This is a Beta Test?! - A Literally Broken System

I took my hands off the trackball as I tapped my foot on the metal flooring below. A part of me wanted to fiddle with my stats and start looking at what I actually got before deciding on the next course of action, but did we really have the time to spare for such things? I sure as hell knew that the quirks I\'ll be getting were going to either be average or atrocious depending on my rolls... but the [Moves] though...

"What should we do?" Shizu asked aloud from below me.

"We\'re attached to the enemy right now," Guidance pointed out. "We can maybe run across the tether and board their ship, but I wouldn\'t wish running over the Deep using a thin chain onto anyone."

"Agreed," Shade quickly nodded. "One slip and you\'ll pretty much be dead, cooked alive by the Deep\'s red hot waters."

There was a lull in the action as we all stood by on that dim bridge, all looking at each other as if waiting for one or the other to make the first move. We all knew that the peace would be short-lived, but the clear lack of leadership was inevitably forcing me to step up to the plate.

Not that I wasn\'t doing that already in the first place.

"We should probably just regroup and wait for our engines to come back online," I mused aloud, staring out at the burning enemy ship as I spoke. "I don\'t see them being able to recover quickly enough for them to shoot back."

"I think you\'re forgetting that they still have cannons, Moriya," Shade pointed out, the dull glow from his kiosk barely illuminating his face. "They don\'t need any power to fire those at us."

"But they\'re not aimed at us right now, yes?" I rebutted. "At best, they might just try and use the tether to board us, and even then I think we\'re all in agreement that\'s a stupid idea."

"What\'s so stupid about that?" Shizu asked, her tone clearly raring for a fight despite everything that had happened. "I think we can do that ourselves just fine."

"With all due respect, Shizu, did you not hear us earlier?" Shade almost scoffed out loud. "It\'s too dangerous. And even then, you can easily be shot down if they\'re using the portable steam cannons."

"Steam cannons, huh..." So that\'s what they were called... At least they weren\'t steam guns or something. That one guy with projectile targeting didn\'t say anything back when we fought by the beach. "Yeah, that just seals the deal on us not doing that."

"But-"

"Shizu, please don\'t," I cut her off with a smile. "I know you wanna kill them, but the risk you want us to take is just far too high when we could just sit back and wait for Shen to fix the engine."

"Assuming it can even get fixed," the princess fired back. "Shen\'s great, but even I didn\'t recognize any of these machines. It wasn\'t until after I forced myself to think and memorize what exactly each button did that I actually managed to make these things work."

"Even accounting for her [Manifest]?"

Thankfully, my words managed to shut her up, Shizu sinking into herself as her shoulders told me that she was thinking about her next reply. Well, I get that she wanted some action, but just going in headfirst would just end up with us being dead.

And we didn\'t even know if we\'ll respawn this time.

"Wait, if we die, can\'t we just all kill ourselves and try again?"

...

...

The sheer awkwardness that sentence exuded pretty much killed any sort of mumbling inside the bridge. Looking around, Shade was staring at Shizu as if she had already gone insane, while Guidance, well, didn\'t really know what to do, I think. She had been doing her part as a follower for the past few minutes now, I feel, and I just know that she was thinking about something even with all of this chaos going all around us.

Still, I had to nip this in the bud. "Shizu, we don\'t even know if it\'ll even work outside of a dungeon. For all we know, we might die permanently this time."

"I agree completely!" Shade quickly chimed in, the tension in his tone apparent even if he tried to hide it. "We still haven\'t even experienced this revival firsthand. All we have are Moriya\'s claims that you all have constantly died over and over until you cleared this so-called dungeon."

"But it\'s true though!" Shizu vehemently fired back. "I\'ve seen it myself with [Code Watcher]!"

"That\'s before I stopped being able to understand the code completely, Shizu," Guidance finally chimed in, her voice shaky despite the smirk on her face. "For now, we shouldn\'t expect ourselves to magically come alive once either of us dies."

"Fine," Shizu pouted. "But I\'m still expecting us to kick Vestygian butt! I won\'t hesitate to pull rank if we\'re not gonna!"

"Fair enough," I weakly chuckled. "But seriously, our current situation is just too precarious to-"

[*"Hey, Shade guy! You there!?"*]

The sound of Shen\'s voice echoing from the comms stopped me from completing my thoughts as I turned my attention to what she had to say.

"I\'m here, kid," Shade scoffed. "What\'s the situation down there?"

[*"I was gettin\' to that!"*] Shen audibly pouted, her accent somehow getting thicker the more annoyed she got. [*"I\'m back here in da engine room. It isn\'t anythin\' I\'ve ever seen earlier, but I think I can make it work again! Nothing a good whack can\'t fix!"*]

"Go do that then," he replied.

[*"I\'ll be right back!"*]

From that, the line got cut off.

"Well, we better hope that the girl knows what she\'s doing," Shade chuckled, his gaze landing on me as he scoffed.

"Come now, she fixed our hull, didn\'t she?" I replied to his unsaid remarks. "If anything, this might be-"

[*vvvrrrroOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!*]

[*"There! All done!"*]

Shen\'s voice from the comms we\'re almost drowned out by the bridge itself as the entire [Rig] roared back to life. The lights all went back on, the Tether Cannon outside seemed to crackle with newfound energy even as it clearly- wait! "Shizu! Turn that cannon off right-"

[*VVRRRoooommmm....*]

"-now.... Well, that\'s just great..."

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