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Vernon is regretting directing his boss to buy this hunk of junk ostensibly known as a vehicle. Not very much, but a little. Mostly because she then made him drive it, and this is a finicky and temperamental beast that keeps listing to the left, but in amounts that change a bit on every single bump. They are driving through what is colloquially called 'the wasteland,' which is a desert about half as hospitable and twice as rocky as it sounds. He is having to adjust often. It's annoying. Not very, and honestly, having a functioning vehicle that is not potentially going to explode is a bit of a novelty for him, but enough that he will think fondly of that other vehicle boss-lady had been eyeing before he steered her this way. That sure would have been nice to drive. It would have been painting a gigantic target on their backs, but still. He can dream.
"Yeah? Did you go around being a crazy terrorist or whatever, shooting up towns and stealing plants and slaughtering your way through this dustball planet of ours? Or were you just there when it happened, and got involved, and things didn't go the way you'd have preferred."
"I was there when those things happened because the things were following me. If I hadn't been there they wouldn't have happened, it doesn't matter if I wasn't the one who personally killed anyone, they're still dead and it's my fault."
"Ahuh. And yet I still think her odds are better with you than without you. Because it's only a matter of time before someone with a plant goes, 'Hey, why don't we just keep her,' or someone else goes, 'oh, a plant and an engineer to keep it running, that sounds like a payday to me,' and I think when that happens there's not much any of us can do about it. 'Cept you."
"Her life expectancy is a lot higher than a year and people definitely try to kill me more often than—"
... Well, he's not stupid, so he'll do his best. But he can do some looking around while not moving.
There's... something attached to his back. And Vernon can probably guess that it looks just like the one on Zash's back: a strange device with a glowing blue crystal head attached to a long metal neck that ends in four thin segmented legs that are individually attached to his back.
"What the fuck is this."
Please no please don't be Nai he thought he had more time they can fix this plant please give him more time—
"Lost tech of some kind. Looks like, uh." He eyes Zash's little strange device, and its crystal head. "... I couldn't tell you what all of the moving parts are, but the little crystal bits remind me of a type of bomb I've seen before."
"Kinda hoping I'm wrong but. Yeah. A bomb. 'cept this one has legs and has gone and attached itself to us."
"Fuck. Go check on Yvette, I need to go warn the others."
He doesn't wait for confirmation and just dashes off.
"Careful with it, it's finicky about temperature changes and getting jostled too much!! Going red is bad!"
But yeah he'll go check on their resident engineer while Zash goes dashing off to maybe save the town.
Their resident engineer does not seem to have a bomb attached to her. She's been left alone and in peace.
"You, stay. Here's the safest place in town, it's already well defended. And meanwhile I should go be somewhere so that if I explode I won't... make too much of a mess."
"Promise to do my very best."
And then he can go back down the many fucking stairs and outside to see how the rest of the town is doing.
As Vernon is exiting the building he can feel more than hear the boom of an explosion going off. When he gets to the main town "plaza" most of the townies are there, looking terrified, with bombs attached to all of them, even Rosa's kid.
Zash is off the main group, staring a the place a ways off where the ground is charred and there are a couple of pieces of someone lying around. Not all pieces, though, and the surrounding area is remarkably intact; seems like these bombs are set up to be very localised and sufficiently thorough to properly vaporise their subjects.
When Zash notices Vernon he says, "Where'd you see these bombs before? How do we disarm them?" He seems to have adopted the same no time to waste, no nonsense expression he did the other day when he was saving the police officers.
"Uh -- southeast of here, near Terminal, one of the local gangs got a bunch of 'em up as a sort of minefield. Disarm, I don't know, I never got close enough to them to try. I do know they were kept in the shade, when one got caught in the sun for too long it exploded on its own. So, uh, heat or sunlight might set 'em off?" He shrugs a little helplessly. "Dunno. Coppertop's fine, by the way, she doesn't have a new temperamental friend."
This isn't like Nai... but it might be one of Nai's many "friends". Goddamnit, Nai, you need to figure out a better way to make friends.
"This—okay. Whoever's doing this is probably nearby—Rosa, did anyone new arrive here? Anyone at all?"
"Ours waited until we were distracted to grab us, is there somewhere someone could watch and tell the little blighters when to jump and hang on?"
"We're on the highest ground around, the only place anyone could watch from is..."
She looks up. Ah. Yes. The gigantic rock the town is named for.
The only reason Zash misses his shot, here, is that he wasn't trying to kill—whoever's there. He was just trying to call their attention and see what they'd do.
What he's doing, it seems, is skipping down the side of the rock like some sort of video game character who takes no structural damage from jumping down large distances nearly-vertically along some rock walls.