(A few minutes before the previous chapter's ending.)

A/N: This chapter and the two following it were written all at once. They were separated for pacing reasons.

The sky was peppered with concrete, deadwood and steel raining upon the shore. Each piece of debris plunged into the water louder than the one before it.

The tire tracks in the sand ended where footprints started. Most of them were similar: the awkward, wobbly steps of a man in long shoes. One exception stood out: a sharp and methodical stride, dug with military precision by a pair of stilettos.

A deep monotone chatter emanated through the speaker of a floating object. "Inquiry: Unit 7B should clearly state its objective. Aimless wandering from assigned area during active mission time is considered a form of insubordination and wasteful-"

"Honey," a feminine voice retorted, "do not ever mistake me for a slacker. I only ever have three things in mind: my objectives, me, and my subordinates in that order," almost as if to flirt, "something exploded here, and I know a call to action when I see one. Got it, POD?"

"Affirmative. Warning: This support unit will remain unable to assist Unit 7B to its fullest ability without a clear statement of Unit 7B's intentions."

"Hush now," it took on a mocking motherly tone, "you can listen to the widow[ch18]'s groveling[ch16] later while she needs me. You just keep watching and I'll reward you with handsome data."

A lone figure, a slender silhouette of black, white, and gold, hopped from shattered bed to bed on the remains of a clinic in the delicate spin of a ballet dance. Steeling herself for a charge attack that might infringe upon her delicate features from any direction as her long silver ponytail whirled in the wind, she frolicked with the demeanor of a butterfly and the power of a meteor.

Thump. Crack. Splash. Snip. Thump.

The seemingly bottomless tapestry of branches, leaves and weeds proved to be no match for her. From her long satin gloves, glowing strings of energy sunk their tips into the slag and flung it off into the shore, one cinder block and one steel beam at a time. The threads cut searingly through the weeds, and the webs she weaved chopped through leaf and concrete alike, leaving every slash straight, and either red-hot or ashen black.

Sliding her finger gently over the cracked remains of a wall, she made out a smudge in the shape of a hand. "Recent. There's precious little dust, and lookee~ my, someone's been grabby," she leaned over to a cupboard with the clear markings of hands and several containers' bottoms that were removed from place. With a quick reach into her sleeveless jacket's zipper pockets, she pulled a pair of wet wipes out, furrowed a brow and pursed her lips. "POD, do you think the R&D division deserves its funding?"

"Affirmative. The Research and Development facilities of the Bunker are instrumental to maintaining equipment and progressively iterating on-"

Unfazed, she turned her nose up at her floating assistant. "Well," cracking a wry smile, "we're about to find out whether they can help with basic hygiene," the tissue up in smoke and vapors as she rubbed it lightning-fast, "...I guess you're right," she playfully petted the roof of its casing.

A mere moment later, she'd leapt back and blinked: a foreign hair was stuck between her eyelashes. Focusing her only exposed eye on it, she'd inspected its fibers. "Animal hair! In my wet wipes? How did this get in here-" she plucked it, and grunted in annoyance. "Ugh. Maybe I should cover my left eye with the visor too, with all this dust flying around. Or maybe not," she put a thumb to her chin and covered her lips, "after all, the humans once said, 'an eye for an eye', did they not?"

"Refusal: This unit will not answer Unit 7B's question due to its low confidence in Unit 7B's comedic abilities."

"Suit yourself," she lightly slapped the back of the floating cube, "now, lift me up," she gripped its mechanical talons, leapt into the air, and reached with her palm at the rubble beneath her, "Laser! Now!"

"Error: command interrupted by system function."

A moment later, she'd let go. Adjusting her posture, she fell back to the ground, landing flatly on her soles in a dust cloud: nothing transpired, as she waited for the assistant to fly back down to her eye level. "POD," she groaned, "look at what a mess my boots are!" she pouted, "if you re~ally want an excuse to make me do all this by myself, keep this up and I'll-"

The pod turned away from the android, turning its light on and chiming. "Alert: The following communication will be encrypted, and classified Privilege Level 5. Unit 7B is required to digitally sign an authorization for Order 67."

A dark holographic screen was projected into the thick dusty air, showing black characters on a khaki background. Turning towards it, a scowl formed over her visible eye, one she'd quickly restrained lest it overly crease her skin. "To authorize the use of force on the following targets possessing no entries in the YoRHa combat database… ensuring security by any measures necessary," she scrolled down the virtual sheet with her fingers.

"Good use of decorum, I can tell they didn't just copy a template for this letter." She skipped over a set of photographs and idly read through a few paragraphs, "uh-huh, 'Squad Commander 7B, signs off on the following operations to be undertaken by YoRHa units 5S and 10D in accordance with POD number whatever's recommendations.' And this is the time for it?"

The floating assistant manifested a glowing yellow stylus between its talons. "Information: As designated squad leader by Command, Unit 7B must immediately provide its digital signature on the authorization form, or refuse the operation otherwise. Units 5S and 10D will be informed immediately. Delays will negatively impact mission outcomes."

"Hm. This pen's a bit… asymmetrical," she swiped the stylus off into the ground and stepped on it, dissolving it into a brief flash of light. "I'll see the others. Conjure them."

"Affirmative." The pod produced another holo-pen of a different shape.

"Wrong color. I need the same color as the text," she flicked the item off of her assistant's grip. Before long, it materialized a third one; her fingers gracefully swooped in on the writing implement and turned it upright in her hand, leveling it with the line on which she intended to write.

A couple swift gestures were all it took for her to calligraphically sign her name on the virtual form, above the English words "Glory to Mankind", sighing at the holographic display's disappearance.

She ran through a slit in the slag down the crumbled staircase and snapped her fingers at the pod to turn its light on, pecking it with her lips and whispering to it. "Don't move. I wanna surprise them."

Trampling in sharp high heels over hardened pools of molten rubber between the steel beams of a shattered basement, she snickered at a green light in her peripheral view. "Ooh. Messy. A black box…" she turned over to an object embedded within a crack in the floor, "now, we can't have that just lying here," she whispered into a microphone on her finger.

