Quinn’s leaned forward, mechanical arm perfectly applying the final layer of paint against Axel’s skin. The newest recruit and biological freak let out a little chuckle, but it was easy to tell his mind was elsewhere.
“Give it a minute to dry, and we’re ready,” Quinn said, the weather gear hissed, cool air brushing down their back.
“Isia said you identified as ‘they’.” Axel broke the silence, eyes fixed on the crowbar.
“That’s right.”
> *Vesper: Temper.
>
> *Quinn: Must you eavesdrop?
>
> *Vesper: Would you rather try this without help like last time, Mx Stutter?
Grinding their teeth a little, Quinn let out a small sigh.
“You don’t need to explain anything if you don’t want to.” Axel pipped up. “Just wanted to… never really…” His words faltered, awkwardly shifting on the seat. “...Never mind.”
> *Quinn: What do you want me to do here!?
>
> *Vesper: Small talk! You agreed you owe him.
>
> *Quinn: A favor!
Withholding a groan, they knew Vesper wouldn’t drop this. They quickly opened a tab and queried a social-interactions AI. “Tell me about your family.” They parroted the suggested prompt.
“Huh?”
Faltering for a moment, they quickly doubled down. “Your family. You have one, right?”
Axel leaned forward slightly. “Nothing too interesting. I grew up with my father, and after he died fighting monsters, I moved in with my aunt.”
> *Vesper: Don’t ask about the aunt.
>
> *Quinn: What? Why?
>
> *Vesper: Are you dense? I can hear the ‘she’s dead’ in his voice from outside.
“What about your mother?”
His whole demeanor shifted abruptly, brows furrowing deeply. “I’d rather not know.”
> *Vesper: You gonk!
>
> *Quinn: What!?
>
> *Vesper: You think he skipped mentioning his mother because he was saving the best for last or something!?
>
> *Quinn: Fuck you, I’m not a mind reader!
>
> *Vesper: Don’t leave him hanging, say you’re sorry!
>
> *Quinn: I already apologized!
>
> *Vesper: Not for that!
“You’re probably busy,” Axel broke the silence, slapping his knees a little and standing up. “I’m ready to go, so-”
“The alloy has tungsten in it.” Quinn blurted out, pointing at the crowbar. “I noticed on the last stream that your arm moved too quickly, and found some alloy that’s got more tungsten in it. That’s why it’s heavier, and it should be tougher, too.”
“Oh.” Axel glanced down at the 10kg chunk of metal and bounced it as if the thing were barely noticeable. “It does feel more comfortable. I’ll be taking it easy today, I want to keep it cost-effective, right?”
“Right.”
Watching him step outside, Quinn let out an exhausted sigh, toppling over on the chair, the parts that weren’t cybernetic groaned in complaint, muscles aching from the exertion. With an annoyed groan, they shifted their attention over to Cecilia… and after a moment, grimaced, and turned to the bag of broken pieces Axel had handed over.
> *Isia: What’s today’s itinerary?
>
> *Vesper: Axel doesn’t seem very focused, and asked to keep it light.
>
> *Isia: We stick to a patrol route, then?
>
> *Vesper: Seems that way.
>
> *Quinn: Then I’ll cede drone-controls over.
Though they set up the control relay over Vesper’s neuralink, Quinn still had left their drones in ready-mode in case they were needed. They’d also left a tab open with the stream and some of the feeds in the background, if only to make sure there weren’t some unforeseen developments.
Sitting down on the tarp and opening the bag to more carefully assess the work that would be needed, one thing caught their attention right away. “It’s… rusted?” The plastic had shattered from what could’ve only been blunt force. But the exposed electronics had rusted over, something clearly impossible even in some severe case of neglect.
> *Quinn: Do you know anything that could’ve done this kind of damage?
> *BrokenPieceOfCrap.png
>
> *Vesper: That’s Axel’s?
>
> *Quinn: Yes.
>
> *Vesper: Then don’t ask.
>
> Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
>
> *Vesper: If he didn’t share
> *Vesper: This must be some shit he’s doing for the doc.
>
>
>
> *Quinn: But this is clearly from some chemical, or a monster at the very least
> *Quinn: What if he went to the Paws and “tested it out” or something?
>
> *Isia: C’mon choom.
> *Isia: He had the perfect chance back at the party.
>
> *Vesper: Didn’t the doc tell you to keep your nose out of it, too?
> *Vesper: You know this crap is way over our heads, don’t get us into trouble.
Quinn didn’t answer, eyes flickering to the stream, at Axel swinging a chunk of iron while barely paying attention to the monster that got turned to chunky salsa. Each swing he took would result in a monster dying, not an ounce of hesitation, walking through the G-class creatures as if they were nothing. It was a sight that made Quinn’s robotic hands shivered a little, an involuntary trembling, phantom pain shooting straight into shoulder-sockets, the strain from lifting that very same weapon still lingering.
A single question remained.
But what if?
It bounced around, building momentum for minutes, until finally Quinn chose to send a task-request to the AI helper running off of their base’s servers. It took the program a little bit to find the official Lower-Management exclusive contact information of NexCorp, the corporation in charge of Frontier City 02.
With but a thought, a profile data request for Axel Garcia was sent. The response was instantaneous, a quotation for what parts of the profile data would be provided at what cost. 500 credits for the basic package, the sort of price-tag that would only be attached to either a sub-low-management corporate employee… or that of a nobody that had become a person of interest.
