Over at The Garrison, the youngest field operative of the Rogue Special Forces was in the middle of a strenuous training session. The lithe young man, armoured from head to toe with a techno-organic shell, found himself squaring off against a squadron of hard-light projections within the Garrion’s training room. These projections, based on the abilities of the Summoner sub-class of channelers, had been tuned specifically to the young man’s abilities and designed to exploit his weaknesses in an attempt to foster his strength. Unfortunately, they had the undesired side effect a stoking his temper, a fact that tended to play out poorly for the room which housed the nascent technology responsible for their creation.

A loud growl escape this young man’s lips as two beams of concentrated zeta impacted his back, blasting chunks out of his protective shell before he could turn and return fire at their source. As he spun, the form fitting gauntlet that covered his arm morphed itself into a forearm mounted cannon, before unleashing a stream of rapid-fire projectiles in the direction of his attackers. In this case, his attackers were small autonomous drones, compiled from the code of one of Harry Benet’s abilities. As the young man turned to attack, the drone strafed his fire, narrowly avoiding the stream of projectiles before returning fire of its own.

The youngster cursed lightly as his body started to oscillate rapidly, attuning itself to the ambient zeta flows within the room before he found himself propelled from his location and reposition on the otherside of the arena. This quick movement forced the drone to recalibrate its targeting, giving him just enough time to take it out with another flurry of shots. His concentrated fire blasted the small attack vehicle into a nearby wall before it shattered into fragments of light and zeta energy then dissipated into nothingness. In the centre of the room, a small holographic display popped up, displaying the young man’s name, the current training routine and a number of tracked statistics about his performance.

“A new record.” He muttered to himself, still unimpressed with his performance as he began to review the other statistics.

Unfortunately, his analysis of his performance was cut short. His performance statistics were quickly replaced by the face of Harry Benet, which was now being displayed in the centre of the room.

“Hyaku—there you are—I need you to collect a civilian from Neo Brighton and bring him back here ASAP.” Harry stated, drawing a loud scoff from his subordinate.

“I wasn’t aware that ‘courier’ was one of my key duties.” Hyaku snarled in response, but Harry just rolled his eyes at the retort.

“Well Lieutenant, unfortunately for you, doing whatever your Vice Admiral says is.” Harry replied sternly. “And as acting Vice Admiral, I’m ordering you to collect Roun Itami from the capital.”

Hyaku’s gaze narrowed sharply at the command.

“Daniel will transfer the exact coordinates to your data comm.” Harry continued to ignore his displeasure. “I expect you’ll return and bring him to my office within the hour. Now get moving.”

Just as he had done with Roun, Harry ended his communique with Hyaku abruptly, causing the young man to snarl with annoyance. With a loud grunt, he forced his combat shell to return to its default configuration, taking on the shape of armour once more before he actively retracted the armour’s components into his body. Quickly, the armour liquefied and seeped into the Rogue Special Forces fatigues that he had been wearing beneath it, before the viscous fluid seeped into his pores and completely disappeared. Once this was complete, he walked over to the central console to disable the hard-light projector before turning and leaving the small training room.

A sharp left on his exit preceded a long walk down a now deserted hallway, one normally frequented by Rogue field operatives hustling back and forth, as they went about their daily tasks at the Garrison. Unfortunately, with the uptick of haima’sa activity within the capital, most of the Garrison’s field teams had been deployed to Neo Brighton, leaving Hyaku among a small skeleton staff manning the base. Another annoyed grunt escape him as he turned sharply once again and headed to the hangar, descending into an underground portion of the base that was the size of a major sporting stadium. The Garrison’s hangar housed a massive fleet, ranging from the small passenger vehicles to massive heavy assault craft designed for warfare; but what Hyaku would be looking for was somewhere in the middle.

As he rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairway, he made his way past the civilian transport vehicles and towards what could only be described as a contemporary take on the classic fighter jet. The unimaginatively named Zeta Wing was named after its retractable fin systems, which allowed the jet to narrow its footprint when parked. This allowed the Rogues to house a sizeable fleet of Hyaku’s second favourite vehicle on the Garrison’s grounds.

