Nyz scrambled out of the cockpit and into the decontamination hatch and ascended out, not bothering to put on a combat suit to protect from the fog. The hatch closed behind him as he jumped off the beetle, leaping the forty yards to the downed victim just as the bogral attempted to return, having recovered from another of Kal's attacks.

Seeing an easier target, the bogral attacked Nyz, who watched it move laughably slow compared to him when he entered combat mode.

Pushing a hand forward, Nyz slammed his palm into the bogral's chest, but instead of the beast flying back, it stuck to his hand. Nyz felt the power within it, born of feeding on the souls of others. He could feel a few recent souls as well, then released them into the afterlife to end their suffering, sparing only one, which was both the most recent and matched the signature of the body on the ground.

That one, he pulled out of the bogral as he infected the creature with a curse of death and decay, causing it to wail and stumble back, finally released from his hold.

Nyz looked at the greenish mist in his hands, the fog swirling around it, but not touching it. He approached the victim. It appeared to be a man his age, the front of his combat suit split down the middle, his shirt ripped, the bogral's claws having managed to cut into his skin, drawing blood.

Nyz used one hand to rip open the man's shirt further, then pushed the mist into the victim's bared chest. Immediately, he felt the soul taking to the body, and the victim fell unconscious. Nyz picked up the man and returned to the beetle, letting it decontaminate them once they were inside.

Once the decontamination finished, Nyz ripped off the man's combat suit and bodysuit, then triggered the decontamination again. Once the second round finished, he opened the lower hatch and passed the man down to Kal, then descended the rungs as Kal spread the man out on the table.

"It's your lucky day," Kal told the unconscious man. "Because you're with the only two people in the world who can purify a body that's been contaminated with the Anomalous Magic Force within the fog."

"I'll take over driving," Nyz told him. "You make sure that fog is purified."

"I will," Kal told him as Nyz made his way back into the cockpit. "Why did you rescue him?"

"Do I need a reason?" Nyz asked as he sat down and began driving the beetle along the path, pulling up the route on the screen.

"Sort of," Kal said. "I mean, we're about to hit a facility that doesn't exist, we don't know who this man is, and he's going to tell about us once he's back in society. Plus, it's not like you to save the life of some random person in the fog."

Nyz didn't respond for several minutes, listening as his friend worked on purifying the fog from the man's body, hooking up IVs and monitors as he worked. When Nyz looked back, the man had a blanket covering his midsection and legs, and Kal was sitting on one of the benches, checking something on a tablet. In addition to the normal IV, the man was receiving a blood transfusion as well.

"How's he doing?" Nyz turned his attention back to the screens.

"Stable," Kal answered. "He'll wake up probably tonight, sometime after the serum finishes neutralizing the fog. The transfusion will be finished by then."

"Out of curiosity," Nyz said. "Why did you have the antidote on-hand? We've never actually needed it before, since you and I are immune to the AMF. I'd have expected you to need to make it once you stabilized him."

"You answer my question and I'll answer yours."

"Do you remember four years ago," Nyz used the large guns to shoot a pair of bograls in the path, navigating past them as they died. "When I fought a few bograls during a few missions?"

"I do," Kal answered.

"I didn't tell you everything."

"I figured," Kal said. "What does that have to do with you rescuing him?"

"Their souls are in torment," Nyz told him. "As the bogral absorbs its strength. It's a hellish torture that lasts for days. I could sense it as I sent to the afterlife the souls which hadn't had their strength fully absorbed yet. The pain and agony they were in…"

Nyz shook his head. Once the bograls finished absorbing the soul's strength, the soul passed on, but it was still a hell the soul had to go through.

"They need their rest," he said. "And this man still had an intact body. I figured that he at least deserved a second chance after going through that."

"Puppies and tormented souls," Kal muttered. "You have sympathy for some of the strangest things."

"It's perfectly normal to be sympathetic to puppies," Nyz stated, aware his friend had forgotten he was with someone who could hear mutterings from that distance. "Lots of people like puppies."

"That 'puppy' was a hellwolf pup," Kal countered. "It breathed fire."

"How's he doing, anyway?"

"Doing good," Kal answered. "He's now taller than me, so there's that. I did get him to stop chewing on anything I didn't train him to chew. His horns came in a few days ago, too."

"That's good," Nyz said. "So the serum?"

"I always have some on-hand," Kal told him. "Just in case we run into someone we could get answers out of who ordinarily wouldn't tell us anything."

"By throwing them into the fog, then giving them the serum," Nyz said. "How cruel. But efficient, I'm sure."

"Or by rescuing them while they're under attack and soon to die," Kal said, and Nyz could hear the eye roll in his friend's words. "By the way, did you notice how uniform the mechs and combat suits were?"

