A light flurry of snow slowly made it’s descent around a certain Tal Ravis, who found himself taking a stroll through Downtown Manhattan in the dead of night with nothing more than the next streetlight ahead to guide him down a wet, slippery sidewalk. Occasional gusts of wind dug into his relatively light winter clothing, causing him to tighten up and clench his teeth, but none of this inclement weather was something that he wasn’t already used to.

He owed this temporary freedom to Hawken, who, in a surprising twist, had unanimously approved everybody’s leave requests and announced her decision during a pre-Christmas gathering of all personnel who resided in their little forward operating base. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, he had thought, remembering all the times that Nova had made his deployment to Nauru miserable. Of course, one flaw remained, and that was that her wonderful announcement on the 22nd of December had given very little time for anybody who lived anywhere outside of Omicron Delta to go home and arrive in a timely manner.

His trip home had been incredibly uneventful, consisting of two day’s worth of travel on multiple shuttles until he was finally able to catch one that was bound for New York, or more specifically, Planet Manhattan. He was lucky enough to avoid trouble along the way and eventually was able to triumphantly step out of a Stargazer, a santa hat draped over his helmet and goggles for a comic effect that had elicited some laughs from random shuttlegoers, just in time for some intense Christmas celebration as well.

Thing was, he didn’t know how to go about engaging in festivities this time around, with no mother or brothers to fall back upon and leech off of for a good meal or free stuff. To make matters worse, he discovered that he’d somehow decided that it was a good idea to throw all of his food out five months ago, fearing that he’d return to find a load of rotting foodstuffs lying around, so here he was, heading to the shops at 11 PM on Christmas Eve. He’d never been this eager to get his usual meal of spicy corn chips and iced tea before, especially this late at night, but after five consecutive months of eating chicken-flavored synth paste and synth paste derivatives, he thought the benefits far outweighed the costs of walking through downtown Manhattan in the dead of night. Besides, he kept his trusty “burner” on him for a reason, right?

A lone vehicle making it’s way up the road startled Tal a bit, who in the meantime had been entranced in counting the number of steps he could take before he encountered another crack in the sidewalk. He looked up instinctively and locked onto the source of the noise, a bright-blue colored SUV that drove past him just as quickly as it suddenly appeared. His eyes continued to wander around downtown Manhattan’s residential skyline, picking out tall apartment complexes amongst a layer of clouds, until they finally came to rest on a particularly familiar apartment building that he recognized as the one that he grew up in. Not a particularly spectacular building, but an easily recognizable one that was filled with the memories of his childhood days.

Memories that are probably better left buried, he thought, as he continued on down his road to success. Considering that the convenience store in which he would partake in a voluntary exchange with the cashier was always a frequent spot for a young Tal Ravis, who had based out of that very apartment complex, he had to be somewhat close, unless the shop had somehow grown legs and wandered off.

An incredibly tall tree, currently covered in snow, was the next major landmark during his journey. He couldn’t really find any memories or thoughts to linger upon concerning this tree–other than the fact that it was very tree-like–so he continued soldiering on through the wind and snow, another strong gust making him really wish that this trip would end sooner.

He arrived at the store, which oddly enough had it’s lights off despite historically being open for 24 hours, after an uneventful, lonely bout of zoning out and marching in a mildly straight line. Much to his dismay, as he walked up to what used to be the front door to read a piece of paper that was stapled to a plywood slab, the store had in fact closed 2 months ago, thereby ending a chapter of Tal’s life. To make matters even worse, there was probably no other shop in the city that offered corn chips and iced tea at 11 PM on Christmas Eve, at least, not one that he was willing to seek out.

What a merry Christmas this is turning out to be, he thought, turning around to go back to his homely home aboard an old Scimitar.