Quinn hesitated. 500 creds was a tall ask for what would amount to the barebones, yet what if there was some clue hidden in there? Their eyes lingered on the rusty, broken tablet, and on the open stream tab involving casual monster slaughter.
But would a corporation, a small corporation at that, willingly sell something useful for merely 500 credits? Sighing, they mentally waved away the quotation and they instructed the AI to delete the channels that’d been used. After a little more digital scrubbing, they’d effectively guaranteed the footprints would not lead back to them.
A small messenger program was opened, one that had only two users in the whole world.
> *Quinn: What is Axel Garcia?
Usually, every previous query had gone unanswered for days, if not weeks. This time, however, the answer came almost instantly, one Quinn would’ve never expected.
> *DcM: Find out.
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
“You don’t need to push yourself.” Vesper’s voice came in through the earpiece as I splattered another monster.
Though I nodded along, my gaze remained focused on the sizzling corpse. There should’ve been a notification, but the system’s “down time” seemed to have taken that away too. This left me in a rather uncomfortable situation, my AP wasn’t rising, instead there was a growing pressure all around me, as if something was building up. But I couldn’t do anything about it.
I could only imagine that the now-invisible monster-cores were effectively going nowhere, just lingering waiting to be consumed. On the one hand, that was a rather concerning thing to have, but on the other, the more monsters I killed, the clearer the sensation was becoming.
Now if I could just reach out and grasp it…
“Just give me a heads-up if any F-class shows up so I can avoid them.” I replied once I got confirmation that the streamer-mic had been muted.
The other predominant thought running through my head was Shadow. With just two days left, even with the AP build-up, I did not feel certain I could tackle this head on and survive. Clearly the stealth-capable meguca had been following me around, she must’ve had ample opportunity to engage me but hadn’t.
That did not bode well for me.
How do you fight someone that knew your every move?
In the academy, monster-fighting courses had never touched on such a subject matter. How could they? Combatants were expected to be on strict need-to-know basis, ensuring that mind-reading monsters could be ambushed and trapped. There was, however, one course that did cover the prospect of having a fully compromised opsec: marketing and corporate competition.
If you were absolutely certain that you could not keep secrets from an adversarial corporation… then don’t try to keep secrets and make your moves out in the open.
But did that strategy have any merit for my current circumstances? And how could I even make use of it? I kept going back and forth, trying to come up with pros and cons of taking that route as I kept casually splattering the odd monster that came my way. It would’ve been an almost leisure stroll through half-ruined buildings, if not because I had to “pretend to be on the hunt”.
I followed along just fine, not the first time I had to do something while my head was somewhere else. I’d crouch, I’d grunt, I’d comment on “tracks” or whatever, the basic script outlines covered most of this already. But my head was definitely not in it, not when this build-up of “unspent” cores kept demanding my attention while also needing to figure a solution for the Shadow situation.
The fact that Moreau had not answered any of my contact attempts was not helpful either. Was she even alive? Would the red button on her device even do anything? If this was how it felt to be “entirely off the rails”, it sucked, but there wasn’t much in terms of alternatives. It wasn’t as if I could just up and get the problems to go away by ignoring them.
One problem at a time, then.
As I killed mouther number thirteen, I gave a few clicks to the microphone to signal I wanted to start winding down. Vesper and Quinn confirmed the stream was going into ad-breaks, and I turned my full focus at the “unspent” cores. I could not see them, but their presence was felt, as if the air around me had become charged in some way.
It took a minute to pick out that sensation of… possibility. It went beyond mere physicality, I couldn’t touch the cores even if I waved my hand around. No. The feeling was closer to that emotion one had when trying to pick what road to take on the way back home. At first, I thought there were no options to be had, these were G-class cores after all. Yet at the same time, I had the distinct impression that all of them being gathered in one place was somehow different, meaningful.
Yet the moment slipped through my fingers before I could even take full stock, vanishing in a wave that left me with the AP rising at the corner of my vision.
“Maybe next time,” I muttered, certain there’d been something there…
“Next time?” Isia’s voice chirped in through the headpiece.
“Just thinking about the next hunt,” I quickly said. “It should probably be… three… maybe four days from now?”
The pause that followed was one I’d learnt to recognize to probably mean they were talking with one another. Eventually it was Vesper who spoke up. “Four days is fine, the viewership still needs some stability. Think you’d be up for four days in a row after that?”
“Maybe?” I offered, quickly running the math in my head. The last thing I wanted was to end up pushing AP buildup for no good reason. Though I could potentially just transform and stay cooped up, it felt like a massive waste I’d rather avoid. “Depends on how active you’d want it to be.”
“Three like today, one like the first stream.”
“Works for me.” I nodded along. “Though, I’d need some way to contact you guys.”
“Quinn’s got that covered… ah, ad-break’s over, time to close. You remember the lines?”
I withheld the sigh, plastering a customer-service smile.
“That’s going to be it for today. Don’t forget to subscribe to the iron-age tier to not miss any updates! If you use the subscription code…”
I prattled on the jargon and promotional lines, mostly tuning myself out as I realized that there was one option on the table I hadn’t considered until now.
I was going to go meet Bear.