Honkai Impact: Merc's Involvement

Chapter 16: The Fall Out

When Theresa had finished speaking, the room went quiet for a while as no one spoke or even gave a reaction until finally someone spoke.

"W-Wait what? Really?" Asked Alex in shock.

"Yeah. While you and Himeko were on your way back here with Kiana, I received my last few payments and all of them added up were enough to pay off the remaining half of our initial debt." Said Theresa, standing up and walking over to Alex.

She reached into a pocket and fished out a couple stacks of cash as she handed it over to him.

Alex counted the money and sure enough she was right.

It was exactly the remaining half he needed.

"Oh. Well um, t-thanks I guess." Said Alex, feeling a bit awkward.

The fact that Theresa picked now of all times to tell him this was just extremely nerveracking especially when Alex had just saw two people he had grown close with be kidnapped.

He placed the money away as Himeko stood up and rubbed the back of her head.

"So kid, what're you gonna do next?" Asked Himeko.

Alex was about to answer until Kiana had interrupted him.

"What do you mean, 'What's he gonna do next', Himeko? He's obviously gonna help us get Mei and Bronya back! Right Alex!?" Asked Kiana looking at him.

Alex looked at her and for some reason struggled to give her a straight answer.

Right now in his head, he was conflicted on what to do.

While yes, he definitely did care for the safety of Bronya and Mei, at the same time he's no longer working under them anymore.

With his debt paid off, he was now free to leave and get back on track with his other daily activities as a merc.

Not only that, but the biggest worry he had was that should he assist in the invasion of an Anti-Entropy base, that would surely affect his mercenary work in a negative way seeing that he has helped AE with a few jobs in the past.

Obviously he couldn't ask them to pay for his services again since he had just gotten paid, so there was only two decisions for Alex to make.

Either work with them free of charge this one last time then part ways, or pack his bags now, take off already, and avoid making a permanent enemy out of Anti-Entropy.

"Come on what's taking so long!? Isn't it obvious that your gonna help!? Don't tell me your seriously considering leaving!" Shouted Kiana

"Calm down Kiana! There's no need to get angry right now!" Said Theresa.

Alex didn't appreciate Kiana shouting and rushing him, especially since he never forgot why he was in this entire situation in the first place.

"H-Hey what gives you the right to yell at me? The only reason I've been here so long in the first place was because you ended up crashing a drone causing my initial payment to be short." Said Alex back at her.

"You're still hung over about that!? It happened a month ago already!" Said Kiana.

"Exactly! If it weren't for you then I would've left weeks ago and not have to deal with this school's problems!" Shouted Alex.

"Huh!? Don't act like you're not a part of this cause you are!"

"I ain't saying that I'm not you just aren't looking at the big picture! As a mercenary, I need to avoid making enemies and stay on both Schicksal and AE's good sides so that my line of work isn't compromised. If I go through with this and word gets out that I attacked a base of one of my main employers, then chances are very likely that Schicksal wouldn't wanna hire my services anymore to risk the same thing happening to them."