Powder Miner

When Nader had entered the vessel, he of course hadn't taken off his damaged armor, nor had he taken off his helmet or mask. In fact, though he had placed his normal-sized rifles and his Horsekiller (because it wouldn't fit well in the cramped space) on his back, his Sorraia machinegun remained mounted on his right arm. The mangalloy-armored man kept said arm carefully placed across his lap in a way unlikely to accidentally pull the trigger-handle, but he wasn't looking down: he was looking right ahead, turning his head this way and that so he could keep a careful watch of everywhere in the vehicle. People were talking, and Nader was keeping an ear on the conversation, but given that he was both feeling quite paranoid about the influx of mysterious armed people, AND given that he wasn't presently panicking, he decided to keep quiet, just in case he riled himself up; he was perfectly willing to open up on anything that threatened him, but he didn't exactly want to needlessly shoot someone. ...but then one of the new people said something about demons and magic, and he couldn't help but speak up, his voice colored by a particularly bizarre Arab accent further tinged with what sounded like Russian influences. "We did meet that one demon-summoning woman in the Australia we went to... ...if any demons appear here, I am going to shoot them. Several times. Be forewarned."

Satomi strode out with the others towards the blacksmith without any hesitation, purpose in her strides. As she walked, she spoke after Kusuke did, offering her own reason, which was consistent enough: ”I think that it would be a shirking of Duty to turn back from this fight, here, if I intend to protect this village.” While she was in the blacksmith’s shop, she spent a couple of minutes looking over the gear inside, perhaps a bit too closely, as she had her head a couple of inches from the things she was inspecting, but in the end Satomi decided to grab the silver bow (she may not exactly have trained much in it, but her experience with the crossbow and the strength she knew was at least enough to operate this bow should help it work) and two of the lightable arrows; she could make good use of those. Satomi will join the fight, taking the Silver Bow and two Flaming Arrows!

Satomi listened to the conversation turn, and to questions being asked, and her own queries began to formulate in her head. She put her hands up to her face, her kimono’s sleeves hanging down over her mouth as she thought. Then she lowered her arms, brought her head back up, and looked at the guide, asking her first question: ”Do you know the source of those undead that we faced in combat earlier? I suppose that things might well be different here, but at least where I come from, undead either come from the actions of a maho tsukai, or from an area tainted by the influence of Jigoku, both of these being very serious problems. Do you have any dark mages or tainted areas responsible for the creation of these monsters.” She prepared to move onto her next topic and her expression grew a bit smug. ”Well, if the issue is an invasion of this village, you are lucky to have a Kaiu-trained engineer. Siege combat against hordes of monsters is, in fact, my family’s specialty. It sounds like I will have a lot of work that I can do here — construction of fortifications, work on your walls, and creation and operation of siege weaponry, these areas are those that I have been trained in. But... what do you have to offer in terms of labor? I can work on much of the construction myself, especially with the siege weapons, but with the fortifications and walls in particular the process will be slow if I don’t have any hands aside from those in my group who are available. Though...” Satomi gazed at Kusuke pensively for a few moments, before her attention snapped to another topic. And evidently this topic was somewhat embarrassing, because Satomi blushed a little and spoke more sheepishly. ”Also, I don’t suppose that this village has a place our group could bathe, or somewhere where we could wash our clothing? It has been... some time since I have been able to properly do so.

When the XCOM craft flew in to the area, Nader’s initial reaction was to turn his head and torso in the direction of the vehicle (albeit with his guns still vaguely pointed in the direction of the scene with the “Ethereal” that Nader was still occasionally taking brief glances back at, and, now, pointed downwards). When he managed to get a good look at the way the vehicle was moving and landing, his voice rang out querulously. ”What the hell...?” Whatever this plane was, it used engines that were clearly far more advanced than even the Lightning Streak back home... considering that they were in the middle of ROTATING DOWNWARDS. His fascination with the plane was so much that when the Reaper popped in and answered the question he’d tossed out just before the new alien arrived, all Nader did was stare confusedly at him for a moment before letting out a belated ”...oh yeah.”

