Back at the mothership, Lance and the rest of the squad gathered around the display in the communications room. He wanted to personally send the signal that they had arrived.

Stubbs was concerned. Nakuna looked the other way when they went off the books, but with the planet being monitored there was no way that their transmissions wouldn't be seen by a lot of eyes. Lance was being sloppy and taking risks, he was furious in a way that the deer hadn't seen in a long time.

"So, how long to do we give..." the deer began to ask, interrupted by the chime of an incoming direct connection.

Lance accepted it without hesitation. In his mind's eye he had been hoping for something fun like a bound and gagged panda flanked by armed guards. If not that, maybe him begging for mercy and blubbering into the camera.

Buster was seated in the cockpit of his Jerboa. The hatch was open, revealing the sunrise peeking over a sharp sheer cliff of grey rocks. The breeze ruffled his fur and he took in a slow breath.

He was in his pink scrubs, and he had a resigned look on his face.

"Hey Lance. I had hoped I would never see you again. But I should have known you'd find me." he greeted them, seeing all four of their faces peering back at him from the feed.

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"Hey Buster. Ready to die?" the rabbit asked.

The panda tried to talk quickly so Lance wouldn't have a chance to interrupt. "Look, the people here are defenseless. They're good people. This is a hospital. They don't pose any threat to you. They didn't want to turn me over so I ran away as far as I could. You can come pick me up and I'll go quietly. Just leave them alone. I care about them."

As he talked, Pitt was excitedly motioning to a display and tapping away while Lance kept the panda talking. "Well Buster, if you cared about those humans so much maybe you should have closed your call with them instead of trying to be sneaky and have them listen in. Because now, thanks to you, we just triangulated the location of your little hospital!"

Pitt was outright giggling with glee as he held up his tablet, showing the feed of the hospital board watching in. "Oh my god, they don't even have any guards!"

The panda's eyes flew open, ears erect in surprise. "NO! Lance, please!"

The rabbit had wanted to see that look of despair for so long. He had wished he could have seen what Buster's face looked like when he watched the cockpit recording, and now he knew.

"I'll tell you what, Buster: since you care about these humans so much I think we'll pay them a visit before we come pick you up. You didn't mind missing out last time, but maybe now you can hop your little tin can over and try and stop us!" Lance taunted him with a sadistic smirk.

"Yeah, says here you're about eight hours away from them. If you hurry there might still be some left!" cackled Rema as he slammed his wing down onto the console, purposefully ending the call.

"Oh my god, he is so fucking stupid! The Nakuna Empire truly is in decline if it was made a fool of by such an idiotic bear." Lance didn't even try and hide his glee. It was better than he could have hoped for.