The mission briefing was short and sweet. Planet Epicurea, breathable air, drinkable water, food that wouldn't melt your stomach, matriarchical society unusually fond of procedure and posturing. The plan was to find an object of interest (description helpfully provided by the ship), negotiate for it, then return to the rendezvous coordinates before Stacy decided to leave without them. So simple, only three crew members would be assigned to carry out the mission.

Anwei Ayles, whose negotiation skills and extensive experience dealing with alien races (especially slightly snooty ones) would no doubt prove eminently useful for the delicate nature of the bargaining that would take place,

Howard Bassem, whose intrinsic understanding of diplomacy and unorthodox means of obtaining information would smooth over any rough edges (and maybe help grease the wheels a little behind the scenes), and last of all --

[ooc -- Anyone's free to barge in during the first subthread ("Mission Briefing") if they like, the rest of the post is only Anwei, Howard, and Zouichi :) ]

Bowser, acting as Zetta's VERY reluctant minion thanks to a bet gone horribly, horribly wrong, has been keeping himself busy by doing heavy lifting and drudge labor for the past couple of months... while complaining loudly, dragging his clawed feet, and generally being as obnoxious as possible, which helps explain WHY this state of affairs has dragged on for so long.

Shore leave is no different, especially since Zetta somehow managed to earn himself boatloads of money to play with.

Right now, Bowser's SUPPOSED to be hauling a small mountain of Zetta's purchases back to the ship posthaste. Instead, he's doing his OWN shopping, which involves yelling at some unfortunate stall owner while leaving Zetta's goods haphazardly piled next to him.

"-- you've gotta be kidding me! Someone's gotta be selling lava on this dump of a planet! EVERYONE knows that a castle's almost useless without a moat of molten rock, and you're telling me that you don't have it!? What kind of shoddy business are you idiots running!? And another thing-!!"

 Karis had been spending more time planetside. She didn't mind the ship that much, but it was still nice to get off of it. Even if everything looked the same. She didn't much remember how things looked in color (dim, hazy memories, like a dream). Everything was in the same black, white, grey as it always was. This was her world now. Years and years of it had desensitized her to it. But, there was one place in the twisting maze of shops and bazaars where she felt like she'd found something worthwhile. 

An array of fountains. She could still hear and the trickle of water was pleasant enough. Well, would've been if there hadn't been people around to irritate her. Stupid people. So, Karis was pushing her way through the crowd, judiciously throwing elbows when she felt the need to clear a path. Most people avoided her anyway. Something caught her eye and she half-turned; a familiar figure. The Doctor. Hmmph. What was he doing out here?

She pushed her way through the crowd to get to him.

"Hey! Doc!"

Sakura figured she should probably be more annoyed than she was, crossing her arms and staring down the statue of her that was, consequentially, also crossing its arms and staring her down. Life imitating art was usually an expression she'd heard, not something she'd expressly seen. (Given the artists she knew, art wasn't even something held back to be appraised -- most shinobi artforms leaped out and grabbed you in some way or another.) She couldn't say she appreciated this particular example.

"Really funny. Can we move on now?" She unfolded her arms, clapping her hands together in the vain hope it would actually do something about the statue staring out at her.

Surprisingly, it did. The swirling inky whatever underneath the odd statue head produced another statue after a while, one that carried slightly more context than the last. Contorted awkwardly between dozens of jointed arms belonging to an unseen puppet, Sakura looked back in shocked frustration at someone left undepicted. "This isn't any better," she muttered, crossing her arms again.

[ ooc: For the curious, this is from her fight with Sasori. ]

While everyone else was busy going shopping down on the planet, Setsuna had more important things to do. Namely, take his Gundam out for a test run.

Everything had gone smoothly, and all systems were functional. Which bothered him a little bit. There had been certain subtleties to the 00, sometimes it would pull on a hairpin turn, an occasional rattle in the cockpit when he pushed past a certain speed... none of those things were there. The suit was perfect. Too perfect. It was almost as if the suit was brand new.

Except the 00 Raiser had been through hell, and the odds of its GN drives being repaired after Exia and 0 Gundam exploded were faint at best. It did have all the hallmarks of Celestial Being's craftmanship, but even so, Setsuna couldn't help but wonder where did this suit come from? And its GN drives? Two more questions to add to the growing pile, and he still had no answers.

"Gundam..."

As he exited the machine, he half expected to have Trudy screaming at him again about him not asking permission before launching previously. As if he needed her permission, or anyone else's, to take his own suit outside. But as he lowered himself from the cockpit to the ground, those concerns went right out the window as he noticed the two suits docked behind Dynames.

...so, he was here now. And off in the distance he could see that Tieria's suit, which had disappeared briefly, was back again. Which meant that the four of them were together again. The thought brought the smallest of smiles to the corner of his mouth, though only for a brief moment.

"Allelujah..."

As his feet hit the hangar floor, he scrapped whatever plans he did have. After all, if Arios, along with its predecessor Kryios, were both here, his comrade was sure to show up soon enough looking for them. Setsuna would just hang out by his own suits and wait for him.

Not long after the crew left XaXing, the ship had received a communication from the GIA, directed for Leon. In it was a new set of orders, ones that weren't part of Stacy's mission list, it seemed. After reviewing the orders, Leon put them into Stacy, which prompted an abrupt change of course.

While they were given more time than Stacy's usual routine of giving them their orders five minutes before dumping them off the ship, they still didn't have a lot of time to prepare, forcing Leon to call a meeting of some of his senior staff.

He was waiting for them in the briefing room that was just off the main bridge, a hologram of the world they were now headed to displayed over the conference table.