First, Satomi had to briefly deal with a flavor of the strange sensations she Fer whenever Kusuke transported her in time in some capacity, but then the pain in her ribs practically melted away; by the time the brief process was done, she wasn’t injured at all, which made the brief bout of strangeness more than worth it. Undamaged as she now was, she took a deep breath in, and then exhaled it out satisfiedly before she turned towards Kusuke and gave him a brief, slight little bow of gratitude. ”Thank you once again, Kusuke-san, I find myself in your debt.”

Satomi sheathed her katana, the sword slipping into the lacquered grip with practiced and artful ease... admittedly after she’d drawn it only to find her target taken out in Jun’s rampage. Still, she’d (somehow) been the one to destroy that oni eye, so she’d at least significantly contributed this time around, so she could be proud of her contribution to this battle. Perhaps she was getting nimbler through all of this combat. She’d welcome it, certainly. Satomi spends 2 Merit to gain 1 DEX! Two strangers came then, seemingly friendly and most certainly far more alive than the previous visitors. Satomi couldn’t spot any maho marks, or anything else from whatever similar dark magicks afflicted this world, so they likely weren’t the culprits behind the zombies. Satomi would remain at least partially on her guard, but she would let herself drop out of her combat stance, and... ...ooh, that hurt. Satomi put her arm across her ribs; the zombies had battered her rather severely over the course of the battle, and now that she was no longer in a state to ignore it, the pain from those attacks was welling up to the surface. A couple of her ribs were probably cracked, she thought, and she winced. Then, she sidled up next to the time traveler, still keeping an eye on the two locals as she spoke to him: ”Kusuke-san, if I could beseech you to provide some aid...?”

The thought process that Satomi went through immediately after shooting down the oni eye was minimal, and didn’t involve said little victory at all; instead, halfway running off of instinct and halfway on logic, Satomi identified the arrow-filled zombies as the biggest threat (going off of what one had done to Kusuke-san), and then she reached for the hilt of her sword and charged with strides long enough to have her right leg pushing out of her kimono. When she reached her target, her sword lashed out lightning-fast at it. ”May your body be released from this torture, undead!” It was only after she had struck that she abruptly realized that she had actually not only struck the fairly small moving target, but she had brought it down with multiple shots. She hadn’t expected that in the slightest... she’d had problems seeing it exactly, even. The surprise would probably have caused her to hesitate if she weren’t combat trained. Satomi uses Iajutsu Strike with her Daisho on Pincushion Zombie B, dealing 2d6+STR (3) damage first strike!

Nader’s immediate reaction to Contagion’s deciding to move in front of him was dynamic, with the armored paranoid taking a large step to the right, moving his left arm to try to block Contagion off from getting in front of him again with the Horsekiller’s barrel and keeping his right arm trained on the new alien, albeit now less accurately, lessening the being’s individual danger from Nader specifically. Oh, and he also verbally blew up on Contagion: ”Did you just step in front of my fucking guns?! My four guns, two of which are essentially heavy weaponry?! Did you just WILLINGLY PUT YOURSELF DIRECTLY INTO MY CROSSFIRE?! ARE YOU EVEN MORE OUT OF YOUR MIND THAN I AM?! Why the hell would you —“ The strangely-accented man stopped his rant suddenly, given that he couldn’t afford to lose the situation completely, but the shake of his head and the tone of his voice afterwards communicated clearly his continued displeasure. ”...Allah. If you see, Mr. Chemical Weapons, I haven’t pulled the trigger. I can listen well enough with my guns pointed at this thing, and considering our new compatriots, it can talk well enough with all these guns pointed at it. But I wil NOT be unprepared.”

