Adrian dismissively waved his hand. “This is par for the course on bandit business. They only look tough, because they pick on civvies that’re even worse fighters than they are. Like, sure, one or two [i]might[/i] have had some formal training, but picking on lightweights makes them way softer than they think they are. We’ll have to see exactly what things look like once we get on the ground—weatherman’s hardly ever right—then we can decide how to handle it. Hopefully without having to do too much work.” He chuckled and steadied himself against the table as he turned away. “Anyway, it’ll be gotime soon, so I’m gonna make sure everything’s alright in the hangar. Seeya in a bit.” Adrian stopped with one leg still slung over the seat of the bench and looked back at Aidan. “Oh, I probably don’t have to say about how that stuff—”he gestured to the soda can in Aidan’s hand—“Goes clean through you. Just saying, don’t forget, no outhouses in the badlands.” Adrian slipped away and melted into the halls of the cruiser as he traveled to the GEAR bay.
---

	“Anything different today?” Adrian asked the crew chief as he set up to scale his GEAR. The buck shook his head.

	“After what you did in the past drills, I’m afraid of what might happen if we make you use anything else.” Adrian rolled his eyes as he opened the hatch. “We [i]did[/i] give you a few auxiliaries—extra ammo, a little flare launcher, beer keg—“ The mention of alcohol being fitted to his GEAR caught Adrian’s attention well enough that he nearly lost his balance and tumbled to the bay floor.

	“What?” He shouted dumbly as he pulled himself upright and clung onto the edge of the hatch a little tighter than before.

	“Care package. For the civvies.” A beat of silence hung over the L-68’s stall before Adrian spoke again.

	“There’d better not be—“

	“The extra ammo offset your GEAR, so we put a small tank of water on the other side as ballast,” The crew chief explained, placating Adrian enough that he could slip into the cockpit of his GEAR and run his startup checks as the crew cleared away.

	“You didn’t really just…?” One of the technicians whispered to the chief.
	“For a second there, I thought he was gunna have me take it off.”
	“Isn’t there a regulation against that? Anything?”
	“Regulation, shmegulation.”