AnnouncementPlease let me know if I should tone down the number of images. Sorry that I was a bit te tonight with the upload but still technically Wednesday per my time zone.Nymphs, it seemed, cked manners.

  The Nymphs we’d helped were regarding me with open suspicion right in front of me. It wasn’t like I could do anything against them anyway with my mediocre kit.

  “Are you sure she’s not a Gardinan spy?” The sleek looking one asked.

  The other combat nymph scoffed. “Do you really think those primitives would be so savvy?”

  The standard nymph, Haruka, I believe her name was decided to butt in. “Regardless, she could be ascended when we get back to republic territory.” The other two nodded, seeming to accept that point.

  “Very well,” The one who had initially been against me being here began. “I’m just surprised you halted your expedition for a seedling.” She said, looking at Hati now.

  Haruka piped up. “And thank Aurum you did! It must have been her will that you arrived in the nick of time.”

  Hati nodded to that. “Yes. I suspect she is a messenger of Aurum as a matter of fact. She speaks of times before Hod.”

  I puffed my cheeks in frustration; they were ignoring me while talking about me. The three of them observed me for a moment before the heavy duty frame nymph asked. “Is that the truth, seedling?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t remember anything happening between my life from before and waking up a day ago, but it’s possible I made a deal with Aurum and I just don’t remember.”

  Hati nodded along to my expnation, and added on. “Yes, that plus the fact she was born with an Alqand Tempr form.” The heavy one raised her eyebrow at that.

  I offered a handshake towards them with a friendly smile. “I’m Silver, I guess. It’s nice to meet you all.”

  Only Haruka smiled back, but they all shook my hand in turn.

  “Naomi.” The heavier one said.

  “Aiko.” Said the other with a nod of greeting.

  “Haruka.” She shook my hand more enthusiastically. She blocked her mouth from the view of the others and whispered. “Sorry, the combat types can be such stick-in-the-muds to strangers, I’m sure they’ll open up in time.” I hoped she was right.

  I lent Haruka a hand loading her robot walker; it looked like a much bigger version of the boston dynamics bot, and had tons of rigging for crates and bags of all sizes to attach to. Despite some crates clearly being full of heavy weapons, a 20 plus kilo crate barely registered to me.

  “How long is it going to take us to get from here to Alqand?” I asked her as I loaded the automaton.

  She put her finger to her chin though. “Well, it took us a few days to get here, but if Hati’s conversation from earlier is anything to go off, they’ll likely pick us up with a flyer automaton. So, with that given… I don’t know; however long it takes to get to the rendezvous point.”

  “So less than three days?” I asked hopefully.

  “Less than a day.” She eborated.

  I let out a breath of relief. I did not feel like spending another three days navigating the shoddy construction of this byrinthine megastructure.

  After loading the walker, Haruka threw her hands in the air, looking at me expectantly.

  I looked at her and asked uncertainly. “Uppies?”

  She rolled her eyes but nodded, she was the only one without a frame, and thus couldn’t reach the top of it.

  I lifted her by her armpits and pced her on the mount, she grabbed the straps like a horses lead, and called to the others.

  “We’re all packed and ready!”

  Aiko, in a complete reversal of her attitude to me, gave her a genuine smile and separated from the other two. “Good work, Haru! Upturned Checkpoint gave us a rendezvous and an ETA for the transport.”

  Her face fell ft when she turned to me. “You sure you can keep up? I know Hati and some of the higher ups seem to think you’re special, but I doubt you’d make it to the middle levels with that shoddy frame.”

  Hati cpped her hands, saving me from Aiko’s wrath. “That reminds me!” She turned to Haruka. “Didn’t we have a Takemikazuchi frame in the Fault settlement?”

  Aiko audibly huffed at the idea, but her friend Naomi seemed neutral to the whole ordeal.

  “As a matter of fact, we do!” She gave me the thumbs up. “I think it would suit her just fine.”

  With everyone ready and a destination in mind, we began our journey to the rendez-vous point.

  Large building rooftops were the only nding pces safe enough for us to travel.

  “How long is it going to take us to get to the building we need to climb up anyway?” I asked Hati.

  She gave me a look of pity. “I know it’ll be a struggle with your rusty frame, but we’re going to climb this one here,” She pointed at the nearest skyscraper, roughly 30 meters away. “then we’ll have to fly rooftop to rooftop.”