It had been a dizzying series of events that had marked the end of Nader’s part of events, something that wasn’t helped by Nader’s particular set of issues. First of all, the Moskurg man had been practically directly impacted by a rocket, and his armor had done practically nothing to stop the world of hurt that had ensued. The explosion had passed cleanly past his plates, pushing a couple of them apart from each other, and shrapnel had embedded into his shoulder and chest, paired with a rather horrific burn; Nader had been barely on his feet and briefly swaying into flashes of unconsciousness, and in a world of agony. Allah... he hadn’t been as invincible as he’d thought... And then he barely registered someone practically appearing beside him and speaking, reacting by stumbling a couple of steps towards the side in shock and some level of fright. He only caught a couple of the phrases the man had said, and in his only-slightly-conscious state, he certainly didn’t have the ability to respond to them. Then, of course, he was pumped with more than one cocktail of chemicals from more than one source, which he was not particularly happy about; the next few seconds were spent flailing about and grousing about ”Putting shit in my body— what the hell— what are they doing—“ until he noticed that his grievous wounds were completely healed, with bloody shrapnel now even on the ground after being pushed out of his wound. After an enervated shudder, and a couple more unintelligible phrases of somewhat irate muttering, Nader made his way back over to everyone else, juryrigging a temporary fix to his armor (with a large hole now torn in the fabric backing) by taking a plate’s secondary attachment hook and sticking it on another. When Nader made it back to the rest of the team, with his armor blood-spattered, soot-marked, and somewhat precarious in places, but overall still very much covering his body, the very first thing he did was respond to the cloaked man with the Russian accent (just speaking generally in the direction of the other team, to one of the phrases he remembered actually hearing, his continuing irateness audible: ”What did you mean, ‘especially with a gun like that’—“ The very second thing he did was watch yet another damned alien’s descent, and, perhaps predictably, freak out. ”Aw fuck, more of them this quickly?!” Then he whirled in the direction of the new alien, and even as said alien was in the middle of talking about common enemies he pulled his Osprey off of his back, and then the PAW, and then he pointed them directly at the alien. Then he followed those up by pointing his arms (left arm straightened, right arm bent with wrist aimed at the alien) at the robed being as well, the Horsekiller and Sorraia then completing the ensemble of four more guns now threatening the alien.

Much like most of the party, Satomi’s reaction to the zombies was assuredly negative. That negative reaction, however, wasn’t borne from disgust, or from unfamiliarity, and was both very emphatic and rather unique. Specifically, the moment she spotted the undead beings shambling into the clearing, she pointed at them and began to shout. ”Maho! Mahooooo! Maho tsukaaaiiii! Undead, zombies, either the taint is afoot, maho is afoot, or something similar is afoot!” Immediately, Satomi drew her sword and pointed in the direction of the zombies. ”This is bad news, this is very bad, we must find the source of this and destroy it immediately! Either of these options is terrible!” Satomi gestured with her sword a little bit more, before the combat really began in earnest and she sheepishly put it away. After all, she knew that she could do more damage with the Perfection Crossbow — it was why she had loaded it, after all, so she was absolutely going to destroy one of these undead maho taint monstrosities with it, or maybe one of the strange eyeball oni hovering above it. ”Take this, being of Jigoku, and BEGONE! Satomi unloads her Perfection Crossbow into Demon Eye B, dealing 6d6+DEX (5) damage! Loadout:

Nader’s expression behind his mask turned into a thoroughly displeased frown as the enemy sent in a bevy of reinforcements... but at least he could take some solace in the fact that the groups present had successfully reduced much of the enemy forces to alien meat and scrap by the force of their combined firepower. Now, of course, it was time to contribute more himself. Nader whirled in the direction of the red flying thing that had just exchanged fire with his tiny blue companion, and he raised his left arm to point his thirty-pound, six-foot-total Horsekiller at the monstrosity. ”How ‘bout you try this on for size, huh?” His left arm straightened out with the telltale click of his gun rail, he gripped the pull-lever on the underside of his wrist, and... BOOM! A .60 caliber round was sent zipping off towards it. Nader fires his Horsekiller at the Archon King, dealing 6d6+3+STR (5)+DEX (3) damage! The attack has a 10% chance to miss, but with the No Silencers Here perk it taunts the King’s action! (Active Cooldown: M3 Sorraia, 2 turns)