She looked at the intricate criss-crossing fiberglass lines surrounding the device's rugged obsidian exterior. "The reactor… it's a prototype. Ju~ust as I'd expect for a boy that's out of his element," she shook it, "wonder if this one turns into a mushroom. It'd make for a good stew if it did, ah. But if it doesn't, that explains why this place isn't a crater." she dissolved the reactor in a flash of light, "Off to digital storage you go."

"Hm. This'll be a," she slowly savored her next word, "lovely encounter," she opened a crumpled metal locker and marveled at its contents. She caressed the cheeks of the dead android within, and softened her voice. "Oh, hun, you must have been so angry. If only you'd met me earlier, you could've had such a peaceful end," she hugged its chest, you could even have called it an act of love!"[ch21]

Her fingers ran through the tiny limb stubs all over the side of the unit's body, the wires and nerves sticking out, before a visceral revulsion stayed her hand. After remaining still for a moment, she'd raised her index fingers, wedged them in the body's armpits, lifted it up onto her shoulders, and hauled it back into the daylight to be greeted by the slick slate-gray assistant raising it into midair. "Analysis: These are the remains of No. 22, a prototype YoRHa unit of the deprecated Gunner type. Components have been substituted extensively and combined with machine lifeforms. Fuel filter is missing."

She smiled softly, and winked. "I delivered," she put her hand on her hip, "didn't I?"

"Affirmative. Unit data has been submitted to database and is pending verification."

"Now… to deal with the decoy objective of Operation Argo, then it's back to real soldiering. But, seriously," she twirled a corkscrewed lock of hair, "mark an access point on my visor. I can get all this dust off my uniform, but I will not take it well if my mascara starts running."

"Access point marked on map. Warning: said access point is operating in restricted mode. Bandwidth has been limited for security."

"Wait, so it'll take that long for it to reconstruct me in Yokohama? I better write the girls a message then," she clapped her hands at the assistant for it to project a communication interface and materialize her holo-pen. Swiping it immediately from the air, she scribbled a note on an input pad. "If-you-can't-handle-the-target-call-me-to-intervene-I-would-be-disappointed-to-lose-you-Captain-7B. That'll do it. I-am-always-available. Have 10D's POD immediately notify her when it catches this."

She took another pair of wet wipes out her zipper pocket and cleared her shoulders of debris. "Eugh. I almost wasted a logic vaccine just making sure all these I/O ports don't write bad bits to my OS chip. Good thing I took his black box out."

As soon as the floating cube took to moving along her planned path, she'd grabbed it again and held it in place. "Hold on."

"Inquiry: Unit 7B should state its reason for delaying its movements."

Her tone grew sterner. "I might go there and see them. My girls are not allowed to get hurt if I can help it. And besides," she winked, "in restricted mode, who's to say these glorified candy dispensers would reconstruct my earrings faithfully? I will not face that machine in the Forest Kingdom again and ask him to make me another pair." She wipes the two belts on her skirt, wiping dust off of them with a grimace of disgust.

POV : the man.

(Immediately after the previous chapter's ending.)

The helmet on his head strained his neck, his joints screaming in the language of pins and needles for relief.

Feels like my head's in an iron maiden, or like I'm taking the shots from when I was a kid… except all over my neck instead of one spot on my arm.

With the visor down, sweat dripped over the glass to blur his vision and constricted him in his own shirt as he ran through the hundreds of glowing particles in the attic. A pitter-patter downstairs propelled him toward the windowsill like steam out of a boiler.

He took a quick detour to rush over to the gold necklace on the floor he'd spotted from the staircase.

I want my Rolex! I want my three months rent! I want my compensation for having endured living in this place, and by God, I am getting it! This necklace is mine, no matter which bitch it is whose name is engraved on it!

With the dexterity of a drunken sailor on a rocking ship, he pried it upwards with the sole of his shoe, scooped it up with his foot and raised his knee briefly to pick it up; the first time, his foot fell back. Ding. The necklace struck the floorboards with a loud clang, pulling a scream of frustration out the man's lungs. "Gaaaah!"

One more attempt: bouncing on the other leg to keep balance, he caught his foot at the apex of its trajectory, and yanked the necklace expediently into his pocket. Without skipping a beat, he scurried up to the window.

Something assaulted his senses. He knew he wasn't exactly by himself, but there was something watching him. It felt like a stiff breeze and a blur, but he couldn't call it an entry: for one, how would anyone come in without making a clear sound on the stairs, and second, was this presence fact or delirium?His mind froze in its tracks, as if stretched thin in a hundred directions.

…If I didn't know the exit, I'd call this place purgatory.

The gentle pit-pat downstairs abruptly halts. The man turns around by the window, looking every which way, and briefly hears a thud come from right at the bottom of the staircase. Whiplashed, he turns around. Before he'd even registered what he'd seen, he'd already had a chill rise up his spine. Without a second thought, and without even taking time to look, he raced to the stairs, panting too loud to hear his own thoughts: whatever was down there, he thought, he could process later; but what was up here with him, he thought, would rip his balls, face and soul out, not necessarily in that order.

Not a moment after he set his first step on the top of the staircase did a whirlwind blow over him carrying nails and wood shavings. The only warnings were a flash of light and the faintest whimper of a woman before he'd blinked and found the stairs all chopped into splinters along with the flooring next to them, exposing the closet right beneath the attic.

The figure, staggering under its own momentum, loudly dug its heels in: a nefarious presence, bewailed by grating and screeching floorboards to curdle the listener's blood.

He froze in place and slid a finger over his visor to wipe the muck and sweat off: unmistakably the figure he'd seen on the burnt field, only now crystal-clear.

When it was on the field, the surrounding ashes muddled his view of the silhouette. Yet in the light of the attic and standing nearly eye-to-eye with him, its sleek and clean features contrasted sharply with the muted browns and beiges of the attic, its shelves, the toolbox, the bandages strewn on the floor. Its skin was paler than the white fabric of the sleeping bag.

