Nyz stepped out of the rental car, and the driver took off to their next assignment. At Kal's orders, Nyz had sold his car at a shop, then took a rental to the mech garage nearest the Gate they were leaving to. Entering the garage, he looked around for his friend, spotting him near a 'beetle'.

The mech itself consisted of a central unit mounted on six legs, each ending in a set of wheels. The central body was large enough to contain two floors with two on the upper level and four on the lower, including the cockpit.

Three smaller, one-man mechs were mounted on its sides, each with four legs and a gun mounted on either side. Atop the beetle were several more guns, including one which released magic shots and two which fired heavier bullets, and each corner had a smaller gun for all-around defense.

While the walkers each had thick, enchanted glass windows on the front and sides where the pilot's head would be, allowing them to view out, the beetle contained no windows of any sort, though it possessed a greater range of sight than any walker could.

Walkers were the smaller, one-man mechs with four legs on the side of the beetle, so-nicknamed because the original versions were made before most mechs were given wheels to navigate with, causing them to 'walk' across the ground at all times.

Kal had given himself a deeper tan and had turned his hair a dark brown, wearing green contacts to conceal his normal eye color. He was in a deep discussion with an official holding a tablet in one hand as Nyz began walking towards him, and Nyz tuned in to their conversation.

"Just two of us," Kal said. "But we'll be fine."

"Are you certain?" The official asked. "The monsters have been more active the last few days. Normally, we wouldn't send out a unit unless they had four in suits accompanying them."

"With the beetle," Kal argued. "We have a superior defense. The armor on mine is made of an adamant alloy, it's only bright orange to make it easier for Scavengers, soldiers, and the like to see. I made it here to Valeros by myself. Honestly, I'm pretty decent with it, and I travel around all the time."

"I saw that in your paperwork," the official told him. "I still want to make sure you're absolutely fine with it. What if something big attacks?"

"Four rapid-fire guns that can switch between bullets and magic shots, two slower, but more powerful guns, and a magic cannon," Kal said. "We'll be fine, I swear. A few months ago, I went up against a thrashrak in this thing by myself. I won't be alone this time, I'll have Noll with me."

"Yes, Noll," the official said. "Who, according to the file, isn't a mech pilot by any training."

"Does it really take that much effort to target and press a button?" Nyz asked as he stepped past the official and beside Kal, turning to face the official. "Isn't much of the targeting automated?"

"It is," Kal told him. "He doesn't actually have grounds for refusing us to leave, he's just worried about a couple of eighteen-year-olds heading into the Fog Zone by themselves, even if we have a beetle."

"You told me it was a transport mech," Nyz looked at the beetle. "I was assuming something… well, I don't know what I was expecting, but you didn't tell me you had a beetle. A two-man combat walker, maybe, but not a beetle."

"The beetle's safer," Kal shrugged. "I got it a few years ago. It wasn't cheap, but I'd done enough jobs to afford it. I just finished resupplying it with ammo and crystal cartridges, so we're ready to go."

"Liratt," the official tapped something on his tablet. "Will take around two to three days days, due to the terrain and the Fog Zone. Do you have food supplies as well?"

"Yes," Kal answered. "I always stock up on travel rations. We'll be fine. I also have emergency medical supplies. I keep enough on-hand that I don't need to resupply every time I enter a town."

"Just doing my job," the official told him.

"You're looking for a reason to delay us," Kal told him. "You'd rather we group up with others, get a couple of Scavengers to escort us rather than trusting us even if we want to leave on our own, even after seeing my record showing I travel around all the time, even without others to accompany me."

The official gave him an apologetic look.

"I have a set of twin sons your age," the official told him. "They just turned eighteen. Seeing two young men like you wanting to go out into the Fog Zone alone makes me think of them and worry."

"Oh," Kal said. "I guess that's understandable. Parents tend to have those worries."

The official gave him an incredulous look, as did Nyz.

"We're orphans," Kal told the guard. "When we were little, it was just Noll and me against the world. We ran away from our orphanage when we were old enough to, and when the attack in Troak occurred, Nyz moved here and I began traveling. I promise, we'll be fine. And I'm sure your sons are smart enough to get protection if they head out."

"Maybe," the official shrugged. "The younger twin went through a rebellious streak, ran off and joined Gairal a few years ago, a little after he turned fifteen. I worry he's going to get himself killed one of these days, especially with how Gairal is lately. Attacking military soldiers, blowing up a building with themselves inside, attacking Asterox… I suppose it's making me more worried."

