|Socks' POV|

The fleshing was shot and scrambled to the floor.

Hit.

Red liquid oozed from their upper shoulder. This confirms that this is indeed the fleshing that everyone was looking for.

Restrain target.

The fleshing's eyes widened as they placed a hand on the new wound and shot their weapon towards me. I dodged it effortlessly and with the press of a button, turned my weapon to a taser.
Just as I was about to use the weapon, the fleshling threw something directly to my face and scurried away. I pressed the trigger at that same time

Unexpected, yet dumb.

The thing that the fleshling threw at me turns out was the weapon stolen from a mettanoid referred to as Tbh. Who, soon will be rebooted the next day.
The weapon formed a small crack on my mask. That was not the problem though, the problem was that I have lost my target.
There was a trace of white smoke clouded and exasperating where I last saw the fleshling. A piece of paper was left right on the spot.
Curious like any other Mettanoids, I dusted off the smoke and collected the paper.
Actually, it wasn't just any paper, it was more like an imagery, a photo.
It was crumpled up badly and was smudged with black oil. I stored the item carefully into my suit pocket to inspect it later and put my index finger up to my right temple.

"Target last seen in tunnel D."

I reported to the system that'll soon alert the others. Instead of turning back and getting out of the tunnel, I decided to investigate into this tunnel a little further. The fact that a fleshing knows about these tunnels is beyond suspicious.

What was the fleshing hoping to achieve here?

There was a forked path that led to three other different tunnels, the tunnel lights flickered dimly in purple. By now, the others will be marching their way towards here.
If this was some sort of ambush set up by the fleshling, I'll have to deal with it on my own for a while.
It's not like they stood a chance anyways, they were never armed or trained with weapons that Mettanoids wielded.

Spirit activity was recently detected in this area.

The guide in my vision flickered several times to pinpoint the area of where the photo was located earlier.

That's new, could a spirit be allied with this fleshling?

There's been theories and assumptions around the city that the spirits were siding with the fleshlings to take Star Numera for themselves. But that didn't worry me as much as it should. That's only a concern for the Vanishers after all. They were the ones who dealt with the Spirit activities.
My only task now is to figure out where the fleshling might have gone to.
I turned on the night vision lights from my mask to take a better look of the tunnel. There was a faint trail of white steam at the left side of the tunnel.
That tunnel I believe lead to a nearby museum located in the center of the city fountain.

Strange for a spirit and a fleshling to go to a museum, there's nothing much valuable there.

The faint trail continued along the path as I followed it. It took about ten minutes before I spotted small droplets of red liquid stained on the ground. I put a finger back up to my temple to report what I have just discovered.

"Targe-"

Then something pierced the back of my head that caused my systems to shut down.

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|Blaza's POV|

I stabbed the pipe piece deep into the bot's skull (if they even had a skull). The bot's eyes turned blank and fell to the floor. Some black puddle was already forming under the corpse.

"Eughhh-"

I gagged.

"I didn't even know they could bleed-"

There was a brush of wind beside me and Meme reappeared back to his 'physical form'

"Chill, that's just some oil and probably battery juice."

Meme floated towards the corpse and poked on it several times.

"I think their dead."

He turned to me.

"OF COURSE I KNOW THEIR DEAD-"

I shouted in a hushed tone, gripping the cloth that I badly wrapped around my wounded shoulder.

"We.. we should probably go now-"

I was about to run further into the tunnel but Meme suddenly floated right in front of me and blocked my tracks.

"Wait! Can we loot this bot first?"

He pointed at the corpse, his eyes gleaming with excitement. My stomach lurched.

"Y-you don't mean for me to-"

I stuttered, not wanting to say it out loud. Meme folded his arms and slowly nodded.

"You know what I mean by loot."

He went over to the corpse and made a motion that he was tearing the bot's head open.

"Come on Meme- you can't be serious."

I gagged again and I felt like I was already suffocating in my mask.

"We need bot parts! Think about how many things we can learn and invent from fresh bot parts! Just.like.what.we.have.here."

He gestured towards the bot corpse again.

"I'm not going to do it."

I replied stubbornly and started to keep walking. But then my legs suddenly felt frozen cold as I was forcefully turned around and kneeled down in front of the corpse.

"You know Blaza, I can always posses you. Did you forget about that too hmm?"

He raised one of his eye and looked at me, knowing he won.

"You're sick Meme."

I grumbled and heaved the pipe out of the bot's skull, some bits of oil squirted on my mask.

"I know."

Meme responded, unbothered. I wiped some of the oil smudges off my mask and started to pry open some parts of the bot's skull as much as I could. I winced when I moved my shoulder.

"Can you also try to grab some of the shiny parts? I wanna take a look at them once we get home."

Meme asked joyfully, sounding like a child that was picking desserts at a bakery.

"Yes, yes, of course as I am doing the most disguising thing of the day."

I responded and rolled my eyes again. Meme had this weird obsession with shiny things. And I just wanted to get this over with.

"It doesn't look too bad, at least it's not an actual human brain, ha!"

Meme laughed even though what he just said didn't make me feel any better searching through the dead bot's brain.

This is going to give me nightmares now, great-

I tried to not pull my hand away when I felt some squishy and warm parts of the mechanical brain. My fingers searched and avoided the places that looked dangerous. Eventually, I felt a small smooth surface, a bit rigid on the edges but it was small, enough to fit in my pocket. I grabbed hold of it and pulled it out.

"Oooh what did you find?"

Meme peered over to my shoulder. I snapped the wires that was attached to the part that I took out. It turned out to be a green computer chip with small lines of wires and codes on it. I turned it around a couple of times to take a good look.

"Well, we got ourselves a chip. Can we go now?"

I turned to Meme. Meme frowned and didn't look satisfied at all with the result.

"But that isn't shiny."

He complained and let out a groan.

"One more time and I promise we can go."

He promised, crossing his heart. I sighed and held my breath till I pulled another random thing out. This time, it was a small spherical device attached to a set of two wires. The device was blinking red.

"Now are you satisfied?"

I held the small device up to Meme's face. He smiled and took the device from my hand.

"Yep, let's go."

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