His jittering hand became still after a spare few moments. The sound of steel against stone still rang out through the cave, and Eren's pained grumbles along with it. Even through the filter of a respirator, his exhaustion was made clear through his bated breathing. As he turned and allowed his knees to buckle, his back slumped against the wall, and he sat down to rest. The pickaxe he had been using fell from the grip of his right hand, the hold on it unwillingly loosened.
Staring at the machine, an urge to visit the hospital for a checkup swelled within him -- but he knew that the good doctor was gone, and so was any chance of an update. Before that moment, there had not been a time when his arm had malfunctioned. It was his own fault. In fact, it wasn't even a malfunction, but rather a perfectly acceptable result for extensive use.
The power was dead. It was as simple as that, but Eren felt irritated over being unable to fix that on the spot. He thought about where he put the extra battery that he had been given, and came the conclusion that he wouldn't be able to move his arm before he was able to return home. Without a working right arm, that was going to be extremely difficult.
“Shit,” he said, his voice coming through the mask over his mouth. “How the hell am I gonna carry all this out now...?”
Passing over stone and dirt with the only working hand he owned, he slipped some of the ore he had taken from the walls of this District Beta mine into the bag near his left side. Even if his right side wasn't going to cooperate, he'd find a way to make things work, through sheer hardheadedness if he had to.
It wasn't hard to catch someone attention when making all the noise that he had, and the noises that he continued to make. Between all the commotion, he noted the sounds of someone stepping closer, as well as what sounded like a wheel. He couldn't tell. His hearing wasn't as good as it used to be, thanks to so many days of shooting a gun without anything to cover his ears.
By the time it was near enough for him to discern that it was a person, getting away and avoiding them wasn't an option. He lifted himself up and off the ground, his bag along with him, and tensed up as a direct reaction to having to possibly butt heads with someone else. The look on his face, though passive, was harder to gauge through the dull light of the tunnel. The same went for the person that he was trying to look at -- he couldn't make their face out, only that they were shorter than he was, and that they had company of a sort. He'd make contact first, if only to try and keep things civil.
“You don't seem like the kind of person that should be in this place,” he noted with caution. “I don't think it's very smart to come down here, anyway. Radiation'll get you if you're not careful.”