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Crosshair hopped down the stairs of the Marauder, taking a look around.
“Have you seen Tech?” he then asked Hunter who was doing … Hunter things.
“Huh?” Hunter looked up at him. “No, I haven’t.”
They were both quiet for a moment, Crosshair waiting for Hunter to keep talking.
“Well?” he prompted after a second.
“What?”
“Is he close?”
“Oh. No.”
Crosshair rolled his eyes. “Second mission and we already lost someone. That’s a good track.”
Hunter only shrugged and turned back to whatever he was doing. “He can handle himself.”
“I still need him. I need to ask about the modification he made to my scope.” But Hunter was already not listening anymore, and Crosshair gave up, wandering over to bother Wrecker for a bit.
When the sun set and Tech was still not back, he started to get antsy. Crosshair had tried to reach him on his comm, to no avail.
“Hunter, I’m going to search for him,” he announced when he couldn’t take it anymore, not waiting if Hunter had acknowledged him.
Crosshair remembered seeing him leave the clearing where they had landed in that direction, so he tried to follow one of the countless animal paths around. However, he knew Tech - hadn’t known him for a long time - he could be everywhere. Stuck in a tree, or a gorge, or a cave, or just happily sitting somewhere, totally forgetting the time.
For now, there was a pretty clear path he could still follow. A broken branch here, a foot print there, but when the underbrush cleared it proved to be more difficult.
Crosshair huffed and tried to call Tech again, to no avail. He couldn’t believe it, they’d been off Kamino for three weeks, gotten a day off while waiting for the planet to pass an asteroid field that would make it impossible to pass the atmosphere and that’s where they lost their first member. Not even in combat. How embarrassing.
Maybe they should have gone with Tech’s idea to implant trackers in all of them.
Crosshair sighed and stopped at the forest, looking around. He was almost about to turn back and try a different direction when something white caught his eye in the twilight.
They’d spent hours trying to convince Tech to go with grey armor instead of white, to be less visible to enemies. Now, Crosshair was glad about the color, easy to spot even in the darkness.
He slid down the slope and turned towards Tech. The other didn’t even look up or flinch - but not too absorbed in whatever he was studying, because Crosshair noticed the twitch in his head. He had recognized his footsteps, then.
“What are you doing?” Crosshair asked when he didn’t see anything obvious.
“I’m going to see fire flies.”
“Oh. Okay." He looked around, but couldn’t spot any. “Where are they?”
“Over there.” Tech pointed towards a bunch of orangish insects that looked more like sparks than anything else. Crosshair blinked.
“Those are not fireflies.” Fireflies were yellowish-green as far as he knew. Tech had talked about them a few times.
“Yes they are. Fire flies.”
Crosshair squinted when the orange glow grew.
“Tech, they’re setting the forest on fire!”
“As I said. Fire. Flies.”
“Our ship is in there!”
“Oh.”