Corvayne drove the buggy with Wick, Hari, and the miner Coatz as well as his injured ally back into the elevator out of the massive mine pit. Corvayne felt pretty certain they'd be back at some point to try to sneak in and see possibly another tower entrance, but the second nuke hanging in the air pitted his greed against his sense of right and wrong. He wasn't a hero or chosen one, but he wasn't going to let a bomb go off.

Hari had her book open and was step by step casting a spell designed to find a specific item. She sometimes would stop and get Corvayne to give her details about what materials were in the weapon. There were also restarts where she got a word wrong, but there was a long ride up for her to cast the spell properly. She could sense both the nuke a mile or so below them and one on the ground above them. She gestured off one direction as the elevator came to a halt. “That way!”

Corvayne tore down a side street as fast as the cart would go. Hari lead them to a building with five other buggies parked outside of it.

“Admin building and quarters.” Coatz added.

“Coatz, you can take the buggy and your friend to a medic. I'll plan on dropping this weapon off on the east side of the wastes: hopefully it wont block the road or rain radioactive sand back down on here.”

“You'll be okay here?” He looked eager to join in and shoot the guards, but Corvayne wanted his enemies to have no idea they failed to cover their tracks.

Corvayne tapped his spear and gave his most confident smile. “Save your friend, and grab a beer for some fireworks.”

Then he checked his weapons, hopped off the buggy, and slid up to the wall of the admin center. Hari and Wick followed him. He considered just running in but before that he wanted to know what weapons they were packing. They certainly had machine guns and maybe other shield units. The steel walls of the building were probably thick enough they couldn't just shoot him through it and cripple or kill him. He winced at probably. So, he could probably stall them out in a fight, but he really only needed to get one person to tell him where the other bomb was. He didn't want to have to kill anyone else today if he could avoid it. Okay, technically the sawblade psycho killed himself.

He was considering where to breach the building when there was a trio of bangs like the worlds largest steel drum rang out and the wall of the building blistered then exploded outward. Corvayne had a moment where he was sure the next moment would be a radioactive hellstorm but instead he found himself on the ground. He turned from the smoking hole and checked his crew, Wick and Hari looked alive if not upright. Turning back he saw the aristocrat from the warehouse float outside backwards as a flickering snake of bright pink danced out of the hole in the smoke.

The floating man fired back into the building, punching huge holes in the smoke as he glided away from the hole. Another mercenary with modified armor lept at him, energy whip coiled like a spring around his forearm. He landed, lashed out thrice in a blink melting a corner off a building. They kept fighting without a glance at the three of them. Well fine, Corvayne would deal with the winner.

The hole was billowing smoke from inside the management building. Corvayne decided that whoever won that fight going on, he was going to focus on getting the bomb and getting out.

“Wick, can you bring the hovercycle over?” He tossed her the keys which she caught. “Me and Hari will get that nuke.”

“And anything else we can carry.” Hari added. He smiled at the little streak of greed she had. Noise from the front of the building made him flip around the girls and edge to the corner. Wick ran off with her boots to get the bike while he peeked around and saw they were cleaning the place out with garbage bags. Hari peeked around his should. The smoke here helped, as much as it made his eyes water.

Corvayne pointed to five guards bags to the buggies lined up out front. “We just need the bomb, we can try to fish them out when we go to the ship.”

He used [Cross Skill: Sundering blow] on the melted lip of the hole in the wall, his spear cutting away red hot metal before he stepped through. Hari hopped up after him and pointed to the back corner of the building.

“If you see someone pointing a gun at you... get behind cover as fast as you can.” He reminded her as they moved through what looked like a series of bedrooms that someone had shattered and burnt. There was a thin layer of smoke and a few fragments of a bed burning. He could spot a straggler running out with a bag over his shoulder. Loot, money, whatever. Hari was pointing the correct way for the bomb even while looking over at the guard running out, then snapping back to focus.

