[color=00a651]"Slowly,"[/color] Sloan quipped, biting down on the tip of his straw with a quick grin.

Nadia had a point, though. On his way over, he'd stopped to buy a newspaper and see what was poppin', and what he seen had put him in a bad mood for almost an hour. The obituaries page was the size of a CEO's last will and testament, which didn't [i]quite[/i] match up with the paper's crime blotter being so small that it could have passed for a CEO's [i]tax filings.[/i] It was the first time the thought had crossed Sloan Negasi's mind that he'd been sent here to die. He'd been working on making it the last. 

Progress was a little mixed right now.

Nadia probably had similar concerns; his Dagula training practically demanded that he notice the way she rubbed her neck, or the tone in her voice as she tossed around the mission parameters himself. What his Dagula training [i]didn't[/i] drill into him was empathy and quiet confidence; to someone who had been thrown into this situation head-first and blindfolded just like the rest of them, hell, even [i]Sloan[/i] would have appreciated a new friend.

[color=00a651]"Hey, I'm sure nobody here is jonesing for anything too action movie-esque. Ain't what we trained for,"[/color] he said, trying to compel himself to believe that held true for even people like Murphy and Suzumi. [color=00a651]"The boss fooled us all with that barista trick, no matter what he's actin' like now, and even Marlowe's more mellow than I gave him credit for. If there's trouble, it's probably gonna wait until we all get to know each other first."[/color]