Chapter Text
Operator Quartz thumbs through the pages inside the dossier folder provided to her by Rhodes Island as the Columbian wilderness flies past in the window of an unmarked transport van. She’s read the file at least three times since being assigned as the squad leader of this mission. “Squad” was a stretch, though, considering the only other member was the operator currently driving the van that hums and shakes underneath her. Beehunter grips the steering wheel with an air of nonchalance and only one hand at the twelve o’clock position. Her other arm rests against the driver side window as she lounges back in her seat.
“You’ve been lookin’ over that a lot since we took off,” Beehunter says.
Quartz grumbles and closes the dossier. “Doesn’t hurt to be prepared,” she retorts.
“It’s easy! We get the guy, take down anyone in our way, and get back to the branch office,” Beehunter turns her head to look at Quartz, excitement for action written plain on her face.
She’s technically correct. The two of them have been assigned to find and escort a Perro man - a whistleblower with dirt on a Columbian bottling company’s unsafe bottling practices. It’s a big scandal; with potentially thousands if not tens of thousands of people being exposed unnecessarily to Originium as a result of their disregard for safety regulations. If this gets out, the company is looking at a product recall, regulatory fines, and criminal charges against those responsible. It would cost them a lot of money; money that could be kept in their coffers by paying much-cheaper mercenaries to shut up one noisy Perro that wouldn’t stop barking.
“Eyes on the road,” Quartz reminds her partner. Beehunter shrugs and turns back, with their destination coming into view as they drive around a rock formation.
The two of them still have another half an hour to go before they arrive at the mobile village their charge is hiding out at right now: Glumspring. Quartz knows a little about it from her time exploring the wilderness. It’s a small mining town, with only about four or five plates altogether. Much smaller than the city they just came from, which is much more modern - i.e., large. Only a day’s drive there and back is close for most major mobile cities, but not so much for a backwater ghost town. It’s a weird place to hide from hired thugs, but maybe they’re all dealing with some kind of coward. Quartz pulls her pocket watch from her vest, forgetting for a moment that it's still broken. She sighs and looks out the window. Sparse trees and scrub dot the rocky desert between them. Nothing but the occasional big rock or tree or spire of Originium left from a catastrophe to see for miles and miles. Only half an hour, but plenty of time to think about the mission again and again. She almost wishes she could relax as much as Beehunter is. Maybe she would have made a better “squad” leader for this mission. Then again, they’d likely be halfway to the wrong city already if Quartz hadn’t had the common sense to consult an atlas.
Beehunter groans. “Are we almost there yet?” she asks.
“Not yet, we still have a while to go.” Quartz reminds her, which only elicits another groan from the Ursus boxer. Quartz is almost impressed at how impulsive she can be, asking if they’re almost there when Glumspring is clearly in view. She truly is unfettered both in mind and body. Unlike Quartz, weighed down with the responsibilities of the mission and her sword alike.
Quartz sighs. “I’ll buy you a treat when we get there, okay?” If it would get Beehunter to stop complaining, then Quartz is more than happy to use some of her new spending money.
Beehunter lights up at the suggestion, turning to Quartz again. “For real? Even, like… a sticky honey bun?”
“Anything you can find at the fuel station,” Quartz specifies. There’s no chance of finding a real bakery in Glumspring. Quartz sees something out of the corner of her eye on the road; only seeing it so late because of her eyepatch. “H-Hey, keep your eyes on the road!”
Quartz lunges forward to take hold of the wheel, swerving wildly across the dirt road. Beehunter slams on the brakes to bring the van to a screeching stop. As Quartz and Beehunter catch their breath, they look onto the road and see a single, large Infected coyote crossing the road. It looks up from whatever it was sniffing at, and locks eyes with Quartz for a moment before dashing off into a patch of scrub.
Quartz breathes a quiet sigh of relief. “You really have to keep your eyes on the road if you’re going to drive, Beehunter.” Despite the cautious glare she’s shooting Beehunter, though, the Ursus seems much more interested - and happy - about Quartz’s hand on the wheel.
“What are you -” Quartz follows her gaze and finds her own hand resting on Beehunters.
“Your hand is real soft, y’know?” Beehunter says with a shit-eating grin. “Not really what I expected!”
