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First, you should check on FET. That guy was half the reason you're not a headless corpse on the floor. Imagine what your mother would think if she knew her baby boy died like a chump. Oh, you wouldn't wish that upon her.
You rub the side of your sore, concussed head. If only you remembered much of, well, anything about her. You're pretty sure that's the brain damage talking.
You boot up the CPPQUEST program to see what information you can glean from him.
The screen boots up, and, hoo, the graphics look even worse than before. Calling the game pretty before would've been a lie, but in comparison to this? Most of the UI is complete gibberish garbage noise. The only thing you can somewhat make out is FET's character icon.
"CURNT RESTING. U, IKE ANY OTHR HUMRN< NED REST. GME RECOMMEDNS PLYER TKE BRK 2. PLZ PLY TRMW"
You try to type something into the command box, and the game outright rejects it. Huh.
The status screen shows that his HP value is set to 33/55. Not terribly injured, but still, he lost 40% of his HP in that fight. You suppose he did take a lot more up front damage. He ate a LOT of bullets from that guy's gun, you can absolutely say that. You rub the uncountable amount of bruises on your chest.
You review the text/dialogue log to see what happened while you were out.
"RND HEAL: HEAL 6 HP (-2 FRM MEDCINE EFECT)" is the only coherent line within it. Random heal, huh? That was probably from Lucy and Hidaka patching you up. <span class="mu-b">So the link isn't just one way? That's very, very interesting.</span>
If you weren't barely holding together, you would've done a test to see if hurting yourself would've hurt him. Not in your current state, though, fuck no.
You turn off the game, shifting your attention to IT. The machine that is the brain of any good bureaucracy—the FAX MACHINE. Hidaka already knows what you're doing, quickly joining you as you approach it.
"Written a report. On your behalf." Hidaka pulls out a chaotic assortment of files that she had written. "Someone had to do it. Why not me?" There's a hint of pride hidden in her bored, taciturn voice.
You try to keep a mask of impassivity over your face as you talk to her. "Well, well, look at you. Thank you."
"No issue. This neatly organized report of the various tests we have performed should CLEARLY show how productive we've been." It's hard to notice at first, but she's puffing her chest out. She's really excited about her report and, hell, you can't say you blame her-
Wait. Did she just speak in a full sentence? You shake your head, okay, whatever. Fine. "Go ahead and feed it in, then."
She does so with gusto. You call up ZENITH but an automated voice interrupts you before you can say anything. "EXTRA FEE OF $25 TO REVIEW REPORTS FROM UNKNOWN THIRD PARTY SOURCES."
'Unknown third party' your ass, THEY GAVE YOU THE SPONSORSHIP! You grumble as you dig some cash out of your satchel. You hope that whatever you get out of filing this report will be worth the extra price.
