A very groggy Jet stirs from under Wiccan, flicks into acceleration long enough to wake up, then stares blearily at Cipher Nine.

She is not doing the word thing after waking, nope.

"We were a bit worried, yeah. You okay now?"

"More or less. And you?"

"Getting a bit bored? Only so much binge watching dramas I can do..."

"Did you catch Nebula's Haze? An import from the old Tion Hegemony, it aired during their separation crisis about a century and a half back. Almost pure monarchist propaganda, but there were hidden rebel messages in the codec."

"Yeah, there was some neat stuff analyzing it too." She slides off Jet and out of bed, stretching. "Mostly watched more modern stuff, though, but that'd been recced a few places." Morning bounce. "So, what now?"

"That depends on how you feel about rakghoul nests and confined spaces."

"Sounds like - okay not fun, but better than sitting still."

"Great. The old Tarisians buried their power plants underground, and I'm about ninety percent sure the lab I'm looking for is in one."

"Anything dangerous past rakghouls?"

"I don't think so. The plants were pretty well hardened, and there's not all that much else on Taris."

She nods and gets up. She's fine with that - rakghouls are demonstrably not very dangerous to her.

"So we're getting going?"

"Nice as the accommodations here are, yes. I'm still on the clock."

She leads the way out and to a four-seat speeder she's requisitioned.

Fancy! And minimizes Wiccan tripping over random stuff. Though she might want to fly once they're out of sight of the base...

Jet flops into the speeder. She is perfectly fine not running everywhere.

"We'll be picking up one more brave adventurer to join our merry little band," she says once they've cleared the base.

"Oh? What're they like?"

"His name is Doctor Eckard Lokin. He is, apparently, a specialist in rakghouls."

"What's he studying?"

"And I'm guessing no power use around him?"

"He's trying to tame rakghouls, or something like that. I did a little digging; it turns out he is or was a scientist affiliated with Imperial Intelligence, back in the day. He vanished off the grid about a decade and a half ago, so either he's been running some seriously black ops or he's gone rogue. Given his, uh, nonexistent support setup out here, my money's on the latter. He knows I'm a Cipher, but he also knows I'm working with the Republic and that I know he's gone rogue. So there's some secrets trading going on already. It's up to you if you want to take part in it."

Glance at Wiccan. "Our initial setup?" she asks.

"Man, it's been years since that whole 'Asgardian' thing." To Cipher Nine: "So we spent a while pretending to have different powers way back when. I'll stick to flight and lightning, unless something weird happens, and Jet will be mostly like accelerated reflexes, super strength."

"Works for me. What's an Asgardian?"