Quartz draws her hand back in simultaneous indignation and surprise. It’s true, Quartz has been practicing better skin care since arriving at Rhodes Island, thanks to Utage’s guidance, but… “W-What do you mean it's not what you expected!”
“Oh, er…” Beehunter trails off before looking forward and stepping on the acceleration pedal, putting a hold on their conversation about hand-holding and resuming their drive to Glumspring.
Quartz now has something to think about for the next half-hour.
The stairs up to the target’s location creak underfoot with every step Quartz takes. Old, wooden, and haphazardly built, the apartment building Quartz climbed is almost a symbol of the pioneering spirit Glumspring must have been full of before Columbia’s expansion pushed the edge of civilization further and further west. Beehunter is three stories below her, waiting in the van. Luckily for her, at least, the fuel station in Glumspring had some kind of sweet pastry filled with preservatives for sale which had the word “Honey” somewhere on its label. That was enough for the Ursus to be happy with it. Quartz has no doubt in her mind that Beehunter has probably even finished her snack altogether by now. All the better, it means she won’t be distracted by it once they pick up the Perro they’re meant to be protecting.
Quartz walks along the outer balcony of the apartments; it's built more like a motel than a proper apartment complex. She doesn’t question it, of course. The building likely wasn’t meant to be permanent residence at any point during its lifetime; not when it was being built, and not when someone had decided that it should be in the first place. Her foot stops in front of a door; apartment 315. She raises a hand to the wooden door with its chipped paint and rusted door knob and raps her knuckles against it.
Knock, Knock, Knock.
There’s a shuffling behind the door, like someone surprised to receive a visitor. Other than that, there is no response. Quartz sighs. Of course he would be hesitant to open the door with such a big target painted on his back. Quartz clears her throat, preparing to recite the cheesy code-phrase given to her by the Doctor.
“The doctor is in,” Quartz says clearly, to nobody in particular. It’s easily the hardest part of this mission so far.
The door creaks open, with a brown-haired Perro peering at her from behind both the chain keeping the door locked and his absurdly thick glasses. Once he sees Quartz, he closes the door again, and undoes the chain lock with a satisfying ker-chack . This time, the door swings wide open, and the whistleblower stands before her, slouched, tiny, and pathetic compared to Quartz.
He looks left, then right. “Are you all they sent?” he asks, clearly nervous.
“My partner is in the car,” Quartz reassures him, “come on, let’s get a move on already.”
Quartz escorts him down the stairs and towards the back of the van. As she opens the van’s rear door, Beehunter speaks up.
“You got the guy?” she asks.
“Yeah,” Quartz says as the Perro climbs into the back of the van.
Beehunter lets out a little cheer. “Alrighty! Step one, done!”
“Are you sure this vehicle is safe enough?” the Perro asks.
“Yes, yes,” Quartz sighs, “It’s armored, despite its looks.”
The Perro looks back as he climbs into the back seat closest to Beehunter. “How armored?”
“Armored enough, will you just buckle in already?” Beehunter groans.
He would definitely be safe, even from a direct hit with a small explosive. The van is really more of an armored limousine, or a police vehicle. While the back is mostly basic, cramped seats set against the sides of the vehicle, that just left more room to reinforce the walls. These vans are often used to transport important personnel or materials. It’s becoming increasingly unfortunate that their mission involves the former rather than the latter, given the amount of bellyaching and complaining from this man.
Quartz closes the van door before the Perro can complain again and circles back around to the passenger side door. She slides in, pulls the seatbelt across her chest and buckles in, and opens up the glovebox to pull out the dossier folder. “Did anything happen while I was gone?” she asks.
“Nah, nothin’,” Beehunter says. She cranks the key in the ignition, and the Originium engine roars to life. “Just gotta drive back the way we came, right?”
Quartz’s thumb comes to rest on a map of the local area, including a weather report, mobile city routes, and timetables for their movement. “That’s right, but we’ll have to be careful once we get into Goldpoint,” she says, referring to the city they just came from, and the location of the nearest Rhodes Island branch office. “They’ll be waiting for us to get into town this evening, and they might try to run us off the road.”
