Problems in the Rear View

"I'm not judging your results Xan, but I believe we might have wanted to stick around and destroy that creature." Xanthiana had fled immediately upon coming out of the mine leaving the mercenaries to deal with the hulking creature of the 99'ers. She was helped by them ignoring her and focusing on the rampaging beast, but Elly just had to be the voice of reason. Xanthiana was driving down the road, having gotten to her car and gotten out of the situation as soon as possible.

"I'm sure the mercenaries can handle it, and if they can't its not like one creature can destroy all of paradise can it?"

"I don't believe this is what we call an optimal situation Xan."

"Elly you have to work with me here."

"I'm just saying Xan, we shouldn't flee a situation we could help with." Xanthiana breathed out heavily. The ego device wasn't wrong in a traditional sense, but in the world that she lived in it was wrong in every sense of the word. In the new world the only person you help most was yourself in Xanthiana's experience. Her even helping the members of Top Notch was a bit of a stretch for her, but she had to pay them off, it was the one thing in the new world that seemed to bite you in the ass more than anything else, owing anyone anything.

"Tell you what Elly, next horrific creature that is killing mercenaries we'll stop and help, deal?"

"I have a feeling you won't honor this deal at all, but deal." Xanthiana had no plans to honor that deal, or hope that the deal would come to be honored at all, but it got the EGO off her back and that was important for the moment. The drive back to Top Notch was pretty uneventful, so much so that Xanthiana let her mind drift for a moment and almost slammed in to a make shift barricade being swarmed by what looked like a horde of people.

"What the shit?" The horde looked to be infected, probably with the disease that she had been sent to get the supplies to help combat.

"Careful Xan, they appear to be infected with an airborne mutagen that has made them rabid." Xanthiana had stopped the car short of the barricade, and so far the infected had not noticed her, but she didn't think that would hold out.

"Options?"

"We ran before."

"As good as that sounds Elly, I think if we don't stand and fight here there won't be a here to come back to."

"Oh sure ignore the giant interesting monster, stay and fight the horrible plague, you make no sense Xan."

"Clearly Elly you don't know Irathients at all." Xanthiana checked the ammunition in her rifle, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

Mutant Mutilation

"Puny smelly thing in my home." The creature looked to be stitched together from all sorts of people and then reinforced with cybernetic parts. Why the 99'ers had created it was anyone's guess. The creature lumbered out of where it appeared to have been sleeping and slammed a fist into the ground. Xanthiana didn't wait to see if it was hostile, she opened fire with her rifle, the bullets impacted but didn't seem to do much to the creatures flesh even with the acid impacts. Xanthiana kept on the run, the creature due to its size and the limits of its flesh seemed slow to get up and move around, which was a minor benefit considering Xanthiana didn't appear to have a means of hurting it.

"Options?" Xanthiana had grown so used to talking to Elly in her head, she was a bit surprised to have said it out loud.

"I'd suggest an escape." Xanthiana scanned the room quickly and didn't see any exit, which raised the question of how the huge monster got down here in the first place.

"Well if you can find an exit in this room I'd surely appreciate the heads up." The mutant had gone into a charge, Xanthiana side stepped it and it slammed hard into the rock wall causing the ceiling to shake over head bringing down part of the room. Xanthiana had forgotten about the crate of parts this job was originally about, she spotted it in the middle of the room miraculously unharmed, for the time being anyway.

"Structurally the room appears to be weakest in the northern section, if you can get the creature to damage it further, you should be able to use that to escape."

"So you want me to stand in front of the northern wall and hope the creature destroys it?"

"Well its either that or hoping the ineffectual bullets you are shooting will suddenly work."

"Fair point." Xanthiana went to the cave wall on the north side and shot toward the creatures face, she figured if she couldn't kill it, she might wound it or at the very least blind it. Her bullets made an impact into the eyes but didn't seem to do much damage, but they did enrage it so that it stopped, snorted, and then full on charged toward her. It was faster than before and almost caught her off guard. She felt her foot get clipped by the monster as it crashed into the wall, and then through it. The impact on her foot was enough to throw off her dodge and send her crashing into the ground.