The silence enveloped the attic; something slowly fell out of a spot on her chin, pushed out by a glowing substance. From the brisk and solid landing sound, he could tell it was a splinter of wood. As quickly as the little splinter bounced and spun on the floor, the glow on her chin shrank and vanished, leaving a smooth patch of skin.

If sanity could not make heads nor tails of it, his hindbrain was almost certain of its nature: a tall and slender woman, sporting a dress that fluttered in the wind within an inch of the ground.

Dark-brown insignia on her back: a symbol resembling either the shape of eyelashes if the MS-13 found a way to sharpen their eyelashes for stabbing, brass knuckles, or a fist with knives tucked between its fingers. Long jet-black hair, done in braids so meticulous only an assembly line could make them that seemingly sucked the light out of its surroundings. The Wiccan Taliban? The drawings of goth middle schoolers?!

A scythe, taller and wider than its owner herself, floated behind her back with a halo around its handle, bestowing an air of holiness upon her. To the right of her temple, a dark red cube with black metal talons levitated.

…If Isaac Newton saw this, he and I would've been put together in a padded room.

The man, picking up his pace, scurried over around his pursuer's back, unthinkingly kicked his sleeping bag up over his knees, grabbed it with his arms and ran to the window before the next idea popped into his head. I-I-Bag! I can jump and use the bag to cushion my fall! W-wait, what the fuck am I thinking?! My hands are shaking, I need to roll it up, and I don't even have ten seconds for that!

"Guuh!" he shrieked, turning around to see a shape closing in on him, announcing its approach with the roar of a hurricane: she'd launched her weapon at him.

Swoosh.

The scythe and its wide carbon-black serrated blade cleaved the air, tore through the vertical cables in the middle of the room and the support beams leaving nothing but sawdust.

Crack! The glass snapped loudly, blasting off into the field outside as the weapon bounced off of the window's metal frame, leaving a dent that arched it into the shape of a bow for a parting gift. The walls cracked, the ceiling creaked, the rulers and compasses on the shelves took flight, followed by a blizzard of papers and hardcovers.

The man, watching death oncoming, leapt backwards and slammed his head on the wall as the blade's tip stopped short of his neck. As swiftly as it flew at him, the weapon spun in a boomerang motion and floated back into its halo behind the woman's dress, slicing through the leatherbound covers of three tomes, and coating the floor in hundreds of evenly-cut page fragments.

"Le pamoi saske cu puco'u ckisku le selbradi klani poi dekte fpi'i vopiso n'iu ci. .i le selbradi nejni cu pimo'a no'o lo'e re'amnu. Fa'o."

["Preliminary target analysis: estimated combat level index is seven-point-nine times ten to the power of negative three. Target's energy emissions are multiple orders of magnitude below expectations. Over."]

With his head spinning and his eyes seeing double, he hurried over to the other end of the room. He stubbed his toe, cursing out loud the "damn toolbox" on the floor and tripping into the racks of circuits, cables and tubes in the attic's rear. A volley of energy projectiles whizzed right over his head. When an electric shock from the circuitry struck his arm, he'd jolted back into place, briefly thinking he'd been retired from service to meet the good Lord — a false prediction. I'm still here… Weapon! I need a weapon! The… the fucking rifle! Maybe it's charging energy up inside this contraption!

Opening the lid of a metal container on the racks and stuck all ten inches of his forearm inside, clawing and scratching the deepest reaches within for anything of use until he could feel the blood in his veins curdle and freeze as he'd made a quick realization.

…That Cog son of a gun took the rifle earlier.

".A'ecai doi le selbradi cu ca troci nu ri xaksu vanbi nejni mu'i ra cu ba pregunta mi'o .i .eicai mi'o cu ca darxi. Fa'o."

["Warning: Target is attempting to absorb energy from contraption or deploy energy-based attacks. Suggestion: sabotage the energy pipeline. Over."]

"Ko dai ri'e dai'a do sisti go'i."

["Go nuts and stop him."]

"Je'e .io fa'o."

["Affirmative. Over."]

Did… the cereal box… just say pregunta… if this is just a 'pregunta', I don't know how the fuck a 'frase' will turn out.

With his forearm stuck in the container, the man pushed back and held the lid up. The dirty warning light turned on and the container heated up almost instantly, searing his arm intensely enough that he'd yanked it out at once, clutching his wrist. Holy shit! It burns! I can still feel the pain! I still have nerve endings!

Face to face with the woman, he'd noticed an oddly terrifying look in her face: there was nothing that stood out. In fact, there was nothing: there were no creases, no pores, no body hairs, no scars, a sight his mind refused to accept. The figure before him had all the markings of a face, yet its skin's devilishly smooth softness did not betray the smallest sign of life.

After she briefly stood statue-still under the sunken ceiling, the woman crossed half the attic in one step and lunged at the hyperventilating man and his sleeping bag like a tiger at its prey. His helpless eyes betrayed a blank stare as he'd felt a blazing heat radiate from behind and ahead.

…Is this a glimpse into hell?

Quivering and sweating, he raised his sleeping bag as a last-ditch shield. Holy shit! Even without that scythe she'd borrowed from the Grim Reaper, she could body-slam me into the 10th circle of Hell! Virgil and Dante better lend me a rope out of there!

The ubiquitous particles that were his greatest annoyance in the attic, he'd noticed, had suddenly disappeared: they were all flying towards the racks of circuits and wiring behind him, pouring like moths to a flame. Wh…

"Le darxi cu co'aze'i fasnu. Fa'o." A beam of light unloaded out of the floating prism by the woman's side, going over the man's head. ["The strike is on the verge of happening in a very short time period in the future. Over." or "Impact imminent. Over."]

They ain't aiming at me?!

"Nngh!" The woman grimaced, slammed her heels into the floor and bounced off into the ceiling. Her somersault in high heels rumbled the floor, and ended with her latching on to the ceiling's bars, crushing two of them under her unrelenting momentum.

