Week 30: World's most awkard road trip.

Darya was, all things consider, feeling pretty good just after the mission. It was well done, no one got killed, and this may well help with the leakage of Tracer Li parts to the cult. She reached her van, pulling off her balacalva and wiping off most of the ETE paint, before climbing in. She started the van, when a knock on the window made her look up to see Xu standing there on the passenger side. Inwardly, she groaned, but she unlocked the door anyway.

"Thank you," Xu said. He looked backwards, as though expecting someone else behind him, and then hesitated when he saw nobody. Then he looked across at Darya, hesitated for another moment, and climbed into the passenger seat and carefully closed the door, keeping his eyes turned away from Darya.

With a flick of her hand, the chipstart built into Darya's mungo activated and she began to pull it out of the parking spot and into the street. Like Xu, she avoided eye contact, prefering to keep her eyes straight ahead, driving faster than she usually did (although she was very careful to keep to the speed limit). When she had to stop at a red light, she took a moment to buckle herself in properly with her seatbelt.

Eventually, Xu broke the awkward silence.

"So," he said, his voice carefully neutral. "Where does the cult hunt go from here? Is there anything else I should get to work chasing up?" His eyes stayed firmly on the road ahead and the tone of the questions was entirely businesslike.

"That depends on what happens after this." said Darya, equally carefully neutral. "The Ai Jinn may have Han Yul...disappear, or they may close ranks around him. I'm not sure, legally speaking, what our evidence shows."

She turned a corner carefully and bit her bottom lip. "I think, right now, we need to avoid doing stuff in Ai Jinn territory for a bit, wait for them to cool down. I may go and investigate what's been going on in Madrid, myself. I suggest if you have any more leads on other things, you focus on those."

"Reasonable enough," Xu said, still refusing to demonstrate any kind of reaction. "There's something going on in Kim'chaek I need to get to work on, so I might have a look at that."

He lapsed back into silence, staring out of the window.

After around half an hour more of silence, Darya's internal AI started telling her she needed food. Hitting one of the array of buttons on one section of the dashboard, a nutribar fell out of it which she unwrapped with one hand and started chewing.

"There are more, if you need one." she said, simply.

"Brought my own," Xu said, reaching into his normal, slightly shapeless, clothes and pulling out a nutribar of his own. He began unwrapping it in silence.

Shrugging, Darya consumed her nutribar and hit the button twice more, dropping two more nutribars down. She chewed on them as they headed towards the motorway back to Seoul. They were heading along quite nicely when the van began to make slightly strange noises from its engine, and black smoke began to come out from under the bonnet. Swearing in a variety of languages, Darya pulled over to the hard shoulder, and got out of the driver's side door. "I'm going to see if I can fix this, you call Ace and say we may be late." she said.

"Alright," Xu said, his gaze lingering dubiously on the smoke.

Ace? He smeakered, guessing the former WF Agent would still be in range. Darya's van has had a bit of engine trouble. Looks like we might be a bit late back. Don't know how long it'll take, but it looks fairly dramatic.

He turned back to Darya. "Any idea why that happened?" His voice was still neutral, with no hint of accusation in the question.

"Don't know yet." Said Darya, lifting the bonnet of the van and leaning into the resulting billowing cloud of smoke. Technology had come a long way in the last five hundred years, and the old internal combustion engine had, theorectically, been replaced by new, exciting technologies, silent, green, and capable of incredible speeds.

The Ai Jinn regarded these as quaint attempts to fix what was not broken. Who cares if it doesn't pollute the world? That's never stopped them before. Noise? Who cares? Incredible speeds? One shot to the tires and you're out of control.

No. The Ai Jinn kept the old model, because it worked, and it was cheap. Well, it worked most of the time, anyway.

Switching to her infrared view, Darya frowned. There was a massive hot spot that shouldn't be there in the engine. Reaching her hand in, ignoring the blistering heat, she felt three things. Firstly, there was a leak in the pipe linking the fuel tank to the engine. Secondly, this leaked fuel had ignited in low oxygen conditions, causing it to be an external combustion engine. Thirdly, because of her sticking her hand in the leaked fuel, her hand was now on fire as well.

