As the shortage of corpse-dissolving mineral worsened, Mann Co turned to their most brilliant minds for a solution. As it turns out, however, their most brilliant minds were haberdashers. The resulting solution (skull-hats) was stylish and wildly profitable, but failed to eliminate the multitude of putrifying limbs and organs on Mann Co property. The hat-makers were fired, then immediately rehired, dusted off, and told to get back to work gluing feathers to felt or whatever it was they did, exactly.
Coincidentally, in a charming mountain laboratory outside of Rottenberg, Germany, an unknown scientist (whose name we're beginning to suspect may be Unknown Scientist) discovered an amusing side effect of the charged particles coursing through the veins of mercenaries. The TF-66 medibeam antenna could also feed a signal into an external transceiver and when the person attached to the transceiver died (suddenly, via crazy coincidence), it would exude a cloud of charged notdeadium particles in the shape of whatever mercenary, military android, or bewildered circus clown was transmitting. If an external medigun beam passed through the fine mist, the body would regenerate quickly, leaving a living and thoroughly relieved mercenary, military android, or circus clown. Bongos was immediately re-vaporized for security reasons.
Realizing the application vis-a-vis solving the quicklime shortage, Gray Mann's hellish robotic war machine rolled out to Rottenberg to rampage through its quaint architecture, menace its lederhosen-bedecked population and destroy the Reanimators before they could be mass produced and put onto battlefields. Two days later, a team of mercenaries decided that they should probably see what all the fuss was about and headed over there.
