A certain mister Ravis maneuvered his way through the tight corners of an awfully familiar-looking archaeological dig site, one hand keeping his trusty carbine shouldered while the other wafted at the thin, yet still uncomfortable layer of white smoke drifting idly in the air. By the smell of it, there was a paper fire somewhere in the cave complex, likely set by the resident Zoner research team in order to cover up their work, and he hoped they hadn’t gone and destroyed everything in anticipation of a Core raid. Anxiously picking up the pace, he covered his mouth with the sleeve of his khaki-colored, high-speed-low-drag combat shirt, the intensifying whitish-gray haze irritating his throat and lungs. Coughing down here could easily give his position away to some marauding Zoner hiding in the shadows with a radioactive twinkie, and dying definitely wasn’t something he was planning on doing anytime soon. Not down here, or like that, anyways.

Eventually, he stumbled upon the end of the winding maze of a cave: a hollowed-out cavern re-purposed into a sorting room for all sorts of artifacts. The residual layer of smoke seemed to be somewhat less intense here, the source of it being a lonely, flickering barrel fire left to burn in the corner. Tal slowly moved his left hand from his mouth back up to his carbine’s vertical foregrip, reaching a thumb up onto the weapon’s handguard to depress a duct tape-smothered pressure switch, which was hooked up to a fancy weapon light/IR laser combo. A bright cone of white light thus shot forth from the end of his rifle and he swept the room with the muzzle, ready to give any lurker two to the chest and one to the head.

To his bloodthirsty dismay, however, the room was entirely devoid of people and dead silent, bar some stray buzzing from a small oscillating fan sitting on a plastic table that someone forgot to turn off on their way out. He swept the stalactite-dotted ceiling one more time with the flashlight before assuming that it was clear, and he started forwards into a sea of white plastic tables, scanning each one with the light on his rifle. Whoever worked here did a great job of covering their tracks by the looks of it, as every single examination table had been cleared of any xeno artifacts of interest, assuming there were any in the first place, and only some pebbles and mud-encrusted tools remained.

Disappointed, Tal relaxed, letting his carbine drop to his side on its three-point sling as he sighed and rubbed his face with a gloved hand. He’d been delayed by engine problems on Yaren, buying the researchers enough to time to grab everything they could and burn the re--wait, what was that?

Out of the corner of his half-opened right eye, he saw a peculiar-looking crate, sitting smack-dab in the middle of a square formation of folding tables, and instinctively he raised and pointed his weapon at it, squeezing the life out of the pressure switch as if it’d make the light brighter and things easier to see. It was a typical black utility box labeled FRAGILE in faded white capital letters, looking not unlike a typical plastic cooler used at parties, with an olive-green cylindrical bag sitting comfortably next to it. Carefully, he crept towards it, pushing a table out of the way so that he was set to be just about right on top of it. A voice in the back of his mind told him to be mindful of any booby-traps, since there was pretty much nothing else of value in the room and nobody would just leave something valuable sitting in the open like this, but hey, at this point, he had nothing to lose, so he took up a kneel next to the box.

He drew his handy pistol from a thigh holster with his right hand, pointing it at the crate while he reached over with his left and lifted the top-mounted handle up, prying the cover off and throwing it some ways away with a loud clatter. The inside didn’t hold any kind of bomb or rabid animal, thankfully, although the layout was definitely peculiar. There were four deep rectangular cutouts that he could make out in the dim lighting of the cave, obviously intended to hold something big or bulky, and a little red thing sitting in one of the holes that he couldn’t. Quickly, he holstered his pistol and brought the carbine’s handguard back around, activating the light to reveal a chunk of red crystal still encrusted in rock. He slowly stood up from his squat, bringing his carbine out from under his arm so that he could more naturally point it at the box. He’d found something now, maybe even a valuable xeno artifact, down here, but one more question remained.

Where the hell were the other three?

Tal sat alone and in silence at a cafe on New Tokyo, stirring idly at a milky-tan cup of iced coffee with a cute little wooden stick that was adorned with a pink parasol at the end. He didn’t normally stoop to drinking coffee, being primarily a consumer of Libertonian iced tea, but judging by the blank expression the cashier gave him when he asked for “a can of Arizona”, they didn’t have any in this joint. Instead of throwing a fit, he simply gave up and went with a small iced coffee, so he could dip out and take a seat at a corner booth before a marauding gang of ninja warriors walked in and cut his head off for being a filthy gaijin.