“So what?” Beehunter says. She shifts gears and gets the car rolling onto the road. “We’ll just bash their heads in if they try something!”
“Not ‘if’,” Quartz corrects, “but ‘when’ they try something.”
The Perro pipes up again. “E-Excuse me, are you sure I’ll be safe?”
“Let us do our job without interrupting us,” Quartz glares back at him, “and we’ll all be perfectly fine.” They only have so much time to hash out a plan, to steel themselves for the inevitable conflict in Goldpoint, and this man wants to spend it consumed by anxiety. Quartz checks her pocket watch again. Still broken. If only she could be rid of the burden of anxiety entirely herself. If only she could be like Beehunter, carefree to the point of borderline idiocy.
“So… What do we do when we get into town, then?” Beehunter asks.
Quartz looks at the road map of Goldpoint’s plates. Like most maps of mobile cities, this was more a collection of smaller maps, with various points along the edge marked as potential connections to other plates. Luckily, this map in particular was certain to be up to date in terms of what plates were connected and which points they were connected by. If she just drew a line along this street, which leads to plate 3, connector A, and then brought that line to plate 7, connector D…
“Here, I’ll plan a route through Goldpoint, along with some backup routes, and some emergency contingency routes as well.” Quartz says to Beehunter.
“C’mon, you know I’m not gonna look at those,” Beehunter moans.
“Beehunter, you were brought along on this mission because of your driving experience,” Quartz says. The truth is that Beehunter was certified , and Quartz hadn’t had the time to earn her own certification, despite having driven rovers and buggies and ATVs and almost everything else in her time exploring the Columbian wilderness. “You can at least make an effort, alright?”
Beehunter sighs, knowing that neither she nor Quartz want Quartz to have to pull rank. “Alright, yeah, sure,” she concedes, “just don’t expect a perfect job, okay?”
Quartz nods as she goes back to tracing lines across different maps. “Great. I’ll try to make sure it isn’t too complicated-”
All her planning is brought to a halt as a small explosion goes off down the street.
“Гавно!” Beehunter cries out. Without waiting to find out what made the explosion, she swerves to the right, with the flow of traffic. Predictably, the howl of several more engines make themselves known, following them down the sidestreet Beehunter took.
“Oh my God, we’re going to die!” the Perro yells.
“Shut it,” Beehunter says. The Perro ignores her, and Beehunter just groans before pressing a button to close the privacy screen.
Quartz looks in the rear view mirror. Several helmeted mercenaries are hot on their heels with motorcycles. Without even thinking, she reaches to retract the sunroof with one hand, and underneath her seat to retrieve her greatsword with the other.
“Woah, woah, what are you doing?” Beehunter looks at her, incredulous.
“I’m not going to tell you again, Beehunter,” Quartz says as she starts to climb up onto the center console, “keep your eyes on the road.” She hefts her greatsword up over her back, and finally pokes out from the top of the van. With her one good eye, she sees a wagon full of barrels coming up on the side of the road. She doesn’t have time to think about what might be in them, or even if there’s anything in them at all. So she doesn’t do that, only taking the time to swing her sword and crack open several of them at once while cursing that Rhodes Island hadn’t sent a sniper operator in her place.
A gush of water flows out of the barrels, and Quartz isn’t sure what she expected. She doesn’t expect for their pursuers to suddenly slip on a small puddle, after all. However, in a stroke of luck, the gush of water does hit one of the riders clean in the side as they pass, throwing him from his bike and sending the motorcycle careening into another. Two down, but three more take their place. Four in total; nothing they can’t handle.
“Turning right!” Beehunter shouts from below.
Quartz braces herself as the van goes into a hard drift onto a main road straight down the center of town, old-fashioned saloons and general stores rushing past in a rustic blur as more modern vehicles race down the street. The sporadic shift in direction doesn’t shake any of their followers. It does give them enough space on either side of the van to pull up alongside it. The first unlucky guy to do so gets checked by Beehunter’s driving. He loses control of his bike and winds up driving into an oncoming truck. Quartz winces at the impact. The second leaps from his bike onto the side of the van, trying to climb up.
