After a little bit of post-gunfight therapy, James helps Jack up to his feet, and the two racers walk over to Antonio, who's celebrating with his men. They seem oddly jovial, despite the fact that they'd lost a few men in the process of all of this, but perhaps that's just the nature of their line of work.

"Well, Antonio, I think we held up our end of the deal. I don't think those Sabaku guys are gonna be getting in your… surprisingly spiky hair for a while. Did Genie fill you in on what's gonna happen now that the mission's done?", James asks him, while Jack stands behind him, reasonably checked out.

"Yea, he did mention that you guys had my next job. He also said you guys might be in with the feds, but that's fine by me, as long the pay's good", Guster says back, while taking a swig of some celebratory ale.

"Ummmm, yea, sure. We've got the budget for whatever your price is. Don't worry though, it'll be a super-low stakes thing. Couple of experiments, few tests to run on ya, you'll be in and out and paid in no time."

"Experiments?", Guster asks, being taken a bit aback by that statement. "What, am I gonna be someone's lab rat or something?"

"Kinda? How about we start with this? When we first met today, you said you'd never seen us before. What happened before you came here?"

Guster sits down on a rock and takes another drink, thinking back to what led him here. "Well, I got released from prison a few weeks back on good behavior, and have been plotting my revenge on Goroh ever since he left me to rot on Takora's Moon. I'm not 100% on the details from there, but I met up with Don and he told me he had a Goroh problem, so I agreed to be his Goroh solution."

"A few weeks back?", James asks himself. He turns to Jack to see if he heard that too, and Jack snaps to focus, like someone who just realized he should've been paying attention a few sentences ago. He nods and acts like he knows what's going on, but he's still lost. "OK, well, I guess I should let you know of something that… might surprise you a little bit. You haven't been out of jail for a few weeks. It's actually been a few years", he says as he pulls up the current interstellar date on his comm device.

Guster looks at it in disbelief, trying to figure out where three years of his life had gone. "2562? What the hell? How's that possible? If that's true, then what the hell've I been doing all that time?"

James replies, "If it makes you feel any better, you've been trying to get revenge on Goroh. ("Oh thank goodness.") After you got out of jail, you joined the F-Zero series in order to get your revenge on the grandest stage possible. Well, after the most recent finale, Black Shadow won the title, and brainwashed a bunch of racers, including you and Goroh. My guess is that Shadow basically rewrote your backstory, along with everyone else he got, to whatever would be most useful for him."

Guster keeps looking through the comm device, looking for proof of what McCloud is talking about, and finds plenty of articles and sites to back up his claims. His release from jail was reported on, as well his entry and subsequent success in the F-Zero series. He has an entire part of his life blocked out from his memory.

His look of disbelief fades into one of rage as now a second person has taken a large chunk of his life from him. "What do we have to do to get back at this Shadow guy?", he asks.

"Well, first we need to get back to the GSF HQ to make sure you're out of his hands, and then our colleague Dr. Stewart will run a few tests on you, and… Antonio? You alright?", James asks as Antonio has seemingly frozen in place after he spoke his last word. Jack waves his hand in front of Guster's face, but no reaction.

"I wonder if whatever was controlling him just shut him down, so we can't use him?", Jack asks James.

"Yea, probably. That's a bit of a pain, but at least he'll stay docile until we can…"

Suddenly, Antonio pulls out his plasma pistol and tries to fire it at James, but McCloud's quick reactions allow him to knock the gun out of his hands before he can get a clean shot off. However in one swift motion, Antonio grabs his bottle of ale and smashes it on the rock, giving himself a sharp melee object to swing at the prying men. Both of them jump back hastily, as James stays in front, guarding Jack from him.

Guster swings wildly at the two racers, but they manage to dodge the first few swings. However, Guster gets a clean cut on James's bicep, enough to draw blood, but not severely injure him. By this point, the rest of Antonio's men are trying to get Guster to calm down, thinking that James or Jack did something to make him mad, but Guster's points his bottle at anyone who gets close to him. "Back off, boys. They're mine", he says in a voice that doesn't sound like his anymore.

The men keep their distance, as they can only assume that whatever the racers did warranted of this wild reaction. James tries to cover up his cut, while still standing in front of Jack, trying to calm Guster down. "Antonio, I don't know if…" is all he can get out before Guster is back on the offensive, trying to cut McCloud down to size. He has a manic look on his face, and a lust for violence. He's about to take another swing at them, but in mid-swing, he stops. The wild look on his face is still there, but it looks like he can't move anything.

Then, Morley steps out from behind him, holding a freeze stick. "That's not our Guster. Something's not right about him."

Both men exhale as the chaotic situation is resolved without any bloodshed or serious injury. James puts his finger to his ear and calls for help. "Hey Jody, we're all wrapped up down here, and we've got Guster, subdued but not unconscious, technically. Come on over here and let's get out of here."