"Get up Xan, the creature has been temporarily disabled!" Xanthiana looked up from the ground and could see the monster had impaled itself on a piece of the cavern, but as the EGO device had suggested, it did appear still functional and able to fight. Xanthiana ran back to the center of the room and snatched up the crate of supplies. She ran past the monster and found herself in what looked like some kind of run off for the mine proper, she could see light at the end of a tunnel and ran for it, behind her she could hear the creature waking up. She came into the light and found the mercs were waiting for her somehow.

"Trust me on this one boys, you're going to want to run." They laughed and then the monster burst forth and they weren't laughing anymore.

Mind If I Step Out?

The mine was definitely deeper on the inside than it had looked on the outside. So far it had appeared empty despite signs of workers tools discarded about. The smells got worse further in. Xanthiana knew Gulanite could stink, but she had no idea it could smell this awful, or whatever the 99'ers were doing down in the dark could stink this awful. It was overpowering to the point of her eyes watering.

"What is that smell?" Xanthiana started to doubt it was the rocks, and feared it was something else horrible instead.

"Unknown, I don't believe its gulanite, the mining process does not produce an odor like this, also I keep bringing this up, but the stability of this area is highly compromised Xan, we need to get out of this mine."

"Well if you can identify an exit I'd surely agree with you and we could leave." Elly didn't have an exit and Xanthiana continued on. The mine was broken up in active veins and what seemed like administration, or whatever the 99'ers would consider administration. Xanthiana decided on the admin buildings since that would possibly have a map and/or a clear indication of another entrance to the mine.

"No 99'ers currently on radar, its hard to pick up signals thanks to all the interference, so I can't say that with 100% accuracy, but I'm scanning on multiple frequencies and coming up with nothing."

"Well thats encouraging or terrifying, smell is getting worse though, maybe this isn't admin, and its actually waste processing?"

"Unlikely, from what I've scanned of the 99'ers the first thing they remove from their subjects is the digestive system."

"How nice of them."

"My records indicate prior to the madness that gripped their miners union that particular digestive track removal was necessitated by the company, without food to process workers productivity was increased 58%."

"All at the cost of their humanity, how nice of that company." Xanthiana didn't know a lot about how earth had been running post arkfall, but every time she thought she'd reached the limits of madness she'd find something else horrible. Administration was also completely empty, though the smell was getting worse and worse, it was a building sense of dread that percolated through everything. She had to wonder how the 99'ers dealt with it, but she was sure like their intestines they probably had their noses removed as well.

"Xan I just ran an analysis of the smell, I advise against continuing here, this is not administration, nor will it lead to an exit." Xanthiana was about to ask what it could be when she turned a corner and ran into a room full of body parts. It made sense of course, the 99'ers kidnapped people and forcibly turned them into 99'ers obviously all those body part had to go somewhere. Though it was more than a little alarming for Xanthiana to see them casually strewn about the room.

"This is their surgical operation."

"Correct, though this appears to just be a storage area for dead organic matter according to my analysis the 99'ers don't see it as anything more than organic waste." Xanthiana was going to make a quip about that when her footing gave way. She clanged around some access tunnels before being deposited in what looked like a large hollowed out mine shaft.

"Ow, anything broken Elly?"

"No Xan some areas will bruise but I don't detect any broken bones," Xanthiana was about to ask where they were when she heard a large growl, "Xan I'm detecting a fairly large biomass approaching." Out of the darkness a hulking cybernetic giant emerged, it looked about twenty feet tall.

"Gee you don't say."

Predictable Problems

"And that's why you never give someone a grenade and tell them how long the fuse was." The explosion had covered up Xanthiana's escape, but just barely. She could hear the gunshots from the mercs hitting near her feet as she fled towards the mine. Elly of course was telling her how bad that idea was the whole way there. The grenade had not killed any of the mercs, it went off in the air on the way back, but it did throw their aim off allowing Xanthiana to make the mine entrance relatively unscathed. Of course shortly after making it a rocket streaked from behind her and leveled the entrance thereby trapping her, but she was still alive and still had the stuff Top-Notch wanted, as good as that was with where she was currently trapped.

"I told you this was a bad idea, and its only going to get worse, the rest of the mine is currently experiencing instability, with pockets of gulanite poised to also explode, and I haven't mapped this location, our one way out is most likely closed."

""Aside from that any other good news?"

