She delivers the Allrounder to the Wakagawa Garage, pays the repair costs for the machine-gun dents and the ammunition expenses, and Chihaya is finally free from work.
Her bank account already has over three million yen deposited. Nowhere near enough to buy her own Actanoid yet, but she’s stopped worrying about ammunition costs. Going into the red is something she hates, but she’s gotten to a place where she can accept it as better than getting the loaner wrecked.
“growth……”
She nods to herself, quietly savoring her own development, and climbs out of the basement.
Up the stairs with the handrail to the ground floor, Chihaya peeks out through the gap in the curtains.
A quiet residential street. Apartments for Actors dotted here and there, streetlights well-maintained.
The sun had already set.
Even after the Berlet fight, she’d been holed up in the snowy mountains until she handed off the wrecked units and transport vehicle to the team Unison Human-Machine Technology dispatched — and then traveled all the way to the Wakagawa Garage after that. Of course time had gotten away from her.
“pulled an all-nighter”
She yawns and opens the fridge. Pulls out a tupperware of pre-cut vegetable sticks and crunches through them while pressing the button on the water heater.
A long soak, and then bed.
While waiting for the bath to fill, Chihaya browses Actors’ Quest to kill time. She figured she’d decide on her next job.
Maybe because she’d built up a track record — the number of jobs showing up had increased.
“……aren’t there a lot of extermination jobs?”
For some reason, about seventy percent of what’s showing up is culling dangerous New Frontier creatures or taking down Actanoids acting like bandits.
The latter — bandit suppression — comes with higher advances and higher payouts. The idea that there are enough Actors like the Berlet that attacked at the Wakagawa Upper Mountain Range to have bounties posted on them sends a chill through Chihaya.
“just get along with each other……”
Even if it gets processed as an accident, it definitely affects your reputation. Get identified and you’d be dragged through the mud.
And even if a destroyed Actanoid is just a thing you can sell for money, selling it can leave a trail.
Apparently Actanoids engaged in banditry tend to cluster around the Haigu Mountain Range area — the frontier of exploration and development. Poor signal conditions, and by hiding a Rannoid unit on their side they can create one-sided ambushes.
Some of them even have bounties on custom Order-series Actanoids.
Order-series units are custom-built, so identifying the individual should be straightforward. The fact that there’s no Actor information attached suggests it was either self-built in the New Frontier or arrived through some highly unusual channel.
“scary”
She makes a firm mental note never to go near the Haigu Mountain Range, and keeps scrolling through the job list.
She wants to take jobs as safely as possible, so harvesting or transport is ideal. Or recovery work on Actanoids that ended up destroyed somewhere while on a job.
Wrecked Actanoid recovery is popular with what are commonly called scavengers — Actors who actively seek out those jobs. Since Actanoids themselves are expensive, recovery work comes with correspondingly decent pay.
Easy money, relatively safe — a popular category, and Chihaya finds herself drawn to it.
However, to prevent bandit Actors from getting there first, the coordinates of wrecked units are only shared roughly. On top of that, many units have gone dark deep in the New Frontier due to communication interference and can’t be reached without a Rannoid-series escort — which rules out a lot of those jobs for someone borrowing a Rounder-series Allrounder.
There are also a small number of jobs surveying New Frontier creature ecology. Long duration, low pay — apparently not popular for good reason.
Several jobs catch her eye, but they’d need preparation and research before she could take them.
I’ll think it over properly after the bath, she decides, and is just starting to get out a change of clothes when her phone vibrates.
“……new job request?”
Apparently a job has come into her Actors’ Quest account.
Direct requests aren’t supposed to be common. Especially for Chihaya — still a newcomer with no great track record.
She sets down her decidedly unglamorous cotton underwear and picks up the phone.
A direct request from Unison Human-Machine Technology.
“……oh, I see?”
It seems taking down the attacker single-handedly made her look like a skilled Actor despite being new.
She reads through the job details with trepidation — first relieved to find it’s not a combat job, and then immediately tilting her head.
“a request for me? why?”
The job: Recovery of four destroyed Allrounders and an isolated Jackalope. Scavenger work.
Reward: one and a half million yen. Quite high.
The destroyed Allrounders are one thing, but the Jackalope is described as isolated — meaning it’s presumably still mobile.
A Rannoid-series Actanoid named after the mythical horned rabbit — the Jackalope is a small unit, about one meter tall. True to its name, it has moose-like antler-shaped antennas on its head, giving it a charming appearance.
Its small size makes it easy to hide, and it has decent speed. Designed for field use to support expeditions, and extremely resistant to harsh conditions.
And unusually for a Rannoid-series, it comes standard with weapons.
Both arms are equipped with directional acoustic weapons, effective at deterring and disorienting animals.
The cute looks come with a price tag that is decidedly not cute — roughly twenty-five million yen plus optional parts.
If it’s still mobile they’d obviously want it back. But being a Rannoid-series unit, solo return travel is difficult — hence the job posting.
But there’s definitely a catch. Otherwise they wouldn’t be coming to a new Actor like Chihaya.
She can’t help suspecting her name came up because they’re anticipating an attack, and want someone with a track record.
“one and a half million……hmm”
The payout is pushing her toward a decision.
And then there’s the excavation explosives the Fernleg Scorpion made off with. That alone must have been a significant loss.
Not her fault — but she felt bad about it anyway.
“one and a half million……I’ll think about it in the bath”
— She accepted the job.