Not a second later, she landed perfectly still within arm's reach of the man. The scythe dissolved into thin air behind her back and appeared in her hands, spinning virulently in a fan-like motion as if to repel something. Dazed, he clutched his portable bed, dived sideways, and ducked under its cover.

Eyes shut, jaws clenched, he'd heard a rain of projectiles, ricochets and crackles.

The whistling and hissing of the air shook him to his core, quaking the precious few floorboards on which he rested. A few objects he couldn't see struck the helmet on his head, laying chink after chink in its cracks. Glass broke, metal was bent, wood was vaporized, and shrapnel spun and took off all around the attic, and a burning hole was etched into his sleeping bag right above his stomach–one through which all life would have spilled out of him, had it been any thinner.

The once-charming gable roof snapped into pieces, breaking and collapsing above the two occupants. The building was chock-full of smoke and glowing dust anywhere the man could look, blocking everything from his sight—had his legs been the slightest bit number, he'd also concluded that he was half a casualty himself.

Shit, shit, shit… I'm under like, a million pounds of wood. I'm sending Giles Corey and Mr. Fipp[ch20] my regards.

Letting out a few pained breaths muffled under his covers, the man coughed the dust out of his tongue and throat, choking. Oh God… I'm going to die here.

He let go of the sheet, and tried to crawl over the few square inches of flooring left intact around him, noticing a crack in the floor. He dragged himself off to the side, firmly gripped the jagged edge and turned to look: it was a hole in the broken floorboards leading into the closet, he'd realized from seeing a window. Straight back to the closet.

…Well, my journey in this house has gone full circle. Yeah, speaking of closets, this'd be the time to come out if I were gay.

Crawling on the floor and treading as quietly as possible, the man did his best to hold the sleeping bag up with his shoulder and arm, lest it fall and the debris on top make a sound, until his arm gradually moved away, followed by his hand and then his fingertips. Once he was in the clear, he'd held his cough in long enough to stick his head through the opening, cough into his free hand and breathe in. He looked down; there was the bag[ch12] in which he'd been first brought into the house. The closet window was broken and its frame in shambles.

"Le remoi seske cu puco'u ckisku le du'u le selbradi goi ko'a cu pu je canai bacyxundi'e lo gusni .i cakiku ko'a canci fe'eroroi ve'a .i ja'o ko'a cu morsi. Fa'o."

["The second analysis explains the predicate that: the target's infrared signature is no longer detectable. No more vital signs were found. Conclusion: threat neutralized. Over."]

"A'enai doi… mi cu ca pu'o mensku nu mi tolmencre…"

["Mmh, I feel like such an idiot…"]

Hacking, wheezing, choking on the dust and chafing under the rubble as it mixed with his sweat and lodged itself in his facial hair, the crevices in his lips and his tongue; his throat slowly but surely gave up the ghost. With all of his strength, he dragged his neck into the gap in the floor.

A second look revealed yet another issue: the window's edges and surroundings were coated in broken glass. So, this window's making me an offer: destroy your legs and feet, and you might just get to live long enough to walk past a few trees and tattered blankets on laundry lines before a moose munches on you.

…

Fuck you, I'll pass.

All skin and bones, yet he had never felt heavier than that moment, slithering under the coarse debris and wood into the hole and twitching at the occasional glass shard. He clenched his jaw and braced himself for impact as he slid over the rubble, letting his chest, hips and knees free from the crushing pile of glass, metal and dust above.

Wait. Wh-

In the brief moment he was at the mercy of gravity, his chest tightened. Even with his eyes closed, he could see his own skull split open and release torrents of blood, before blinking again and finally feeling the dreaded moment of truth: a mild nosebleed. When his mind had cleared up, the pile of rubble he landed on broke his fall. Letting go of the sleeping bag relieved him of the blaze burrowing through his skin.

I need… an ice pack…

A faint beep rang through his ears, like a fish surging up through a sea of tinnitus and quickly dipping back in. It was not in his head; this sound had a position, an origin and a distance, the three properties of a vector if my D+ in high school algebra was any fuckin' good for a subject on which I didn't cheat.

The masculine voice from above spoke slowly, as if to recite a well-memorized passage.

"Ju'a vlapoi cu pu'o notci da poi cu vajni mi'o zi'e poi tepritka klani ci fi le selci ly Seven-B .ly fo mi'o .i xu do dircu nu mi tcidu ra? fa'o."

["Notification: new text message received from Unit 7B. Priority: high. Privilege level 3. Display contents? Over."]

POV : the scanner.

(A few hours earlier.)

I'm finally at the vantage point marked on my mini-map. I take one last look at the corner of my visor's interface, and make sure of it: no doubt!

Tenna and I have combed the area for a few hours, looking for that… darned thing! At first, we just followed its tracks hoping that was enough: but that led us right back to the lake where I found the Resistance camp's second-in-command[ch16]. We've been over trees, underneath them, we went through some ruins, crossed a river and an abandoned watchtower: nothing.

So we gave up. But more than a week later, we find this rundown home in the middle of nowhere, so Tenna and I take turns watching it for two hours each.

Did humans raise their children in structures like these? It looks a bit… sad. Like a place that needs so much renovation, but from the peek I could take at this distance, it was just full of junk. There was a television set[ch21] left on the counter by the windowsill, and it wasn't even plugged in. I tell Tenna on her shift to look out if they turn it on, and show us some sort of message so I can decipher it… but whatever they show, it won't demoralize me now. Not after we've come this far.

It's the third shift now: mine. I saw a machine come and go, but that's it. A little machine, even. It was smaller than any I'd seen before. There were also the cicadas chirping for hours on end, and a few vultures feeding on a boar's carcass by a tree, something Tenna absentmindedly wandered off and found on the other side of the building.

I lie down over a tree's branch with her by my side watching my back, a job for which I thankfully don't have to keep my nostrils turned on. Still, it wouldn't hurt if I could try[ch17] some of that perfume I've borrowed from 7B…

While I'm watching, I spend a good amount of time drafting my authorization to attack and record data to the intelligence server. The holographic keyboard takes some getting used to, because it has to calibrate input for the 'force' I apply to the keys with my fingers inside my sleeves. The display is transparent, so I can see through what I type and look at the building at the same time, without even moving my eyes.