"Xu, in the back of the van there are some fire extingeshers. Please could you pass one to me?" she asked, pulling out her now burning hand and looking at it dispassionately.

Xu whistled as he saw Darya's hand emerge on fire. "Well, looks like there's definitely something wrong in there."

He moved round to the back of the van, opened the door and started rummaging through the contents, before pulling out a fire extinguisher. His movements, while not exactly slow, weren't exactly especially fast either.

"There you go," he said, proffering the extinguisher. "Or do you want me to put your hand out first?"

By the time Xu had returned with the fire extingsher, Darya had already put her hand out herself by burying it in the dirt to the side of the road. Standing up, she shook her head. "No, just use it in there." She pointed at the engine. "I'll go get my repair kit."

She walked around to the back herself, going around the opposite side to where Xu was.

Xu looked the engine over, his infrared vision turned on. He frowned, aimed the extinguisher and sprayed, trying not to hit anything important that he didn't have to (Int+Mechtronics pass by . It only took a quick spray and the fire was out, and without covering the whole engine in foam.

"That should do it for now," he said. "Got that tool kit yet?"

Darya pulled out a depletable toolkit from the back of the van, looking in and scowling at the mess. The only things that seemed to stay in place were the weapon racks, filled with items she thought may be useful, but rarely were. Her hellfire rifle had been taken to pieces a while ago. She had been planning to convert it into an on the go microwave so she could hot food, but it was designed to sheer and burn, not cook, so it was a struggle. Across the floor, her suitcase where she kept her spare clothes was half open and had some sticking out, while her sleeping bag was buried under an avalanch of datapads, nutribar wrappers and general equipment. She need to get this sorted out...but first she had more pressing matters.

Heading around the front again, she motioned to Xu to stand back and began pulling out a variety of different tools, as well as some extra piping, and began to get to work. It would take a few minutes, and it probably won't be good in the long term, but she was confident she could get the van back to Seoul easily enough. (Int+Mech = 15, rolled a 4, passed by 11.)

Xu stood back and watched as Darya started fiddling around in the engine.

"You know," he said, still keeping his tone as neutral as humanly possible, "that's really not the best engine setup you've got there. If you switched that around," his finger flicked out and pointed out a couple of components, "and changed that out for a newer model," another point at a component, "then I'm pretty sure that this wouldn't happen again. Well, it'd be less likely to, anyone."

(Int+Mechtronics is a pass by 6 (and the roll is even a pass on Int+Drive), so what he's saying should be accurate)

"Yeah, I'm thinking about getting Cobra to look at it. She should be able fix it up more professionally, but this should do for now." Said Darya, wiping her hands on a rag and slamming the bonnet down. "I'll drop it off in a garage when we get back to Seoul." she said, walking around the back and chucking her toolkit back in, once again pausing at looking at the mess, before getting back in the front and starting the engine with a swipe of her id chip.

"Fair enough, I suppose," Xu said, walking round to the passenger door and settling himself into the seat. There was a pause, then, as Darya started up the engine, he spoke up again, his tone one of mild curiosity.

"What do you think of our new recruits? I've not really had much of a chance to speak with them."

"I haven't seen Cobra in action yet, but she reminds me of Ace, that look she gets when talking about vehicles is like him with a new helicopter. I think she'll be okay. Majorie...I suspect will end up being a liablity. She walked through a laser trip wire in a cult base delibrately and then ran away when cult showed up. I have a horrible feeling she's going to get herself killed." said Darya. Her tone was fairly neutral, she didn't seem angry, just stating facts. "I think she's a scientist, so hopefully Positron can find her a lab and set her up far away from things that would shoot at her because she walked in front of them."

One of Xu's eyebrows twitched upwards and he turned towards Darya. "Did she really? That sounds...potentially worrisome. I imagine she must have some useful skills or the CEO wouldn't have brought her in, but I would have thought she would at least be of value on a mission. I'll have to keep an eye on her." The last statement was delivered in a more thoughtful tone as his gaze turned back to the road.