He smiled as he ran down a hall to the back of the building. Another point for the elf, she had her priorities straight. The miners lives came first. Broken tiles crunched under his feet as he walked into a mess hall area that reminded him a lot of where he ate most of his meals growing up. They had put the bomb on a kitchen table. Corvayne didn't waste time, picking it up.

He actually grunted when he tried to lift it. The thing was heavy as hell! They must have had two people lugging it, or the guards also had above normal human strength. He got it into a cradle carry and, very aware the bomb could go off any moment, double-timed it back through the smoke to the hole in the wall, hopping down.

Wick was gliding the hover-cycle carefully down the road, so Corvayne ran with the bomb, trying to keep it steady as he pumped his legs to meet her. He tossed it on the back and buckled it in. If It fell off too close to the mine then this was all for nothing. Wick hopped off the bike and he jumped on before it had even come to a complete stop.

“Hari, any other bombs besides these two?”

She shook her head. Okay good. A third one would be death. The buggies were probably going out a hole in the fence to the south or east. The guards would wait until they were at least three miles away. Closer meant they might get rads. Depending on how fast those buggies went, he might have only two minutes.

“I'm going to run this out over the desert and get back here. I'll either be back and we can try to catch those assholes or dead. Wish me, try to get the miners to run west.”

He pointed himself east to the nearby fence. He amped up the power going to the anti-gravity engine and then slammed on the impulse and with a hum and the roar of the engine between his legs went flying, a punch in the gut as the bike flew off into the black of night. He gunned it as fast as possible, his a wild leap clearing the low fence and aiming him like a rocket into the air before he had to let it drift down to set up another jump. There was a short rise in the direction he picked. A hill was better then no hills. He was going three hundred miles an hour as he arced into the air, roaring all around him.

Of course, no good deed goes unpunished. His hair stood up, and had the sudden feeling of imminent attack behind him. Corvayne tried not to panic. He had to buy himself a few seconds and so he swung his arm backwards to the weapon behind him and used [Cross Skill: Sheath the Life] on the bomb.

He nearly blacked out from the drain it caused, but suddenly the pressure dropped. Only for a few moments before it surged at him again. He applied the skill again and suddenly he had a pounding headache. He could feel his skill as a queasy balance with something hot and angry under his hand. He started into a turn over the hill, having his shadow hand hold the bike steady with most of his attention spent imagining a beast he had shackled. It was too big, too strong. He ramped up his speed to max then forced himself to use another one of his weird modified skills.

He manifested [Cross Skill: Soul Reaper] and pushed the bomb off his cycle, then cut and turned while hitting the gas as hard as he could.

He didn't dare look back, just keep whipping away from the bomb and praying that his rattling bike could throw him far enough if it fell apart. He felt the skill finish and there was a jerking on his back as his shadow suddenly fanned out behind him. A moment later it was daytime in the desert. If he was going to die, he hoped someone told the Watchers to rename him 'Brings-The-Sun' or something. He felt muted pain through his shadow the something wet exploded out from his chest and suddenly he was in a fog bank. A moment later something like a hammer left in an oven hit his back and he was sure he dislocated his shoulder keeping himself from being torn off the bike, belt digging into his guts. He had no idea how he was alive but he could see the air around him shimmering and his chain armor was dripping water.

More importantly he was still alive, watching the blast wave that had just hit his back flying ahead of him as the light from the bomb dimmed. He looked back at the mesmerizing cloud, a mushroom shaped pillar. Then he saw eyes and teeth and holes for a nose appear on the crest of the cloud. The burgeoning glowing cloud for a moment was clearly skull shaped, probably due to handling the bomb with [Soul Reaper]. He might have just been exposed to an insane dose of radiation, but he couldn't help himself. He thought of when Eats-Fights-Leaves rode Sandworm while waving his stupid hat around. You were only really alive when you were on the razor edge of life and death. He smiled. Then laughed a little.

“YEEEEEE-HAAWWWW!”