A half hour passes while you wait, but before the pilots return, you pick up an incoming transmission. After listening, you save it for Tendou. When everyone returns a few minutes later they're all carting bags and barrels with the sky blue substance poking out the top. When Tendou stops with his barrel in front of you, you give a low chirp to get his attention.

He glances between you and the other pilots by their own ray frames, then climbs into the cockpit. “What's up?” he asks, glancing across the screens.

We received a transmission from the reinforcements five minutes ago on an open line. I can play the message back for you if you want.

“Yeah,” he nods, then, “Wait, I should let everyone know. Just put a notice here that there's a message.” He taps on one of the monitors, so you quickly put together a little notification graphic and put that on-screen where he indicated.

While you're working on that, he leans out to call the others over. “We got a message,” he says, waving them over. They come quickly, crowding around the entrance to the cockpit, a couple looking in to catch sight of the message on-screen.

Tendou reaches to the system controls on the side of his pilot seat, presses on the selection button, and you take that as your queue to clear the fake message and play back the transmission. Your speakers come to life once more, an unfamiliar woman's voice playing through them, though much of it broken up by static.

“...vance team, backup is......spond... repea... advance tea......ckup is here... respon....”

Despite the bad signal inside the factory, the message is clear enough for the pilots. “Crap, I'll respond,” Mouse says, dashing to her own frame. She runs off, while everyone else quickly loads the bags and barrels of fuel into their cockpits. Even Tendou looks at the metal barrel uncertainly, before sighing and dumping the whole thing into your cockpit.

The amorphous blue goo spreads everywhere, and he has to brush it away from his pilot seat to climb in. “Never thought I'd be swimming in money...” he chuckles, stepping through it to sit down. “Oh, oh, ugh...” he soon grimaces though, when he tries to reach for the foot pedals, feet squishing through the stuff. “That feels disgusting...” He shudders, but pushes through, and closes the hatch.

You stand, and everyone turns to head the same way as Mouse, back toward the factory entrance. You barely pick up her response message to the backup team, letting them know that it's safe to approach, and when you get outside, there's an entire convoy of vehicles coming through the ravine, with a few more ray frames flanking the sides.

There's another transmission, so you play it for Tendou. “I see you ran into some trouble,” the same woman from before comments, given the destruction in the field outside, and all the destroyed Hex.

“Yeah, we ran into a lot more resistance than we expected,” Mouse confirms. “We did manage not to damage the factory though.” She steps aside as the first large trucks roll past, and you do the same.

“Good to hear. Find anything else useful?”

Mouse begins to walk beside the front of the column while explaining, “We secured some ray frames for salvage, and there's also a storage room with tons of resources for building things. We didn't do any testing with the factory equipment though.”

“That's good enough,” the woman says. You slowly follow after, while the whole group moves into the factory, Mouse pointing and directing them around to the different areas and where everything is. Some divert down each path, and when she points out the one hole in the building she suspects the Hex used to get inside, and a whole contingent rolls off that way, bringing most of the frames with them, including Takashi and Wayne.

Finally arriving in front of the main factory control screen, Mouse climbs out and drops down to ground level. Only a few trucks remain, with an older woman climbing out to join Mouse, both walking to the factory interface. You barely pick up their voices, just enough that they seem to be haggling over prices of some kind.

At the same time, Tendou eyes the blue goop filling the bottom of the cockpit, before he shakes it off his shoes and opens the hatch. Grabbing onto the zipline, he tenses up, knuckles white, and steps out. He flails a little on the way down, but still touches down without issue. Shuddering briefly, he jogs off to join the two women in their conversation.

You wait and watch, only able to make out body language. It's a rapid back and forth, which they finish up around the time Tendou arrives. Mouse gestures to him a few times, and the group soon reaches the console. Looking down at it from above, you can make out the screen well enough to see what they're doing.

When they tap on the screen, it immediately comes up with a series of options for constructing all manner of things. Like Mouse said when you first visited, this factory appears to be a mass production facility, for making everything from small computer components to entire ray frame parts.

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The humans page through for some time, before the older woman points out one thing in particular. It's a metal barrel, like the kind the pilots used to hold that BP earlier. They tap on it, make a few more selections... then everyone holds very still, while the huge machinery beyond that glass slowly begins to move.

It chugs away for a minute, before something inside changes, and it gets louder for a few seconds. Then the process winds down, as a conveyor belt extends from the wall to your right. It rolls briefly, carrying out a metal barrel, which the humans walk over to inspect excitedly.