Sighing, he checked his watch. His associate was supposed to have been here 20 minutes ago...

Tal looked up from his depressing cup of coffee when he heard the door swing open, immediately reaching an arm up to cover the lower half of his face. The hoodie that he was wearing, all black except for a subdued-gray Libertonian flag printed on the right breast, stood out considerably from the bright, cheery atmosphere of the cafe, although it did wonders to block Komachi from seeing Tal's amusement at the fact that she was thoroughly soaked in rainwater. He watched her as she trudged over to the table, heavy raindrops dripping down from her hair onto the linoleum floor with little pitter-patters that he could kinda hear between the wet squeaks that her shoes made, snickering quietly to himself until she got close enough to pull out a chair.

Once she sat down and scooted in, he dropped his arm from his face and leaned forwards onto the somewhat shiny, wobbly metal table, arms crossed with his elbows resting on the edge. He looked just as out of place as Komachi did, being, well, not Kusarian, although it didn't seem to bother him all that much. After all, he was dry. While she whined on and on about Nauru or something again, he reached over with his left hand and used the little parasol to stir at his coffee, breaking up the little glob of powdered creamer that was sitting pretty on top of his drink and causing it to enter a mesmerizing swirl.

Komachi's finger entering his peripheral vision snapped him back to reality, and he looked up to find her pointing at the little cup of drank.

"You're not seriously going to drink that, are you?" she said, giving him more of that typical 'tude that made him want to straight up backhand her across the face.

"Of course I'm gonna drink this," he declared, a bit quietly as he didn't want to raise too much commotion, "I paid 20 credits for this shit."

He grabbed the cup and took a quick sip, grimacing a bit as the bitter, half-creamy coffee slid down his throat. They only had pure grain sugar here, which didn't dissolve in iced coffee very well, so he was effectively drinking a cup of sugar-on-the-bottom muddy water that smelled like turpentine. Stifling a gag, he coughed to the side, over his right shoulder, and returned to his guest. "Anyways, yeah," he started, clearing his throat, "New Core job, but this time it's different. None of that stank-smelling shithole of a planet called Nauru anymore, no sirree."

He reached over to his right and pulled a manila folder out of his backpack, opening it halfway so that he could draw a document from it, lazily tossing the folder aside and unfolding the sheet of paper, splaying it out on the table for her to see. "This right here is an old temple on Nauru of some indiscriminate alien design. Now, hear me out before you get pissed," he said, pointing at various spots of the diagram as he went, "Core researchers have tried to get into this place, but it's sealed up pretty tight. Nobody knows what it looks like on the inside, so they've ruled out cracking it open with a few blocks of plastic explosive in case they blow up something important. Instead, they found four altars on the corners of the wall surrounding this temple, with each one having a differently-shaped hole hammered into it. They've assumed that putting something in these holes would unlock the main door, but up until now, they had no idea as to what would actually open the damn thing up."

He took a pause, turning back to the folder to pull out a somewhat blurry picture of the red artifact he had found months earlier, taken by him inside of the cave. The flash illuminated the crystalline artifact fairly well, all things considered, and Tal took pride in being able to take such a good picture with a crappy secondhand camera that he threw in one of his vest pouches before he set out.

"I, uh, found this 'thing' in a box in some Zoner research site, and it turns out that it just might be part of our key in. Core just got back to me last week, tellin' me that they've cleaned this thing up and cross-referenced this with other science-y shit they prolly stole from some Zoners that were on Nauru, and it turns out that I hit the fuckin' jackpot. This thing right here is part of the key in, but the only problem is that we need three more of these diamond crystal things to actually get the temple open. As far as findin' 'em goes, the Core's got me some leads, but actually getting them is pretty much entirely up to us." He took a quick breath before delivering his ultimatum.

"Pay for this one's pretty good, at least, compared to the other jobs we've had. What do you say?"

He grabbed his cup and leaned back in his chair, forcing himself to take a long swig of coffee even though it tasted like absolute garbage.