At any rate, no corners will be cut! Not the standard margin size, not the letter spacing. the Commander isn't strict about it, but 42O's calls often go into detail nitpicking everything I send her way. And if 7B's anything like Tenna describes… what horror! I can hear my internal fans spinning up when I imagine what it'd be like if I sent her a simple message without all the bells and whistles the higher units like.

"You look like you're so sharply focused. Mmh, I should learn to look like I'm working… and this thing can teach me to type reports." Tenna pets my POD, and the holographic display flickers. "Warning: Unit 10D is not authorized to physically interact with this support unit. Failure to withdraw is a violation o-"

I shake my arms to lower my sleeves, stand up and grab it off of her hands. "Tenna, stick to yours," I raise my pointer finger at her, barely high enough that it pokes out of the warm synthetic wool to wag.

It's really a performance, of sorts. It's like how human sisters interact, we both know it's not as serious as it looks. Before long, my POD is back in its place and ready for me to lie down again and start typing on the holographic keyboard in midair.

"We'll find the ball[ch17] and ask it all the questions we want."

She leans back on the tree. Her weight shakes it vigorously: it's like she woke it up from a deep sleep. The branches shake, and a few leaves fall over her hair. They rustle her hair every time she plucks them off. "Hum, we have-" she picks up a bird's nest off of her head and waves a bird off from pecking at her head, "I have to shower, and we have to let the captain know before we make a move…" She's clearly irritated by all the broken twigs that fell into her hair, even if she doesn't want to show it.

I wouldn't handle it that well, for sure.

Time to blow her mind. "I already sent it. The tall man, the slouchy fellow with the beard, the machine, the creature, what's that weird thing's name-Emil of the Woo?[ch17]."

I can't see her eyes behind the visor, but I can tell from the slight shift of her visor that her eyes are popping out underneath.

"You're fast."

Always deadpan, Tenna. Never change.

"While we're here, I'm sure the Captain will take her time to get back to us, but I'm keeping watch. The first target got away and, the other one, hm…"

"Mmh, who are you talking about?"

"He looks a bit like the bald face I found in a photograph once, but a lot more… deflated? I'm not sure."

"An inflatable android,hm… if it's for swimming, why not just carry a buoy instead of inflating his skin?"

My POD shoots up into the air and interjects. "Conjecture: the abnormal properties of hostile units being discussed may be due to unauthorized use of salvaged Resistance and/or YoRHa equipment. Proposal: collect more data until Unit 7B replies to letter, in order to-"

Tenna's POD makes a loud ping, and speaks in a slightly higher voice than mine. "Priority message received from Unit 7B: Attack authorized. All threats must be prosecuted with extreme prejudice."

I get up, and adjust my visor.

I can't believe I'm doing this. This was meant to be just a sideshow of a mission, but it feels like so much more than that. We look at each other, and nod.

"Hmm."

"Mhm."

We're closing in from the side, and I put my hand on her shoulder before we split up.

"You stand watch in the field, do what you do best as a D-type. I'll go in first, and collect data. I'll hack into anything I find-"

Is that… a man's laughter? No, no, that's the sound of a maniacal breakdown!

An infernal sound assaults me from the window. "10D! Y-you go on and check it. Next time I enter sleep mode, that shout will panic me down to my kernel![ch21]"

POV: the scanner.

(During the end of the previous chapter.)

I stand at the rear entrance. Tenna signs off that she's watching out for me.

Little holes! I peek through: nothing's moving in there. I open it and…

The floor is… wet?! No, no, no! I'm not about to slip and fall in these boots. This looks like a trap! Better turn back and walk through the laundry line. I'm short enough to sneak right under it.

But there's a better way: if I jump on the stool and latch on to POD, I can just walk on the wall around the building and avoid whatever's on the ground. I'm sure it would've been easy for whoever set up shop here to lay traps all around the building or landmines to kill whoever gets too close to exposing the truth about their deeds.

With this in mind, I manage to avoid a window on the ground floor and make quiet steps. Hands on the support unit, feet on the wall… all these centrifugal force exams we take during physical check-ups are finally making sense.

Standing sideways with my head slightly lower than my feet needs some heavy calculation of friction coefficients to keep generating the upwards force to resist gravity. And the coefficients have to be calculated again with every step I take.

Before long, I briefly go even higher to avoid the carcass, and then I make a clean somersault off to the front door. It's up to me to make the first move. A couple trapdoors are available for me to break in, but it might be too dark in the basement before I get struck by whatever's hiding there.

To shed light on this matter, the sun is a girl's natural ally.

Whatever that… laughing abomination is on the other side, I'm sure Tenna will make short work of it. If I can't make a quiet entrance, I'll have to make a powerful one. So, let's learn from the best…

Shredding doors isn't so bad after all![ch17]

Once Treacherous Covenant flashes into my hand, the door is history. Well, I wouldn't mind if I had any melee combat skills, but I'm sure that just piercing it in random spots until it breaks should make… an impression?

As soon as I'm inside, I look all around. I almost lose it at the face of a Medium Pseudopotamus hung on the wall[ch19] before realizing that it was just the shell of a dead machine. No problem.

…H-hey! Someone just ran up the stairs! Where did they go?! I need to catch up to them-oh. Oh no.

The light coming from below… it's from black boxes. The renegade, was she in on this? Tearing the black boxes out of other units like it's a game to her?! And whoever is here, are they going to call for her to come back? No, no, no, this is really bad. I need to search for anything I can find, capture as much data as possible and hand this over to a battle division!

It feels like a jungle of furniture here. There are hospital beds, shelves of strange bottles and containers, some… surgical tools? The television is over there, facing outwards. I strafe around a rug and a pair of beds to look in the closet.

