"Raven...I'm not sure about this..."

Today was another contract on Rubicon for the silent mercenary that was Raven.

She'd talk a lot more if it didn't hurt so much to do so—her augmentations made sure that her vocal cords tore like paper whenever she used them.

Life on the war-torn planet was...interesting.

She'd made a name for herself, sure, but she didn't quite understand what that name meant for her—Raven didn't have a reason for herself, only ones given by others.

Of course, she had Ayre—she was nice to her, which was something she couldn't say for many others.

And, yeah, Ayre was a sentient bit of Coral stuck in her head, but it wasn't so bad...

...she soothed her, in the eternal pain that was her life as a fourth-gen augmented human.

She was a good pilot, one of the best, and Ayre made her better.

They were a dynamic duo unlike any other, and it showed, in how every one of her contracts ended with the enemy—the enemy at the time, she was a freelancer—reduced to molten slag, and a couple digits added to her account.

Now was one of those contracts—though this one was one of the rarer ones, an assassination.

Some pilot was proving a pain for the RLF, and Rusty was busy, so that left it to Raven.

She'd calmed Ayre's worries in her mind—she was the best...

...nobody was like her...

...like them.

"Good hunting, 621, I'll see you when you get back," Walter spoke in her ear, his coms going silent a moment later.

Raven continued on, streaking across the skyline in her Core at mach four, eyes perceptive even as everything was nothing but a blur.

And then...

"Raven! I've got a signature, bearing forty-one, closing fast!"

Seems this was it.

She'd spotted the Core sooner than she expected to, though it didn't matter.

What she wasn't expecting, was for the other Pilot to stop—their thousand-ton, near forty-foot-tall machine of war's feet digging trenches into the asphalt of the road to slow down.

She followed suit, her own AC pausing a ways before the other.