42 Into the City

Aida opened her mouth to protest again, but she found that she was already back in her own body.

Opening her eyes, she realized she was laying on a sofa in a foreign room. Looking around, she saw that Xiao Ai was laying beside her, asleep. No one else was around. The room was a far cry from the System's luxurious room.

Grumbling to herself, she said, "Che~ Stingy con system. Not even letting me sleep in a comfortable setting."

The system did not respond but the silence was filled with its silent protest.

She was glad to finally complete the annoying punishment system. Getting up to stretch, she noticed her body felt as though it had not moved in a long while and all her joints were stiff. She stretched and cracked her neck, it felt so nice!

There were remnants of their presence in the room. Seeing this, she was secretly relieved that she hadn't chosen to believe in the wrong people again. They did not choose to abandon her when she fell unconscious, but instead somehow managed to bring her to this place.

Just as she was thinking this, a gunshot rang out. The sound reverberated on the falls of the store. Jumping into action, Aida quickly put Xiao Ai into her pocket and crouched down.

Learning the painful lesson from last time, she made sure not to act impulsively and charge out without knowing the situation. Instead of stepping out, she made use of her newfound skill and used the system to run a quick scan of the area.

Holding onto Xiao Ai, she was able to have her scan cover the entire store. The system quickly put together a 3D model of the store through the scan. 'At least you're good for something,' grumbled Aida who was still bitter about the punishment.

[...]

The 3D model showed 4 blue dots which were her companions and there was a red dot beside her companions. The dot itself was small, but the dot was surrounded by a dark purple aura.

Without thinking too much about what the dark purple aura means, she quickly went over to where they were located. The brain activities of the four companions seemed to be stable, so they should be okay.

The 3D model showed that her companions were in the ceiling. Thinking for a moment, she brought a shelf over to climb up and peer behind the boards. Despite all her skills, she has none that enable her to fly or jump high heights, so she had to do it the old school way.

As Aida pulled herself into the ceiling tiles, she had to lay flat on her stomach in order to fit. Xiao Ai in her pocket was squished and deformed. Thankfully she was asleep, otherwise she would surely protest and pout.

Up in the ceiling, she saw endless strings of white webs that criss-crossed everywhere. There was also a lot of dust that made her sneeze endlessly.

As she was overcoming her next fit of sneezes, the spiderwoman sneaked up behind her and shot a web in an attempt to bind her. Aida was prepared as she had kept her scan on this entire time.

Rolling to the side, Aida turned her head and finally got to catch a glimpse at the spiderwoman. "#$*(&@#^$(@^# What is that thing?!" screamed Aida. She was just like Rin, and absolutely hated spiders. Even before, when she had to kill spiders in the house, Xiao Ai was the one controlling a robot arm to help her kill it.

Disgusted, Aida decisively used her electric shock to attack the spider woman [1]. The electrical arcs were quickly transmitted through all the webs and the webs began to burn and melt off. [2]

Seeing the webs melt, the spiderwoman screeched in anger. It propelled its body towards Aida. Aida whipped out her gun and shot her numerous times.

The battle was fought and won in a short period of time. If Ace were awake, he would surely be squealing with excitement at this time.

After the webs had successfully melted, her companions were revealed. She inadvertently electrocuted them. Awkwardly scratching her head, she was glad there would be no evidence of her actions when they woke up. She was pretty embarrassed about unintentionally injuring her own teammates.

Carrying each person down, she brought them into the minivan and strapped them in, carefully avoiding the disgusting spiderwoman. Scanning the store and the minivan, she realized they had done a great job of prioritizing the high calorie foods. Nodding her head in approval, this saved her a lot of time. She was unaware of how long she was asleep for, but didn't find it a particularly relevant piece of knowledge in the apocalypse.

Stopping by an aisle and grabbed all the gummy worms in stock. They were her vice.

She went back into the room she first woke up in and packed everything there including Ace's laptop. After one last check that she had everything, she got into the car and drove it out of the store with glee.

She realized her companions probably did not feel comfortable going into the city with her unconscious so they stopped at the nearest "safe" location outside the city. Clearly the apocalypse was far more dangerous for ordinary people than she anticipated. Luckily for her companions, she was fairly confident in her survivability in the apocalypse and was far less concerned.

Now that she was awake, she could drive the car into the city as planned. With her newfound skills, she could take on any threat that came up. She correctly speculated that the spider with a woman's face was a mutation that occurred due to the infection. Her disgust towards spiders made her disinclined to investigate this case thoroughly. She was confident she would find other mutation cases that would be more palatable for her to dissect.

Driving to the city, she used the irresponsible and unhelpful system to map out the city and find a good residential area to make as their temporary home base. She was eager to have a soft bed to sleep on and a warm meal to eat.

[1] Aida's electric shock is quite similar to Pikachu. She can shoot small amounts of electricity from her fingers when she has enough energy and can shock people when they come in contact with her.

[2] Spider webs are flammable.