"Alert-" POD warns me, but by the time I hear him, I can already feel my ankle in the clutches of something from underneath. Is it in the basement?! I don't even get to process the signal from my sensors before I start kicking and thrashing about.

My mouth is open.

If I fall, I'll scream.

But my heel pushes something off, and it lets me go.

I jump back and take a defensive stance, aping what I saw of that woman who was with 9S once. She looked intimidating back then, in the Bunker. Maybe if I do it too, it'll intimidate whatever lurks here.

…it's an android, on the floor. Something's monstrously off about his skin - like he was burnt, or punctured, wait… it looks like he has 'pores' all over his skin. Why would you… impersonate our creators?

I'm forming a working theory about how all this came to be. The renegade unit, and the two modified older android models. Did they brainwash her? If she's a prototype, maybe she couldn't tell they're not humans? Did the other one flee up the stairs just now? H-hold on.

This one crawling on the floor is mouthing something at me that I can't understand. Some Old World language, I suppose.

I raise my fist. The software runes are cast into the air, and the maso flows into his head.

Remote control: let me hack in!

One by one, my senses are cut off from the real world as I enter virtual space. If this goes all well, I should get in, copy some files over to a sandboxed filesystem, disconnect and it'll be over in a few hundred milliseconds. My motor functions won't be turned off long enough for me to even lose balance in the real world.

POV: the man.

Lying down for a moment, the man's pulse seemed to slow to a crawl over the rubble. His body grew numb; his eyes and body told two different stories. The former, told through a spiderweb in the cracked glass of his helmet, was that he'd fallen on his stomach, his head struck something hard and that his hands and legs were twitching.

The latter was of him falling into a pit of needles, and that everything below his neck disappeared to make way for the smell of blood and rancid puddles of sweat consuming his being. With a hectic force, he yanked the helmet off of his head, finishing it off as its frame broke into pieces.

Am I… dead?

It's like… holy shit… before you know it, it's like when I nearly hung myself all over again.

The ceiling drummed and thumped powerfully, drawing a shiver out of the man.

The last few shards of glass left on the window trembled with each noise, falling one by one. Not long after, a gust of wind blew from above the closet, brisk as thunder, cranking the window ever-so-slightly open with a creak.

A chill rose up his spine, invading every fiber of his being as his breath grew heavier. I-I need to find… Cog, man…

Where's… Cog…

A loud ringing permeated his ears, like a violin in the pitch of nails on a chalkboard playing inside his skull. For a moment, he whipped his head around searching for the source—before realizing it was within.

After a couple seconds of breathing, he'd felt his body strangle his mind with a million sensations: the tight, sweat-drenched fabric of his pants around his legs, the pain and the broken toenail in his shoe, the nauseating stench underneath his shirt, the coarse rubble all over his skin mixing with his sweat, his tendons stretched thinner than his sanity and his shirt stained red with blood where he'd fallen on a stray nail, clenching his jaw as he pulled it out.

Heaving himself up, he staggered, limped, tripped and trotted up to the open closet door, pushing it wider open. The floor had become warmer, and a suffocating heat was rising from beneath.

Is Hell spilling over? That seems about right.

With both arms, he reached at a hospital bed, leaned over its ticking fabric, shut his sore eyes and rested his hand before recoiling in panic at a loud creak and crack, and his feet giving out. With a yelp, his eyes were peeled wide open at the noise. Holy shit! Did I break the bed-

…No, he turned to the shattered remains of the front door: the tree by the house had been felled in a matter of seconds. The charred and rotten carcass of the[ch13] boar underneath it had been crushed into a fine paste, with its skeleton holding the trunk up from blocking the entry.

Why did the tree fall… it's because the-the monochrome motherfucker never left! Why is she looking for timber? or… or… is she still looking for more victims? Cog!

On the tips of his toes, every fiber of his being wobbled as he'd stepped over the unexpected mechanical horror at his feet: another killer goth, one with short white hair, sporting the proportions and rounder face of a middle-schooler who had just hit puberty and is dressed like she's sneaking out of her parents' to go to Treefort. I ain't a priest, so I ain't interested in touching it.

After a quick look at her blindfolded eyes, the hailstorm of fear that'd welled up within his arteries mellowed out once he'd realized that somehow or other, the unit was either deactivated, dead or something in-betweenand that he was by no way in hell going to stay here and find out.

Turning to the back door, the man made a beeline for his exit, wiping the blood on his hands and passing by the dinner table to pick up a knife for stabbing, a fork for lunging, and a stray bullet[ch21] fired into the table's woodwork to bite if need be. Sliding on a puddle of water, he rocked back and forth to keep his balance as he stepped on shards of broken glass, and craned his neck over to the kitchen: the window was smashed and there was a leaking pipe on the wall.

Panting, he crossed himself and grimaced. "God," he grunted while leaning on the shut door, "I ain't ready to meet you yet."

Powering through, he attempted to open the door: no dice, only a loud bang.

After three attempts, kicking it was of no use, and the faintest sound of a finger tapping the ground from somewhere behind him fired a chill up his spine: in a living room with two war machines, he was the third wheel in a contest for life and death.

His hair stood on end, his fingers froze stiff, his eyes darted around the dinner table, chairs, hospital beds and the large box-set television to tell which of the two figures sprawled on the floor had started twitching with all his strength he flung himself at the door, prying the door ajar and plowing the piles of fallen glass, wood, circuits and wire.

His feet stood on edge at the exit, manically powering through glass and fallen shingles on the floor and briefly untangling a power cable from his legs, ramming his head into a water pipe before turning around as he pressed the sore spot on his forehead. The laundry line!

Sneaking along the wall towards it, he crawled through the weeds up to the shade of the pine trees, and spotted small, orderly, square footprints neatly circling a bush yonder. First a crawl, then a walk, then a run ensued as he eagerly ran, his heart pounding at the distant sound of a car's engine sputtering, whining and fizzling out; the words "Wait for me, you sons of bitches!" silently flowed out of his throat and tongue; with his free hand, he choked himself lest a mere cough betray him to his apex predators.