As he approached the craft, Hyaku attempted to connect to it using his data comm, a process the took a few seconds as his device and the ship’s on-board security systems went about the process of verifying his identity through the scanning of his zeta signature and biometrics. By the time he closed the distance between himself and the craft, the small canopy was already opening, allowing Hyaku climb into the pilot seat some three meters into the air with little more effort than what was required for a hop. In seconds he was strapped in and the canopy closed, allowing him to run through his pre-flight checks before the VTOL system brought the oddly thin jet off the ground and into a hover. All that was left to do was to activate the massive hangar bay doors, before Hyaku was zipping through the opening inside the Zeta Wing. Once on the outside, the retracted fin system expanded into more conventional wings. This gave the craft a look more reminiscent of a traditional fighter jet and, more importantly, unlocked its full flight capabilities, allowing Hyaku to accelerate sharply and he set his course for the capital.

What would normally have been twenty-minute drive via hyper rail took a mere three minutes in the Zeta Wing, which was neither confined by winding roads nor arbitrary speed limits. With maximum speeds well above mach-three, Hyaku wouldn’t even get the put the machine through its paces before he was cruising over the capital, looking for a clear spot where he could land the jet.

Back on the ground, the RSF branded fighter jet was hard to miss for the small group of six channelers, who had migrated to the outside of their favourite dining spot to wait for the mysterious Hyaku to show up. Roun and Tyler in particular watched as the wings of the jet retracted and the vehicle’s vertical thrust brought it down in the middle of the street just outside of The Watering Hole.

“When I join the Rogues, dibs on one of these.” Nicola whispered as she leaned toward Roun’s ear, drawing a light chuckle from the young man.

“I’ll make sure to reserve you one when we join up.” He smirked as it touched down.

The small group watched as the canopy popped up and Hyaku stood up in his seat, before hopping out of the cockpit and landing gracefully just a few metres away. He was just as Harry had described him: tall, surly and with a long, white pony-tail. Roun smirked lightly at the spot-on description.

“Hyaku, I presume.” Roun stated as he and Tyler approached the young man.

“Correct, and I assume that you’re Roun Itami.” He replied, drawing a nod from Roun.

“And this is Tyler Cage, she’s my partner for placements.” Hyaku’s eyebrow tipped upwards at the statement, more puzzled by its relevance than anything else.

Roun’s gaze narrowed, as it now dawned on him that amidst his strange conversation with Harry, he’d completely forgotten to mention that Tyler would be accompanying him. He sighed lightly at the oversight.

“She’s coming with us.” Roun explained, this time causing Hyaku to narrow his gaze in response.

“Those aren’t my orders.” He retorted, but Roun just smirked.

“Entirely fair.” He nodded. “But I’m not coming with you unless she comes with me.”

Hyaku scoffed loudly at the response, his gaze narrowing even further.

Roun just chuckled, thinking that if his eyes got any more narrow, he’d be unable to see.

“The Zeta Wing only seats two.” Hyaku replied, his tone laced with annoyance at the exchange that was drawing on much longer than he’d prefer.

“That’s alright—” Tyler spoke up as she stepped forward now, drawing a light chuckle from Roun. “He can sit in my lap.” Her statement drew light laughter from the entire group, with the exception of Hyaku.

The surly RSF operative just gazed at the two youngsters with a no-nonsense look on his face, prompting Roun to chime in.

“We can both fit in the back.” Roun affirmed. “And unless you plan on crashing between here and the Garrison, we should be good.”

“Even if you do, we’d probably survive it, honestly.” Tyler mused, but Hyaku had had enough.

Once more he simply growled, but at this point he couldn’t be bothered to argue with the two young channelers.

“Look... whatever – I’ve only got twenty-minutes to get you back to The Garrison and at least half of that will be taken up with security checks.” He scoffed loudly. “Get in the jet, and let’s be off.”

Roun and Tyler nodded, waiting for Hyaku to turn his back to them and begin moving back towards the Zeta Wing before they both began shaking with excitement. All Hyaku could do as he hopped back into the vehicle’s canopy was shake his head and sigh heavily at the day’s developments.

“I did not sign up for this…”