Perhaps sometimes, knowing that nowhere around you—not in any direction, not even beneath your feet—could be called safe was fundamentally a tormenting thing.
If Nana was deliberately messing with her, then Cardigan absolutely had to complain properly about the feeling of her heart and lungs stopping just now... But seeing Nana's expression, which seemed utterly unchanged, Cardigan could only keep stepping in her captain's footprints and hurry after her.
"...A beautiful sight that only appeared after a Catastrophe... I'd rather never have seen it..."
"Your file said you experienced similar things in the snow mountains before... I thought rescuers were already used to scenes like this."
In response to Nana's question, Cardigan shook her head wildly in denial.
Perhaps it was inappropriate to guess someone's background based on her own professional experience. Nana shrugged and continued onward.
Seeing that her captain seemed able to distinguish directions clearly even in the darkness, Cardigan walked over the creaking Originium dust desert and asked something she had wondered about for a long time.
"...How did you receive this mission, Captain?"
"What mission?"
"The rescue mission... The Ticarondo rescue mission... Later on, Blacksteel and the United Government both gradually got involved... But why did such an important mission fall to us?"
"...Because no one else would do it..."
Having said that, Nana seemed to realize that her wording was inappropriate... After all, although Columbia did not have a government with a total responsibility system like Great Yan, it had many paid, well-equipped Catastrophe rescue teams.
ICA had similar services as well. As long as the payment was sufficient, countless people would answer the call—not merely to rescue people from a Catastrophe, but even to drive a Landship straight into one.
Thinking this, Nana habitually calculated how much it would have cost Rhodes Island to