"I believe there are still 99'ers in here with us, I have picked up several of their cybernetic signatures coming from within." Xanthiana withdrew a flashlight from her gear and fixed it to the front of the rifle, Elly could boost her ambient sight, but she preferred the flashlight, it seemed more natural.

"Fantastic, so cut off from the outside, trapped with cybernetic monsters, and we have no way of getting out, today just looks better and better." The inside of the mine had been damaged by the explosion, both of them, but it didn't appear to have been in a great state to begin, which probably lead to the instabilities Elly was noting.

"You are exceptionally chipper about this Xan, do you know something I don't?"

"Nah I'm just used to these kind of situations, in the war I was trapped underground for three days with my squad."

"How did that turn out?" The mine entrance snaked to the right it was the only direction for Xanthiana to go, and she didn't feel any reason to keep whatever monster waited in the depths waiting.

"Resorted to cannibalism in the end, Sensoth are very tasty." There wasn't any noise in the mine, but Xanthiana could hear something outside, possible explosions, she guessed the 99'ers had not taken their defeat by the mercs lightly.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah but its a hunger you really can't ever get over, I mean not in polite society."

"This is really fascinating in a xenobiology kind of way Xan."

"I'm joking Elly we didn't eat each other."

"Oh well, I'm sure you had some great stories."

"I'll make you a promise we come out of this alive, I'll tell you a story about it. Now give me a map, lets find us a way out of this burial." A map appeared in her head, and Xanthiana continued on into the dark.

Mine All Mine

"I have to say your plan was superior to mine, aside from the fact that you caused an explosion large enough to alert just about everyone in the immediate and not so immediate areas." The aftermath of the gulanite explosion was pretty extensive, so much so that Xanthiana was concerned the cybernetic parts could possibly have been damaged in the explosion.

"Results are results Elly." Most of the 99'ers were dead, the ones that weren't Xanthiana mercy killed. While searching through the wreckage she was concerned about all the fumes from the burning gulanite, but Elly assured her the research on gulanite burning was inconclusive, which was really comforting to her. Xanthiana hoped the explosion would keep other 99'ers at bay, though it was more likely to do the opposite as the machines would probably want to investigate what caused the deaths of their fellow cybernetics. The rubble obscured the parts Xanthiana needed, but thanks to the EGO device she was able to track down the crate and find it was mostly intact. Xanthiana was actually surprised the 99'ers had not emerged from secret hidy hole to attack when a group of them did just that. Using a type of burrowing device from underground they emerged, six of them, at first they looked to be a scouting party, but upon seeing Xanthiana they opened up with their modified miner weaponry.

"I'm sensing multiple seismic vibrations, the miners are coming at us from under the ground." Xanthiana had the crate of supplies under her left arm and she was firing at the 99'ers with her pistol with her right, it was an awkward set up and was messing with her aim. She huddled down behind some wreckage and set down the parts to take up the rifle.

"Gee I couldn't have figured that out on my own. What kind of escape plan do I have here?"

"Bad, its open terrain made worse by the explosion, outside of that the mine is there, but considering the 99'ers are coming from the mine, and your explosion destabilized it, that would be a really terrible idea."

"So you're saying the mine?"

"No I am not saying the mine, that is the opposite of what I said Xan!" Xanthiana was about to make a break for the mine when a new salvo of gunfire erupted opposite the 99'ers. It was concentrated and accurate, the cybernetics didn't stand a chance as they were basically standing in the open. Xanthiana put her head up to see who had just saved her ass and felt her heart sink.

"Ms. Roeyka we'd be real happy if you came out with your hands up and handed over the parts you were getting for Top-Notch." Of course it was the Mercs from before.

"Can I have a moment to think this over?" The clink of a grenade near her feet was the answer.

"You have three seconds."

Operation Boom Goes the Dynamite

"This is a sub optimal operation." The 99'ers camp was a loose group of ramshackle buildings, there did not seem to be any rhyme or reason for the operation, things were just casually cast aside in some places. Xanthiana did not know much about mining but Elly assured her the 99'ers were very bad at it. They did seem to have a lot of guards around their haul, or that's what Xanthiana assumed the cybernetic monsters with large weapons were. Xanthiana had parked the car from a distance and used a pair of binoculars that the Top-Notch people had loaned her to make her assessment, Elly assured her that the EGO device could see that far with out the binocs but Xanthiana sure as hell couldn't.

