Desert Treasure

[t0l]

"Hey, you hear about Sapphire Raven?"

Tal, who had previously been slumped over the watchtower's single heavy pulse laser whilst staring out at a vast nothingness, looked up and over his right shoulder to find a fellow mercenary drawing a phallic object on the wall with a black marker. While he raised an eyebrow at him, he decided that it would be against his interests to report this "blatant defamation" (whatever the hell that meant) of Core property since snitches got stitches, plus he'd adorned the wall with his own trademark phallus once too.

"Who?" he had replied, to a man who was obviously a bit to absorbed in his vandalism.

"The purple spandex-wearing space ninja-woman."

"Oh, her! Yeah, what about her?"

"I overheard Hawken talking about how she left the Core."

Tal returned to leaning on the weapon emplacement, letting out a long sigh and taking a few seconds to process that information. Then, he realized something.

"Does that mean I get to go home?" he had asked, with a single bead of sweat irritating him as it slowly dripped down his cheek. His stomach growled incredibly loudly in the ensuing silence, most likely from the dodgy synth-gel he just consumed a few minutes ago.

"...No."

"Then why should I care?"

The mercenary lowered his marker for a second, looking around aimlessly while having a good, long thought about what Tal had just said. "Good point" was all he could stammer out before he decided to bury his face back into the mural of signatures, phrases, and unsightly artwork that surrounded them while they were on post. Tal simply rolled his eyes and sighed, moving both of his arms into a crossed position atop the box-like weapon so that he could comfortably rest his head and hopefully catch some Zs.

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