Here We Go Again

[t0l]

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?"

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