"That's normal."

"Those were all Class B combat suits and walkers," Kal said. "They were all identical, but not military or from a corporation's soldiers. However, they all bore a logo. Specifically, a small image of Ilbrathi, with golden laurels surrounding the world."

"Gairal?" Nyz asked. "I didn't notice."

Had he noticed, he would have simply killed the man along with the bogral.

"I figured," Kal said. "But those units we passed were members of it. There were a total of twenty walkers and ten outside of them, aimed as if leaving Valeros. If Gairal members had just left the city, that might be part of why the official was so worried, even if he'd verified us already. He might have worried about us encountering the Gairal troops."

"Oh."

They fell silent as they continued the ride, Kal eventually returning to the cockpit. Nyz swapped back to the other seat, focusing on clearing a path of monsters as his friend navigated. They stopped briefly again for dinner, and the only other changes which occurred happened when Nyz took over navigation so that Kal could change the IV and blood pouches and check on their patient.

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A little before ten that evening, they pulled off the path and Kal set up the auto-defense system and perimeter alarm, switching on additional exterior lights. While he would prefer to use the FDKG, he knew it was risky to do with the chance that someone else might happen to pass by them.

Kal removed the remaining IV and he and Nyz both changed into shorts and light t-shirts, then lay on the benches to either side of their patient, quickly falling asleep. A couple of hours later, both woke to a sound within the mech, and when they sat up, the man they were treating jumped.

"That was disturbing," he said. "You two were asleep, I'm sure of it."

"We're alert sleepers," Nyz stated. "We can sleep through monster attacks, but someone moving around near us wakes us with ease."

The man nodded, then looked between him and Kal as the latter turned the lights in the room from dim to fully-on, and when the man's gaze settled on Nyz, his eyes widened.

"You!" He exclaimed, green eyes full of shock. "I recognize you!"

"I don't recognize you," Nyz told him. "Us meeting now is the first time we've ever crossed paths where you were within my line of sight. Where did you see me?"

"That's the innocent look I was talking about," Kal told him.

"Oh," Nyz said as the man looked at them in confusion. "You work for Gairal. You blew up a building and opened fire in a civilian zone. Your actions caused the deaths of two thousand civilians just a few days ago. Regardless of whatever training you went through to get abs like those…"

Nyz lifted up his shirt, showing the man that his body wasn't just lean, but packed with dense muscle that could only come from having spent his entire life training.

"It doesn't match my skills," Nyz stated.

"Uh," Kal said. "They planned on blowing up a building. I'm the one who triggered the explosions."

"If we hadn't chosen to interfere," Nyz said as the man's eyes widened. "They would have blown up two buildings. Who actually did it doesn't matter. He's part of a terrorist organization that, in the last decade alone, has caused the deaths of more than eighty thousand civilians across Ilbrathi. How many of those deaths are you responsible for, terrorist?"

"You're the ones who triggered it?" The man asked. "How? We made sure-"

"Answer my question," Nyz said. "How do you know me? You don't get to ask anything here, and if you think I'll be sympathetic to you, think again. I've tortured members of the military and various corporations. A lowlife terrorist ranks even below them on my cards of fucks to give."

"Uh," Kal said. "You did show sympathy for him. We discussed it right after you rescued him, remember?"

"That was different," Nyz stated, his gaze fixed on their guest's. "Now answer my question. Why was Gairal watching me?"

"We weren't," the man told him. "Well, not that I know of. I recognize you from…"

The man shivered, holding his arms and looking down.

"When the bogral stole my soul," his voice was quieter. "It was horrible. It was only a few seconds, but it was horrible. Maybe a minute? I don't know, it's hard to tell. But then there was a warmth there. I could tell what the bogral was thinking the entire time, and when that warmth showed up after it was in pain… the bogral was thinking 'dragon' and 'monstrosity'. Then I saw you, briefly, before I was pulled out of the bogral. You did that, didn't you? You did something to recover my soul from it.

"But how did you know I was still there?" He looked at Nyz again. "Everyone knows that bograls absorbed the souls immediately, that's different than… what I felt. Yet you-how did you rescue me? Humans don't have mana, we can't use magic."

"I hit the bogral while it was in the process of stealing your soul," Nyz stated. "We used a magic cannon up top, then he kept hitting it as I went out and rescued you."

The man nodded, then his face flushed.

"You weren't naked when you ran out, were you?"

"I wasn't, why?"

"When I saw you," the man said. "And I know you rescued me, you were… completely bare. I saw everything."

"Strange," Nyz said. "I was most definitely dressed when I picked you up."

"Yeah, of course," the man shook his head. "If you weren't in a suit or a mech, the fog would have-"

The man cut off, before looking at himself, only then realizing he was naked with only a blanket to cover his private parts. His face reddened a little more, and Nyz rolled his eyes.