From the moment that Lucille had announced the presence of four incoming humanoids, Satomi had focused herself on preparing for a potential fight, specifically by working the loading process on her finicky crossbow — the flaws with the weapon had made themselves abundantly clear time and time again since she’d so excitedly made it, and it was in fact another source of frustration for the young samurai. Still, it WAS a useful weapon, she just had to jimmy... the... accursed... winch... into... place! With an unintentionally cute little grunt, Satomi got the loading lever into place, a click signifying the successful loading of her “Perfection” Crossbow. Satomi stood up from where she’d been kneeling down to prop her crossbow up against the ground, and held it in a position that was ready but not aimed, and with that delicate task finally done, Satomi chose that moment to join the conversation. ”Um, I don’t know about not hoping for anything, that sounds dangerous in its own way to me. But we definitely ought to be preparing for the worst, to be sure. If they are friends and we’re prepared for a fight, well, we’ll just scare them a bit. If they’re foes and we aren’t prepared for a fight, it would go very poorly for us. It just means we shouldn’t immediately shoot them, not that we shouldn’t be ready to. It doesn’t pay to be unprepared where I come from, either.”

Satomi leaned against the glass of the window as the interdimensional bus swept down over the ocean, and at the significantly closer distance, the scene below was visible in far clearer detail. ...That is to say that instead of a gigantic, completely indistinguishable blue blur, it was a gigantic, halfway-indistinguishable blur dotted with brown shapes that were still a bit fuzzy but were of the approximate size and shape to be ships... and in that case, a LOT of ships. There were other-colored blurs on the ships too, which Satomi couldn’t identify at all, though some of them were quite massive. ”Those things on the ships... does anyone know what they are?” Satomi hoped that this was interpreted as a request for clarification on the things themselves, whatever they might be, rather than any sort of admission of her poor vision.

Through his scope, Nader watched in rather a large amount of shock as all of a sudden, not only did several incredibly strangely armed and armored people jump out of nowhere and start taking out the apparent hostiles, but some OTHER woman ran in screaming, shot Aquila full of syringes, and then set a bunch of the ostensible aliens on fire. He groaned loudly, and then he put his Osprey back onto his back. ”Well, so much for not drawing the attention of literally the entire base... fuckin’...” Muttering, Nader stepped out from behind the tree, red and blue armor glinting dimly in the moonlight, and then he raised his right arm, bracing in position, straps taut, and Sorraia raised. And then, a three-second BRRRRT rang out, around fourty expended cartridges flew out of the side of his gun, and light flashed as that many 7.62mm bullets were sent flying at ADVENT’s forces. Nader fires his M3 Sorraia at the two ADVENT Soldiers and remaining Captain, dealing 2d6+5+3 damage to each of them! He also activates his No Silencers Perk here, taunting... as many of his 3 targets as the GM lets him get away with, for an action!

Navin grunted three times as he was shot with multiple arrows — his armor had certainly taken a lot of oomph out of the shots, but that didn’t make getting filled full of three arrows a particularly enjoyable experience. Still, he had things to do. Looking down at the man that he had just brutalized, Navin felt a pang of guilt; he did not enjoy doing things like this, but since the man was at least alive... maybe he could actually avoid killing this one. ”If you don’t want to die, leave!” Navin didn’t stick around, though; he had to help defeat the beasts that were attacking their castle, and accordingly he began to run in the direction of the downed flying beast, the soles of his footwear pounding against the ground as he approached it as fast as he could, before he brought back his arm, brought his fingers together into a knife-hand, and then sent that down at the grounded beast, a loud and piercing line of explosion arcing from his fingers towards its flesh. Navin uses Piercing Strike on Bel Lahmu B, dealing (3d6+STR+SYN)*1.5, ignoring RES! Additional Notes: 12% chance to dodge melee attacks with Aikido, from his Fistfighter Perk Constitution: 2, Resistance: 1, Dexterity: 4, Intelligence: 2, Strength: 10, Synergy: 10 Cooldowns: Flurry of Explosion, 1 turn, Piercing Strike, 1 turn