  But why would we have to do all that? “Can’t we just go by ground to the pce we need to be then? Are you and your friends scared we’ll run into more collectors?”

  She shook her head. “Actually, the collectors are the least of our problems; if a powerful variant or swarm attacked us, we’d be outgunned, and even worse, variant parasites are a constant issue in these levels.”

  Parasites? On synthetic humanoids? “How the hell does that work?”

  She shrugged. “Variants and the lower levels as a whole are weird. If you get a tingling feeling in your abdomen area - or anywhere for that matter thinking about it - let me know, and I’ll give you one of these.” She held up a small gss container.

  I mock gagged. “What the hell would I do with that?”

  Hati snickered. “You eat it. It cures parasitic infections.”

  “I think I’d rather die.”

  Naomi cut our conversation about the writhing pest short. “Chop-chop people, we don’t want to be te to the rendezvous point.”

  Apart from the absurd amount of colpsed holes in the floors of the office building we climbed, it didn’t take as much time to get to the top as I expected, or at least it wouldn’t have.

  Haruka and her walker climbed at a near snail pace in comparison. While most of us could just boost jump through the holes in the structure, the walker wouldn’t fit. So when there was no easy way through each floor, she would have to use the grapple line and climb the outside on the windows.

  It was even more difficult than it sounded.

  First, we - the nymphs with frames - would have to ascend to the floor just above where Haruka was; then we’d have to make sure we had a structurally sound hard point for her to grapple up with the walker’s winch. Spoiler alert, the hundred odd year old abandoned building didn’t have much structural integrity. It was to the point that there was no one exterior wall in the building that could hold the walker’s weight for enough time to traverse more than a floor or two.

  When we did reach the top, Hati handed me a pair of futuristic looking binocurs, and pointed out towards one of the nearby roads.

  Looking where she was pointing, I felt grateful we weren’t travelling by ground. Automatons simir to the ones I saw in the massive cavern roamed the ashen streets, unnerving red bdders pulsed on their backs, presumably the parasites Hati mentioned.

  She tapped my shoulder then pointed to the rendezvous building. “We would have had to get around all of those, or fight them… Mind you if we did fight them, we’d likely die; there’s a nasty swarmer type I saw on my way down. They’re like a never ending hoard of miniature shotgun walkers, they come running as soon as they hear you get a shot off.” she shivered in disgust even at their mention.

  “I suddenly feel much more comfortable with the idea of roof hopping. Plus, how bad could it be? It worked fine st time at the bridge.”

  Hati face palmed at my comment. “Well now you’re bound to fail.”

  I ughed. “You believe in jinxes?”

  Confused at that, she responded. “I’m not sure what a jinx is, but that sort of statement is a bad luck in these parts.”

  I went to pass the binocurs back, but she let me hold on to them for now, expining she’d already seen all there was to see in this region.

  That was fair enough, I could well be running low on luck given how well things have gone for me thus far.

  The first hop went off without a hitch, all the frame nymphs rocketed over the streets below safely. I was curious to see how the walker would get over… I was not disappointed.

  Haruka looked nervous, and braced herself tight against the walker’s straps as it contorted its legs like a jumping spider. With a gasp from haruka, it shot up into the air in a controlled jump and nded more gently than one would expect from such a rge vehicle.

  “Say, how come the walker doesn’t shoot straight through this fragile roof into the floors below?” I asked nobody in particur.

  Naomi answered, she had a voice you’d expect that a no-nonsense sergeant might. “It has powerful shock absorbers in the legs, they extend a second before nding and cushion for both itself and whatever it’s nding on.”

  I nodded, that was a very smart design choice, doubly so if all of Hod looked the way the Accumution Zone did.

  Unfortunately, my luck wouldn’t st.

  We were on our fourth roof jump out of the dozen or so it would take to get to the building we needed to be at, when my ancient frame failed me.

  My thruster didn’t ignite after I confidently jumped from the rooftop - something I never thought I’d do - and the road below rapidly approached me.

  I shrieked in panic, momentarily forgetting that I had a massive thruster strapped to my rump.

  I hurriedly angled myself so I wasn’t falling belly first to the ground, and prayed for a hail-Mary. If my thrusters didn’t activate I’d likely die only a day and a half into my new life.

  With a dizzying pulse of power, my thrusters came back to life, drastically slowing my descent.

