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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.
When Zash is being shot at, he dodges.
When his doppelganger is being shot at, he doesn't, because he can just intercept every single bullet as if it's nothing with his many flying knives.
He keeps climbing the steps and any humans that insist on being in the way while he does will not be doing that for very much longer.
"Run, there's nothing you can do, you can't fight him, run!"
Zash himself will run after Nai, though, and keep trying to shoot him for all the good that does.
Others, not so much. They will go down fighting.
They won't go down fighting. They will just go down. This isn't a fight, it's a massacre.
The large rock, its stability destroyed by the redirected grenade launcher, reaches a tipping point when the giant robot stands back up after Zash's doppelganger steps onto its hand, and it starts to collapse down onto and around the city. Almost in slow motion, it tips over, pieces of it crumbling off and ponderously crushing everything (and everyone) in their path. There's a reverse domino effect, the larger rock crushing buildings which then crumble into rubble that spreads the destruction further...
When the dust settles, there is not a Jeneora Rock there, anymore. Not the boulder, not the town, not the people.
She's not sure that it's a mercy, that the factory that housed the plants is the most stable and defensible spot in the city. It could be that she's been buried alive in here. At least the tremors have stopped. She... attempts to find where the doors of the place once were. It's mostly rubble, now, but the walls themselves were sturdy enough to stay up.
"HELLO?!" she yells, wondering if this is how she's going to die.
This might be how she's going to die. No one comes.
Okay, well.
Then she will make sure her paper packages of data on plant red state recovery are neatly organized and easy to find, for whomever inevitably picks through this place. That's about all she can do.
She might try yelling again, in a bit, but it's a good idea to conserve her energy.
She can hear the sounds of someone trying to dig the rubble out from the entrance before she decides to try yelling again.
"Oh thank god," calls Zash, and the noises of digging the rubble out become more enthusiastic.
"Zash? Is that you?? I'm okay!!" Aside from being a bit entombed alive but that's fixable really.
"It's me!"
Amongst Zash's many superhuman capabilities is his superhuman strength, so it doesn't take him too long to clear enough rubble out that he can look through a hole to see her, and then not too much longer after that for the hole to be wide enough she can crawl through.
(His non-robot arm turns out to be stronger than the robot arm, it seems.)
She obligingly wriggles through the hole and out into fresh air. Then, shortly after, into Zash's arms.
"Hi," she says in a small voice.
Anyone seeing the way he's hugging her will be further sold on the whole "married" act. He doesn't literally start crying, but it looks like it's taking some effort.
Yvettte is crying and in fact has been crying intermittently throughout this mess. There are long tearstains through the dust on her cheeks.
"So I think this might be all my fault," she says very quietly, into his chest.
"The. The bomber. Was absolutely out to get a pet plant engineer. Probably to get me to make the plant make more bombs for him or something. Um. I shot him."
"...this was not your fault." But he has to hug her again because he has enough self-awareness to see the parallels.
Even though, you know, he's right and she isn't.
"The poor red plant getting dumped with it and its fellows work was definitely my fault," she murmurs. Hug.
"--But, but this isn't. It's not about me, how. How bad's the."
"Nai—knife guy—took both plants."
"Melissa's dead. Elliott's dead. Tonis lost an arm."
"Vernon's dead."
... Standing? How is standing. How does one stand. She thinks it is collapse into Zash time because.
Because.
"Oh," she says.