Big mistake, Quartz thinks to herself as she pulls herself and her greatsword onto the roof. She doesn’t even have to swing it, fortunately. She plants her boot onto the poor guy’s hand and twists hard. He falls from the side of the van, and Quartz feels a slight bump a moment after.
A third mercenary, however, climbs up from the back of the van, moving quicker than Quartz can stop his advance. The van’s roof isn’t particularly big - maybe twelve feet long - but it’s big enough that Quartz has room to swing her sword. She braces herself, holding her sword low to the ground and letting its tip rest on the van’s roof. The mercenary makes a show of throwing off his helmet and donning a cowboy hat.
Of course, Quartz rolls her eye, just our luck to get ambushed by a bunch of melodramatic showoffs.
The man slips something onto his hands from his duster - probably some kind of metal knuckles, and rushes her. Quartz knows just how to time her swing. Before he enters her range, she hefts the sword up with both hands. Just as he steps in reach, she swings down. Her greatsword is a heavy weapon that takes good timing and practice to use well, and Quartz prefers it that way. The mercenary throws his hands up just in time to keep from being bisected, but the sheer weight of Quartz’s strike knocks him stumbling back. Without missing a beat, Quartz pivots around the point of the sword, almost using it as a lever to launch her feet into the man’s gut. The kick sends him stumbling back again. He catches himself just at the edge of the back end of the van. Before he can catch his balance and strike back at Quartz, though, the van jolts, as if hitting a pothole, and the mercenary tumbles off the back of the van.
“Sorry!” Beehunter shouts, barely audible over all the noise of traffic.
Quartz watches as the third mercenary falls and tumbles down the road like a log, the final mercenary just barely avoiding his body. She watches as he prepares to throw something, and the gears in her head click forward like the hands of a watch as she realizes it's an explosive. The van could probably handle the explosion, but not if it was on the inside.
“Close the sunroof!” Quartz shouts.
The sunroof doesn’t close. Behunter yells back, “What?”
“No time, just close it!”
It shuts, and Quartz hefts her greatsword over her shoulder, like a baseball bat almost. An oversized, bladed baseball bat. The last pursuer finally lets his payload fly straight at the van - even from this distance, Quartz can tell it's a proper grenade. She takes the hilt of her sword in both hands again, and swings it with form that even Babe Ruthless would be jealous of. She’s reminded of listening to countless games by radio with her former friends in the wilds of Columbia, just like this. Would they be proud of her?
Instead of slicing the grenade in half, the flat of the blade smacks it right back downwind. With a satisfying clunk , it makes a straight line and hits the last mercenary in the head. Quartz couldn’t have made a better shot if she had tried. Without waiting for the explosion, she ducks down and braces herself.
Boom.
Quartz looks back to see a cloud of flame, dust and smoke where the last man standing used to be, rapidly fading into the distance. With an almost disturbing nonchalance, she walks back over to the sunroof, and knocks on the hatch.
Knock, knock-knock-knock knock. Knock knock.
“Open up, it’s me,” Quartz yells, hoping it gets through the metal.
The sunroof slides open, with beehunter looking up, and Quartz just drops down back into her seat. She starts tucking her sword back under her seat as if nothing even happened.
“Woah, that was so cool!” Beehunter cheers at the first chance she gets, “You were like, a total badass out there!”
Quartz just blinks at her, a little taken aback by the sudden praise. She’s reminded, again, of her old friends - people who trusted her to get the job done. She hasn’t heard compliments so earnest in a while.
“I was just…” Quartz thinks for a second. “Doing my job.”
If Quartz had wanted to get Beehunter to chill out, that was the wrong line to say. Beehunter practically beams at her in awe, muttering about how cool she is under her breath.
“H-Hey! Beehunter, eyes on the road!” Quartz reminds her once again, and not for the last time this mission either. The van jolts as Beehunter jerks her head forward and straightens out the car. Thankfully, Beehunter keeps her eyes forward so that Quartz can safely hide her growing blush at Beehunter’s adoration.
“I-I’ll figure something out,” Quartz says, clearing her throat and trying not to be embarrassed, “let’s just get out of town for now, alright?”
“You got it, boss,” Beehunter replies, shifting gears once more as she turns onto a ramp to find the mobile city’s exit.
The mission is far from over, but for now, they can all rest easy.