"Everyone is," Nyz told him. "That's why I decided to ask Kal to escort me when he popped into town for a few days. Gairal's had a strong presence here for a couple of years, and I want to leave before they decide to blow up the building I'm in. Or decide to shoot me in a gunfight on the streets just because I was passing by during it."

"Alright," the official tapped away on his tablet again. "You two are cleared to go. Good luck, and may the fog be gentle for you."

"Thanks," Kal said.

Kal and Nyz climbed up onto the beetle, then descended into the access hatch near the middle beside the heavier weaponry mounted atop it. Immediately inside was the decontamination room, which had only enough space for two or three people at a time, and just the one entrance to outside of the mech.

When the beetle was set for the Fog Zone, it would require them to press a button to seal the chamber first, then blast them with a decontamination gas before allowing them to enter the mech proper. On a side wall to it was the door to another room, where weapons and combat suits were stored.

Nyz entered first, stepping down the rungs into the general-purpose room in the beetle, which consisted of benches along two walls and a table in the center. Kal followed after him. They closed the door to the decontamination chamber, then walked into the cockpit, Kal taking the seat on the left, Nyz the one on the right.

"The suits in the storage are Class S," Kal told Nyz as he powered on the mech. "Since they didn't inspect me, it was easy to do that. While this looks like a Class B beetle, it's Class S as well."

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"Of course," Nyz said as the control panels lit up and the screens on the front of the cockpit turned on, showing them a view of outside. "And our weapons are, too, I take it?"

The screens directly in front of them showed them the view ahead, but smaller screens on the sides and on the control panels in front of them showed them views from other angles, and would give them alerts to motion activity not from any mech or combat suit registered as a friendly. It allowed them a full view of everywhere around them, and they could change which screen they were looking at on the main monitors at any time.

"Yep," Kal answered Nyz's question as the warrior himself examined the screens.

Once the mech woke up, Kal began navigating it out of the garage and towards the nearby Gate, which was right at the end of the parking lot for the mech garage. When they arrived, Nyz briefly exited the mech to show the paperwork to the guards, then returned, sitting back in his seat.

"You didn't mention monster activity went back up," Nyz said as Kal drove them out of the city.

"It did," Kal told him. "Lots of goo-type monsters acting up or increasing in size over the last week. Because of their tendency to hold things down and muck up systems they get into, a lot of Scavengers have been annoyed and are outright refusing jobs until it quiets down."

"Goos are the threat right now?" Nyz asked. "With the beetle, they'll be easy."

"Not just goos," Kal said. "One of the other annoying fog monsters has been active, too. Bograls."

Bograls possessed a humanoid form, with skin paler than that of people who never had a moment of tanning in their life. They possessed no gender, and for the most part, appeared to be neither male nor female, but something between, with no genitals of any form, nor any facial features. They were unnaturally slim and generally stood seven feet in height.

Most bograls could wield magics of shadow or water in variety, and their bodies were resilient to magical damage. Bograls used their claw-like fingers and toes to break into mechs and open up combat suits, and the moment they touched someone flesh-to-flesh, they stole the person's soul.

If a bogral stole someone's soul, the victim was usually consumed soon after, though on the occasions where they were recovered, their bodies remained in a vegetative state until they expired, with no emotion or thought, no ability to act on their own. No government or organization had found, as far as Nyz knew, a way to restore the person's soul, as even killing the bogral which stole it didn't work.

While a bogral was easy to deal with before it managed to damage a mech enough to break it open, that was only under two circumstances. The first was that it attacked alone. The second was that it did not wield its illusion magic to deceive its targets into thinking they were seeing something else or more targets than there were.

Any quality mech or combat suit would read something different, allowing most Scavengers and soldiers to know they were dealing with illusions, but it wasn't unheard of for newer or less-experienced Scavengers and soldiers to be fooled or not have gear with the proper sensors for detecting such things.

A few reports claimed there were bograls with masculine or feminine forms along with horns, wings, and tail, though the reports were unverified. That led most to either dismiss them, consider them to have been illusions, or believe that bograls were sometimes accompanied by another fog monster, which was mistaken for a bogral.

After all, with the fog blocking access to the sun, there was little need for pigmentation, resulting in pale skin on most people and monsters alike.

"I can see why people would be worried," Nyz said. "If they break your suit, it's not the fog that will doom you to a horrid, painful, agonizing death."

"It's the bogral," Kal nodded as he turned on the mech's lights. "Their touch is nasty, absorbing the souls of others to grow more powerful. Some of them are powerful enough their illusions are fooling the sensors, too."

"They can do that?" Nyz asked. "Since when?"

