Hours after Omar made his call and we spent some time together to pass time, having the privilege of tasting some of his personal reserve of beer, the Raider’s ship appeared on the skies in the direction of a previously accorded meeting place at the city’s outskirts. The vehicle hovered over my position and, without landing, transported three of the rebels to the ground, the violent Lycus Dion, the cyborg Konstantin and Harec, their leader. The white-haired man walked towards me, but the Eternal Soldier pushed him aside as he came to me with an extremely volatile temper.

“If this is a fucking joke you’re dead”, Dion said, showing me his sharp teeth and gifting me with a dose of his breath. I wondered if the man was in some manner related to an unknown species of land shark and what the fuck he had taken into his mouth to have a breath that rivaled with his reputation. Much to my surprise, he was able to scare my dog, who cowered behind my legs as the soldier stood in front of me.

I showed Lycus the case where I kept the cassette and opened it, showing him his precious possession. The redhead took the mixtape and the player and quickly connected it to a pair of headphones he had brought along to check the object’s veracity. I could see the mix of impatience and hope emanating from Dion as he waited for the music to start after he pressed the play button, eventually turning into an ever-increasing smile as he followed the rhythm with his head and began to play an invisible air guitar.

“Fuck yes, finally!”, The soldier said in an incredible joy before taking his shotgun from the holster and firing it in the air, laughing and shouting like a possessed maniac and singing along with the song, making quite the memorable scene, “Yeah!”

Then, suddenly, Dion turned to me and gave me a hug with his mechanical arms, lifting me in the air, as he thanked me repeatedly, “If you ever want to kill or beat the fuck outta someone, just give me a call man”, He offered me in exchange for the favor I had just made him.

When I was finally free from Lycus’ iron grasp the leader of the Raiders walked towards me, leaving the Eternal Soldier to enjoy his music. As I finally faced Harec, I was hypnotized by his glowing eye and the black substance around it, different from the one that composed his clothes. I knew a bit about it, but seeing it in person was different than I had imagined.

“I guess you haven’t done this out of charity”, the man said to me, taking me away from his eye.

“No”, I answered after I collected my thoughts back into order, “I wanted to interview you and your Raiders”.

“An interview?”, The native asked me, reminding me that journalism was a foreign concept on the Broken Planet.

“A long chat with a lot of questions which I would like to spread around the planet”, I explained to him as I tried to control my excitement, finally having reached my objective. “Not a bad deal if you ask me”.

The man contemplated my demand in silence for a few seconds before finally giving me the awaited answer.

“Fine”.

“Rusty, start recording”