A glowing pellet of energy whizzed right over his head, striking a tree's branch above him and dropping something long and round into his hair. "Guuh-guh-grenade?!" he wheezed and yelped, grabbing the foreign object and tossing it as far as he could to his side, and hearing it strike a hollow piece of metal: it was a pinecone that struck his mechanical companion.

His frozen and shrunken stance of cornered prey thawed into the usual slouch as his hands fell down to his pockets. The tight, contorted lips holding screams of panic hostage loosened into a sigh, letting out heavy breaths. "Oh Christ," his vocal chords wheezed. His fingers jumpily scrubbed the pinecone's pollen off his hair. "Cog! Y-you-"

The stubby's monotone, now familiar, felt more reassuring than robotic. "You were mistakenly identified as an enemy, Derrick," it turned around and hopped along its footprints, "After the commotion, Emil and I had presumed you were deceased. I appropriately tilted my aim away from your cranium as soon as I recognized your likeness."

"You thought I was one of them?! Good Lord, man, do I look like a living Barbie doll?!" he hushed his tone, running hunched over to the stubby's eye level, "Your rifle's got the same… shiny metal case as the floating weapons the Ballbusters in Black are using up there!"

"It is my understanding that the resident of this household has been butchering androids[ch14] to hoard their parts for reverse-engineering purposes. Similarly, he had intended to harvest your organs for study." It hopped inside the garage's broken doors, turning its head around to look at the man, who lagged behind and rested his palms on his knees. "Our actions have averted for us the fate of all previous visitors to this residence."

"Hurgh… hurgh…" he sneezed, "let's get in the damn car. I can drive us out of here. I know just the right place… The keys. Where are the keys?" he patted his pockets down, skin paling as the sound of empty fabric dilated the whites of his eyes, and boosted his murmur to a wail. "We're never getting out of here aliiive!"

The machine grabbed his wrist, dragging him inside by force. "Derrick. Your carelessness will expose us to lethal force. I will not endanger myself needlessly to support you."

The two stood inside as the man took to the shelves, rummaging through scrap, wrenches, bolts, butane tanks and locked toolboxes, ripping his throat out as it were. "Where are the fucking keys?!" he shouted once more as his hands scrambled over a shelf, grabbing a bottle of rubbing alcohol and splashing it over the wound in his abdomen.

His mind was turned to mush by panic. The alcohol burn was hardly noticeable as adrenaline coursed through his brain. He turned over to the machine by his side, spilling more rubbing alcohol on its frame from the bottle shaking vigorously in his hand. "Where are the keys?!" his shout was punctuated by a coughing fit.

The spherical creature rolled off the car's dashboard, bounced up to the garage shelf by the man's head and rammed the wall. It shouted at him in enthusiasm

".ui coi doi tamne djordjbush! .ije ri cu pu co'u ze'i ve'u klama nau! .i mi cu te cusku djica nu mi'e fi la Cog. canai fe nu mi'a posystizu'e do!"

["Cousin George Bush, you're here! I knew I shouldn't have listened to Cog when he said we should abandon you!"]

Before the machine had gotten a word in, he'd shouted right back. "Ballkid, stop fucking calling George Bush and help me find the keys!"

Jerked to his right, the man fell back over the car's wireframe chassis with a shriek. His legs, tightly-wound like a coil, lunged at the creature to yank the keys off from between its teeth. "Gimme that, ballkid!" With both arms, he pulled the rusted door open, seated himself in the rope-bound seat in the cabin's center and twisted the key as hard as he contorted himself: the engine clicked and croaked, screaming, yet all he'd seen was a dash of sparks in the air.

"Jesus," he swallowed. Narrowing his eyes, he cracked his knuckles and cranked the ignition again; his voice trembled with each click and thump that fizzled out. "...Cog?" he barely held back the fear in his voice.

"It seems the vehicle is not functional. There is likely an issue with the battery, the carburetor and the fuel tank."

"Oh, shit, I didn't know!" he turned to the machine, crossing his eyes and curling his lips as he quipped sarcastically, before straightening his face out. "But suppose the car did work: were you planning to ditch me here? Throw the meatbag to the wolves?"

"Indeed. It was most prudent to assume that following the ceiling's collapse, and the spotted enemy unit remaining idle on the roof, that you were deceased."

"So the bitch is on the roof. Where were you, motherfucker?" His fist struck the speedometer as the spherical creature watched the two of them from over the shelf. "Why didn't you come back and open the window?"

"The most immediate assumption that came to mind was that you merely took the necessary time to open the window after my exit. After this was deemed improbable, I was far enough that the time to return would make for an unsafe delay."

"Fuck you, talking like an air traffic controller and all that." He stepped out of the seat, putting his feet down between the ropes that held it in place, and bent over the engine block, its pistons, and air intake, sweeping dust off the parts with the palm of his hand. "Your TSA agent buddies are back inside," he scowled at the machine, "and they wanted to get acquainted with my blood type!" He sighed. "Butane. We got it? We need fuel."

The machine stood in front of the headlights, hauling a litter box. "The tanks are on the shelf to your left, Derrick. You have ignored them."

Frustration clouded the fog in his mind. With every step he took, his posture swung left and right. The space around him seemed to both shrink and grow. To protect the few cubic inches inside his skull, he wrapped his hands around his temples and let out a cry of despair that bewildered his companions. "Why is no damned thing ever in the right place," he caught his breath, "where I need it when I need it?!"

He sighed. "Cog. Get a tank in," he sat himself back on the seat, rested his feet on the pedals and stared down the spherical creature, lips parted, skin jaundiced and face pale. "Ballkid. You're gonna have to get in the trunk," he gestured over to the vehicle's rear and rested his chin over the steering wheel.