  I’d like to say my nding was graceful, but that would be a lie; in my panic I only just barely recovered from the fall in time. The left leg of my frame was shattered, damaged to the point I wouldn’t be walking with it anytime soon. A weak part in the rust could have been the cause judging by the way it snapped.

  Haruka yelled down from the building I fell from. “ARE YOU OKAY?!” it echoed off the surrounding walls, breaking the eerie quiet of the lower levels.

  Recalling my conversation with Hati, I didn’t dare yell, instead just giving a thumbs up.

  She shouted “CAN YOU MAKE IT BACK UP?!”

  I gave a thumbs down with a frown, ying in a pile that was once a frame on the ground.

  Before she could shout anything else, Aiko’s hand cmped around the smaller girl’s mouth, making a shushing gesture, then pointing to something down the road from me.

  Turning towards what she saw, my heart sunk to my stomach. One of the parasite machine gun walkers from earlier were making their way towards my position; still not close enough to target me but it wouldn’t be long.

  I’m not sure how Nymph biology works, but between the battle when we first arrived, the rooftop jump, and the fall, no normal human would have enough adrenalyn left to kick in. Right then though? I’d have been sweating bullets if I could.

  It was even worse than the battle from earlier, at least then I hadn’t been alone down here to deal with the corpse collector. I didn’t want to die, and the thought of one of those disgusting parasites leeching off of and controlling me made me want to vomit.

  Seemingly oblivious to my panic, but acutely aware of my peril. Haruka jumped with her walker to the next building, Hati set up a sniping position on the rooftop, while Aiko and Naomi jumped down in a much more controlled way, gracefully activating their thrusters a dozen meters before the ground.

  They nded a short distance ahead of me, putting themselves between the infected automatons. Aiko gred at me, and mouthed an “I told you so.”.

  Maybe she was right. Maybe I was a liability endangering them all. But then what else was I supposed to do? I’m sure I could contribute once we reach Alqand, but what if we never do? All because of my stupid rusty frame.

  The first one went down with only a few shots, the second shortly after. The noise was the biggest hazard of all in the less traveled areas of the infested lower levels.

  Aiko muttered under her breath “Shit!” as several more began to round the corners, coming out of their usual haunts to investigate. Three of the miniature walkers Hati told me about even appeared seemingly from thin air down the highway.

  Naomi shot up into the air unching her massive shoulder missile along with a burst of explosives from her gun at the oncoming horde. Unfortunately, they were too dispersed for the missile to kill more than one or two, but her gun scored some hits.

  Meanwhile, Aiko did her best to defend me, albeit reluctantly.

  “Can you hurry up and take your shit frame off?! We’re getting bsted here, and I need you light enough to grab!” Aiko shouted at me.

  Snapping my eyes from the spectacle of the battle ahead, I complied, yanking off the legs as quickly as I could, but struggling to figure out the hangar thing on my back. I even accidentally fired one of my stabilizing thrusters, causing me to embarrassingly roll on the ground to my side.

  Eventually getting it off, Aiko muttered “Fucking finally.” backing towards me as she continued to shoot at the approaching mini walkers.

  Three more of the minis appeared in the distance and Naomi, likely out of power for her thrusters for the moment, nded next to us.

  “Three more just appeared down the road, looks like they’re spawning from thin air; I’ve never seen anything like it.” Naomi commented, baffled.

  I pulled out my binocurs and looked to see where they were coming from. For a moment there was nothing there, but from the side of the road a Nymph I’d never seen before appeared.

  She sliced the empty air where the minis were appearing. A glitchy mess of colors resolved into the form of a massive spider like automaton with one of its legs freshly severed. It quickly went transparent again to hide, but it was too te; I doubted its massive structure could move fast enough to escape this mysterious stranger.

  Aiko’s voice shook in fear. “Since when have swarms been able to cloak?”

  She looked towards Naomi but she had no answer.

  Two slices ter and the spider was dead. Still watching through the binocurs, I could swear I felt the stranger gazing back at me even from all this distance away. She looked over her shoulder towards us, then bounded into one of the nearby alleyways with her thrusters.

  I let out a sigh of relief as the remaining swarm was easily kept at bay for us to ascend back to the safety of the roofs.

  Aiko looked down to me in her arms, helpless without my frame. “You’ve got some expining to do, seedling.” She snarked.