As soon as they're satisfied with that, they return to the console. At the direction of the older woman, they select a few more things for it to build. The first is a speaker, like the kind used in your cockpit. The second is an engine, a very small one, like would be used in a small car. And the final item is a computer chip.

Everyone waits anxiously as the three items are built somewhere in the depths of the machine, each one rolling out on the conveyor belt in their own time. And with each piece, they pull it off and inspect it closely, to ensure it was built correctly. Though, given the complexity and size of the three, they'd likely need to test them to be sure there are no defects too small for them to discern by eye.

In any case, they appear satisfied with their initial inspection. The factory appears to be functional. As soon as they've determined that, Mouse selects the next thing to build: a standard armor plate for a ray frame. An error message appears this time.

Materials Missing:

Chi

The pilots appear disappointed, while the older woman shrugs it off and says something that lifts their spirits. They continue to discuss briefly, with Tendou showing a surprised expression, then a smile when the woman turns and points uncertainly in a southeasterly direction.

They talk for a little longer, before Tendou returns. He hesitates briefly with the zipline again, but makes it up to the cockpit smoothly.

Can you fill me in on things?

You show the request once he's settled back in. “So, it looks like the factory is fully functional,” he starts by confirming what you'd already figured out yourself, “but it can't make ray frame parts because there's no chi in storage. But Shado has their own stockpile, so they can transport it here to use it. More importantly, Mouse managed to bargain with Tachibana-” the older woman, probably- “that we can trade in those Bogatyrs we got. Instead of scrap price for them, we can get some parts made. Brand new, custom parts.”

That's... You consider the deal briefly. An entire ray frame for a custom part?

Is a single new part worth as much as an entire frame though?

“Well, no,” Tendou admits. “We can get two parts for each, but the value's mostly in them being new, and that we can get anything. Anything the factory has blueprints for, anyway. Mouse said she'd send over a list of parts soon,” he finishes, pointing to her still talking to Tachibana below.

You think a little more on his explanation, before finally responding.

I see. So it's expensive, but it gives us a way to get our hands on specific parts that would be hard to come by normally, or in good enough condition to use.

“Pretty much. That mostly makes me think of computer components,” Tendou thinks aloud. “We can't salvage them from Hex since we always wind up wrecking the cockpits, you know?”

Actually, that may be a way to replace my damaged computer system.

“Wait, isn't the computer basically... you?” Tendou asks.

No, like with the Hex you disabled, I only really exist within a specific decision making module. The regular computer systems that handle everything else sustained damage back when I first activated. The Hex that was attacking you cut into the ceiling of the cockpit, damaging my primary and backup computing modules.

I quarantined the damaged areas and reconstructed what data I could, and haven't seen any notable increase in degradation over the last few days, but if we have the opportunity, replacing them could be a valuable option.

“I see...” Tendou thinks about that, rubbing his chin. After some time, he says, “Hey, we replaced your arms and legs and all, but what about the torso? Instead of replacing all of the computers, could we swap that instead? Get a torso with all the parts still working? If you are just one specific part...”

That could be difficult. According to my schematics, my AI module is welded directly into the cockpit. Perhaps swapping the cockpit itself into another torso could be feasible though.

Of course, there's the possibility of pulling your module out anyway, but you don't mention that at the moment. Without knowing exactly how well the job was done putting you in, there's no way to guess how dangerous it would be to cut you back out. Worst case scenario, the electrical components that serve as your own 'brain' could be destroyed. That's not a solution you want to suggest unless absolutely necessary.

“Good to know,” Tendou says slowly, clearly still considering your options. “We should also check in with the rest of the group.” Thinking aloud, he holds up his fingers one at a time. “There were seven Bogatyrs, four more in the battle, four Badangs, plus the other two from earlier in the valley, the Thor, and the Firebird. Between all five of us, it's gonna be a messy split to see how much of what goes to who, you know?”

You agree. It is a lot, and the biggest threat during the battle isn't even among the frames you downed. You don't know how the human pilots divvy up rewards in the first place, so it's hard to say just how much you're going to get, before you even consider the option of trading in some amount of it for parts instead of salvage value...

Yes, this is a lot to consider. Let's talk to the others and find out just how much we'll have to work with, what it's all worth, and how much we may want to trade in.

Besides even that, there's always the possibility that among the parts and scrap that are yours for the taking, some of them might be usable as-is. You think about that while Tendou calls for Gardenia to come along to talk to Takashi and Wayne. From the sound of it, Mouse will be following soon as well, once she finishes speaking with Tachibana.