"Hey, hey! Where are you going?" Lenny asked John as he saw that John walking toward the other tunnel."I"m going to investigate. My PIPS is receiving some radio signal coming from there" John indifferently answered.
"What? Are you mad? Don"t you remember the monster that just came from there?"
"Mother Poptops are extremely compet.i.tive, aggressive and protective creatures. They wouldn"t allow another Mother Poptop, or any type of creature, to make a nest near their own. In other words, the path is cleaned from any possible threat"
"Okay, I get it. But wasn"t your job as a Protector, or something like that, to protect the weak, innocent and whatever?"
"You? Weak? Innocent?" John amusedly laughed, "You are way better than me, a trained soldier, in using weapons, even in face of danger you are able to stay calm. This is peculiarities earned only by experience, a lot of it"
"Well... But aren"t I a suspect of the murder?" Lenny curiously asked.
"Not anymore. When I threw the handcuffs you placed them without hesitation, and when I was facing danger you didn"t take the chance to kill me. But Oscar, on the other hand, hesitated to put the handcuffs and when danger arrived he left immediately fled, leaving us both behind without hesitation and blew the entrance of the tunnel, trapping us here"
"Uh. You really observed well..."
"Of course. Observation skills are one of the basic one if you want to be a Terrene Protectorate" John proudly said.
"Whatever..."
John stopped walking and looked at Lenny who was behind him, "Why are you following me?"
"I can"t mine all of that alone you know. I didn"t bring enough food to stay here for 7 days" Lenny shrugged his shoulders.
"What makes you think I have enough food?"
"Because you looked pretty calm when you said that we need to stay here for that long"
John facepalmed himself, [Great... now I have an extra mouth to feed] John sighed, [Think positive John. He is a person in need. Right, that"s it! I"m only helping a person in need]
"Alright you can tag along"
"I would whatever you wanted or not"
"Are you always this annoying?"
"No... But if I try hard enough it isn"t that difficult"
"Just... Just shut up"
And like this, both John and Lenny walked deeper into the mine.
"By the way what is your name?" Lenny asked John. They have stopped their walk and were currently seating around a campfire that John had made.
"John Connor..." Answered John while he prepared to put a few bird meat in the blaze.
"John, what a generic name. I will call you Connor than"
John almost dropped the meat in the fire, "So... What is going on between you and Oscar" John tried to change the conversation topic
"That f.u.c.ker is a son of a b.i.t.c.h..." John was surprised to know that Lenny had come up with more than 100 degenerative words to describe Oscar in less than 2 minutes, "That guy betrayed me. He stabbed me at the back when I least expected"
"That was a recent event?" John instantly became interested.
"No, it happened 16 years ago. We were both Explorers. We roamed freely in the universe, together we explored more than a 100 worlds" Lenny deeply gazed at the burning fire, reminiscing the past, "We were like brothers, but it all suddenly changed when he met a female human called Ferris Laparte. He started to get more aggressive, merciless and... cold. I don"t know what she did to him, but it completely changed him..."
"..."
Lenny continued, "I started to notice his changes, but I thought it would pa.s.s with time. I was wrong. It all changed for me in a single night. We were exploring a distant planet, we found what appeared to be an old USCM (Universal s.p.a.ce Corporate Military) facility. Inside there we found what appeared to be a project for a Bioweapon. I didn"t want to have this kind of thing, but all that mattered for Oscar at that point was if that Data Memory was going to please Ferris. I became enraged because of that and tried to destroy the Memory, but Oscar didn"t let me do it. He literally stabbed me at the back, took the Data Memory and fled with our ship, leaving me there, to... die"
Lenny reached his hand and took a slice of roasted bird meat, "I escaped the planet through a mysterious portal that leads me to what it called, Challenge Room. I was forced to stay inside there for one year before I found the exit portal. The challenge was a survival one. I had to stay alive while facing the most dangerous adversities and... Ops. Sorry, I deviated from what I was saying. Ahem, continuing, I left the planet, found a city and bought a ship. I spent the last 15 years working as a Bounty Hunter, looking for him and honing my skills. 5 days ago I received a bounty to hunt down a Novakid outlaw that was running rampant at Sector Gamma. I followed the trails and I found out that the outlaw was Oscar, and thus it began our game of catch for 3 whole days until I was able to destroy his FTL Drive. He had no choice but land on this planet. I followed him here and we began trying to kill each other again. The rest you know about it. He killed the middle-aged man because he wanted to take his resources, but I arrived almost at the same time, so he had no choice but leave everything behind and keep running until he found this cave"
John ate his dinner while he was listening to Lenny"s tale, [So it"s a pretty huge grudge between both of them], John suddenly remembered something, [Ferris Laparte... I know this name, but from where?]
"And you?" Lenny interrupted John"s thoughts, "What are doing on this distant planet?"
"Ahhh... It"s a long story, well... not really" John then started to tell Lenny about his history as well. Since Lenny already told something very personal nothing fairer than doing the same.