The clink, the drop and the fitting of another cylinder behind him grated on his ears. His fingers darkened by ash and grime, he briefly dusted them, reached inside the ol' jockey box with his left hand, swept the sweat off his brow with his right forearm, and peered inside: a flimsy sheet of paper, folded in four and turned yellow, with a couple tears in the middle. Unfolding it in his hands, he found a map of the surrounding area and roads, drawn in shoddy pencil strokes with unintelligible labels. "Even the maps are written in these… these damn letters," he sighed, "but since Texaco probably isn't selling maps of this backwater, I can make do with what we've got."

"An individual in my colony once attempted to cartographically reconstruct this area on paper. It would be wise for us to check in on his progress, as my data is incomplete."

"Really? You got somebody like that-well, of course!" he shouted in excitement, "you know, like, all the machines, man! Cog the Yellow Pages!"

"Is this referring to the yellowing of the material in your hands?"

"No, no-nevermind," he rubbed his eyes and nose, "get to putting the damn tank in."

"The individual in question has been of hitherto questionable reliability. Until recently, however, I had placed greatly more trust in Emil than was due. Adjustments are therefore necessary such that more data sources are preferable."

He narrowed his eyes and whispered. "Of course you did, rust-bucket. Listen to somebody who doesn't send their friends to Rape Central for a change."

"So we're… here," he slid his pointer finger, smearing a spot of grease over the sheet and moving it up a narrow line… "this was the clinic… and, this must be that city I saw over there… which we can reach by this bridge." He looked at the legend, and spotted an arrow in the corner.

So that's north.

A trapezoid dominated the better part of the paper map, outlined in hard pencil strokes with a few attached letters labeled over it. He called out to the machine. "Cog, which way were we meant to go again?"

"Our path would require us to return to my home colony. With my accompaniment, greater security may be attained. The troops may be able to confront the enemy units." The machine explained its plan, barely audible as the creature on the shelf started shouting halfway through its speech. The machine swiftly turned to it, spoke a few words, and turned back to the man.

"Doi la .emirus. .ionai .i gacu'i ko nonsku."

["Emil, my friend, quiet down."]

"S-sumimasen!"

["Sorry!"]

Returning to face the man, the machine subdued its sudden inflection and spoke in monotone. "My colony is to the west. Our final destination, however, is approximately fifteen degrees north of East."

"The… the spot with the super network[ch4], you mean? It goes through a huge-ass city, the one with all those skyscrapers we see behind the trees?[ch15]"

"It would seem so."

"So that puts…" he muttered, "our destination… through this road and this bridge… right over this road labeled '20' and through the city," he tapped his finger lightly over the sheet, "assuming there's no Machine-zilla in there to eat our car in one bite."

The smiling sphere bounced off the garage shelf into the engine block, bit down on something and began to unscrew, bristling the man up. "Hey!" he reached out, trying to grab it and toss it off. "Whatever the goth kids outside do to my balls, I'll do to you!" he threw his hands at it, coating them in dust and soot and missing every blow.

Four objects flew off the grip of the creature's teeth in a blur off the engine block, flying off the metal: spark plugs. A split second later, it rolled off the frame up the shelf, grabbed four cleaner spark plugs, and screwed them back in as quickly as it took the old ones out. "What the…? You're an auto mechanic?" he chuckled, and turned back to the machine still attaching a gas tank, while the latter stared blankly at him. "Check it out! Ballkid's a gift that keeps on giving!" His snicker turned into an all-out guffaw. "He should've built us an android-proof house!"

Once he cranked the key, the car rocked forward; the seat shoved the man onto the dashboard, slamming his nose on the steering wheel. A loud hiss scraped his eardrums from underneath the headlights: litter box pebbles were scattered over the tires; the brown cat screeched and jumped off onto the wall.

The man shook in his shoes, and briefly felt a chill run up his spine as he'd pictured what would've remained of the pet had the tires struck it first. "G-gurgh! Get that thing," he coughed, "get that thing on the damn car with us now! This car is our sanctuary!" His throat nearly ruptured from shouting one last order at the machine, before it grabbed the feline and enclosed it in the trunk with the creature.

"I have ascertained the absence of electromagnetic interference behind this barricaded exit," the machine announced as it lifted the planks. "The presence of enemy units within attack range is unlikely."

Shortly afterwards, his eyes were baking: the meager sunbeams that slipped through the gaps in the walls and the cracks in the door now flooded in the open barn from every direction. He narrowed his eyes and adjusted the collar of his ragged shirt. The coat of sweat over his skin, mixing with the alcohol over the wound in his abdomen felt like a fire eating away at his flesh from the outside in.

With his foot firmly on the clutch pedal, and the key cranking in his blackened hands, the engine wheezed and sputtered its way into a roar of triumph as the man shifted gears and rolled forward off into the blinding sunlight above the cracked asphalt, holding a corner of the paper map under his thumb over the steering wheel and clutching his wound in the other, spotting a few reddish patches of skin on his arm through the tears in his sleeve.

The sounds of the stubby's motions were well-known by now. It leapt up to the roof, it latched on to the roof's bars by his side, that much he could tell without a look: he'd learned it by ear.

The next solo of this jazz session was his: to press the gas pedal and make his first turn. "We're goin' to the colony. You'll have to give me directions," he sighed, "and you'll have to spot anything that crawls, runs or flies our way-ow, shit!"

The stubby interrupted his train of thought. "Make two right turns," it commanded.

Slam. The beat dropped and the rhythm broke: something conked his head. The car ground to a halt. He checked his temple for blood with the unblackened back of his hand, shouting at the machine on the car's roof. "Shut the fuck up! Why did you hit my skull with-with that huge iron Lego on your rifle?!" he looked in a dizzied trance at the dangling object by his side.

"Turn right."

He sighed, cranked the key once more and set himself to follow the machine's instructions.

First gear, second gear, third gear… and bam. A shock from the rear of the car, and another from ahead. The ground shook. The pines by the side of the road fell, one by one. A blinding flash of light, followed by clouds of smoke and dust eclipsing the road. The shockwaves, loud as they were, cracked rocks to gravel, trees to splinters and shattered the tarmac. The man's blood ran cold in the rocking seat. His throat squealed in unison with the tires as he wrestled the steering wheel to maintain his direction.