[color=f26522]"Scrap? You must be a hell of a mechanic if you can make something like [i]that[/i] out of scrap."[/color]

Ray continued to watch the ground for anything that looked like a large depression, occasionally looking up to tune what few short-range scanners the Hyllos possessed, clearing his map of radio-born fuzz.

[color=f26522]"For me, I was a hotshot no-name recruit in the Armed Police Unit, Gallop. We were tasked with bringing down an incursion of Mad Cars, machines that had been hijacked by the Bydo- actually, maybe I should start at the beginning. Where I come from, humanity has been at war with the Bydo Empire. I don't know the full details, but from what the lab boys and my old drill sergeant told me, they're some kind of bioweapon from the 26th century, come back in time to wipe out the whole of humanity. So they'd hijacked this place's infrastructure and rounded up a whole bunch of mutants- poor bastards hadn't even realized they'd been taken."[/color]

Reflexively, Ray reached under his seat for a pack of cigarettes, before remembering he no longer smoked. [i]Could[/i] he still smoke? If he could talk, that must mean he still had lungs and a mouth, right? It felt so [i]natural[/i], being like this. Like his body had always been [i]meant[/i] to be this way. He shuddered.

[color=f26522]"Sorry. Remembered something I shouldn't have. Anyway, after my Gallop days, I joined the Space Corps. Got my nickname during the conflict with the Solar Liberation League- from what I recall, it came down to conducting research on the Bydo and something about ethics. I was a soldier, so I didn't pay it much mind. Long story short, we won, the Bydo attacked again shortly after, and I ended up transferred away from the front after sustaining life-threatening injuries, which the lab boys took as permission to turn me into... well, this. Can't really complain, since I signed the forms when I was recruited and all, but damned if I didn't give them hell all the same. After that-"[/color]

A faint depression appeared on the edge of Ray's map. A glacial valley? No, too rounded, and it looked like it had a steep dropoff after the first twenty meters. More telling, Ray felt- tasted? The telltale pulse of a living creature. The sinkhole. He set the Nova to stand by above the depression as a relay station, allowing the pair to remain in touch with the base if anything went wrong. Preperations made, he slowed to a hovering stop as they reached the edge of the phenomenon.

[color=f26522]"Looks like we've found our target, Mr. Nagare. Careful on your way down, the walls might be fragile."[/color]