A worried expression flitted across Perlita’s face as she looked between Gabriel and Soryn, taking in their respective conditions... and then she spoke, with that worry translating into her voice. ”Ah...! Gabriel, I’m sorry, but Soryn really does need this Diarama more than I think you do, especially considering your element, please just keep hanging on!” Perlita sputtered out for a moment as she was addressed by Atton, but despite this guy being a complete stranger, she couldn’t help but find his speech reassuring, to her pleasant surprise. ”...uhm... thank you... right! Right, let’s see if I can’t just be a bit more proactive here! Doing God’s work... uh, Crawford, come forth!” Once again tugging on the strings invisible to everyone but her and Gabriel that summoned her Persona... and she sent a strong infusion of pink healing energy towards Soryn! Perlita casts Diarama on Soryn, healing him for 4d4+11+11 (from perk) health points! Constitution: 6, Resistance: 4, Dexterity: 7, Intelligence: 0, Strength: 2, Synergy: 11 If dealt a non-stun Ailment, Perlita's Justice Arcana perk afflicts its dealer with the same Ailment, and her Dark Jacket protects her from sleep effects and confers 25% resistance against darkness attacks!

LOTUS watched other members of the party take initiative, and he wasn’t particularly perturbed — it looked to him like they were taking intelligent enough courses of action, largely putting pressure on Lancer, or preparing to, with Morgan appearing to be helping the party recover. There were a couple of things LOTUS found notable: Dackly seemed to have put into place the actions she’d been taking it upon herself to do, Katsuo was still mindlessly raging, and Bridgett was charging up one of her powerful blasts. With these variables in mind, LOTUS issued orders to the remaining members of his squad. ”Alright... Hikari, I want you to grant attack power to Katsuo and Bridgett again, the latter will need it and the former is pretty powerful! Dackly, I want you to start laying into Lancer, start prepping her for a big effect of yours! Gozer, you should renew your boost of Dackly’s toughness! Ritsu, I would appreciate it if you attacked that officer on the left, as well as you, new lady with the demons, it’d be appreciated if you sent your demon to attack that same officer! Support it if you can, otherwise just keep yourself protected! Isobel, I will want you to go give Dackly a poppy, because she could probably use it!” ”Right, I don’t need telling twice! Hold on Dackly, I happen to be an expert in keeping plants alive!” Oh God, Isobel thought, that joke was stuuupid... but no time to dwell! Instead, Isobel sprinted on over to Dackly, handing her a poppy. Isobel uses Healing Poppy to heal Dackly for 2d4+INT*1.25! Also, she has a passive 10% dodge chance, and if stunned physically or chemically LOTUS' moves can still be used. Constitution: 3, Dexterity: 8, Intelligence: 11, Resistance: 2, Strength: 2, Synergy: 0

Heavily fortified, with several turrets, mysterious future walls, walking tanks (something about this offended Nader on an engineering level; sure, that was cool, but come on), and quite a few patrols of soldiers out there. This is why he’d insisted on scoping the place out — he figured that they could avoid some of the patrols, and at least start the engagement on their own terms if these were hostiles... oh, and there was Aquila walking right out and getting into a conversation with the troops out here. ”Why in the name of Allah...” Nader sighed angrily and adjusted the grip of his marksman rifle, getting it into firing position and aiming in on the head of the person pointing his gun at Aquila. ”Nice, really, good job, you fucking idiot.” His words were spat with venom, but not actually enough volume for Aquila or the troopers to hear him; he didn’t want to give away his personal element of surprise until he took the first shot, no matter how much he wanted to chew the knight out for giving away their position with his usual grandstanding moron antics.

