It took almost four whole days for them to return to Oregon. By the time they had reached Oregon, Salem had made a few enhancements. By combining a Falcon-esque suit and an Iron Man suit, he was able to generate enough thrust through the six total thrusters to be equal to the large engine of his original suit.
Landing had become a simple matter of folding their wings and landing Iron man style.
Touching down just outside the village, Salem urgently sought out Ruby.
"Do you know where Ruby is?" Salem asked a convinient passerby.
"We cast her out about a day ago." The person spat on the ground, as if disgusted by the thought of her. "In my opinion, we should have burned her like every other witch."
"What direction did she go?" Salem fought down his anger and asked as calmly as possible.
"Why? You want to kill her?" They asked.
Salem put a hand on Alina's shoulder in an attempt to calm her. "Why? Do you think we can't manage it?"
Seemingly convinced, they pointed towards the massive grey clouds hanging over the horizon.
"Damn it." Salem cursed under his breath. Thanking them for their help, Salem dragged a shaking Alina away from the village.
"How could they do that?" Alina burst out. "She helped free them!"
Salem wondered at the human (Although not all of them were human, they had the same mentality.) ability to forget about benefactors.
"We're going after her." Salem said. "We need to get her out ASAP."
"Yes. And then burn this village to the ground." Alina said venemously.
"Stop. No. If everyone paid back every single bad deed with another, we'd enter an endless loop." Salem began creating the heavy radiation shielding on their suits in preparation of their entry into the dead zone.
Deciding to test out the radiation shielding, Salem created a Geiger counter and had his nanobots create radioactive particles and measured the amount of radiation that could pass through.
Satisfied at one millionth of all the radiation being able to pass through, Salem applied them to the suits, added filtered breathing apparatuses and made the suits airtight, although he set up an emergency removal button because it was rare for his creations to work on the first try.
With their preparation complete, the two of them entered the area.
Entering the air, Salem and Alina began the long, arduous search for any trace of their friend.