That he can do.

For the moment, their focus is on Tanya instead. Through the rifle's sights she can see the angry twist on their faces from her apparent betrayal. With three of them firing on her from different directions, she's in a difficult position. Bullets are whistling past or ricocheting off the rooftop, and it's a matter of moments before she's hit.

The closest is only one rooftop away from her. The others are separated by the wider expanse of the main road. 

The undead are starting to clump together as they leap at the walls as well, trying to reach the sources of noise. It looks like the Coterie held off on using their firearms before for good reason.

What she would not give for the ability to run an enhancement spell right now. She would be able to duck out and shoot all of them before they had time to react if she was running her usual suite of enhancement spells. Instead she has to take potshots and duck back into cover using her normal human limits. Yuck.

She has her gun, the dead guys gun, and his ammo too. She can probably maintain this state of affairs for a while at least.

Can she get a clean shot on any of them? They don’t need to be out of cover long, just have to be out of cover to fire at her at the same time as she leans out to take a shot. You only need to get lucky with timing once per enemy if you are as good a shot as she is.

Joon better hurry up before the zombies surround the buildings.

The one nearest her? Yes, she can manage that.

"Got the soul! And I have an idea, bunker down and stop shooting for a minute!"

He runs past the undead massing at the base of her building, shoots one with the void pistol and slashes another in the back with the machete, then carries on running.

Her shooting at them is the only thing keeping the riflemen busy and not shooting at Joon! Is he an idiot? But at least she has more effective cover with one of the shooters dead. This had better be a good plan, if he gets himself killed, she will kill him.

Hey, according to the game layer he's 50% smarter than he was before!

(So far he's put a point into each of the primary stats, to test how much of an effect they each have)

He skids around the corner and out of the line of sight of the riflemen across the street before they can switch targets, drawing off around half of the undead that were trying to climb up and reach her. She can hear the thwip of the void pistol as he continues thinning their numbers on the way.

Across the field, the continued fire of the fuchsia gunmen gives their own pursuers a shared intent. The bodies clamber over each other and rise into the air, taking on larger humanoid forms. Amalgamated hands with each finger made up of a corpse's limb reach onto the edges of the buildings, pulling the greater umbral undead up.

Fuchsia Coterie minion defeated!

Fuchsia Coterie minion defeated!

THAT STUPID FUCKING IDIOT! THE COMBINER ZOMBIES ARE WAY WORSE THAN TWO GUYS WITH GUNS AND LOOSE ZOMBIES! The only thing keeping her from yelling at Joon is not wanting to get the zombies attention. Hell, if gunshots weren’t a noise problem she would shoot next to his head just to truly display how annoyed she is!

She drags roof guys corpse, with difficulty due to her small size, with her so they can grab its soul as she goes back down to street level. She hopes the zombie megazords stay busy with those two corpses that JOON WASTED. Can’t collect their souls now!

Down at street level she'll find him fighting off the remaining undead he drew away from her, void pistol in one hand and machete in the other. His movements are noticeably smoother than they were before. That he's using the machete at all is a clear sign that he's not just trying to eliminate them with as much safety and caution as possible.

Moron, moron moron moron moron. Once they get out of here she is beating discipline into him. He will be getting the full 203rd mage battalion treatment. In fact her men from the 203rd if they saw the training she will put that moron through they would count themselves lucky she was so gentle with them in comparison!

”Joon! Soul jar!” She shout-whispers at him, pointing at the corpse she is dragging.

"I hate to say it, but you could've pushed the body off the roof instead of dragging him. It's not like he's going to get any more dead."

He stabs another undead, then hurries over to spike the body and extract the soul. 

"The one you shot with the void pistol, the one on the street I bottled, and this guy makes three. There's the one on the rooftop opposite, and the other one on the street back there for another two. If we can find the bodies across the main road, that's all the souls we need to complete A- Cypress' quest."

“Just one problem you blithering idiot! Now there are two mega zombies! Should we just ask politely for them to let us near the bodies? Were you dropped as a child? Had a fondness for licking lead off the walls? Was your father a literal rock and you inherited all your intelligence from him? That was your idea? To increase the threat!” She swears if gunshots wouldn't attract the mega zombies she would shoot right by his stupid fucking head. Scare some sense into him.

"Sorry I panicked because people were shooting at us and I didn't want you to die!"

Joon shoots another undead to punctuate the point but it doesn't go down. Perhaps with the help of a point in SOC, he adds:

"Would you have been able to take out all three of them? I didn't know that. What should I have done?"

He manages to only sound a little petulant. The next thwip hits the heart.

“Probably yes I could have! You know what I definitely can’t kill?” She gestures to the buildings with the voltron zombies on them. “Those! If they ever notice us, we die way more certainly than facing any number of goons with guns.”

She rubs her face in exasperation. “I at least expect you to not make things more dangerous for us! If we survive I will beat some tactical thinking into you.” Tanya is being very literal about the beating.

”This isn’t my first time being sent to a new world, so trust me when I tell you that dealing with Gods petty vengeance requires you to think! So if we get out of here I am cramming everything I learned at the war college into your empty empty head whether you like it or not.” 

"Fine! Gunmen are easy, big zombies are hard. Maybe I'll get a skill from your lessons." If they're any good, he leaves unsaid.

Despite their interpersonal friction, collecting the other three souls on this side of the street goes smoothly, as does reaching the airdropped crate.

The parachute fabric has already been lifted aside and the side of the crate opened. It's been emptied of firearms and ammunition, but a sword and a knife remain uncollected. 

And there's one other part of the delivery, useless to anyone else in the Coterie...

Ahhhh so that’s why the Coterie people expected her to take care of the zombies for them. Bottles of ethanol, of diluted sulfuric acid, and of compressed hydrogen gas. All able to be slotted into a contraption with a nozzle on it. With just the amount of control she had over igniting small explosions on her finger, she can tell much bigger flames and reactions being controlled would be very effective against crowds of undead.

It’s no mage rifle, but this is also nice.

After looting the bodies and the crate they have a rifle each for Tanya and Joon and one to bring back to Cypress or to use for parts. Tanya gets the chemical sprayer and knife, and Joon gets the void pistol and the sword to replace the beat up machete.

That is a decent loadout for each of them even by Tanya standards.

"The rifle is a different skill so I'm not going to be as good with it to start with." Despite having actually used a rifle before all this, out on hunting trips. "Training it will have to wait until we're somewhere with fewer enemies around. Do you think you could take out one of the mega zombies with that kit?"

“No, moron. Terrible idea. If you want to farm exp stick to trash mobs like regular zombies. Don’t tempt trouble when you don’t need to. Even if that wasn’t the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard and I could take a mega zombie, the rooftop bodies have probably been raised by now. Why would we even go in that direction? We are taking the long way around back to the mechanics shop and staying faaaaaaar away from those things.”

They do still need two more souls, and he would really like to have them in hand before they get back to the mechanic's where the three of them would each be faced with the temptation of killing the other two to complete the set. 

In the meantime, he follows Tanya's instructions obediently and promptly, doing his best to convince her that he's worth more as backup than as fuel.

But then, on the circuitous route back, they find the trail of another mega zombie. It's gone, but it has left behind two corpses of ordinary convicts who must have crossed its path.

The bodies are fresh. Fresh enough not to have risen yet. Fresh enough that touching the spike to them draws out their souls, not yet dispersed to wherever they go.