"Let him take the stickies off of you," Nyz said. "Then we'll decide what happens to you."

"How am I alive?" The man asked as Kal began disconnecting the man from monitors. "How am I conscious? My suit was ripped open, I remember that. The bogral had taken my soul, though I guess you're right, it must have only started to. But the fog definitely touched me, no matter how quickly you rescued me. A decontamination wouldn't save me. My body should be turning into the… whatever the fuck happens. It ain't pretty, and I'm whole. I'm…"

He felt his chest, noticing the four scars on it from where the bogral had sliced into him with its claws.

"Alive."

He looked at Kal and Nyz.

"You said that you triggered the bombs," he said. "Who are you? How did you rescue me? If something that could save people from the fog really existed, wouldn't it be known, even in rumors? What did you do?"

"I developed a serum years ago," Kal stated. "Which can purge the contamination of the fog out of living beings. It's only available to my associate and myself. My associate here is also the one who stopped the other building from being blown up, who took out the Gairal members who retrieved the suits and mech, and who attacked Asterox Corporation right after. We're an independent organization that belongs to ourselves, with our own goal. The only reason we did anything with your group's plans was because it suited our purposes to use Gairal's act of terrorism as cover. Normally, we'd have killed the bogral and been on our way, except my associate here felt sympathetic over a tortured soul, so he decided to rescue you. Because of that, you're with us here, now."

"But that doesn't mean we'll spare your life," Nyz told him. "You see, we have no fondness for terrorists, even if we might use their own, planned attacks to cover us and to let them take the blame for us sometimes as it'll cause them to be hunted even more, which is more to our liking. Only because of the torment your soul was going through did I decide to save you."

"So we're going to give you a choice," Kal told him. "Either give up your life of terrorism, swear an oath to keep silent about us and what we have and can do, and take on a new identity once we're able to put you somewhere safe. That's option one. Refuse to take it, and we'll toss you out of this mech, back into the fog."

"You would kill me, even after sparing that serum for me?"

"Yes," Kal smiled. "See, we have what amounts to unlimited funds. Because of that, I can afford to waste a little bit of the serum whenever my associate has a sympathetic moment."

"If you lie to us about your intentions," Nyz told him. "We'll know. If you make the promise and change your mind later, then go back on it, we'll know. Monitoring you won't be difficult. However, we can fully build a new life for you. All you have to do is promise to give up your life of terrorism and never tell anyone about us or what we have and can do."

"I joined a few years ago," the man told them. "Thinking I was doing the right thing."

He snorted.

"I guess I got lucky," he said. "A few years ago, I was sure Gairal was right. But then as time passed, I realize I was wrong, that they were wrong. I wanted out, but no one leaves Gairal. They die in battle or are executed as traitors to the cause. They'll look for our bodies, find the mechs and suits. They'll notice mine missing. Even if they don't, all it takes is one member seeing me when they know I'm supposed to be dead. Even if I used a skin tint or hair dye, that washes out, need reapplying regularly."

"I've developed a longer-lasting skin tint," Kal stated. "Easier to apply, too. Same with hair dye. I can arrange for a surgery to reconstruct your face, adjust your vocal chords to change the pitch of your voice. I can remove all traces of your existence from servers and databases, changing your identity and giving you an entirely new one."

"If you're that worried about them torturing or executing you," Nyz said. "We can toss you back into the fog. There aren't any bograls right here, so you'd probably get killed by something else first, if the fog doesn't do it sooner."

The man gave him a horrified looked, then shook his head as a thought came to him.

"What if I helped you?" He asked. "You guys said you're fighting Asterox, right? While I might not agree with Gairal anymore, I do have issues with Asterox. They cover it up, but I know they abuse and exploit their geniuses."

"You have no idea," Kal said as Nyz went up into the decontamination chamber.

Nyz grabbed the box of the man's gear, then returned back to the general room, setting the box on the man's lap.

"Can you do that?" Nyz asked.

"Do what?" The man looked inside the box, eyes widening as he began pulling out the pieces of his armor. "What kind of tool cut these so jagged?"

"That wasn't a tool," Kal told him. "My associate there ripped it with his bare hands."

Nyz took the arm covering from the man, then demonstrated his ability to rip through the alloy with ease, before crumbling it into a ball and tossing it back into the box.

"I'm a trained soldier with greater body strength than anyone else you'll ever meet," Nyz told their guest, whose eyes were wide with shock. "My associate is a supergenius who invented a serum to save people from the fog. With his planning and my skills, the two of us are all that we need for a mission. And though you were honest, I wouldn't trust you on a mission, anyway."