Finally, Satomi popped up from where she’d been sorrowfully sunk down between the tops of the seats in front and behind of her — because the small samurai was so short, she had been practically invisible unless you had a direct line of sight to her seat. She looked plenty miserable, still, but she wasn’t having an abject panic attack, at the least. Indeed, she was just kind of glumly looking out the window. Not that she could see absolutely anything out of it, of course; with her vision being how it unfortunately was, everything as far away as the surface of the planet was was a completely indistinct blur. At least she could tell that they were approaching something, even if she couldn’t tell anything about it other than... well, maybe it was the ocean, that was a lot of blue. Still, the fact that they were approaching anything at all told her that it was time to put an end to her absolutely shameful behavior, and that she had spent more than enough time just moping over things. Julie was gone, yes, and it was a tragedy, but no Crab worth their mon would ever just let a loss stop them from doing their job, and Satomi would make sure that, though she was a poor excuse for a samurai, she didn’t sink THAT low. So she sat up straight, straightened her daisho on her obi, and spoke with a sigh. ”...right. Time to get ready to do my Duty again, whatever it may be... wherever this may be, anyway.”

Nader had attached his Horsekiller and Sorraia to each of the arms as the ship approached its destination, and accordingly when the Weatherlight dropped them off, he was already properly armed and properly dangerous. Dropping into a new world unprepared could be deadly, after all. When the ship left, Nader looked around and then proceeded to provide his personal summation of their situation... quietly of course. ”Forest, probably a good place to land, all things considered. Won’t have to deal with everything at once. Still, those lights could be some sort of enemy...” At that moment, Contagion suggested to everyone that they move in the direction of the lights, and Nader stuck out his hand and quickly replied. ”No! Wait a minute, we don’t want to be charging into this blindly if we can help it, it would really serve us well to try and get a peek of what those lights are... but I may well be able to contribute here, fortunately.” Moving a few steps forward to crouch behind a tree and make sure that his profile was as poorly visible as was possible, Nader pulled his Osprey off of his back, and put it up to his head, using the zoom of the gun’s scope to try and get a read on what exactly those lights were from. Given that it was the middle of the night, he knew he wouldn’t get a perfect view, but anything was better than being completely in the figurative dark about the situation.

Having been satisfied with putting his commandeered workshop room in order, Nader had once again been walking around the ship to make sure it was clear from interdimensional intruders; if he had free time, he’d figured that he’d better use it to make sure things were secure. He certainly didn’t intend to just drop his guard when he knew that there were things out there that wanted them dead and when he was still with a group of relative strangers that he couldn’t necessarily trust. When he heard an unknown voice coming from one room, it seemed to confirm his fears. He drew his Osprey rifle, and peeked in to see precisely who the hell was in the room. When he saw that it was just some sort of vaguely suspicious communication device, though, he calmed down and put the gun back on his back, listening to the voice; aliens invading and conquering the world? Horrible, Nader thought, and like the colonialists but on pretty much the grandest scale he would have been able to think of before he’d been called into Castle Doom. His pondering cut off and his entrance became much more sudden when he watched the medieval man pick the device up and just start randomly messing around with it; the mangalloy-armored Forenian promptly charged into the room and extended his hand in a “stop” gesture. ”What in the name of Allah are you doing?! You don’t know how that thing or anything similar to it works, you could damage something or cause it to damage us or just lose the coordinates by blithely fucking around with it!”