As James is on the comm with Jody, Jack goes over and shakes Morley's hand. His face looks sunken in and his normally optimistic expression looks broken, but he still goes over to thank Morley and every single other man there for their help with this dangerous mission. "You guys were amazing back there, and if there's anything I can do for you guys in the future, I'll give you my number, and I'll try to help. Just… maybe not with… this sort of thing again." The rest of the men chuckle, but they give Jack his props for the help he provided. They're the nicest band of mercenaries Jack's ever fought with (and that might include the Galaxy Dogs).

As Jack is wrapping up his thankfulness rounds, their ship lands right in front of their location, with the back door opening right in front of them. "I don't think I should come out to help you guys bring Guster onto the ship", Jody says over the comm. "I might've arrested a few of these guys. Definitely arrested that guy."

The two men say their goodbyes to Don Genie's men and haul Guster off like he's a shelf they're trying to move. Jack carries him under the arms while James walks backwards holding his legs. They walk him onto the ship and set him down in one of the passenger seats, since this ship doesn't really have a dedicated place to put him yet. Once he gets to the mothership, he'll probably stay in the medical bay for most of the trip home, but for now, he'll just have to fly with the crew.

Once Antonio's seated, Jack stands up and excuses himself for a bit. "I've um… I've got a lot to think about, so I think I'll just spend the flight back on my own", he says as he goes off to find a space where he can be alone.

"Take all the time you need, Jack", James says as he lifts off and flies away from Cryton.

"Is he gonna be ok? He looks even more shook up then back when we were in practice and he shot me in the gut with that blank", Jody asks while looking towards where Jack's wandered off to.

"Well, the kid's got a body count now, so he doesn't know how to handle that yet", James replies, speaking as though he knows that kind of trauma.

"Oh man, that's gotta be rough. I figured he'd have the hardest adjustment period to this kind of work, out of all of us."

"Yep, we just need to give him his space for a bit, and hopefully he'll jump back in when he's ready."

"So, what about this guy?", Jody says as she points to a still-paralyzed Antonio in the seat next to her, with a look of primal rage frozen onto his face. "I'm guessing we've got a way to unfreeze him?"

Jack pulls out the freeze stick from behind his back, similar to the ones that were used on him and Jack when they first landed on Cryton. "Ever use one of these?", he says as he tosses it to her.

She holds the stick and her eyes go wide. "Um, have YOU ever used one of these before? Because these things are mega-illegal", she says as she sets the freeze stick aside gently, almost like she doesn't want to get her fingerprints on it.

"Really?", he says as he looks at the device again with new eyes. "I've never used them myself. I had them used on me twice, and someone else used it on Guster to save us from him going feral on us. Never even seen one of those things before then, figured they were just the hot new device on the market."

"The black market, maybe. We think Don's scientists made these in-house, because a lot of them originate from his businesses. But yea, a device that can freeze you until the person who used it decides to free you? There's a million horrible things that can be done with that, so yea, hardcore illegal."

"Well, how about you be the one to use it while we're experimenting on Guster? And we also definitely don't show it to Zoda, so that he doesn't try to experiment on us", James says while nudging the stick back towards her, as a token of goodwill.

"Agreed on that point", she says as she carefully picks it back up and examines it. "I don't feel great about using it, but I guess on this mission, it'll be fair game", she says in defeated tone, knowing that if Atchwa temporarily green-lit what happened at the space station, this'll probably be totally fine.

"Hey by the way, Jody, now that we don't have to worry about anyone hearing us, I have to ask. How did you get in position to fire those plasma bombs?", James asks her with a knowing look.

Jody turns to him, and smiles a rare smile. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Oh come on, Jody, don't treat me like I'm dumb, I know what my own ship's bombs look like, especially when they fly right over my head and nearly trap me in a rockslide."

Jody relents a little and laughs to herself at her own little plot. "Well, I know how you said you didn't like being bugged, either by the police or by Don, so while we were still at Gunfighting 101,... I just put a tracker on Jack. Doubt anyone even noticed. Told you I was good at putting them where they'd go unnoticed."

"Well, you didn't have to get them around Don, so I think that helped", James quickly points out.

"And then after you left the ship, I waited until you were in the cave, flipped the tracker on, turned on the cloaking device, and just followed you from the outside of the cave to where you were planning on exiting. Luckily you doubled back around in the tunnels, so I was able to fire right as you guys came out", Jody says as she relaxes in her chair.

"You know Don's gonna be furious if he finds out, right?", he replies as he just seems impressed with her covertness.

"What are you, a cop?"

James is really taken aback by the comment, and can't help but laugh at its audacity. "You know what? Fair. He'll never find out."