I carefully pocketed a sample of the blighted sawtooth for my commander and my various scientist underlings/employees/minions/followers to study - what processing equipment I had on me wasn't really suited to doing this, plus I don't want to get my current friends to ask too many questions too soon. Aloy, at least, needed to grow up quite a bit before she was ready to handle some of my world shattering revelations.

Speaking of Aloy, she was busy conversing with the leader of the fort for more information about the Carja, the Shadow Carja, and the Eclipse. Oh, and she was also trying to find out about the fanged beast we'd just slain, though that seemed to be beside the point. Geralt, meanwhile, was with Theseus and Zoe, asking if there were any other weird creature sightings - guess they were looking for work/people to help.

I, meanwhile, was focused on two things - getting intel on just what the hell had happened with the blighted machine, and also getting anything I could bring back as a souvenir. Mostly, this meant trying to trade for whatever a local merchant had with the various things I'd gotten from my adventures in the Origin System and the New World. Granted, that included some very valuable items, but that could only take you so far. Still, I did manage to get a nice hat out of it, amongst other things.

As for the strange volvidon that had blighted the machine, it appeared that the creature had shown up several weeks before, and started harassing the town as soon as it had appeared. Ironically, this had resulted in the Nora Outcast Nakoa getting her revenge on the slaver Zaid ahead of schedule - the fanged beast had accidentally found the location of several people he'd intended to sell into slavery, and his attempt to escape the monster had seen him caught down by Nakoa, but not before the rest of the fort had a chance to get a further lead on his slaving ring. The girl had told all of this to Aloy, and wished her luck on her travels.

That was all fine and dandy, but that didn't really help me advance my goals, so I decided to turn my attention toward source of knowledge - Coeus.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

'Greetings, Commander. What do you require?'

'Any additional information on the blight, the portals, or the magnetic anomaly mentioned some time ago?'

'Negative - we have been unable to ascertain anymore information than what we have already provided you.'

'Unfortunate. Can you expand the search area?'

'Working on it. Things would be far easier if we had satellites available.'

'Then build some.'

'...I can do that?'

'...Let me handle this.'

XXXXXXXX

Ugh, do I have to hand hold this probe?

Putting my annoyance aside for now, I set about providing my forces with a larger scale tracking system. Whilst I had no access to my commander in this world (and given the portals that were forming, did not want to risk bring it here), my probes came equipped with the ability to produce engineers and factories, so I still had a techbase to work with.

Starting up long dormant excavation machines within my probe's sanctuary, I began to add in rooms for factories and armories, as well as labs and satellite uplinks. Hundreds of miles away, meanwhile, fabrication ships awakened from their centuries-long sleep and began building an orbital factory. Once that was complete, I order it to produce five orbital fabbers, then scuttle itself - best to keep the tribes unaware of what I was doing.

When the last orbital fabber was online, I ordered them to produce an advanced orbital factory, then get to work on building a new satellite network - one that my ground based facilities would be able to link up to for better examination of the enemy forces. I mused on the irony of building satellite dishes underground, but that was but a momentary amusement - if it worked for XCOM, it could work for me.

All the while, I was busy haggling over a particularly juicy fruit with a local merchant, with none the wiser to my greater schemes.

XXXXXXXXXXX

Approximately half an hour later, the first few results of the new orbital network were in.

First off was something odd with the portal: they were localized over the former United States. I literally did not find a single one that occupied a space other than one of the forty eight continental states (Alaska hardly ever gets counted in that group, and it wasn't one here).

Second, the current portals were emitting more energy than the earlier ones, including the one that had taken me here. Thus, they were getting bigger.

Finally, the portals all seemed to be pulling things from the monster hunter universe at the moment, though one or two of them seemed to be releasing a witcher beast. Considering how dangerous some of the stuff that showed up in the games was, and that I was pretty sure the things in the novels were meaner, this was a good thing. There currently weren't anymore magnetic anomalies, but I doubted that would be the case for long.

For now, though, I had other concerns - namely, getting to the city of Meridian and finding out how long this had been going on.

First, though, I had an errand to take care of - it looked like the commander of the fort, Balahn, had asked Aloy to help him find a lost patrol, after only one of its number returned.

...I had a commander and I was doing this stuff on foot. Was there something wrong with me?

….Eh, if I used that to solve everything, I'd probably go the way of the Martians from The War of the Worlds. And honestly, I liked doing stuff on foot.

…..Why was Viv holding so many bags?

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

AN: New chapter. Boom.

I am aware Flame is being more of a traditional Self Insert than a Commander Self Insert. This is intentional. I feel relying on the Commanders too much makes the SI boring. I want to give Flame opportunities to get more rounded so that, when the inevitable fights against the Commander Defense System happen, he isn't waiting for help to bail him out.

Read and Review! This is Flameal15k, signing off!