Within the room Nader had carved out as his personal gun workshop, the two had talked for a bit, and Nader had discovered that one thing Alan wanted improved on the gun was the fact that it took a few seconds to actually spin up and be ready for firing. Nader's first instinct wasn't actually to put together some simple trick to cut down the spin time, mainly because though he'd had luck translating some of the mechanisms he'd seen in the futuristic guns in Australia, this gun was much more modern and already had the improvements Nader was familiar with with his work on the Velociraptor, plus he hadn't seen a truly futuristic rotary autocannon yet. Instead, Nader took an example of the usual Forenian mad engineering approach to it: he decided to add another system to it entirely, placing a gas-based motor system on the autocannon to get the autocannon rotating very quickly from the start. Upon putting his upgrades together and reassembling the autocannon, Nader found that his efforts were a mixed bag. On one hand, the gas system was actually quite effective to getting the thing to spin -- with an unloaded test run, Nader pulled the lever to get it spinning, and with the roar of its (fairly small) gas engine, the rotary cannon's barrels were spinning away at a decent hum, most certainly fast enough to fire immediately; the UC-41-Velociraptor, which Nader had put significant contribution into, fired not much slower than this thing did, and he knew the rate it needed to work on. Unfortunately, when he then picked it up after waiting for it to stop spinning again, he grunted: it was significantly heavier than it had been thanks to the new system. Ten pounds more, if Nader were to guess. A mixed success, then. "Well, good news and bad news. Good news, gas system I added should get this thing spinning up immediately, and you won't have to wait around before blowing away the things you want to blow away with it. Bad news, the new system adds... well, I'd guess that I put ten pounds on this thing by its heft, so that would put it probably around 50 pounds. Probably a worthwhile trade, in my eyes, but you'll want to use your robot with it rather than try to run around and freehand the damn thing yourself." And with that, Nader handed the upgraded minigun off to Alan's Doombot. Item Upgraded: Very Heavy Minigun (Level 2): A minigun looted from the defeated Talon troopers, claimed by Alan, and then upgraded by Nader, firing obscenely large 45mm rounds at 800 rpn. Thanks to the addition of a gas motor, it no longer needs time to spin up before fire, but happens to be in the neighborhood of fifty pounds now. 4d6 + strength damage, occupies 3 slots.

Satomi sighed mournfully at Kusuke's reasoning, but nodded her head -- even if reluctantly, she had given herself over to the idea of leaving at this point. "...right. Damn. I'll follow right along with you all then..." She put a hand to her forehead, because agreeing to retreat put her through all sorts of things -- shame at failing so thoroughly in keeping aware of things because of her obsession, failing to carry through her Duty, the shame and lack of Courage of leaving... and, most of all, feeling like she was betraying the girl who had taken off her mask for her. "I... I'm sorry, Julie. I'm sorry..." With that apology given, Satomi moved off to the bus while she still could, and when she was onboard she sat down and brought her knees to her chest. She wasn't crying, though, as she was looking out the windows at the (occasionally blurry) bay, waiting to see if she would have to spring back into some sort of combat.

The gesture would be invisible to Alan, but Nader rolled his eyes behind his facemask when Alan cautioned him not to fuck it up, and Nader observed the gun for a few more moments while he replied. "Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't worry too much about me fucking it up. Weapons engineer of the Kingdom of Moskurg for six years, and then after some civilian work for an American gun company for three years, weapons engineer of the Republic of United Forenia for five years. Specialty in infantry weaponry and armor. I'm kind of an expert on the matter, to be frank." He stood up and stepped forward a couple of paces, before turning back to Alan and gesturing him to follow as he started to walk over to the room he'd come from. "Come on, let's go to the room I appropriated to work in. I've got some tools that I took from the Latin guy's safehouse when we left, and I've been putting some work into my own guns for now, might as well see if I can't put an improvement or two into this minigun while I take a look at it, yeah? Don't touch any of my shit unless I instruct you too, though, because I am very particular about letting people into my spaces and letting them touch my things."

Kusuke's complaints got a dolorous response from the samurai engineer girl. "...I... do you think there's any way we could stay, Kusuke-san? We can't, um, no, I just, um, leaving like this, it... it seems like we're doing something horribly wrong, both to the people here, and..." Satomi shut up for a few seconds, but she didn't actually stop walking. "But... I can't think of a way to argue against this too well... I suppose that makes me a terrible hypocrite. Can you think of a way to stay here and not make things worse...? I don't want to just flee and breach my Duty. But..." She fell silent again. "Also, um... her name is... w-was? Julie. Not Somatotrope. If... if we're going to leave her, um, we can't shy away from her name..."