The Quest

Chapter 32: Broken

Squirrel and the rest of the group ran towards the briefing room, where they saw Ronald and Honyakusha talking.

"Mr. Ronald! We los-"

Ronald whispered into Honyakusha's ear.

"Mr. Ronald says that he already knew that we lost. But we need to do something before we lose even more."

"What?" said Squirrel.

"Tons of missiles hit the Citadel, and it heavily damaged our hyperspace drive. Our current one is broken, and we need a new one."

"Where can you even find stuff like that?"

"According to a rumor, a nearby planet is developing those chips in mass, and shipping them off to Valve. That planet is called Inaba, and there has been tons of Valve activity there lately."

"So all we have to do is go to that planet, and then get that drive?"

"Correct. But I didn't say it was going to be that easy. The place is very secure."

The whole group nodded.

"Wait, you two," Honyakusha said while pointing to Squirrel and Macmillan. "You'll be the ones going down to Inaba to get a warp drive. For the rest of you, wait here. The group can't be big enough or else Valve will see through our disguise."

The group nodded, and Ronald sent them off by doing the Ran Ran Ruu. The two did it back, and they walked off to the bay. They got in a dropship, and Macmillan got in the pilot's seat.

"Should be easy," he said with the utmost of confidence.

He flipped the lever, changed the mode, and Ronald pulled a separate lever in the bay. The floor beneath them opened up, and Macmillan started to fly it towards Inaba.

After a few minutes, the drop ship made it through the foggy atmosphere of Inaba, due to all of the factories there. The two got a good birds eye view of the planet- it was just one big town.

There were normal houses on one side, and on another, there were tons of aforementioned factories.

In the middle was a strange structure.

"Well, let's do this," Macmillan said.

Squirrel nodded.

The two landed near the factories, and looked around.

After looking at a few factories, they had finally found the one they had been looking for. The sign read "WARP DRIVES".

The two had to disguise themselves, though. Squirrel and his group were infamous around the galaxy for rebelling against Valve, essentially being labeled as galactic terrorists.

Macmillan snuck around the back, and dug in a dumpster. He found two convenient Valve soldier uniforms. They both put them on, although they did smell a bit funky.

They walked through the front door, and they could see a huge assembly line in front of them. The assembly line consisted of a row of machines going in tons of different directions, and at the end, there was a box which would get sent off by the ship.

"Looks like we've found our target," Macmillan said.

The two walked over to the box, and looked around for any workers or soldiers watching their sleight of hand. There was an armored man watching them with the intent of theft prevention. However, the armor was different from the masked man they had seen before. He must have been another high-ranking Valve soldier.

Macmillan walked over to the man, and winked to Squirrel. "Hey, boss, one of those machines isn't working on the top floor. Can you fix it?"

"You're a worker. You should know how to fix a machine. It was in your training, was it not?"

"Uhhh... I'm a new recruit. I remember the training, but I'm afraid that I'll mess something up." Macmillan was staggering with his words. He had to keep his lie up, or him and Squirrel would be done for.

The man sighed, and then walked to the top floor.

"Now!" Macmillan whispered. Squirrel took one of the warp drives, and they started to run out of the door.

"What the-"

The man saw the two running out of the factory, and could see one of the warp drives in Squirrel's hand.

"GET BACK HERE! GUARDS!"

The man ran towards Squirrel, tons of guards following in pursuit. They had to make him lose track.

They ran to the right of the factory, towards other factories. They seemed to be robot factories.

"That's... our best chance..." Macmillan said in between breaths.

Squirrel nodded. The two ran towards one of the robot factories, and around the back. They moved the dumpster out of the way, which contained tons of bizarrely shaped robots.

It seemed familiar to Squirrel, but he couldn't figure out what it was.

There was a chute behind the dumpster that was used to get the robots into the dumpster. The two got behind the dumpster, hid on the conveyor belt, and put the dumpster back.

The man came running towards the dumpster.

"What the?! Where'd they go? Search this area!" he commanded.

"Yes, sir!" the group of guards replied with a salute. They spread out and began to investigate.

More soldiers came out of the factory. The conveyor belt was turned off. The two crawled onto it, and quickly jumped off it when they got inside. They ran out the front door, and nobody noticed. They then got far away from the factories, and made their way to the strange structure.

"What even is this place?" Squirrel said. "There's drills everywhere."

Surrounding the frames were tons of tubes and drills. The two had no clue what they were for.

"We need to get back to the ship, it's still by that factory," Macmillan said. "We've probably lost track of them at this point." The two agreed, and headed off back to the factories. On the way, they saw some strange creatures walking in the distance.

They saw a dog standing up on its hind legs, a Santa, a guy wearing a jean jacket with headphones, and many other bizarre beings.

"What is that?" wondered Squirrel.

After a while, the two had finally made it back to their drop ship safely.

The two got in, but the man was right behind them!

Macmillan furiously pulled the lever, and they quickly departed in the ship, heading back to the Citadel.

"Curse you!" the man yelled, shooting his rifle at the drop ship.

"Watch out!" Macmillan yelled. "Things might get a bit bumpy!"

Macmillan quickly veered the ship left and right until the drop ship had reached the fog. The fog had covered the drop ship completely, and the man lost sight of them.

"Who even was that? First, the armored man, and then this guy? Valve has some interesting characters in its army."

After a few minutes of flying, the two finally made it back to the Citadel. They docked their ship in the bay, and headed back to the briefing room.