Tal set the cup of coffee back onto the table, struggling to swallow the sip he took with a particularly twisted facial expression as she voiced her various concerns. With a mildly audible gulp, he forced it down, immediately moving his head to his bicep and coughing in an attempt to get the flavor of bitter water out of his mouth. While he was busy trying not to vomit, Komachi had reached over and taken his mini-parasol, and he looked up just in time to find her fumble with it between her fingers and drop it on the floor before asking him when they'd start.

With his proposal and plan laid out already, and since he wanted to dip out of this joint quicker than his dad dipped out of his life, he began to pack up his elaborate diagram as he answered her three questions.

"Yeah, uh, just know that they're gonna pay us enough," he claimed, folding the relatively large sheet of paper up, "I had an exact quote from 'em memorized earlier, but I forgot it after this 'coffee' nearly killed me." Quickly, he took a pause and reached across the table to snatch up the picture he took, stuffing it into the manila folder along with the sloppily-folded diagram and slipping the folder back into his handy backpack.

"As far as leads go, they've got us one really good one and some kinda spotty ones," he said, tapering his voice down to a whisper in order to not attract too much unwanted attention to them, "I'll tell you more about it when we're not in public." It wasn't the most convincing tone he'd ever given someone, but the information he had was not something that he was particularly comfortable with disclosing in public, especially in a relatively empty, quiet cafe with all eyes on him like he was Tupac.

"And lastly, we can start whenever the hell we want, but uh, let's get the outta here first."

He took up his backpack and lazily slung one of the straps over his left shoulder, taking his cup of coffee and standing up, preparing to leave.

"We're going somewhere else," he replied through his teeth, evidently annoyed without the slightest bit of sexual undertone in his voice, "And yeah, I got you. Wish I didn't, though." His voice trailed off during his last sentence, allowing him to be comfortably smug as his snide comments without fear of repercussions.

Tal then made a beeline for the exit, ignoring the rest of Komachi's concerns as he pushed the lightweight glass door wide open, stepping out of the cafe and onto the streets of New Tokyo. A series of aluminum bells hooked up to the door jingled audibly, signalling his departure, and he took in a deep breath of fresh, crisp, thunderstorm air, sighing in relief after having been forced to breathe the stench of working-class Kusarians for half an hour.

Rainwater dripped down from the edges of the awning above him, but thankfully the dry rectangular "cutout" it made in the sidewalk was large enough for him to comfortably manuever his free left hand around back to flip his hella-tactical hood over his head, which was adorned with a hella-tactical black beanie. He wasn't one for big umbrellas, since they were unwieldly and definitely not tactical unless one possessed an Eight Diagram Pole Fighter-level of polearm expertise. Smaller umbrellas, on the other hand, were better reserved for people who had no respect for themselves, and as such he opted for the simpler, more utilitarian look, although with a hood and beanie on he looked more like an anarchist Zoner or something than an intergalactic hero.

While waiting for Komachi to get her useless ass outside, he began to take a sip of his coffee, figuring that he might as well finish off what was left of it before it ended up becoming a collection container for rainwater. At the same time, he casually stuffed his free left hand into the respective pocket of his khaki utility pants, moving his feet shoulder-width apart and standing confidenty with a swagger that was unmatched by any other individual in the Sirius Sector.

At the mere mention of Eliza Valdez's name, Tal immediately withdrew his lips from the edge of his coffee cup, taking a quick second to process what Komachi had just asked before spewing the contents of his mouth all over the sidewalk with a loud PFFFFFFFFT. He wasn't sure if his spit take was caused more by the question or by the fact that his drink was just a gooey mass of sugar sitting pretty at the bottom of his cup, but he sure as hell wasn't about to let this rumor slide by like this.

"How--what, who--how do you know who Eliza is?" he stuttered, reaching his left hand up to mop up the residual goop on his chin and flick it into the distance, "Did someone tell you?"

He paused to spread his arms wide, accidentally (or not) slapping Komachi lightly in the face, and stepped back from the cone of coffee now on the floor so that he could more safely look down to see if he'd gotten any coffee on his precious hoodie or 5.11s. Noticing no new, suspiciously brown stains on his clothing, he breathed a sigh of relief and continued.

"She, uh, she was just some random sniffer who hung around Freeport 11 at the same time I did, around the time that first Core-Zoner conflict shit popped off. Why?"