"Since some apparently figured out," Kal told him as they entered the fog. "That we could detect motion and heat patterns. So they adapted their illusions to imitate heat patterns, and apparently motion, too. Only the more sophisticated gear will detect the magical usage. However…"

"What?" Nyz asked curiously.

"What's strange about it," Kal told him. "Is the fact that reports of this adjustment came in all over the world at once."

"That's strange."

"It is," Kal said. "Which lends credence to the belief that the bograls might have a shared consciousness."

"They're a hive mind?" Nyz asked.

"No," Kal answered. "In this usage, a shared or collective consciousness is when what one knows, all know. There's a theory that humans have one, but they aren't tuned into it, preventing them from accessing the wealth of knowledge at their fingertips. If humans did have one, and they could access it, a terrorist could learn military secrets and plans, a schoolboy could ace every test, a foreigner could speak the local language, and more. We could even access lost knowledge, because once it enters the shared consciousness, everyone knows it, meaning it stays here."

"Being able to speak every language sounds like something you could do," Nyz commented.

"I don't speak every language, though I do speak enough," Kal said. "And you speak a fair few yourself."

"Only because you kept nagging me, since it could be useful on some missions."

"It has turned out to be useful," Kal told him. "You were able to ask questions on more than one occasion without needing to fumble over the words as I said them to you."

Nyz nodded, focusing on the screens.

"How long until we reach the facility?" Nyz asked.

"As long as everything goes as planned," Kal said. "We should reach it tomorrow night. That's accounting for up to two hours of delays due to combat."

"Understood," Nyz said. "Oh, look, goo."

The screen identified the dark brown goo as terrais goo, so Nyz flipped on the appropriate setting to tell the guns and cannon to use the air magic shots, before pulling the triggers and firing, opening up a path for them to pass between.

The goo covered the road for more than three hundred yards, though after it was attacked, the areas immediately adjacent pulled back.

For the next few hours, Nyz attacked goo and bograls which came at them, along with a handful of less-dangerous monsters that happened to be on their path.

"Kal," Nyz said when they stopped for lunch. "Do you think we have a shared consciousness?"

"Who knows?" Kal asked as they walked into the general room, pulling out ration packs and opening them up. "It's possible, but it's just a theory."

"Okay," Nyz put the rations on a tray, then placed them into the rehydrater under the table and turned it on. "We're having burgers. Is ours the flavorful kind or the bland kind?"

"Flavorful," Kal answered. "You know, the clothes won't be the first thing I sell to people."

"Really?" Nyz asked. "What else?"

"Who do you think invented the rations with actual flavor to them a few years ago?" Kal asked.

"You?" Nyz asked incredulously. "Really?"

"Yeah," Kal answered. "I figured out the issue that was causing the flavor to leave the food during the process that magically compressed and dehydrated the food. After that, it was simply a matter of tweaking the enchantments used until the flavor remained. I sell it through a company called NyKa food."

"Oh, right," Nyz said. "I forgot about NyKa Foods. It's what we do with the excess."

Their food finished preparing, then Nyz pulled them out, a pair of burgers with fries, looking as if someone had just prepared them fresh, the fries moist with grease and steaming, the burgers piping hot to the touch. In areas without sophisticated magitech, Nyz knew, rehydrated food wouldn't look, smell, or taste as delicious.

They ate lunch, cleaned up, then returned to the cockpit and resumed their trip, clearing the path as they traveled. Another hour passed, and they saw several walkers laying around, their windows broken open and combat suits on the ground.

"I might not be an intellectual genius like you," Nyz pointed at something on the screen. "But that heat level on the suits and the walkers means they're still cooling, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," Kal said. "I'm not picking up anything on my sensors, so it looks like the ten Scavengers are it, and they had five walkers, two with guns. Either they faced a lot of bograls, or there were a few particularly powerful ones around. I'm only seeing a handful of corpses of the beasts, while there are ten combat suits broken open without bodies inside."

They continued rolling forward, until something flagged on the screen.

"There's something up ahead," Kal said. "A mech. Walker, matching the signatures of the ten we left behind."

They passed by several more walkers, combat suits, and bogral corpses, all of which were warmer than the ones they first came across.

"Fuck," Kal muttered. "Just how many did the bograls take out?"

"We've come across twenty-three empty combat suits so far."

"Rhetorical question, Nyz."

"Oh."

Another few minutes passed, and they came across a bogral ripping open a combat suit, a broken mech on the ground beside them. Without hesitation, Nyz fired the magic cannon at it, knocking it off its victim, who was flagged as living on the screen.

"Keep the bogral off of him," Nyz turned the seat and stood. "I'm going out and rescuing him."

"Got it," Kal told him.