"So far, I've seen at least three things that seem to come from games I've run, stories I've created. The red-eyed zombies killed by a strike to the heart are one of them. Are you from around here? Do you know anything about what's going on?"

"What do you mean games you've run? Did you make games? You aren't from here?" He is either delusional, or.... wich would be just Being X's style, another Isekai? Maybe she isn't the only one hes abused. Maybe he brought in some videogame designer.

She points her machete at him. "If god spoke to you, right now, and told you to kill me, would you?" She has to make sure he's not actually a pawn of Being X. Not another weapon pointed at her like that monster from the unified states.

"What? No! Of course not!"

That's his instinctive response, but Joon being Joon he can't help but think of the caveats immediately after he says it.

Just how good of an argument would the voice of god, or the text in the boxes appearing in his field of vision, have to make to persuade him?

Introspection can wait until he no longer has a machete being pointed in his face. 

"I'm no believer. The last person to tell me 'god has a plan', I beat the shit out of him. Juniper Smith, formerly of Bumblefuck, Kansas, but you can call me Joon."

(Whatever would be wanting information on loyalty might notice that her loyalty points went up several steps.)

She lowers the machete and smiles.

"Tanya Degurechaff, I wish I had also had the liberty to punish those that sing gods praises." Kansas was a state in both the united states of her earth, and the unified states of her second life. She needed to find out if he was from her original world or not. "Wich Kansas? What was the name of the Nation it was in? What started the Great War in your world?" Great War is capitalized by Tanya even when spoken. You can just tell.

"Kansas, in the United States of America. World War One got kicked off by the Franz Ferdinand assassination, right?" He only remembers the name because of the band. 

(If Tiff or Arthur were here they'd immediately start an argument over whether it was actually the structural causes like the web of alliances or the economic factors, and now he's reminded of their absence again.)

There are more of the risen dead outside the gas station, and they've been drawn in by the sounds of violence inside from the first one before it was dispatched. They're slow-moving, but there's not time for more conversation if Joon and Tanya want to outpace them.

There is enough time for Joon to stare at his character sheet's updates briefly.

Tanya Degurechaff, Loyalty lvl 6

Tanya Degurechaff, of unknown parentage, was plucked from an Anglecynn orphanage to serve as a test subject for illegal research from an early age at a black site operated by the maverick scientist Schugel. After a catastrophic accident gave her severe burns across her body and unlocked her fire magic, she was healed and inducted into the Fuchsia Coterie as a child soldier. She was sent into the Risen Lands exclusion zone on one of her first combat missions when all her thoughts and memories of Aerb were suddenly erased, replaced with those of an alternate existence on a planet called 'Earth'. Now Tanya finds herself a newcomer to the world that has known her whole life. 

"Ferdinand's death was the cause on our original earth. Not on other earths. This isn't my first time being... do you have an english word for Isekai? Taken to another world. My second world had the Great War later on, and also magic. It is good to meet someone from home." She uses the machete to bash a plank free from a display. So at least this boy will have something to wield. "Take the board, we must move before the exits are blocked by the zombies."

The boy accepts the plank and is not exactly impressed by his new improvised weapon, but his practice swings do get noticeably smoother after the first few attempts.

More undead have been drawn in from the surrounding fields, and it takes at least a jog to stay ahead of their group.

Joon hits his stride (with game layer assistance in the form of an Athletics level-up) after they've covered a few hundred yards.

He wants to ask about so many different things, about the second world she came from and how she went from one to the next and about magic, whether she has a game layer too or has any clues to her past here to back up the stat screen's biography of her, but one question is probably the most important right now.

"Uh, you've got a destination in mind, right?"

"Mechanics shop? Probably an obvious place to go, so might be crawling with the dyed hair fellows that were killing people on the way down. But It's obvious for a reason. Even just getting you a heavy wrench or crowbar would be large upgrade in capability." Despite her short stature, Tanya is fit enough to jog at a decent pace pretty much indefinitely. So she leads, despite Juniper being considerably taller than her with much longer legs.

"I'll take what I can get." This plank is heavy and he has serious doubts about its zombie-slaying potential.

Dyed hair... the 'Fuchsia Coterie' from her backstory (or the backstory of the person whose body she got shoved into)...

"You, uh, you know your hair is dyed pink too?"

"Haaah?" Tanya tugs at a lock of hair to bring it in front of her face. Yup, dyed the same colour the killers had. "But... why would Being X change my hair..." She mumbles to herself.

"That petty bastard is making me look like the group that were killing people. That utter cuntfaced inbred whorebeater." Tanya is a soldier, of course she knows how to curse in a dozen languages. She flips off the sky. "Just sending me to another world, again, wasn't good enough huh?!" Now she will probably be arrested for being in some kind of killing gang or cult or something because of her hair once they reach civilisation. This is definitely some plot by Being X.

Joon has been there. If he had the breath to spare, he might have joined in with her rage against the world.

Before he can question who this 'Being X' is, they reach the main road.

The mechanics' shop is nearby, and further down it three people are crossing the street: Two more men with pink mohawks, and a blonde girl with hair cropped short. One of the Fuchsia Coterie notices Tanya and calls out to her. 

"Burn the thing!"

They are pursued by a giant undead agglomeration, dozens of blackened bodies clumped together into a huge humanoid form dragging itself after them with massive limbs and eyes like headlights.

Ew, that is in fact more disgusting than anything she saw in the trenches. What Tanya wouldn't give for a rifle and an orb right now. An artillery spell would break that thing apart.

The pink hairs think she is their ally... "Do I look like I'm carrying a flame thrower??" How is she supposed to burn that thing? Also does she even want to help the pink hair murder gang? probably not. Better not get any deeper with a criminal organization. She will have to find some way to dye her hair back to normal too.

"We should run."

He should've mentioned the fire magic from her bio already, then maybe she'd be able to save them!

There's no time to explain that now, if she doesn't even know she has the magic then there's slim odds she'd be able to use it, with rationalizations and recriminations like that running through his head he runs for the mechanics.

The 'Cowardice' pop-up taunts him.

There's another of the Fuchsia Coterie waiting for them inside the building's reception.

Sat on a chair, dead, with a perfect cylinder carved out from his forehead.

"Well, someone killed him. Probably not another of the pink hair gang...." No... that would be crazy right? But there's already 2 of them... "Could be another Isekai got dropped and killed him? Rule of three?"

"The traditional party size is four or five." Then again, his D&D group sometimes went up to six or more.

Maybe it's the blow of the Cowardice debuff or the dead body making him want more firepower on his side, maybe he just doesn't want to use 'pink hair gang' when he knows the correct name, but Joon decides now is the time to come clean. 

"I didn't get the chance to mention this before, but I've got some kind of game overlay. Words appear in my field of view. It says that you, uh, the person with your body before you arrived was a child soldier in something called the Fuchsia Coterie."

He points to the matching dye-jobs.

"It also says that you've got fire magic. That might be why you got asked to burn the big zombie Voltron."