to calm down until she stopped struggling.
"I'm sorry, it's just that everything." Asuna began.
'I know ." the blond woman said to Asuna before handing her a towel so that Asuna could cover and dry herself off.
She began to follow both women out of the showers and back to the basket room or was it a locker room that didn't have any lockers, and she found that a clean set of clothes were waiting for her in the basket where she had placed her old clothes before they were stolen.
"Good you found them, your old clothes were dirty so we just copied them and gave you the clean ones," Auna said to her as she was changing.
"As you can see we're still getting everything ready so it's going to be a while before everything is working so feel free to look for work wherever you can." Asuna said to her before she looked at her with an expression that screamed ask me something.
"How do...how do I... get paid." she asked Asuna it was a stupid question considering that it was the first thing she asked but it was the only thing she could think of.
"Yeah to buy things you need money, so it makes sense that you would ask that first."
"We have three different ways, of paying people."
"The first one is gold and silver and they are honestly both the safest and most dangerous currency we have because no matter what happens you can use them to buy things."
"The problem with having them is that it's easy for people to tell who has them and who doesn't."
"Electronic money but that depends on the kind that the person that's paying you uses, so make sure that you are being paid with the same kind you normally use around here."
"And finally there's paper money because we found a lot of it and we are using the price tags that we found to see how much people charged for things, so it's easier for us to use all of the Dollar and Eurodollars that we have found."
She listened to Asuna's explanation but she found that she was a lot more confused about everything.
What did Asuna mean by they paid people with gold?
"How do I find work?" she asked Asuna.
"That's easy just ask, like I said we're just getting started so everyone needs help." Asuna answered her before she reached into one of her pockets and took out a hand full of gold coins.
"This should get you started." Asuna said to her before she signed to her that she should put the coins in her pocket and follow her out of the room.
"Where are we going," she asked Asuna as the woman led her outside.
She found that the sun had already gone down and the moon was barely visible, but that didn't matter because her eyes were focused on the flashes of light that could be seen in the distance.
"Our scout teams are finding people that have gone crazy, but they're augmented with cybernetic implants so maybe their brains just can't handle them anymore."
"What I'm trying to say is stay in the buildings and use the bridges to move from one building to the other and if you have to go down there please be careful." Asuna said to her as he pointed at the streets below.
"So is there anything that you're good at?" Asuna asked her as she led her into the next building.
'I'm good at hiding." she answered Asuna as she entered the building threw the opened window.
"Maybe you could help our scout teams?" she heard Asuna say to herself before she realized that she had said that out loud and immediately acted as if she hadn't said anything.
As they exited the room she found the entire hallway was filled with people that were selling what looked like different kinds of weapons- armor and firearms.
"I don't see any explosives." she said as they walked past a man that stood in front of a room that was filled with machine guns.
"Why would those be here, I mean if an idiot fired a stray shot this whole place would explode." Asuna said to her s she led her into another room that led to another window.
Again she followed Asuna into the building and found that this time the hallway was filled with people knitting or selling handmade clothes.
"It's easier to put different things in different buildings because right now we can't afford people setting up shop somewhere and then they end up being forgotten by everyone because no one told them what was going on." Asuna said to her.
She stopped following Asuna when she found a sweater that reminded her of the one her mother use to wear.
"Kirito what's wrong?" she turned when she heard Asuna say to someone that she couldn't see.
"Okay, I'm on my way." Asuna said before she began to walk towards the stairs and went down to the first floor.
She followed the woman to the same place where she had seen everyone gathered in the morning.
She stopped walking when found a group of armored men standing around five or maybe they were eight men that had their arms and legs cut off.
Unfortunately, the armored men nor the ones that didn't have limbs were the reason she had stopped walking, no the reason she had stopped walking was the group of children whose eyes were glowing as if they were hacking into something.
"Kirito." Asuna said to a man wearing oil black armor.
"I already called the GunGale Players in Night City and they say that it's called cyber psychosis."
'They say that it's something that happens when someone replaces too much of their original bodies with machines." Kirito said to Asuna
'We have figured out a way of reversing the process, however, it depends on the person and if the method works we might be bringing back someone that was already an out-of-control killer." One of the kids said to Asuna and the man named Kirito.
"So what's the plan?" Kirito asked the boy.
'Simple, we simply inject red nanobots into the affected person" the boy stops and looks around. "Sorry persons and let them deal with what's affecting the brain, whatever happens after that."
"Will e our problem." Asuna said to the boy before signaling to him to inject the men with the nanobots.
She watched as the men that didn't have arms and legs that up to the point that they had been injected were still mumbling to themselves suddenly became quiet and lay on the ground.
She could hear them loudly breathing, so she knew that they were still alive.
"So what now?"Kirito asked the boy as he kept a close eye on the prisoners.
"The Red Nanobots are dealing with the situation, however, there's something I have to tell you."
"While we were using the old computers to enter what was left of the internet, we found dozens of insane A. I so we are going to have to block whatever parts of the internet we can repair before we connect them."