"What's our play here?" She couldn't see the augments she was to steal, but the maps Top-Notch had provided had lead to this place and she couldn't assume they had sent her into to an ambush. "I mean they hardly knew her, you normally get to know a person before you try and kill them," She mused to herself.

"I suggest a forward blitz assault, we have the surprise advantage, if we kill enough to disrupt their operation we'll have time while they try and mobilize against us, then we just grab the parts and get out of there."

"Sure its not like we have no idea of numbers in there and these are some kind of cybernetic super soldiers or anything. I'm sure with my acid bullets, body armor and personal force field we can totally blitz this group and not get killed."

"That's the spirit Xan!"

"Or we could do the not stupid thing and you can tell me how I can explode some of that loose gulanite they have laying around and we can do this attack right." Elly waited a moment and then popped up instructions on how to explode the processed gulanite, Xanthiana suspected the little ego device was mad that she rejected her plan. Exploding the gulanite seemed simple enough, use the fire nano ammo from the pistol to start a fire than the chain reaction would do the rest. Xanthiana hopped down from her observation point and made her towards the mine. Elly kept a radar up, but as far as Xanthiana could tell the 99'ers weren't exactly actively looking for people to attack their mine, which made sense to Xanthiana considering they were cybernetic miners who routinely kidnapped people to turn them into robotic slaves. Her luck held out and she managed to make it to the run off of the mine where she could see some gulanite refuse.

"Elly if I ignited this gulanite can it possibly tail end into the other gulanite inside?"

"Running calculations, its possible Xan, though it will also alert the miners to your presence."

"I'll take the chance Elly, keep the radar ready." Xanthiana stepped back and withdrew the pistol, it was a burst fire, so she knew she'd waste at least four bullets when she fired, but she hoped then nano tipped slugs would ignite it in the first burst so she'd still have the remaining clip to deal with any miners who came looking. She opened fire and the gulanite exploded, a wooshing sound shot up from the run off and went right into the camp where a sequence of larger explosions went off. Xanthiana was knocked down by the force of the explosion, and then covered in exploded debris, parts of which appeared to be the former miners.

"Operation successful I believe the explosion distracted them Xan."

"Thanks Elly I hadn't figured that out."

Contractor Work

"So basically you need me to attack a camp of those cyborgs to get some parts they stole from you, so you can get to work on curing a virus that doesn't affect my kind, but kills humans very easily." Xanthiana did not exactly like the way this plan was going.

"Well we did fix your car and give you medical care Ms. Roeyka." Eren was correct, the challenger had been saved, some front end damage but nothing too bad, and she claimed they had upgraded the engine, so she did technically owe them as much as she hated to admit that.

"This sounds like a little bit of extortion." Elly tried to plead differently, but Xanthiana told her to be quiet, she didn't like being forced into doing anything, especially since that's been the only way that she'd been having to do business since she arrived in Paradise.

"Well working with us does have its perks." Eren lead Xanthiana to Top-Notch's armory. There were a lot of weapons there for the very few employees Xanthiana had seen working for Top Notch. Eren withdrew an assault rifle and a pistol and set them on a table, then she pulled up a utility belt of sorts and some body armor.

"This will go a long way to making things even."

"Rifle and pistol are burst fire three round bursts, they use nano technology to tip the bullets with a little something extra, acid for the rifle, fire for the pistol, be careful their barrels can overheat. Body armor is standard issue Erep with some functionality increased for your ego device to harden impact zones and potentially stop a round from making it through. And finally the belt, its got a personal defense shield, limited rechargeable battery though, so you can't withstand sustained gun fire, but it should be able to help you get to cover."

"Well I have to say working for you guys is a lot better than working for the ereps."

"Private sector usually is Ms Roeyka. Collect your gear and get moving, the virus is spreading and you don't want to see what it does to people."

"That bad?"

"Hurry and you'll never have to find out." Xanthiana collected her gear and some ammunition and made for the Challenger.

"Elly pull up our objective I want to be back in time for dinner." And with that the Challengers engine roared to life and Xanthiana got back to work.